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The most important abbreviations and terms from online marketing

Anyone who – for whatever reason – runs their own website will have occasionally thought about whether they could earn something extra with a little advertising. The first steps in the environment are difficult, however, because it is teeming with shortcuts. ITespresso explains the most important ones.

Medium Rectangle, TCP or Lead? To a layperson, the vocabulary of online marketers sounds like a secret language, but it's one that's easy to learn. ITespresso explains the terms that you encounter most frequently as a beginner in the subject and that will seem completely incomprehensible.

Classic online marketing is about advertising and placing ads on websites. There are different banner formats for which standards have developed over the years. A “leaderboard” is a landscape-format banner measuring 728 by 90 pixels, which is usually placed high up on a website.

The portrait-format counterpart is the "Wide Skyscraper", which with its 160 by 600 pixels is often used to the left or right of the content. Other popular formats found by display advertising providers are “Medium Rectangle” (300 by 250 pixels) and “Large Rectangle” (336 by 280 pixels).

Furthermore, online marketers define not only the format, but also the way an ad appears to the visitor once they visit the website. The “pop-ups” are familiar to many from years past. Here, a new browser window is opened specifically for the advertisement, which pushes itself into the foreground. All browsers now block these pop-ups more or less well. Most website operators hardly use this form of advertising anymore.

The same applies to the slightly less annoying "Pop-Unders" that open in the background. The user usually only sees them when he closes or minimizes the current browser window. Many users also find the so-called "layer ads" annoying, which open within the page but overlay the content. They usually disappear after a few seconds or offer a "close" button.

As an alternative to these very intrusive ad formats, many website operators are now increasingly using more subtle forms of advertising. These include “In-Page Ads” or “In-Text Ads”, which only appear when you move the mouse pointer over a link or a certain area of ​​the website. Then a video or a small overlay opens with the corresponding advertising message.

Video providers also use "in-stream ads" to incorporate commercials into a clip. Sometimes these are called “Pre-Roll Ad”, “Mid-Roll Ad” or “Post-Roll Ad”, depending on whether they run before, during or after the actual content.

Billing: CPC, CPM or rather CPL?

If the ads are running, it's about the revenue. After all, website operators want to see money for showing their visitors the advertising of other companies. When calculating the advertising revenue, the user mainly encounters abbreviations that state how an ad is remunerated.

Very widespread - because Google AdSense in particular works with this billing method - is CPC. This abbreviation stands for "cost per click" and means that the customer pays for each click on a banner. The CPL principle, which stands for “Cost per Lead”, is also popular. Here, the operator only receives a commission if he sends a visitor to the advertising client's website via the ads and the visitor carries out an action there. Classically, this is about registering for a newsletter or requesting further information (catalog, brochures, etc.). In the meantime, however, the purchase of products and the booking of services are also included. The latter is often referred to as “Cost per Order” (CPO) or more generally “Cost per Action” (CPA). Which abbreviation is ultimately used?

Another form of billing is the thousand contact price (TCP), which is known in English as CPM (“Cost per Mille”). Here, the advertiser pays the fee when the ad is displayed a thousand times. Ideally, 1000 different visitors see the advertising banner. TCP or CPM is used less and less, however, since advertisers cannot be sure that the user will see the advertising message just because it is displayed somewhere on the page. Here, CPC and CPL are much more specific and safer, since the website visitor has to act actively or even place an order.

CTR and eCPM: A bit of statistics

Install advertising and wait for the revenue to flow? For most website operators, this is just wishful thinking. Because if you want to earn more than a few euros per month, you have to control and optimize. Analysis tools such as Google Analytics, which can be linked to an AdSense account, for example, help with this. Operators not only see how many visitors stream to the site every day, but also how often they click on ads on which subpages.

In this context, the CTR is an important number. The abbreviation stands for "Click Through Rate" and indicates what percentage of visitors click on advertising banners. In addition, users often find the eCPM, even if they bill by CPC. eCPM stands for “estimated cost per mille”. So the analytics tool estimates the cost per thousand contacts based on past earnings and visitors clicking on ads. Even if this number does not say anything about the exact remuneration, it still serves the site operator as an indicator of the performance of his website or the ads.

The very beginning is often called AdSense

For many operators, however, the first question is how to get advertising banners that you can hopefully integrate profitably into your own website. Google AdSense is particularly popular with beginners. The advantage is the comparatively simple registration and thus the possibility of placing ads very soon.

AdSense is easy to use, the tool offers different banners that can be designed to a small extent and integrated with a few simple steps. The big advantage, however, is that Google takes care of which advertising is actually displayed. For this purpose, the provider uses the content of the website itself. There is a high chance that visitors to an IT website will also be interested in ads on this topic. On the other hand, Google can use cookies and other tracking mechanisms to say fairly well what interests the individual visitor.

The operator does not have to worry about which products and companies are advertised on the site. After all, he can exclude certain ads so that, for example, a competitor's banner doesn't suddenly appear on his own website just because Google thinks it makes sense.

There are also the classic affiliate networks. This is what mediators of advertising media (banners, links, videos, etc.) are called. These include the well-known Zanox, Tradedoubler and Affilinet. Registering with these providers is not that simple. In addition, users themselves have to take care of which companies should advertise on the website and in what form. Billing is usually done by CPL. The hurdles for the first income are therefore significantly higher than with the CPC method. But once they flow, much larger sums can come together.