Have you ever been in a marketing meeting and been thinking, “what are they talking about? This sounds like another language!”.  You are not alone! The marketing, advertising, and public relations industries use a variety of abbreviations when talking about strategies, metrics, and tools. We understand this can be confusing and overwhelming, so we compiled a list of acronyms so you can jump right into your next meeting and sound like a professional.

Have you ever been in a pitch meeting and a marketing professional mentioned a strategy they wanted to try and only said a few letters? Those few letters come together to form very powerful and effective campaigns.

• CTA = Call to Action

  • CTAs are used in advertising creative to entice users to take action on your ad, such as a click or phone call.

• SEO = Search Engine Optimization

  • SEO is the strategy of utilizing copy, content, and links to enhance your organic ranking in an online search.

• SEM = Search Engine Marketing

  • SEM refers to your search campaigns that run on search engines like Google and Bing.

• Pmax = Performance Max

  • Pmax campaigns are a Google Ads product that allows advertisers to utilize all of Google’s advertising platforms from one campaign.

When you are in a meeting with your marketing department or automotive advertising agency, do they refer to metrics with terms like KPIs and ROAS? Continue reading for breakouts and definitions to commonly used data points.

• KPI = Key Performance Indicator

  • KPIs are the metrics that advertisers and marketers use to measure success. See below for some examples.

• CPC = Cost Per Click

  • CPC provides an average of how much an advertiser was charged for each click.

• CTR = Clickthrough Rate

  • CTR is a metric that determines how many users clicked on your ads versus those who did not. The higher the click through rate, the better the engagement.

• CPM = Cost Per Mille/Thousand Impressions

  • This one may not be so easy to figure out from the acronym alone, but it is a simple metric to comprehend. CPM provides the average fee for an advertiser to show their ad one thousand times.

• ROAS = Return on Ad Spend

  • ROAS tells you how much bang for your buck you got. For example, you sold X number of cars with Y advertising spend.

• SIS = Search Impression Share

  • SIS tells how often you showed in your SEM campaigns versus how much you could have shown.

Digital to Dealer Direct knows that as in any field, there are tools and software to enhance the ease and performance of the job. That is no different in advertising! Check out a few abbreviations of tools used in this industry.

• GA4 = Google Analytics 4

  • You might be hearing this one often right now as it just became the official Google Analytics tool. It is a hub to see all your website traffic, events, and data.

• GTM = Google Tag Manager

  • GTM is home to a variety of tags and codes that are placed on your website without the need to consistently update the base code.

• GMB = Google My Business

  • GMB is your digital storefront that provides Google users with quick information about your business like your store hours, address, and phone number. Keeping your page optimized is important for your business and your customers.

We hope that this guide to advertising acronyms will assist you in your next meeting and allow you to dive deeper into the marketing world. If you have any questions about acronyms, or how to apply any of these to your business, reach out to us today!