Welcome to our updated list of the most important digital marketing words to know in 2020. These are words that we have noticed being used more and more often online over the past year (as well as a few commonly misunderstood basics sprinkled in). If you want to stay on top of your game you really need to know what all this jargon means!
Check out our list of top terms from last year if you really want to be on top of where digital marketing is at right now.
1) Active Moderation: When a moderator is reading the majority of posts or comments on a website or social network to check for legal infringements (or breaches of Terms of Service).
Most useful for: Social Media Marketing, Website Owners
2) Ad Space: A space on a website that is reserved for advertising.
Most useful for: Display Advertising
3) Audience Network: Facebook’s extended ad network of websites where it runs adverts.
Most useful for: Social Media Marketing
4) Backlink: A backlink is a link from another website. Different to inbound links, which are simply links from another webpage (whether or not they are on a different website).
Most useful for: SEO, Influencer Marketing
5) BERT: Introduced in 2019, BERT is used as part of Google’s search algorithm in order to understand what people actually mean in searches. It is essentially an update which helps Google understand context when you search.
Most useful for: SEO
6) Bing Ads: Microsoft’s answer to Google Ads, Bing Ads is where you can run search ads on the Bing search engine.
Most useful for: Paid Search
7) Blacklist: A list of (usually permanently) banned people or things. For example, users who break rules repeatedly could be blacklisted from posting on a site, or websites which are untrustworthy could be blacklisted from ad platforms.
Most useful for: Social Media Marketing, Influencer Marketing
8) Brand Awareness: A metric that is defined differently by different organisations. Brand Awareness generally means how memorable a brand is under different conditions.
Most useful for: Branding
9) CAN-SPAM: A national standard in the USA for sending emails, which legislates around SPAM emails and pornography.
Most useful for: Email Marketing
10) CASL: Legislation around email marketing in Canada which requires express permission before emails are sent (in order to stop SPAM).
Most useful for: Email Marketing
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11) CLS: Cumulative Layout Shift. One of Google’s new Core Web Vitals, which measures how much webpages move after loading.
Most useful for: Website Owners, SEO, Web Design
12) Completion Rate: A metric meaning the percentage of people who completed a task, out of those who started the task. Generally used for surveys or onboarding, this is a good way to measure whether your survey or onboarding process is engaging enough.
Most useful for: Website Owners, Content Marketing
13) Consent Management Platform: AKA CMP. How websites track and record whether people have given their consent to cookies or various forms of marketing. This is now necessary for all websites in Europe since the introduction of GDPR and PECR.
Most useful for: Website Owners, Content Marketing
14) Cookie Policy: A policy which explains which cookies which are dropped by a website, and what they are being used for. This is a legal document.
Most useful for: Website Owners, Content Marketing, Display Advertising, Social Media Marketing
15) Core Web Vitals: A new set of metrics that Google uses for ranking websites in search. Rolled out in 2020, Core Web Vitals try to quantify user experience of a website.
Most useful for: SEO
16) Cost Per Result: Facebooks version of CPA which includes any and all goals of an advertising campaign. By making Cost Per Result a goal-neutral metric, it means users can see how much their CPC, CPL etc is, all in one column in Facebook Business Manager.
Most useful for: Social Media Marketing
17) CT: Click-Through. An old and rarely used acronym, which clever marketing folk think they have invented periodically.
Most useful for: Digital Marketing Analytics
18) CTA: An acronym for Call-to-Action. A CTA means specific wording which tells someone to do something (eg telling people to “Like and Subscribe” at the end of a video). CTAs can greatly improve the performance of any content.
Most useful for: Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Display Advertising, Website Owners
19) Demographics: Factors such as age, race, gender, sex, location which are often used to break statistics down in order to find trends. Demographics are also commonly used when targeting advertising.
Most useful for: Digital Marketing Analytics, Display Advertising, Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Paid Search
20) Digital Content Next: AKA DCN (the new name for the OPA). A trade association for the digital content industry.
Most useful for: Content Marketing, Influencer Marketing, Website Owners
21) Dogfooding: A phrase referring to the idea that Dog Food makers should test their own dog food (presumably on their dogs). For Digital Marketing this means testing out content and messaging internally before releasing it on the public, which can help avoid embarrassing mistakes.
Most useful for: General Marketing Tips, Display Advertising, Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Paid Search
22) DOM Ready Time: The amount of time it takes for a browser to actually receive the HTML code (pre-loading the page)
Most useful for: Web Design, SEO, Website Owners
23) E-A-T: A way of judging the Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness of websites and authors online. Google asks the people who test whether their search engine is working properly to consider websites by using this concept (making it a sort of indirect ranking factor).
Most useful for: SEO, Content Marketing, Influencer Marketing
24) Emoji: A standard set of small images that can be added to messages and posts that are used to express an idea or emotion.
Most useful for: Social Media Marketing
25) End User: The person who actually uses a website, product, or service. It is important to keep a focus on End Users as they will ultimately decide success or failure.
Most useful for: Website Owners, General Marketing Tips
26) Facebook Blueprint: The free Facebook advertising course run by Facebook. It is very comprehensive. [Check out our list of free courses from all the big platforms]
Most useful for: Social Media Marketing
27) Facebook Live: Broadcasting live onto Facebook, with a video appearing in your feed which is shown in real-time.
Most useful for: Influencer Marketing, Social Media Marketing
28) Facebook Messenger: The messaging system that is built into Facebook, which is broken out onto a separate app on smartphones. Sometimes referred to as a social network (although it clearly isn’t one).
Most useful for: Social Media Marketing
29) Favicon: The icon that appears on a tab in a browser when visiting a website. Usually just a website’s logo.
Most useful for: Website Owners, Web Design
30) Follow Friday: An old tradition on Twitter where people would suggest interesting accounts to follow (these tweets are sent out on Fridays). Often shortened to #FF.
Most useful for: Social Media Marketing
31) Follower to Tweet Ratio: The ratio of how many followers you have per tweet you’ve written. This is sometimes used as a way of measuring how “cool” an account really is. Often used by influencer marketing agencies.
Most useful for: Social Media Marketing, Influencer Marketing
32) FOMO: An acronym standing for Fear Of Missing Out, which refers to the idea that people always think something cool is going on elsewhere. Marketers can use this idea to improve their marketing messages.
Most useful for: General Marketing Tips, Display Advertising, Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Paid Search
33) Gated Content: Content which is not publicly accessible, and requires people to sign-up, pay, or confirm their age before accessing.
Most useful for: Website Owners, Content Marketing, Web Design, Lead Gen
34) Ground-Swell Approach: An influencer marketing strategy that use a large group of micro-influencers to try and influence people’s actions by starting a conversation from the ground up.
Most useful for: Influencer Marketing
35) Growth Engine: The mechanism that makes a startup grow in a sustainable fashion. This can often simply mean a specific marketing channel (eg “Instagram is the growth engine for this company”).
Most useful for: General Marketing Tips, Display Advertising, Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Paid Search
36) HARO: An acronym meaning Help A Report Out, HARO is a website that helps reporters find expert sources for their stories. Getting exposure as an expert is an excellent SEO tactic.
Most useful for: SEO
37) Horizontal Ad Unit: An ad unit that is wider than it is tall. It is useful to group ad units in this way for multi-size ad slots, as well as general web design.
Most useful for: Display Advertising, Web Design
38) House Ads: An ad for your own products or services, which runs on media (such as a website) that you own. In Display Advertising, websites often create house ads to run when no paid ads are available.
Most useful for: Display Advertising, Website Owners
39) House Party: A social network based around group video chats.
Most useful for: Social Media Marketing
House Party UI
40) Influencer Marketing Platform: A marketing platform that helps brands with their influencer marketing. Currently, they are often not much more than online catalogues listing influencers, however, this type of platform is still evolving.
Most useful for: Influencer Marketing
41) Informational Search Query: A query on a search engine that is looking for specific information. Creating content for these searches can be a great way to get people into the top of your marketing funnel by showing your E-A-T credentials.
Most useful for: Content Marketing, SEO
42) Instagram Live: Broadcasting live onto Instagram, with your video appearing live in your feed.
Most useful for: Influencer Marketing, Social Media Marketing
Instagram Live in action
43) Instagram Stories: A way that users can curate a group of their own Instagram posts. These stories are only displayed for 24 hours.
Most useful for: Influencer Marketing, Social Media Marketing
44) Installs: A metric used when the goal of advertising is getting someone to install a piece of software (generally an app). This is an important metric for CPI campaigns, as there is often a large drop off between someone clicking a button to install an app, and actually completing the installation process.
Most useful for: Digital Marketing Analytics
45) Invalid Traffic: Web traffic that doesn’t qualify to be counted. This can be because it is from bots, fraud, or are from users who are disallowed (for example people clicking on ads on their own website will be discounted by their ad network).
Most useful for: Digital Marketing Analytics
46) Joint Copyright: When a piece of content belongs to multiple people/companies. This often happens for co-branded products or services, and when influencers partner with brands.
Most useful for: Influencer Marketing
47) Kik Messenger: An instant messaging platform, sometimes referred to as a social network.
Most useful for: Social Media Marketing
48) KISS: An acronym standing for Keep It Simple Stupid. KISS is a sort of pseudo-ethos which advocates for not overthinking or overcomplicating things (which can be vital in marketing).
Most useful for: General Marketing Tips, Display Advertising, Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Paid Search
Ironically, the band KISS very much overcomplicated things
49) LCP: An acronym standing for Largest Contentful Paint. A metric that is part of Google’s Core Web Vitals. LCP measures page load speed – specifically the render time of the largest viewable content element.
Most useful for: SEO, Web Design, Digital Marketing Analytics
50) Link Velocity: The rate at which a site gets new inbound links, usually measured as the number of linking domains per month. New sites with a very high link velocity might be considered suspicious by a search engine (as it potentially implies dishonest link building practices).
Most useful for: SEO, Website Owners, Digital Marketing Analytics
51) LTV:CAC: The ratio of lifetime value to customer acquisition cost. This is a way of measuring whether the cost of acquiring a new customer outweighs the amount you will earn from that customer.
Most useful for:
52) Media Kit: A pack of materials about an organisation. This can either be a pack of prices and options for buying media, or a pack of information about a brand/product etc to be distributed at an event.
Most useful for: Display Advertising, Website Owners, Influencer Marketing
53) Media Spend: The amount of money spent directly on advertising. For example, a campaign’s costs might include hiring influencers, and agency fees, as well as money spent on Paid Social – only the money directly spent on Paid Social is counted as media spend.
Most useful for: Influencer Marketing
54) Moderated Forum: A website where comments and posts are screened, with some content being banned, removed or marked by the website.
Most useful for: Social Media Marketing
55) Mommy Blogger / Mummy Blogger: A blogger who talks about their experiences as a mother. Successful Mummy Bloggers will often be paid to review parenting products.
Most useful for: Influencer Marketing
56) MTD: An acronym for Month To Date. This is a way of filtering data by only considering the current month (up to the current moment).
Most useful for: Digital Marketing Analytics
57) Navigational Search Query: A search which is aimed at finding a specific website or webpage. While these searches generate a lot of volume, they are not a good Paid Search or SEO opportunity (except for the brand being searched for), as the searchers intent has already been decided.
Most useful for: SEO, Paid Search
58) Nested Comments: When a reply to a comment is slightly indented or hidden under the comment it is replying to (so a user must expand to see the replies). This is a useful way for forums and comment sections to make it possible to break out topics within a thread.
Most useful for: Web Design, Social Media Marketing
59) Net 60 Terms: A common payment condition in online advertising, Net 60 means that you will only be paid 60 days after the activity has taken place (or sometimes 60 days after the month in which the activity has taken place). This is generally so that the payer has enough time to get paid themselves before giving money to the payee.
Most useful for: Display Advertising, Influencer Marketing
60) Niche: A specific or specialised interest or section of the population. Websites are often spoken about in terms of which niche they fit in, as each niche has it’s own audience/community.
Most useful for: Influencer Marketing, Website Owners, SEO, Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing, Display advertising
61) Non-Exclusive YouTube Video: A video where an influencer promotes a bunch of different brands at once. This type of influencer advertising is cheaper than exclusive videos but is also much less effective.
Most useful for: Influencer Marketing
62) Off-Page Ranking Factor: An SEO term for things that affect where webpages rank in search engines that are not on the webpage itself (for example links from other websites).
Most useful for: SEO
63) On-Page Ranking Factor: An SEO term for things that affect where webpages rank in search engines that are on the webpage itself (for example keyword usage).
Most useful for: SEO, Website Owners
64) OS: An acronym for Operating System. It can be useful to target different ads to different operating systems, as well as split out reports by OS in order to identify problems.
Most useful for: Social Media Marketing, Display Advertising, Digital Marketing Analytics
65) Outreach: The process of getting in touch with other websites or businesses. Seemingly simple, due to the high volume of spam on the internet it can be difficult to connect with other organisations without an introduction, which is why this has become an industry in and of itself.
Most useful for: SEO, Content Marketing, Influencer Marketing
66) Page CTR: The percentage of clicks all ads on a page received (Page CTR can also be used to measure link clicks from a page in general, but this is uncommon). Page CTR is useful to judge whether ads on a page are working in general, rather than assessing whether an individual ad is performing well.
Most useful for: Display Advertising, Website Owners, Content Marketing
Click to enlargePage CTR = (Clicks x 100) ÷ Page impressions
[Find our helpful CTR calculator here]
67) Paid Post: A post on social media (or on a blog) which was only motivated by money. This can mean being paid to let someone else post on your blog or social media account, or creating content in return for money. Paid Posts should be always be marked as such (both legally, and to keep an audience’s trust).
Most useful for: Influencer Marketing, Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing
68) Passive Moderation: When a moderator only checks if posts or comments on a site are suitable if someone flags them. This type of moderation is designed to let a websites community mostly police itself.
Most useful for: Website Owners, Content Marketing
69) PECR: An acronym for Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulation, PECR is an EU regulation around marketing calls, cookies and privacy that sits alongside GDPR.
Most useful for: Website Owners
70) Project Manager: A Project Manager (or PM) makes sure that a project is planned properly and follows that plan (including timings). They traditionally sit outside a companies normal command structure and are in charge of a specific project only.
Most useful for: Marketing Jobs
71) Redditor: Someone who uses the website Reddit (as a registered user).
Most useful for: Social Media Marketing
72) Regram: Instagram’s version of reposting or sharing.
Most useful for: Influencer Marketing, Social Media Marketing
73) RFP: An acronym standing for Request For Proposal. This is what is put out when an organisation is looking for a marketing agency to tender for work. An RFP explains what the goals and budget of a project are, and asks for agencies to pitch for the business in a specific way.
Most useful for: General Marketing Tips, Display Advertising, Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Paid Search
74) RLSA: An acronym standing for Retargeting List for Search Ads. RLSA is a feature in Google Ads to target people on Google Search who have visited your site.
Most useful for: Paid Search
75) Scroll Hijacking: When scrollbars are made to behave differently than usual (for example stopping at a point and setting off an animation). This is a risky design idea, as many users find it unsettling to have something as fundamental as scrolling changed in any way.
Most useful for: Web Design
76) Search Query: The actual words used in a search engine by a user. Different to keywords, which are groups of words which advertisers target in order to hit a set of relevant Search Queries. For example, using the keyword “Cheese” in Google Ads would cover the Search Queries “Blue Cheese”, “Delicious Cheese”, “I hate Cheese” etc.
Most useful for: SEO, Paid Search, Digital Marketing Analytics
77) Site Speed: A general term for the speed at which a site loads. Site speed can be broken down into multiple metrics. Site Speed is a ranking factor in SEO.
Most useful for: SEO, eCommerce, Website Owners, Digital Marketing Analytics
78) Snapchat Memories: A place on Snapchat where users of the platform can save snaps for later. Memories are only accessible by the user who saves them (they are not public).
Most useful for: Influencer Marketing, Social Media Marketing
79) Snapchat Stories: A place on Snapchat to curate snaps from the past 24 hours into a publicly viewable set. These expire.
Most useful for: Influencer Marketing, Social Media Marketing
Snapchat’s Year-End Stories are a type of Snapchat story that summarise your year
80) SoLoMo: Short for Social, Local, Mobile, SoLoMo is a marketing mindset which seeks to integrate three trends for consumers (ie being influenced by social, wanting messages to be local to them, and consume mostly on mobiles).
Most useful for: Acronym Guide, General Marketing Tips, Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, eCommerce
81) Steemit: A blockchain-based social network that pays users for their content using the STEEM cryptocurrency.
Most useful for: Social Media Marketing
82) Subtweet: A tweet that refers to someone without mentioning them directly (often as a way to mock or criticise that person).
Most useful for: Social Media Marketing
83) SWOT: An acronym standing for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. A SWOT analysis of a project is often used to start planning a marketing campaign.
Most useful for: General Marketing Tips, Display Advertising, Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Paid Search
84) Telegram: A secure messaging app that lets you set messages to delete themselves (like Snapchat). Sometimes referred to as a social network.
Most useful for: Social Media Marketing
85) Thin Content: Content on a website that has little to no value to a user. This is generally thought of as very short content, however, thin content doesn’t have a specific length and is more about quality. Thin Content ranks badly in search engines (if it’s even indexed at all).
Most useful for: SEO, Content Marketing, Website Owners
This is a surprisingly accurate metaphor for thin content
86) Thumbnail: A small picture (often auto-generated from a larger version of the picture) which goes alongside content in an index or search result. Thumbnails are very important in getting people to click your content.
Most useful for: Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing
87) Tracking Links: A hyperlink that is designed to be easily trackable, often by adding UTM parameters or else by simply being unique.
Most useful for: Influencer Marketing, Digital Marketing Analytics, Social Media Marketing, Display Advertising, Content Marketing, Paid Search
88) TripAdvisor: An online travel company which features user-generated content (which is why it is sometimes referred to as social media).
Most useful for: Social Media Marketing
89) UGC: An acronym standing for User Generated Content. UGC refers to content not created by the owners of a website and can include comments, social media or forum posts, and guest posts.
Most useful for: Social Media Marketing, Website Owners, Content Marketing
90) Unmoderated Forum: A website where comments and posts are not screened, meaning anyone can post anything.
Most useful for: Social Media Marketing
91) USP: An acronym standing for Unique Selling Point. This is a concept based around how a brand/product/service etc differentiate itself from other products and is a key point in any marketing messages.
Most useful for: General Marketing Tips, Display Advertising, Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Paid Search
92) Vertical Ad Unit: An ad unit which is taller than it is wide (such as a 300×600). It is helpful to group this type of ad unit for both web design and multi-sized ad slots.
Most useful for: Display Advertising, Web Design, Website Owners
93) VfM: An acronym standing for Value for Money, which is used by The Online Advertising Guide for a metric which combines CPC and CTR.
Most useful for: Digital Marketing Metrics, Paid Search, Display Advertising. Social Media Marketing
Click to enlargeVfM = CTR ÷ CPC
[Find our helpful VfMcalculator here]
94) Walled Garden: A moderated marketplace, such as Google Play or Apple’s App Store.
Most useful for: General Marketing Tips
95) Web Accessibility: A way of judging whether a website has been developed so that people with disabilities can use it.
Most useful for: Web Design
96) Webinar: An online seminar. These are growing in prominence and are a very effective type of content marketing.
Most useful for: General Marketing Tips, Content Marketing
97) WeChat: A Chinese social media platform, that includes a payment platform. It is so popular than many people use it instead of having a bank account.
Most useful for: Social Media Marketing
98) WTD: An acronym standing for Week To Date. Used in analytics, this is a way of filtering results by just the current week (up to the current moment).
Most useful for: Digital Marketing Analytics
99) YMYL: An acronym for Your Money or Your Life used by Google. YMYL encompasses all websites which give health advice or financial advice (or technically any site that sells things as they handle financial details). This type of website is subject to a higher level of scrutiny by Google search, as the consequences of them promoting bad/fraudulent websites is higher.
Most useful for: SEO, Content Marketing, Website Owners
100) YouTuber: A user of the website YouTube as a creator – by uploading/managing videos, creating videos, or staring in videos on the platform.
Most useful for: Social Media Marketing, Influencer Marketing
Congratulations you got to the end. Don’t you feel smarter? See you next year.