Every marketing term, in plain English.

Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who complete a desired action, calculated as conversions divided by total visitors or clicks.

CPA is the average cost to acquire one paying customer (or completed action), calculated as spend divided by conversions.

CPC is the average amount you pay each time someone clicks your ad, calculated as total spend divided by clicks.

CPL is the average cost to generate one lead, calculated as total ad spend divided by the number of leads collected.

CPM is the cost to show your ad 1,000 times, calculated as total spend divided by impressions, multiplied by 1,000.

CTR is the percentage of people who click your ad after seeing it, calculated as clicks divided by impressions.

Frequency is the average number of times each person saw your ad, calculated as impressions divided by reach.

An impression is counted each time your ad is displayed on screen, regardless of whether the same person sees it more than once.

Reach is the number of unique people who saw your ad at least once during a given time period.

ROAS is the revenue generated for every dollar of ad spend, calculated as conversion revenue divided by ad spend.

An audience is the defined group of people your ads are eligible to reach, built from location, demographics, interests, behaviors, or your own data.

Behavioral targeting reaches people based on actions and patterns — purchase behavior, device usage, travel, or life events — rather than stated interests.

Broad targeting gives Meta minimal audience constraints — often just location, age, and gender — and relies on the algorithm to find buyers.

A cold audience is people who have never interacted with your business and are encountering your brand for the first time.

A core audience is a targeting group built from Meta's own data — location, age, gender, interests, and behaviors — rather than from your customer lists.

A custom audience is a targeting group built from your own data, such as a customer email list, website visitors, or people who engaged with your content.

First-party data is information you collect directly from your own customers and prospects, such as email addresses, phone numbers, and purchase history.

Geotargeting restricts your ads to people in specific locations — a country, city, ZIP code, or a radius around an address.

Interest targeting reaches people based on topics, pages, and activities Meta has associated with them, such as 'yoga' or 'small business owners'.

A lookalike audience is a group Meta builds to resemble an existing source audience, finding new people who share traits with your best customers.

Prospecting is advertising to new, cold audiences to find people who have never engaged with your business.

Retargeting is showing ads to people who have already interacted with your business — visited your site, watched a video, or engaged with your page.

A warm audience is people who already know your business through prior visits, engagement, or contact — as opposed to cold strangers.

Attribution is the process of crediting conversions to the ads, clicks, or impressions that led to them, determining which marketing earned the result.

An attribution window is the time period after a click or view during which a resulting conversion is credited to the ad.

A click-through conversion is credited when someone clicks your ad and then completes a conversion within the click attribution window.

The Conversions API sends conversion events to Meta directly from your server, supplementing the browser pixel for more complete and reliable tracking.

Event deduplication prevents Meta from double-counting a conversion that is reported by both the browser pixel and the Conversions API.

iOS 14's App Tracking Transparency requires apps to ask users for permission before tracking them, which sharply reduced the data Meta can use for ad targeting and measurement.

The Meta Pixel is a snippet of code on your website that tracks visitor actions and sends them back to Meta for measurement and ad optimization.

A standard event is a predefined action the Meta Pixel can track, such as Lead, Purchase, AddToCart, or CompleteRegistration.

UTM parameters are tags added to a URL that tell analytics tools where a visitor came from — the source, medium, and campaign that brought them.

A view-through conversion is credited when someone sees your ad without clicking it, then converts within the view attribution window.

Ad creative is the visual and written content of an ad — the image or video, the headline, and the copy that capture attention and communicate the offer.

Ad fatigue is the decline in ad performance that occurs when an audience has seen the same creative too many times.

A carousel ad is a single ad that lets people swipe through multiple images or videos, each with its own headline and link.

A collection ad pairs a main image or video with a grid of products beneath it, opening into a full-screen Instant Experience when tapped.

A hook is the opening moment of an ad — the first image, line, or few seconds of video — designed to stop the scroll and capture attention.

Reels are short, vertical, full-screen videos on Instagram and Facebook, and a fast-growing placement for native-feeling video ads.

A single image ad is the simplest Meta ad format — one static image paired with headline and text — fast to produce and easy to test.

Stories ads are full-screen vertical ads that appear between users' Stories on Instagram and Facebook, lasting a few seconds before auto-advancing.

UGC is content that looks like it was made by a real customer or everyday person rather than a brand, used in ads to feel authentic and trustworthy.

A video ad is an ad built around moving footage, used to demonstrate, tell a story, or build emotional connection more powerfully than a static image.

CAC is the total cost to acquire one new customer, including ad spend and all sales and marketing expenses, divided by customers won.

LTV is the total revenue (or profit) a customer generates over the entire span of their relationship with your business.