Most of the terms commonly used in digital marketing are metrics describing how many people an ad reaches, how much it costs and how many sales it generates. Impressions, reach, CPM, CTR, CPC, conversion rate, CPA and ROAS form the core of these metrics. Target audience and remarketing describe who sees the ad; pixels, UTM and attribution explain how data is collected and which ad receives credit for a sale. SEO and SEM describe two ways of gaining visibility in search engines.
Whether you manage your ads yourself or with a performance marketing agency, the reports use the same digital marketing terminology. This glossary follows the flow of an ad report, from impressions to clicks, sales and profitability, then moves to audiences, measurement and search engines. The same abbreviation can be calculated differently in Google Ads, Meta, Google Analytics 4 and an e-commerce dashboard, so we explain those differences alongside each definition. Turkish Google Ads abbreviations such as TO, TBM and BGBM also appear under the relevant terms.
Impressions, reach, frequency and CPM
Ad reports usually begin with how many times an ad appeared and how many people saw it. The following four terms are the right starting point for awareness campaigns; for sales campaigns, read them alongside the terms in later sections.
Impressions are the number of times an ad is displayed on screen. It is not counted per person; if the same person sees an ad three times in one day, the report records three impressions.
Reach is the number of people who see the ad at least once. According to Meta's metric definitions, reach is counted at account level: repeated views from the same account increase impressions but not reach. Meta presents this as an estimated metric. Adding weekly reach figures to calculate monthly reach counts people who saw the ad in multiple weeks more than once.
Frequency shows how many times a person sees an ad on average, calculated by dividing impressions by reach: 60,000 impressions and a reach of 20,000 people gives a frequency of 3. If frequency rises while click-through rate falls, the same people may be seeing the ad too often. Monitor both figures together to judge when to refresh the creative or audience.
CPM (cost per mille, or cost per thousand impressions) is the average amount paid for an ad to be shown a thousand times. It is calculated by dividing spend by impressions and multiplying by 1,000. In Google’s Turkish help pages, CPM also describes a bidding method on the Display Network that charges per thousand impressions. A rising CPM means reaching the same audience has become more expensive; seasonality, competition, or overly narrow targeting may be responsible.
Click-through rate (CTR) and cost per click (CPC)
CTR (click-through rate) shows the proportion of people who clicked after seeing an ad. According to Google Ads' definition, this ratio, abbreviated as CTR, is calculated by dividing clicks by impressions: 5 clicks from 100 impressions means a 5% CTR. A low rate suggests a possible mismatch between the ad’s message or creative and the target audience. A high rate does not guarantee sales, because what people do on the site after clicking is a separate question.
Meta reports offer several versions of click-through rate. CTR (all) shows what share of impressions resulted in any click, while link click-through rate counts only clicks on links within the ad. When evaluating website traffic, columns based on link clicks give a clearer picture because the “all” version includes clicks that do not follow a link.
CPC (cost per click) is the average amount paid for a click, calculated by dividing spend by clicks. It is called CPC in Google Ads, or TBM in Turkish. According to Google's CPC definition, this pricing is sometimes known as pay per click (TBÖ in Turkish); PPC refers to the same model in English. Your maximum CPC is the most you are willing to pay for a click. Unless you use bid adjustments or Enhanced CPC, the click cost does not exceed that amount. The amount actually paid is called actual CPC. Meta’s reported CPC is the average cost of all clicks and should not be confused with cost per link click.
Conversions, conversion rate, CPA and CPL
Conversion is the completion of an action targeted by the ad or website, such as a purchase, form submission, phone call, or newsletter signup. Google Ads defines a conversion as an action used to measure campaign performance and optimize bidding. Before evaluating a report, find out which actions count as conversions; if add-to-cart events and purchases appear in the same column, the conversion count overstates sales.
In Google Analytics 4, the same actions are tracked as key events. According to the Google Analytics help page, a key event measures an action critical to business success. Google describes the sequence as event, key event and conversion. A key event becomes a conversion when used in Google Ads for campaign measurement and bidding. A mismatch between GA4 key-event counts and Google Ads conversions does not alone indicate an error; the dashboards may count the same action in different reports and with different settings.
Conversion rate is the ratio of conversions to a base figure, which varies between tools. In Google Ads' conversion rate definition, conversions are divided by ad interactions eligible to lead to a conversion in the same period: 50 conversions from 1,000 interactions equal 5%. In Shopify's analytics reports, conversion rate is the proportion of sessions with completed payments to all sessions. Seeing 5% in an ad dashboard and 1.5% in a store dashboard is therefore not necessarily contradictory: the first considers ad interactions, while the second includes all site visits.
Work on product pages, checkout and campaign messaging to improve conversion rates is called CRO (conversion rate optimization), and also includes user experience (UX) improvements. One way to measure the impact of changes is an A/B test: two versions of a page, ad or email are shown to different visitor groups during the same period, and their success against the objective is compared. Change only one element per test to identify what caused the difference, and wait for enough conversions in both versions to trust the result.
CPA is the average amount paid for a conversion, calculated by dividing spend by the number of conversions. It stands for cost per action or cost per acquisition and is abbreviated EBM in Google Ads' Turkish resources. In the target CPA bidding strategy, you set your desired average cost per conversion, and Google Ads adjusts bids to that target. Whether a CPA is good depends on average order value and product profitability: a CPA of 300 TL may be profitable on orders averaging 2,000 TL, but exceeds the order value when orders average 250 TL.
CPL is the average cost of a contact inquiry, such as a form submission, quote request, or demo application. Campaigns designed to collect these inquiries are called lead generation campaigns; CPL is a core cost metric for service and B2B businesses. Not every form submission has the same value. In B2B marketing, this is why we assess enquiry volume alongside quality. Tracking cost per lead together with enquiries accepted by the sales team helps distinguish inexpensive forms that never become sales.
Revenue and profit: AOV, ROAS, ROI, CAC and LTV
Average order value (AOV, average order value), also known as average basket value in ecommerce, is sales revenue divided by the number of orders. Shopify calculates it by subtracting discounts from gross sales and dividing by the number of orders, excluding changes made after an order. Understanding whether your own dashboard includes tax, shipping and refunds is essential for a meaningful comparison with the sales value in your advertising dashboard.
ROAS is the ratio of advertising-generated revenue to ad spend: 40,000 TL in sales from 10,000 TL of advertising means ROAS of 4, or 400%. Google renders the term in Turkish as revenue earned from advertising spend. According to the target ROAS help page, in Google Ads the ratio appears as a decimal in the “Conv. value/cost” column and becomes a percentage when multiplied by 100. Knowing that 400% and 4 represent the same result prevents confusion.
ROI (return on investment) is profit-based and calculated as (gain − cost) ÷ cost. ROAS measures revenue while ROI measures profit, so product cost is included in ROI. A store with a 50% gross margin generating 30,000 TL in sales from 10,000 TL in ad spend has a ROAS of 3. Gross profit is 15,000 TL; after advertising, 5,000 TL remains, giving advertising an ROI of 50%. Shipping, payment fees and staffing are not yet included.
Break-even ROAS is the point at which advertising exactly recovers its cost, calculated most simply as 1 ÷ gross profit margin. At a 50% margin the threshold is 2; at 20% it is 5. A ROAS of 3 therefore means profit for the first store and loss for the second. To calculate the threshold step by step including shipping, payment fees and returns, read our article What Is Performance Marketing and Why Does It Matter?
CAC (customer acquisition cost), as defined by Shopify, is the total cost of acquiring one customer. The numerator includes advertising plus sales and marketing costs such as team salaries, software subscriptions, content production and discounts; the denominator includes only first-time customers. This differs from CPA, which includes only ad spend and may count conversions from returning customers.
LTV or CLV (customer lifetime value) is the total a customer spends over their relationship with a business. Shopify's basic formula is average order value × purchase frequency × average customer lifespan. In categories with frequent repeat purchases, acquisition cost on the first order may exceed average order value, provided it is recovered over the customer relationship. Calculating LTV from profit rather than revenue makes the comparison with acquisition cost more reliable.
Audiences, lookalikes and remarketing
Target audience (audience) is the set of rules determining who sees an ad. It can be built using platform criteria such as location, age and interests, or from a business’s own data. On Meta, an audience built from your own data is called a custom audience. Its source may be a customer list, website pixel data, app users or people who interacted with an ad. Before uploading a customer list, ensure you have permission to use it for marketing.
Lookalike audience is used to reach new people similar to a selected source audience. Meta describes this audience as a way to target people most similar to existing customers. The source may be a custom audience, campaign conversions or Page fans. A source with more buyers should produce a lookalike closer to the buyer profile; starting with purchasers is more meaningful than using all visitors.
Remarketing (remarketing or retargeting) means showing ads again to people who visited your website, used your app or interacted with an ad. In Google Ads, these lists are called your data segments and allow you to reconnect with people who have previously interacted with your brand or services. An ad reminding a visitor of a product left in their cart is a typical example. We explain our Display Network retargeting campaigns on our Google advertising management page, and targeting options on Instagram and Facebook on our Meta advertising management page.
Measurement: pixel, UTM, attribution and sessions
Pixel is the advertising platform's measurement code installed on your website. Meta's developer documentation defines the Meta pixel as a JavaScript snippet that tracks visitor activity on a website. Events such as product views, add-to-cart actions, and purchases reach advertising reports through this code. A missing or incorrectly installed pixel leaves conversion counts and the audiences it feeds incomplete.
Conversions API sends events server-side, independently of the visitor’s browser; according to Meta's documentation, it can also carry app events, business messaging events and offline conversions alongside website events. When used with the pixel, the same sale must not be counted twice; Meta’s recommended method identifies duplicate events using event ID and event name, so Pixel and server must send the same ID and event name.
UTM parameters are tags appended to a link that tell analytics tools the source, medium and campaign behind a visit. According to Google's URL builder page, utm_source, utm_medium, and utm_campaign should always be used when adding parameters to a link. For an email newsletter, you might append ?utm_source=bulten&utm_medium=e-posta&utm_campaign=kis-indirimi. Parameter values are case-sensitive, so “Instagram” and “instagram” appear as separate sources in reports; adopting one naming convention across the team prevents this fragmentation.
Attribution (attribution) is the rule determining which ad or channel receives credit for a sale. Attribution models in Google Ads determine how much credit each ad interaction receives for a conversion. Available models are last-click and data-driven; the latter is the default for most conversion actions. On Meta, the attribution window determines how many days after an ad click or view a conversion will count, such as 7 days after a click or 1 day after a view. Because each platform attributes sales to its own ad interactions, the combined sales reported by Google Ads and Meta may exceed the order count in your store dashboard.
Session is the period during which a user interacts with your website or app in Google Analytics 4. According to GA4's definition, sessions lasting over 10 seconds, containing a key event or at least 2 page or screen views are counted as engaged sessions; engagement rate is the share of these sessions among all sessions. Post engagement in Meta advertising reports is a different metric: Meta defines it as the total number of actions people take involving your ad. Seeing the word “engagement” in both reports does not mean they measure the same thing.
Bounce rate in GA4 is the inverse of engagement rate: the percentage of unengaged sessions. In Universal Analytics, the same term was calculated as single-page sessions divided by all sessions. Under the new definition, someone who reads one blog page for 40 seconds and leaves is not a bounce. Remember that the definitions measure different things when comparing older reports.
Another concept that directly affects measurement is cookie consent. Google's consent mode (consent mode) communicates the visitor’s consent status for cookies or app identifiers to Google, and tags operate according to that choice. Shopify also states that sessions are counted only when the visitor grants permission through the cookie banner, and that other analytics platforms calculate sessions differently. On a site using a cookie banner, differences between advertising clicks and analytics sessions are normal.
Search engine terms: SEO, SEM and Quality Score
SEO means the work undertaken to improve a website's visibility in organic search results. Organic results do not incur a per-click charge; visibility is earned over time through technical infrastructure, content, and off-site signals. Google, in the SEO starter guide, explicitly states that it cannot provide a secret that automatically puts a site in first place.
Organic traffic refers to visits from unpaid search result listings. Google Search Console’s performance report shows your website’s clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position in Google Search results. CTR works on the same principle in organic search as it does in advertising. In our SEO management work at Pam Ajans, we interpret Search Console and GA4 data together to determine priorities for the next period.
In advertising reports, keyword and search term must be distinguished. According to Google Ads, a keyword is a word or phrase an advertiser adds to an ad group to reach the right audience; a search term is what a user actually types into Google. The search terms report shows which searches triggered your ads and how they performed, making it the starting point for excluding irrelevant searches. Some terms with insufficient search volume are omitted for privacy reasons.
SEM (search engine marketing) usually means increasing search visibility through paid advertising, although some sources also include SEO. When you see SEM in a report or proposal, ask whether it covers paid search alone or organic work too, to avoid misleading comparisons. For the place of search advertising among other channels, read our article What Is Digital Marketing?
Quality Score is a diagnostic tool in Google Ads Search campaigns that shows how your ad quality compares with other advertisers. According to Google's Quality Score page, it is measured from 1 to 10, shown at keyword level, and based on three components: expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience. Google states that Quality Score is not an input into the ad auction and should not be optimized as a key performance indicator. It is more useful as a way to identify which of the three components needs improvement.
Reading the Metrics Together: A Sample Campaign Report
The terms in an advertising report are interconnected. In a campaign where every conversion is an order and conversion rate is calculated from clicks, CPA equals CPC divided by conversion rate, while ROAS equals average order value divided by CPA. These two equations show why decisions based on a single metric can be misleading.
Consider a store paying 5 TL per click, converting 2% of clickers and averaging 1,000 TL per order. CPA is 5 ÷ 0.02 = 250 TL and ROAS is 1,000 ÷ 250 = 4. Next month, CPC rises to 6 TL, but refreshed product pages increase conversion to 3%: CPA falls to 200 TL and ROAS rises to 5. Looking only at CPC suggests deterioration, yet cost per sale has fallen and advertising returns have improved.
Knowing the answers to these questions when reviewing reports ensures that terms are interpreted consistently:
- Which actions count as conversions, and are add-to-cart and purchase tracked separately?
- Which attribution model and window are used, and are the settings consistent across comparison periods?
- Have platform-reported sales been compared with orders in the store dashboard?
- Were ROAS and CPA targets set according to product margins?
KPI (key performance indicator) refers to the small set of measures chosen to track a business objective, often selected from the digital marketing metrics above. An online store focused on sales may choose ROAS or CPA, a service business collecting inquiries may use cost per qualified lead, and an awareness campaign may use reach and frequency. Trying to improve a metric unrelated to the objective can direct the budget to the wrong place.
To interpret your advertising reports using these terms and choose the right KPIs for your business, schedule a meeting with our team through our contact page.