Marketing & Advertising Abbreviations
111 abbreviations · part of Business & Finance Abbreviations
Abbreviations from marketing strategy, digital advertising, search engine optimization, social media, email, sales pipelines, media buying and customer research. Many are performance metrics such as CTR, CPC and ROAS, so entries give the formula behind each one, making figures from different ad platforms and reports comparable. Ad platforms rename their products often, and entries note earlier names where they are still in use.
| Abbreviation | Stands for | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 4Ps | Product, price, place, promotion | Classic framework for the marketing mix, the controllable decisions a company makes to bring an offering to market: what it sells, how it prices it, where and how it is… |
| ABM | Account-based marketing | B2B strategy that treats specific high-value companies as markets of one, coordinating personalized ads, content, events and sales outreach to the buying group within… |
| ACV | Annual contract value | Average yearly value of a customer contract, typically excluding one-time fees, used in software-as-a-service sales to compare deals of different lengths. |
| AIDA | Attention, interest, desire, action | Classic model of the stages a persuasive message should move a prospect through: capture attention, build interest, create desire for the product and prompt action. |
| AOR | Agency of record | Advertising or media agency formally designated to manage a brand's main advertising or media buying, usually under a retainer contract, and authorized to negotiate… |
| ATL | Above the line | Mass-media advertising aimed at broad audiences, such as television, radio, print, cinema and billboards, used mainly to build brand awareness. |
| B2B | Business-to-business | Commerce, marketing and sales in which one business sells products or services to another, such as software sold to companies, components sold to manufacturers or… |
| B2B2C | Business-to-business-to-consumer | Model in which a company sells to a business partner that delivers the product to its own consumers, often keeping the original brand visible, such as insurance… |
| B2C | Business-to-consumer | Selling products and services directly to individual consumers rather than to other businesses, through stores, websites, apps or marketplaces. |
| B2G | Business-to-government | Sale of goods and services by companies to federal, state or local government agencies, typically through formal procurement such as competitive bids, contract vehicles… |
| BANT | Budget, authority, need, timeline | Sales qualification checklist asking whether the prospect has budget, whether the contact has authority to buy, whether there is a real need, and when they intend to… |
| BOFU | Bottom of the funnel | Decision stage of the funnel, when prospects are ready to buy, served by free trials, demos, pricing pages, testimonials and limited-time offers. |
| BTL | Below the line | Targeted promotion that reaches specific groups directly rather than through mass media, including direct mail, in-store promotions, sampling, events, sponsorships and… |
| C2C | Consumer-to-consumer | Commerce in which individuals sell goods or services to other individuals, usually through an online platform that provides listings, payments or trust features, such… |
| CAC | Customer acquisition cost | Total sales and marketing cost of winning new customers in a period divided by the number of new customers acquired. |
| CDP | Customer data platform | Software that collects first-party customer data from websites, apps, stores, email and support systems, unifies it into persistent individual profiles and makes those… |
| CES | Customer effort score | Survey metric asking how easy it was for a customer to get an issue resolved or task completed, based on the finding that reducing effort builds loyalty more than… |
| CLV | Customer lifetime value | Predicted net value of the future relationship with a customer, often modeled from purchase frequency, average order value, margin, retention and a discount rate. |
| CPA | Cost per acquisition | Average amount spent on advertising or marketing to win one conversion, such as a sale, sign-up or app subscription: total campaign cost divided by the number of… |
| CPC | Cost per click | Price an advertiser pays for each click on an ad, and the metric that reports the average: total ad spend divided by the number of clicks. |
| CPCV | Cost per completed view | Video ad pricing in which the advertiser pays only when the ad is played to the end, common in programmatic and connected TV buying. |
| CPE | Cost per engagement | Pricing or metric in which the advertiser pays for interactions such as likes, comments, shares, video plays or ad expansions, used on social platforms and for… |
| CPI | Cost per install | Price an advertiser pays each time a user installs a mobile app after seeing or clicking an ad, used both as a pricing model and as the campaign's average cost. |
| CPL | Cost per lead | Marketing cost divided by the number of leads generated, such as form fills, demo requests or webinar registrations. |
| CPM | Cost per mille | Price of 1,000 ad impressions, the standard pricing and comparison unit for display, video, social, TV, radio and print advertising. |
| CPP | Cost per point | Price of buying one rating point, meaning 1% of the target audience, in television or radio advertising, used to compare the efficiency of stations, dayparts and markets. |
| CPQ | Configure, price, quote | Sales software that helps reps assemble valid product configurations, apply pricing and discount rules, and generate accurate quotes and proposals, especially for… |
| CPV | Cost per view | Video advertising pricing in which the advertiser pays when a viewer watches a set amount of the ad or interacts with it. |
| CRM | Customer relationship management | Practice of managing interactions with customers and prospects, and the software that supports it by storing contacts, deal pipelines, communications and service… |
| CSAT | Customer satisfaction score | Survey metric asking customers to rate their satisfaction with a product, purchase or support interaction, usually on a 1 to 5 scale. |
| CTA | Call to action | Prompt telling the audience what to do next, such as "Buy now," "Start free trial," "Call today" or "Subscribe," usually as a button or link. |
| CTOR | Click-to-open rate | Email metric equal to unique clicks divided by unique opens, showing how persuasive the content was among people who opened the message. |
| CTR | Click-through rate | Percentage of people who click a link, ad or email after seeing it: clicks divided by impressions, multiplied by 100. |
| CTV | Connected TV | Television set that streams content over the internet, either a smart TV or a regular TV connected to a device such as Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV or a game console… |
| CVR | Conversion rate | Percentage of visitors, clicks or recipients who complete a desired action, such as a purchase or sign-up: conversions divided by total visitors or clicks, multiplied… |
| CX | Customer experience | Customer's overall perception of a brand formed across every interaction, from advertising and purchase to delivery, support and renewal, and the discipline of… |
| D2C | Direct-to-consumer | Spelling of direct-to-consumer favored in India, the UK and in manufacturing and technology circles, describing brands that sell straight to shoppers online instead of… |
| DA | Domain Authority | Score from 1 to 100 created by SEO software company Moz to predict how well a website is likely to rank, based mainly on the quantity and quality of links pointing to it. |
| DM | Direct mail | Printed advertising sent by post to homes or businesses, such as catalogs, postcards, letters and coupons, often personalized and targeted using mailing lists. |
| DMA | Designated Market Area | Nielsen's division of the United States into 210 television markets, each a group of counties served by the same local stations, used to plan, buy and target TV, radio… |
| DMP | Data management platform | Ad technology system that collects and organizes mostly anonymous audience data, often from third-party cookies, into segments used for targeting display and video… |
| DOOH | Digital out-of-home | Out-of-home advertising shown on digital screens, such as electronic billboards, transit displays and screens in retail stores and elevators, allowing rotating ads… |
| DPA | Dynamic product ads | Meta's automated ads that pull products from a catalog and show each person items they viewed or are likely to want, used for retargeting and prospecting on Facebook… |
| DR | Domain Rating | Ahrefs' 0 to 100 score estimating the strength of a website's backlink profile relative to all other sites in its index, widely used in link-building outreach and… |
| DSP | Demand-side platform | Software that advertisers and agencies use to buy display, video, audio, connected TV and digital out-of-home ads automatically across many publishers, setting… |
| DTC | Direct-to-consumer | Business model in which a brand sells to end customers through its own website, app or stores, bypassing wholesalers and retailers, which gives it control of pricing… |
| E-E-A-T | Experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness | Quality concept from Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines describing the signals that make content credible: first-hand experience, subject expertise, recognition… |
| eCPM | Effective cost per mille | Revenue or cost per 1,000 impressions calculated after the fact, regardless of how the ads were actually priced. |
| EDM | Email direct marketing | Marketing emails sent to subscriber lists, such as newsletters, promotions and product announcements; the abbreviation is common in Asia-Pacific agencies, often written… |
| ESP | Email service provider | Platform used to build mailing lists, design and send marketing or transactional emails, automate sequences and track opens, clicks and unsubscribes, such as Mailchimp… |
| GA4 | Google Analytics 4 | Current version of Google's free web and app analytics service, built around events rather than sessions and pageviews, with cross-device reporting, predictive metrics… |
| GBP | Google Business Profile | Free listing that shows a business's name, location, hours, photos, reviews and posts in Google Search and Maps, and the main tool of local SEO for shops, restaurants… |
| GMB | Google My Business | Former name, used from 2014 to 2021, of Google's free business listing service for Search and Maps, now called Google Business Profile. |
| GRP | Gross rating point | Measure of the total audience delivered by a media schedule, calculated as reach (percentage of the audience exposed) times average frequency. |
| GTM | Google Tag Manager | Free Google tool that lets marketers add and manage tracking codes, analytics tags and conversion pixels on a website or app through a web interface, without editing… |
| ICP | Ideal customer profile | Description of the type of company, or customer, that gets the most value from a product and is most valuable in return, defined by attributes such as industry, size… |
| IMC | Integrated marketing communications | Approach that coordinates advertising, public relations, direct marketing, digital, social and sales promotion so that all messages reinforce one consistent brand story… |
| IO | Insertion order | Signed contract between an advertiser or agency and a publisher or ad network specifying the ad placements, flight dates, impressions, rates and terms of a media buy. |
| KOL | Key opinion leader | Influential person whose views shape opinions in a field: in pharmaceutical marketing, respected physicians and researchers who speak about treatments; in China and… |
| LP | Landing page | Standalone web page built for a specific campaign, where visitors arrive after clicking an ad, email or social post, designed around a single goal such as a signup… |
| LTV | Lifetime value | Total revenue or gross profit a business expects from a customer over the whole relationship, used to decide how much it can spend acquiring and retaining customers. |
| MarCom | Marketing communications | Messages and media a company uses to communicate with its market, including advertising, public relations, content, events, collateral and social media, and the team… |
| MDF | Market development funds | Money a manufacturer or vendor gives channel partners, such as resellers and distributors, to spend on approved marketing activities that promote its products. |
| MEDDIC | Metrics, economic buyer, decision criteria, decision process, identify pain, champion | Enterprise sales qualification method that checks six elements of a deal: quantified business impact, the person who controls budget, how options will be judged, the… |
| MOFU | Middle of the funnel | Consideration stage of the funnel, when prospects compare solutions, served by case studies, webinars, comparison pages and email nurturing. |
| MQL | Marketing-qualified lead | Lead that marketing judges more likely to buy than others, based on fit with the target profile and engagement such as downloading content, attending a webinar or… |
| NAP | Name, address, phone number | Core business identity details that local SEO practitioners keep identical across a website, Google Business Profile, maps and directories, because inconsistent… |
| NPS | Net Promoter Score | Customer loyalty metric based on one question: how likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague, on a scale of 0 to 10? |
| OOH | Out-of-home advertising | Advertising that reaches people outside their homes, including billboards, transit ads on buses and subways, airport displays, street furniture such as bus shelters… |
| OTT | Over-the-top | Services delivered over the internet directly to users, bypassing the traditional control of telecom carriers or cable operators, such as WhatsApp for messaging and… |
| PESO | Paid, earned, shared, owned media | Model for planning communications across four media types: paid advertising, earned media coverage, shared social media content and owned channels such as a company… |
| PLA | Product listing ad | Google Shopping ad showing a product's image, title, price and store name, generated from a merchant's product feed rather than written as a text ad, appearing on… |
| PLG | Product-led growth | Go-to-market strategy in which the product itself drives acquisition, conversion and expansion, typically through free trials or freemium plans that let users… |
| PMax | Performance Max | Google Ads campaign type that uses automation and machine learning to place ads across Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps from one campaign… |
| PMP | Private marketplace | Invitation-only programmatic auction in which a publisher offers premium inventory to selected advertisers, usually with a price floor and access arranged through a… |
| POD | Point of difference | In brand positioning, an attribute or benefit that customers associate strongly with one brand and believe they cannot find to the same degree in competitors, giving… |
| POP | Point of purchase | Place where a customer decides to buy, usually a store aisle or checkout, and the displays, signs, shelf talkers and end caps placed there to influence the decision. |
| PPC | Pay-per-click | Online advertising model in which the advertiser pays each time a user clicks an ad, rather than for impressions. |
| PQL | Product-qualified lead | Prospect who has experienced value in a product through a free trial or freemium plan, shown by usage signals such as inviting teammates or hitting plan limits, making… |
| PR | Public relations | Management of an organization's reputation and communication with the public, media, investors, employees and other stakeholders, through press releases, media… |
| RFM | Recency, frequency, monetary value | Customer segmentation method scoring each customer on how recently they bought, how often they buy and how much they spend, then grouping them, for example into… |
| ROAS | Return on ad spend | Revenue generated by advertising divided by the amount spent on it, expressed as a ratio (4:1), a multiple (4x) or a percentage (400%). |
| ROMI | Return on marketing investment | Incremental profit attributable to marketing divided by the marketing spend, used to judge whether a program, campaign or whole budget creates value beyond what would… |
| RPM | Revenue per mille | Earnings a publisher or creator receives per 1,000 page views or video views, after the platform's share, combining all ad and other revenue sources. |
| RTB | Real-time bidding | Auction method in programmatic advertising in which each individual ad impression is offered to buyers and sold to the highest bidder in the fraction of a second while… |
| SAL | Sales-accepted lead | Marketing-qualified lead that the sales team has reviewed and agreed to pursue, marking the formal handoff between marketing and sales in a lead funnel. |
| SEA | Search engine advertising | Paid text and shopping ads displayed on search engine results pages, bought through platforms such as Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising on a pay-per-click basis. |
| SEM | Search engine marketing | Marketing that promotes a website through search engines, today used mostly to mean paid search advertising such as Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising, where… |
| SEO | Search engine optimization | Practice of improving a website so its pages rank higher in the unpaid (organic) results of search engines such as Google and Bing. |
| SERP | Search engine results page | Page a search engine displays in response to a query, containing organic results, paid ads and features such as featured snippets, maps, "People also ask" boxes… |
| SFA | Sales force automation | Software that automates sales tasks such as contact and account management, opportunity tracking, forecasting, quoting and activity logging, now usually a module of a… |
| SLG | Sales-led growth | Strategy in which revenue is driven mainly by sales teams that prospect, run demos and negotiate contracts, typical of complex, high-priced enterprise products. |
| SMM | Social media marketing | Use of social platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and X to build brand awareness, engage communities, drive traffic and sell products… |
| SMO | Social media optimization | Practice of making content and profiles more shareable and visible on social platforms, through share buttons, compelling previews, consistent profiles and posting… |
| SOV | Share of voice | Brand's portion of the total advertising, mentions, search visibility or impressions in its category, compared with competitors. |
| SQL | Sales-qualified lead | Prospect that a salesperson has vetted, typically through a discovery call, and judged to have a genuine need, budget, authority and timeline, making it ready to become… |
| SSP | Supply-side platform | Ad technology used by publishers and app developers to sell their ad inventory automatically, offering each impression to many buyers through auctions and setting price… |
| STP | Segmentation, targeting and positioning | Three-step marketing strategy model: divide a market into groups with similar needs, choose which segments to serve, and define how the brand should be perceived… |
| TCV | Total contract value | Full value of a customer contract over its entire term, including recurring fees and one-time charges such as implementation or training. |
| TOFU | Top of the funnel | Earliest stage of the marketing funnel, when people first become aware of a problem or brand, served by educational blog posts, social content, videos and broad… |
| TRP | Target rating point | Gross rating points delivered among a defined target audience, such as adults 25 to 54, rather than among all viewers, used to plan and buy television and video… |
| TTL | Through the line | Campaign approach that blends mass-media (ATL) and targeted (BTL) activity into one integrated plan, for example a TV ad driving viewers to an in-store promotion and… |
| UGC | User-generated content | Content created by customers or fans rather than the brand, such as reviews, photos, videos, social posts and forum answers, which brands repost, display on product… |
| USP | Unique selling proposition | Distinctive benefit that sets a product apart from competitors and gives customers a reason to choose it, expressed in a single clear claim used across advertising. |
| UTM | Urchin Tracking Module | Set of standard parameters added to the end of a URL, such as utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign, that tell analytics tools where a visitor came from. |
| UVP | Unique value proposition | Concise statement of the specific value a product delivers, for whom and how it differs from alternatives, typically placed as the main headline on a website or landing… |
| vCPM | Viewable cost per mille | Price of 1,000 viewable impressions, counting only ads that met an industry viewability standard rather than all ads served. |
| VOC | Voice of the customer | Process of capturing customers' needs, expectations and complaints through interviews, surveys, reviews, support tickets and social listening, and feeding them into… |
| VTR | View-through rate | Percentage of video ad impressions in which the viewer watched to completion or to a defined threshold, used to compare creative and placements. |
| WOM | Word of mouth | Spread of information and recommendations about products from person to person, in conversation or online, and marketing that deliberately encourages it through… |
| YMYL | Your Money or Your Life | Google's term for topics where poor-quality information could harm a person's health, financial stability, safety or well-being, such as medical advice, investing… |
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