Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Adsense Glossary for Beginners

There are numerous abbreviations that are frequently used and encountered by publishers. Sometimes new publishers get confused and are clueless about some of the terms. Following is the list of most common terms used by every Adsense publisher.

  • Click-through-rate (CTR): Number of times the ad unit is clicked divided by number of times the respective ad unit appeared on web page. For example, if an ad unit has been clicked 28 times out of 2,225 impressions then CTR will be ( ( 28 / 2225 ) * 100 ) = 1.26% approx.
  • Cost-per-action (CPA): Amount a publisher receives when the ad is clicked and thereafter the user completes certain action. For example, a web hosting ad is clicked and user purchases some hosting plan. Important: Almost all Referral ads come under the category of CPA ads.
  • Cost-per-click (CPC): Amount an advertiser pays each time his/her ad is clicked.
  • Cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM): Amount an advertiser pays every 1000 times his/her ad is viewed by the user.
  • Effective CPM (eCPM): It is a reporting feature and indicates the approximate revenue generated across different channels. It is calculated by dividing the total earnings from the number of impressions in thousands. For example, if a publisher earned $5.24 from 2,225 impressions, then eCPM is ( 5.24 / ( 2225 / 1000) ) = $2.35.
  • Public service ad (PSA): These are ads from non-profit organizations and are served in case the ads for relevant content is not available in Adsense inventory or the ad serving system is not able to gather and analyze the content of the web page. The clicks on PSA’s do not generate any revenue for the publisher.

There are many more terms related to PPC advertising, which will be covered in the coming posts.

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