X plus 1

A methodology of testing where a baseline control sample is compared to a variety of single variable test subjects in order to improve the customer response rate.

In [x+1] parlance, an activity is an event that typically represents some user behavior such as a conversion or page visit.

The amount actually paid for each click, considering the click-through-rate and the performance of competitor ads. This difference may result in paying less than the amount bid.

One or more ads targeting the same group of keywords.

The ad rank is calculated by considering the bid (max. cost per click), the click through rate, and ad text.

The number of times an ad is displayed in relation to the number of searches and the other ads in the ad group.

An advertising program by which Google acts as the intermediary between content sites and web advertisers.

A special URL that contains the identifier or username of the affiliate.

The sum of activities developed to promote the programs a company is affiliated with.

A specialized intermediary website that links between affiliate marketers and merchants, providing a wide range of services to both categories.

A system defined by a merchant site by which it attracts affiliates.

A set of rules that a search engine uses to rank the listings contained within its index in response to a particular query. No search engine reveals exactly how its own algorithm works both to protect itself from competitors and to prevent those who wish to spam the search engine.

Anchor text refers to the visible text for a hyperlink.

The acronym for Application Programming Interface.

In [x+1] parlance, a collection of attributes that defines a set of users for targeting, analysis, or syndication. Audiences can be used across Origin Site and Origin Media DSP as well as pushed to partners or other channels outside of [x+1] Origin.

In [x+1] parlance, the user characteristics that can be used to build audiences. Categories of attributes include geographic, demographic, financial, connection, travel, and shopping.

The average amount paid when somebody clicks on an ad.

A statistic describing how your ad typically ranks against other ads over a period of time.

Any link on another page that points to the subject page. Also called inbound links or IBLs.

When pages are removed from a search engine index specifically because the search engine has deemed them to be spamming or violating guidelines.

The maximum amount of money you are willing to pay for a click on your ad; the same as maximum cost-per-click (Max. CPC).

The bid simulator enables you to see the advertising results you could get if you used a different maximum CPC bid for your keyword or ad group.

Abbreviation of robot (also called a spider). It refers to software programs that scan the web. Bots vary in purpose from indexing web pages for search engines to harvesting e-mail addresses for spammers.

An option that relates to keywords set-up. By using the broad match option, your ad will display for every possible search phrase that uses your keyword phrase. The broad match doesn't consider the topic of the words or the existence of additional words in the search phrase.

A technique used by [x+1]'s POE^TM which improves digital marketing in real-time by creating dynamic algorithms. POE^TM always has an incumbent model and a new model, which acts as the "challenger". These models compete for the best performance, continually challenging the incumbent model until a better model is found.

The ratio or percentage of the number of times an ad is clicked divided by the number of times an ad is viewed.

In terms of search engine marketing, this is the act of getting a search engine to record content for a URL that is different than what a searcher will ultimately see. It can be done in many technical ways. Several search engines have explicit rules against unapproved cloaking. Those violating these guidelines might find their pages penalized or banned from a search engines index.

In the case of Google, the network of websites that are being subscribed to the Google AdSense program and thus can display the Ads by Google.

An advertising model in which advertising is either manually or automatically targeted to the content of the page. A web site about travel may see content-targeted advertisements related to travel.

To supplement their business models, certain text-link advertising networks have expanded their network distribution to include contextual inventory. Most vendors of search engine traffic have expanded the definition of Search Engine Marketing to include this contextual inventory. Contextual or content inventory is generated when listings are displayed on pages of Web sites (usually not search engines), where the written content on the page indicates to the ad-server that the page is a good match to specific keywords and phrases. Often this matching method is validated by measuring the number of times a viewer clicks on the displayed ad.

Conversion refers to site traffic that follows through on the goal of the site (such as buying a product on-line, filling out a contact form, registering for a newsletter, etc.). Webmasters measure conversion to judge the effectiveness (and ROI) of PPC and other advertising campaigns. Effective conversion tracking requires the use of some scripting/cookies to track visitors actions within a website. Log file analysis is not sufficient for this purpose.

The percent of people that buy a product/service of all the people who visit a webpage.

The actual text written in an ad or webpage.

The amount of money you pay to a search engine for one click on your ad.

A concept by which you pay not for the clicks on your ad but for the number of people that view your ad.

Abbreviation of cost per click. It is the base unit of cost for a PPC campaign.

System where an advertiser pays an agreed amount for the number of times their ad is seen by a consumer, regardless of the consumers subsequent action. Heavily used in print, broadcasting and direct marketing, as well as with online banner ad sales, CPM stands for cost per thousand, since ad views are often sold in blocks of 1,000. (The ‘M’ in CPM is Latin for thousand.)

Component of search engine that gathers listings by automatically crawling the web. A search engines crawler (also called a spider or robot) follows links to web pages. It makes copies of the web pages found and stores these in the search engines index.

In [x+1] parlance, a collection of creative content that is applied to a placement using one of the decision mechanisms such as a targeting rule, POE, or eligibility. A creative group frequently represents an offer with one or more treatments or versions of a creative within the group.

Abbreviation of click-through rate. The percentage of those clicking on a link out of the total number who see the link. For example, imagine ten people do a web search. In response, they see links to a variety of web pages. Three of the ten people all choose one particular link. That link then has a 30 percent click-through rate.

The ability to ingest and aggregate data from first-, second-, and third-party on- and offline sources in a unified (and increasingly programmatic) manner.

The actual URL of your landing page (the webpage you send your visitors to).

A type of search engine where listings are gathered through human efforts, rather than by automated crawling of the web. In directories, web sites are often reviewed, summarized in about 25 words and placed in a particular category.

The cosmetic URL that displays in your ad.

Unifies data and decisions across digital channels combining the functionality of a DMP to scale real-time data to create better audiences and customer experiences, a decision engine to simultaneously optimize decisions, centralized analytics and a service oriented architecture to easily integrate with other systems.

Intakes and aggregates data for a variety of sources in a unified manner so that custom audiences can be built by marketers across channels. A true DMP includes four core capabilities including 1. Data collection and management 2. Audience creation and management 3. Reporting and analytics, and 4. Execution across channels and touch points.

A technology that allows digital advertisers to manage multiple ad exchanges and data exchanges through one user interface. Real time bidding for display ads takes place within the ad exchanges, and by utilizing a DSP, advertisers can manage their bids for and the pricing for the data that they are layering on to target their audiences. Much like Paid Search, using a DSP allows users to optimize based on set Key Performance Indicators such as Cost-per-clicks, and Cost-per-action.

[x+1]'s Origin Media DSP utilizes the fundamental targeting and analytic capabilities provided by POE^TM to expand and optimize audiences, segment and target via bidding on exchanged-based display media inventory. The Origin Media DSP provides a single point of management for all of the buys and allows one-click access, so users can look across the whole media landscape and target the media that works best for a campaign.

A keyword option by which you set your ad to be displayed only when the search phrase you define and that of the Internet user match exactly. When you use this option you put your keyword phrases in brackets.

Abbreviation of free for all. FFA sites post large lists of unrelated links to anyone and everyone. FFA sites and the links they provide are basically useless. Humans do not use them and search engines minimize their importance in ranking formulas.

In [x+1] parlance, attributes derived directly from a companys site-collected or CRM data.  First-party attributes may also be built from decisions made across the [x+1] Origin platform.

An expression for those ads that are displayed for all the searches that match the keywords they target.

The purchase funnel is a consumer focused marketing model which illustrates the theoretical customer journey towards the purchase of a product or service.

In 1898, E. St. Elmo Lewis developed a model which mapped a theoretical customer journey from the moment a brand or product attracted consumer attention to the point of action or purchase^. St. Elmo Lewis idea is often referred to as the AIDA model - an acronym which stands for Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action. This staged process is summarized below:

• AWARENESS - the customer is aware of the existence of a product or service
• INTEREST - actively expressing an interest in a product group
• DESIRE - aspiring to a particular brand or product
• ACTION - taking the next step towards purchasing the chosen product

Funnel R/F is an advanced analytic toolset that is a module of the [x+1] Origin digital marketing hub. It was introduced in 2010 to reveal the impact of online media strategies and partners so that media planners have more complete picture of how their media buys drive consumers through the purchase funnel. Best for large advertisers with a mix of messages ranging from branding to direct response, Funnel R/F helps guide media planners as they plan the amount of spend and number of impressions at each funnel stage.

Geographical targeting. Describes the distribution of ads to Internet users within specific regions or different countries.

Banners, and other types of advertising units which can be synchronized to search keywords. Includes pop-ups, browser toolbars and rich media.

A hit results when someone clicks on a webpage.

The main page of a website. Usually not recommended as a landing page because the content tends to be for a general audience.

Abbreviation for inbound link. Any link on another page that points to the subject page. Also called a back link.

When somebody views an ad but doesn't click on it, it means the ad has received one impression. Impressions are counted by the number of searches that an ad is being displayed for.

The collection of information a search engine has that searchers can query against. With crawler-based search engines, the index is typically copies of all the web pages they have found from crawling the web. With human-powered directories, the index contains the summaries of all web sites that have been categorized.

Internet service provider

A set of options that, when applied to the keywords in your AdWords account, allow you to control the distribution of your ad. Through keyword matching you tell the system how exactly to match your keywords with those of the people that make a search.

Keywords are words which are used in search engine queries. Keyphrases are multi-word phrases used in search engine queries. SEO involves the process of optimizing web pages for keywords and keyphrases so that they rank highly in the results returned for search queries.

In your AdWords account, your keywords may have four statuses: Disabled, In Trial, Normal and On Hold.

Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of adding superfluous keywords to a web page. The words are added for the benefit of search engines and not human visitors. The words may or may not be visible to human visitors. While not necessarily a violation of search engine terms of service, at least when the words are visible to humans, it detracts from the impact of a page. It looks like spam. It is also possible that search engines may discount the importance of large blocks of text that do not conform to grammatical structures (such as lists of disconnected keywords). There is no valid reason for engaging in this practice.

The specific web page that a visitor reaches after clicking on a pay-per-click (PPC) listing. Online marketers work to improve conversion rates by testing different iterations of landing page creative text, which encompass the entire user experience including navigation, layout, and copy.

Creating free and fee-based backlinks in order to increase link popularity and PageRank in order to achieve high rankings. Also see reciprocal links.

A link farm is a group of separate, highly interlinked websites for the purposes of inflating link popularity (or PR). Engaging in a link farm is a violation of the terms of service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.

A raw count of how popular a page is based on the number of backlinks it has. It does not factor in link context or link quality, which are also important elements in how search engines make use of links to impact rankings.

The text that is contained within a link. For example, search engine is a link that contains the link text search engine.

The information that appears on a search engines results page in response to a search.

The maximum cost per click is the amount of money you have to pay for one click so that your ad ranks best.

By inserting a tracking pixel into creative, marketers can deliver an optimized website experience to a previously inaccessible audience - users who have been exposed to an specific advertisement but did not click through.

A person who sells a product or service online.

Allows page authors to say how they would like their pages described when listed by search engines. Not all search engines use the tag.

Allows page authors to add text to a page to help with the search engine ranking process. Not all search engines use the tag.

A search engine that gets listings from two or more other search engines, rather than through its own efforts.

Information placed in a web page not intended for users to see but instead which typically passes information to search engine crawlers, browser software and some other applications.

A process where multiple components of a website may be tested in a live environment to find the best possible combination of variants. A/B tests are usually performed to determine the better of two content variations; multivariate testing can theoretically test the relative effectiveness of limitless combinations.

A keyword that defines the term(s) you don't want your ad to display for.

Listings that search engines do not sell (unlike paid listings). Instead, sites appear solely because a search engine has deemed it editorially important for them to be included, regardless of payment. Paid Inclusion content is also often considered organic even though it is paid for. This is because that content appears intermixed with unpaid organic results.

Links on a particular web page leading to other web pages, whether they are within the same web site or other web sites.

Program guaranteeing that all pages of a web site are included in Yahoo, leading ISP portals, and 35 other search providers within three days in exchange for payment.

Advertising program where listings are guaranteed to appear in response to particular search terms, with higher ranking typically obtained by paying more than other advertisers. Paid placement listings can be purchased from a portal or a search network. Search networks are often set up in an auction environment where keywords and phrases are associated with a cost-per-click (CPC) fee.

A concept for online advertising where you pay a certain amount of money each time somebody clicks on your ad.

The amount of money you spend to generate an action from one visitor. That action doesn't necessarily have to be a purchase, but a subscription to your newsletter for example.

The amount of money you need to pay to generate a sale through your website.

The system by which you pay every time when somebody views your ad, even if that person doesn't click on it; A concept that is not very popular anymore.

Term popularized by some search engines as a synonym for pay-per-click, stressing to advertisers that they are only paying for ads that perform in terms of delivering traffic, as opposed to CPM-based ads, where ads cost money, even if they don't generate a click.

Abbreviation for Pay For Inclusion, see Paid Inclusion.

The option that limits your ad to be displayed only when somebody types in the search box a phrase that includes your keywords, in the same order.

POE was invented and patented by [x+1], the leader in digital marketing hub technology. It is predictive optimization technology that drives profitable website and media behavior. It is an audience-based marketing technology that utilizes automated, real-time decision-making to improve the scale and efficiency of the online marketing process.The first of its kind and ten years in development, POE leverages sophisticated mathematical models to make optimal segmentation and targeting decisions on website and in external media campaigns. POE derives actionable decisions from massive amounts of complex data.

Designation for websites that are either authoritative hubs for a given subject or popular content driven sites that people use as their homepage. Most portals offer significant content and offer advertising opportunities for relevant sites.

See Rank.

Abbreviation of pay per click. An advertising model where advertisers pay only for the traffic generated by their ads.

Abbreviation of PageRank, Google's proprietary measure of link popularity for web pages. Google offers a PR viewer on their toolbar.

In the case of web search, a query is entered by users into web search engines.

How well a particular web page or web site is listed in search engine results. For example, a web page about apples may be listed in response to a query for apples. However, rank indicates where exactly it was listed be it on the first page of results, the second page or perhaps the 200th page. Alternatively, it might also be said to be ranked first among all results, or 12th, or 111th. Overall, saying a page is listed only means that it can be found within a search engine in response to a query, not that it necessarily ranks well for that query. Also referred to as position.

The amount of money you have to pay every time you restore full delivery of your account after it has been slowed.

A link exchange between two sites. Reciprocal links can often increase Page Rank and provide higher listings in natural search results.

The accuracy of the match between the keyword typed in the search box by an Internet user, and the results returned by the search engine.

Integrations with relevant channels including site side, display, and email today, with search and video likely to soon follow that allow a marketer to find, target, and serve relevant messaging to segments.

After a user enters a search query, the page that is displayed is referred to as the results page. Sometimes it may be called SERPs, for search engine results page.

The number of times Ad Spend is returned in the form of revenue. Calculated as: Total Revenue - Total Cost

Refers to the percentage of profit or revenue generated from a specific activity. For example, one might measure the ROI of a paid listing campaign by adding up the total amount spent on the campaign (say £200) versus the amount generated from it in revenue (say £1,000). The ROI would then be 500 percent.

Robots.txt is a file on a web server which well-behaved spiders read to determine which parts of a website they may visit.

Any service generally designed to allow users to search the web or a specialized database of information. Web search engines generally have paid listings and organic listings. Organic listings typically come from crawling the web, though often human-powered directory listings are also optionally offered.

The act of marketing a web site via search engines, whether this be improving rank in organic listings (SEO), purchasing paid listings (PPC) or a combination of these and other search engine-related activities.

Abbreviated to SEO. The act of altering a web site so that it does well in the organic, crawler-based listings of search engines. In the past, has also been used as a term for any type of search engine marketing activity, though now the term search engine marketing itself has taken over for this.

The words (or word) a searcher enters into a search engines search box. Also used to refer to the terms a search engine marketer hopes a particular page will be found for. Also called keywords, query terms or query.

Functionality that allows a marketer to flexibly combine data sources to build custom audiences.

A web page created expressly in hopes of ranking well for a term in a search engines non-paid listings and which itself does not deliver much information to those viewing it. Instead, visitors will often see only some enticement on the doorway page leading them to other pages (i.e., Click Here To Enter), or they may be automatically propelled quickly past the doorway page.

Abbreviation of Search Engine Results Page/Positioning. This refers to the organic (excluding paid listings) search results for a given query.

[x+1] Origins Site personalization combines unparalleled analytical capabilities with a wide range of data sources to tailor the optimal site experience for each individual visitor. It automatically assembles data about prospects and customers and uses this data to choose the statistically optimal mix of offers and content for each user.

Any search engine marketing method that a search engine deems to be detrimental to its efforts to deliver relevant, quality search results.

Also called a bot (or robot). Spiders are software programs that scan the web. They vary in purpose from indexing web pages for search engines to harvesting e-mail addresses for spammers.

A spider trap refers to either a continuous loop where spiders are requesting pages and the server is requesting data to render the page, or to an intentional scheme designed to identify (and ban) spiders that do not respect robots.txt.

Spyware is a generic/catch-all label that applies to software that: 1. Installs itself secretly, dishonestly or without consent 2. Does not allow for easy un-installation / removal 3. Monitors or tracks users actions without the users awareness or consent 4. Alters the behaviour/default options of other programs without the users consent or awareness (aka thiefware).

All the data that expresses the results of your campaign: totals, percents, means, evolution curves and predictions.

Words such as the, a, an that are ignored by search engines when indexing web pages and processing search queries.

The act of submitting a URL for non-paid inclusion into a search engines index. Submission does not generally guarantee a listing. In addition, submission does not help with rank improvement on crawler-based search engines unless search engine optimisation efforts have been taken. Submission can be done manually (fill out an online form and submit) or automatically, where a software program or online service may process the forms behind the scenes.

The process of adding a variety of tags to web pages.

Refers to the correct labelling of key areas of web pages such as the web page title, the meta content, alt attributes on images and keyword links, and anchor tags within the page content.

The number of people that visit your website and actually have the potential to become customers right away or in the future.

URL that has specific parameters assigned to it, allowing you to gather information about the source of the click, the search query used, and other metrics.

The number of people that visit your webpage, being led there by your ads.

An Internet marketing model that allows affiliates to sign-up for other affiliates. The principle is similar to multi-level marketing.

The unique IP address that describes the identity of the visitor.

A solution that provides many benefits including consistent and accurate data collection, increased tagging flexibility, and reduced organizational friction.

A unique sequence of characters that describes the location of a webpage.

The potential of a website to return value to its users as quickly and easily as possible.

An online media strategy to focus audience targeting to deliver higher-value products to people who are likely to purchase them resulting in a greater return for the same number of conversions.

The leader in digital marketing hub technology. Founded in 1999 and led by CEO John Nardone, [x+1] provides the Origin DMH and has the only DMP (data management platform) to include a decision engine that synchronizes real-time actions across site, media, and both on and offline channels. [x+1] Origin includes a DSP (demand side platform), Site personalization technology, and advanced analytics for marketers and agencies seeking to unify data and decisions across touch points.