Paid social glossary

When diving into the wonderful world of paid social, you need to get to grips with the most important and useful words. Once you understand these words and how they can all fit into a paid social strategy, you can make the most out of your marketing. We have created the ultimate paid social glossary for you, broken down into 10 categories, so you can easily navigate your way through!

Let’s start with the main word itself:

Paid social

What it means: You pay social media platforms to get your ads in front of your target audience.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’re going to start running paid social ads alongside your organic social media.‘

Other related terms: Paid ads, PPC, Organic social media

If you are looking for support with paid social, our team of experts are ready to help. With extensive experience creating successful paid social campaigns for numerous businesses, we can help you achieve your goals; get in touch today.

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Ads and Campaigns

Ads and campaigns are essential paid social tools that you can use to promote your business. Let’s explore all the related terms that you should know.

What it means: What the user sees when running paid social campaigns. Ads are individual posts that can be grouped to form an adset.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We can run this as an ad on Instagram to promote your new product.‘

Other related terms: Adset, Carousel ads, Lead ads

Ad Format

What it means: How your ads look and appear to your audience. This relates to both the structure and layout of your ad. Each social media platform offers several ad formats that you can choose from.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We are going to test different ad formats for this campaign, such as image vs. video.‘

Other related terms: Creative testing, Ad creative, User-generated content

Ad Frequency

What it means: The number of times one single ad is shown to a single user over a time period. It is used by advertisers to better understand how often users see the ad.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We need to expand our audience, we’re seeing a really high ad frequency.‘

Other related terms: Retargeting, Custom audience, Audience targeting

Adset

What it means: A group of ads that all have the same targeting setting. It is one step down from a campaign and one level above an ad.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘In this adset we are going to be targeting your existing customers.‘

Other related terms: Campaign, Ads, Campaign Objective, Targeting

Boosted post

What it means: An organic social media post with advertising spend to reach a larger audience beyond the organic reach.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We want this post to reach more people, can we look at boosting it?‘

Other related terms: Post engagement, Impressions, Algorithm

Campaign

What it means: The over-arching objective of your ads in one group. Each campaign houses adsets, which then contain ads, all working towards the same objective.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘Let’s launch a campaign that focuses on driving sales.’

Other related terms: Adset, Ads, Campaign objective

Campaign objective

What it means: The main goal of a campaign and all the ads within it. This should be the driving force behind your marketing efforts, as it provides clear direction for your campaign. Campaign objectives are often sales, leads, or website traffic.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘The objective of the campaign is to drive purchases.’

Other related terms: Campaign, Conversion tracking, Conversion rate

Carousel ads

What it means: A social media ad format where multiple videos and images can be in one ad. The multiple pieces of content are shown in succession.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We have multiple images, let’s show them in a carousel ad.‘

Other related terms: In-Feed ads, Ad creative, Creative Testing

Dark post

What it means: An unpublished social post that is only promoted to a specific audience. Dark posts will not appear on a brand’s timeline but will be specifically targeted to certain users.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘You can only see the ad if you’ve been targeted with it, it is a dark post.‘

Other related terms: Meta ads, Instagram ads, Facebook ads

Dynamic Ads

What it means: Ads that are created with multiple variations of creative and copy. The platform determines which variations to show to different audiences based on their engagement history.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We will use all 5 creative variations and run the ad as a dynamic ad.‘

Other related terms: Dynamic catalogue ads, Dynamic creative optimisation, Ad creative

Dynamic catalogue ads

What it means: Ads that are created based on the product feed. The products that are shown are based on user behaviour and interests, so are tailored to each different audience.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’re seeing the most success from our dynamic catalogue ads.’

Other related terms: Dynamic ads, Dynamic creative optimisation, Ad creative

Engagement ads

What it means: A social media ad format that encourages user interaction. Advertisers will only be charged when a user engages with the ad.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We need to build up likes and comments so we’re going to launch some engagement ads.‘

Other related terms: Explore Ads, IG stories, Instagram collabs

Lead ads

What it means: A social media ad format that is designed to collect user information from those who express interest in some way.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We have driven 50 enquiries through our lead ads.‘

Other related terms: Lead gen forms, Call to action, Conversion

Lead form ads

What it means: A social media ad format that is designed to collect user information from those who express interest in some way.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We have driven 50 enquiries through our lead ads.’

Other related terms: Lead gen forms, Call to action, Conversion

Messenger ads

What it means: A social media ad format that appears in a social media platform messaging app that encourages users to have direct interaction.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We are looking to start more conversations with our audience so we are going to launch messenger ads.’

Other related terms: Engagement, Direct message, InMail

Native advertising

What it means: Ads that have content that is aligned with the social media source. These ads almost mimic organic posts, so they seamlessly blend in with content.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We want these ads to look native in the platform.’

Other related terms: Ad format, Creative testing, User-generated content

Social media ad

What it means: Any form of advertisement that you pay to have on social media platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’ve been seeing a lot of success from running social media ads.‘

Other related terms: Ad, Ad Copy, Dark post

Story ads

What it means: Full-screen vertical ads that appear in between organic content from users. These can be found on platforms like Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We really need to push more story ads because we have great lifestyle photography.’

Other related terms: Ad format, Creative testing, IG stories

Traffic campaign

What it means: A campaign where the goal is to increase the number of users who visit your website.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We want to give our blog a boost in visitors, can we run a traffic campaign?‘

Other related terms: Clicks, CTR, CPC

Audience and Targeting

Understanding your audience and targeting your ads to people most likely to engage with your content is essential for paid social success. Below are the most important ‘audience and targeting’ terms, go give them a read.

Audience

What it means: A group of people that share interests, behaviours and demographics that you can reach with your content.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We are looking to reach a young professional audience with this campaign.‘

Other related terms: Audience targeting, Custom audience, Prospecting

Audience insights

What it means: Data that allows you to better understand who your customers are by uncovering audience behaviours, interests, demographics and characteristics. This helps create a more insightful social strategy that will drive better results.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘I want to understand more about who is engaging with our ads so I’ll take a look at the audience insights.’

Other related terms: Target audience, Targeting, Interest-based targeting

Audience targeting

What it means: The process of choosing the audience for your campaigns.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We have decided to broaden our audience targeting.‘

Other related terms: Audience, Lookalike audience, Target audience

Behavioural targeting

What it means: The process of using user’s online behaviour data to display specific relevant content to them.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We want to target users who spend a lot of time travelling the UK, let’s look at behavioural targeting.’

Other related terms: Targeting, Target Audience, Top of Funnel

Bottom of funnel (BOF)

What it means: The final stage of the customer journey. Here customers are ready to make a purchase. Customers have already expressed significant interest and engagement.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We are focusing very heavily on the bottom of the funnel as we’re looking to drive the highest ROAS possible.’

Other related terms: Retargeting, ATC, Custom audience

Cold audience

What it means: An audience that has yet to engage with your brand online. This audience is a prospecting audience as they are a ‘cold audience’ that hasn’t been warmed up yet.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We want to reach more potential customers who haven’t heard of us, can we launch some cold audience campaigns?’

Other related terms: Audience targeting, Top of funnel, Prospecting

Custom audience

What it means: A type of ad targeting where advertisers can target a list of audience members who have previously interacted with their content in some way.

How to use it in a sentence: “We’ve built a custom audience of everyone who has visited our Instagram profile in the last 60 days.“

Other related terms: Retargeting, Bottom of funnel, Pixel

Demographic targeting

What it means: Tailoring ads and content to people who share similar demographics, such as age, gender and location.

How to use it in a sentence: “Let’s build out some demographic targeting, looking at women under 30 in London.”

Other related terms: Targeting, Prospecting, Geotargeting

Exclusion lists

What it means: A group of people who advertisers want to exclude from viewing a campaign. This could be because the campaign is not relevant to them or to shift focus to new customers.

How to use it in a sentence: “We want to exclude existing customers so we have added an exclusion list to the campaigns.”

Other related terms: First-party data, Retargeting, Audience

First-party data

What it means: Data that you collect on your audience e.g. purchase history, demographics that can be used for targeting.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘Do we have any first-party data that we can put into the account?‘

Other related terms: Third-party data, Custom audiences, Lookalike audiences

Geotargeting

What it means: Tailoring the content of your ads based on the location of the audience.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘Using geotargeting, our ads are only running within a 20-mile radius of the shop.’

Other related terms: Target audience, Demographic targeting, Audience targeting

Interest-based targeting

What it means: The process of delivering targeted ads to users based on their online interests and behaviours. This data is fed from your browsing history.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We are launching two interest-based targeting campaigns – one covering online shopping interests and the other targeting fast fashion brands.‘

Other related terms: Top of funnel, Behavioural targeting, Demographic targeting

Lookalike audience

What it means: A group of people who share similar traits and characteristics to your existing audience, based on your first or third-party data.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We can utilise Lookalike Audiences to reach new potential customers.’

Other related terms: First-party data, Third-party data, Pixel

Middle of funnel (MOF)

What it means: The stage of the customer journey when potential customers are considering making a purchase. This is when advertisers should establish trust and engagement with their audience. Within paid social, this can look like engagement or website retargeting audience campaigns.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’ve launched some engagement retargeting campaigns to reach the middle of the funnel.‘

Other related terms: Engagement ads, Retargeting, Warm audience

Prospecting

What it means: Using paid social media to reach and identify potential customers.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We have launched a prospecting campaign that is focused on new customer acquisition.’

Other related terms: Top of funnel, Target Audience, Audience Targeting

Retargeting

What it means: Delivering tailored ads to people who have previously engaged with your content in some way.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We are retargeting existing customers with a social media-specific offer.’

Other related terms: Bottom of funnel, Targeting, Custom audience

Target audience

What it means: A group of people which a campaign aims to reach.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘What target audience do we want to use for this campaign?‘

Other related terms: Audience, Audience targeting, Prospecting

Targeting

What it means: The process of identifying and delivering specific content/ads to certain audiences.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We are looking to expand the targeting of the ads.’

Other related terms: Target audience, Interest-based targeting, Prospecting

Third-party data

What it means: Data collected about your audience taken from a third-party tool e.g. an audience data platform

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We are testing a new tool that gives us third-party data about people’s online behaviour that we can target on social.’

Other related terms: Interest-based targeting, Demographic targeting, First-party data

Top of funnel (TOF)

What it means: The earliest stage of the customer journey. This is when customers become aware of a product, service or brand but are not yet ready to make a purchase.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We want to reach new potential customers so we’re pushing more budget to the top of funnel campaigns.’

Other related terms: Cold audience, Prospecting, Brand awareness

Warm audience

What it means: An audience that has previously engaged with the brand in some way. This audience is lower down the funnel

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We are going to see the highest ROAS from our warm audiences.‘

Other related terms: Bottom of funnel, Retargeting, Middle of funnel

Metrics

Metrics are how advertisers can check their paid social performance. We have provided all the paid social metrics you need to know when assessing how well your content is performing.

Ad spend

What it means: The total amount of money advertisers spend on paid social campaigns. This is normally budgeted per month, quarter or year.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘How much ad spend do we have for the remainder of the year?‘

Other related terms: Budget, Bids, Daily budget

Add to cart (ATC)

What it means: ATC stands for add to cart and is a metric that tells you how many users added a product to their cart.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’ve seen 50 ATCs but only 1 purchase, let’s take a look at the website conversion rate to understand the drop-off.‘

Other related terms: ROAS, Conversion tracking, Analytics

Average purchase frequency rate

What it means: The average number of times a customer purchases a product over a specific time period. Advertisers can use this to understand whether to push for repeat customer conversions or focus on new customer acquisition.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘The average purchase frequency rate for mattresses is once every 8 years so we will focus our strategy on new customer acquisition, not re-targeting existing customers.’

Other related terms: Purchase/conversion value, LTV, Conversion tracking

Average response time

What it means: The average time a customer can expect to wait to receive a response from a brand on social media.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We are seeing negative comments coming through with customer service queries, can we improve our average response time?’

Other related terms: Sentiment analysis, Social listening, Social proof

Bounce rate

What it means: The number of times a website is loaded but the user leaves without engaging.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We have seen low quality traffic coming through the ads – our bounce rate is really high!‘

Other related terms: Traffic, Clicks, Link clicks

Brand awareness

What it means: The extent to which users are aware and able to recognise a brand. Brand awareness needs to be high as this improves conversion rates across all channels. Social media ads can promote brand awareness significantly.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We are a new brand on the market with well-established competitors, let’s launch some brand awareness campaigns on social media to support our growth.’

Other related terms: Top of funnel, Audience, Impressions

Click-through conversion

What it means: A conversion that is attributed to your paid social ad, where the user has clicked through your ad to convert.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We are seeing more click-through conversions than view-through conversions.’

Other related terms: View-through conversions, Attribution, Reporting

Click-through rate (CTR)

What it means: The measure of how often people click through the ad to the destination. This is calculated by dividing the number of times your ad is shown by how many clicks your ad gets and is shown as a percentage.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘If you have a 10% CTR, 10% of the people that see your ad have clicked through to your website.’

Other related terms: CPC, Engagement, Clicks

Clicks

What it means: How many clicks there have been on your ad – this could include the image, link or video.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We have seen a high number of clicks on our boosted post.’

Other related terms: Link Clicks, Landing Page Views, CPC

Conversion rate

What it means: The percentage of your audience who have completed a desired action (e.g. signing up for a newsletter or purchasing a product). It is calculated by dividing the number of conversions by the number of total number of interactions and displayed as a percentage.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We are sending a lot of traffic to the website but we aren’t seeing many conversions, I think we need to review our conversion rate.‘

Other related terms: Conversion tracking, Click-through conversion, View-through conversion

Conversions

What it means: The desired outcome of a paid social campaign. This can be a link

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We are optimising our campaigns to drive conversions.‘

Other related terms: Conversion rate, Click-through conversion, View-through conversion

Cost per acquisition (CPA)

What it means: The cost of a customer completing an acquisition action e.g. purchasing a product, signing up for your services

How to use it in a sentence: ‘The client has recently increased their prices so we have seen a low cost per lead but a high CPA.‘

Other related terms: Cost per action, Cost per lead, Conversion rate

Cost per action (CPA)

What it means: The cost of a user completing an action e.g. website visit, engagement, sign-up

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’ve seen an increase in engagements with a low cost per action.’

Other related terms: CPA, CPL, Conversion rate

Cost per click (CPC)

What it means: The average cost for every click on your ad. This is calculated by dividing the ad spend by the number of clicks.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We haven’t had as many clicks on our ad this month so we’ve seen our CPC increase.’

Other related terms: CPM, CTR, Clicks

Cost per lead (CPL)

What it means: The cost of acquiring a lead through your campaigns

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We have driven 20 leads at a low CPL of £5.’

Other related terms: CPA, Conversion Rate, Lead Generation

Cost per thousand impressions (CPM)

What it means: How much an advertiser will pay for every 1000 impressions. This will increase with competition in the market or niche audiences.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We expect to see our CPM increase over Black Friday as the auction gets very competitive!‘

Other related terms: CTR, Impressions, Reach

Cost per video view (CPV)

What it means: The cost to acquire view views from your ads.

How to use it in a sentence: “We have seen an increase in the CPV – maybe we should change up the video creative?“

Other related terms: Video views, Thruplay, Video view rate

Engagement

What it means: The measurement of how many people engage with your ads or posts.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We need to build a community on Meta – let’s push for engagement on our posts.’

Other related terms: Engagement ads, Post engagement, Vanity metric

Impressions

What it means: The number of times a person sees an ad

How to use it in a sentence: ‘This ad has had a lot of impressions!‘

Other related terms: Reach, Clicks, CPM

Landing page views

What it means: How many clicks there have been on the link within your ad, where there have been over 3 seconds spent on the destination URL.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We have set up a landing page views campaign to get more people to read our blog.’

Other related terms: Clicks, Link clicks, CPC

Link clicks

What it means: How many clicks there have been on the link within your ad.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’ve seen a rise in website traffic due to our ad driving low-cost link clicks.‘

Other related terms: Clicks, Landing page views, CTR

Paid Reach

What it means: The number of people who see a paid social ad on their social feed.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’ve seen a significant increase in paid reach so we are reaching a wider audience.‘

Other related terms: Reach, Impressions, CPM

Page views

What it means: The number of times a web page is fully loaded in a browser, on the back of your ads.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We have seen a large number of page views from our ads since we went live, showing that users are spending a lot of time browsing the site.‘

Other related terms: Landing Page Views, Link clicks, Clicks

Post engagement

What it means: The measurement of how many people interact with an ad in some way. This can include likes, comments, shares etc.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘Have we seen an increase in post engagement with the new style of creative?‘

Other related terms: Engagement, Brand awareness, Social proof

Purchase/conversion value

What it means: The amount of revenue driven through your paid social sales campaigns.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We have driven a conversion value of £300,000 this month through our ads.‘

Other related terms: Tracking, ROAS, Daily budget

Reach

What it means: The total number of unique users who have seen your content

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We have seen really high reach on this ad type.‘

Other related terms: Impressions, CPM, Clicks

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

What it means: The measure of your ad’s profitability. This is calculated by dividing your ad spend by your ad revenue to give you a figure. The higher the figure, the higher your profitability.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘This sales ad has seen a ROAS of 10!‘

Other related terms: Attribution, Purchase value, Conversion rate

ThruPlay

What it means: The number of times a video has been watched for 15 seconds or more on Meta.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’ve seen a high number of Thruplays despite a low number of overall video views, indicating an engaged audience.‘

Other related terms: Video views, Facebook ads, Video view rate

Traffic

What it means: The number of users who visit your website from your ads.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We launched traffic campaigns and saw a 30% increase in traffic.’

Other related terms: Traffic campaign, CPC, Landing page view

Vanity metric

What it means: A metric that looks significant and impressive but doesn’t reflect a true representation of performance. For example, a brand may have thousands of followers, but that doesn’t mean they have high conversions.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We have seen a high number of impressions and likes, but maybe we need to start looking beyond vanity metrics and understand our conversion impact.’

Other related terms: Impressions, Reach, Engagement

Video completion rate

What it means: The percentage of how many viewers watch a video from start to finish. This can be used as a way to measure the effectiveness of the video content as it indicates user enjoyment and satisfaction.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We have seen a high video completion rate indicating a high level of engagement on this type of video.‘

Other related terms: Thruplay, Video view, Video view rate

Video view rate

What it means: The percentage of impressions that lead to a video view. This is calculated by dividing the number of impressions by the amount of video views.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘The video view rate is quite low, do we need to test more engaging video content?‘

Other related terms: Thruplay, Video views, Video completion rate

Video views

What it means: The number of times a video has been watched. It is a simple count of how many times the video has been viewed regardless of watch time.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’ve seen 1,000 video views on this ad.’

Other related terms: Thruplay, Video view rate, YouTube ads

View-through conversion

What it means: A conversion that is attributed to your paid social ad, where the user hasn’t clicked through your ad to convert, but has viewed your ad and then converted through another channel.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We have seen an increase in direct conversions since the social ads went live, has there been a large number of view-through conversions?‘

Other related terms: Click-through conversion, Tracking, Reporting

Tracking and Reporting

You can track how users interact with your content using data and you must report on this data in a clear way, so you can refine your strategy and make improvements. Below we have highlighted everything you need to know about tracking and reporting.

Analytics

What it means: The process of collecting social media ad data, which is used to analyse and report on your ad performance

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We can see really positive results in the analytics.‘

Other related terms: Audience, First-party data, Report

Attribution

What it means: The way advertisers determine how to credit their marketing efforts. This looks at how they have contributed to sales, conversions and other goals. There are different attribution models that allow for different ways of measuring this.

How to use it in a sentence: “We need to consider the attribution model to understand the role of social in conversions.”

Other related terms: First click attribution, Last click, Data-driven attribution

Brand lift

What it means: The impact of your social ads on your wider marketing strategy, covering other channels and audience engagement.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We ran a brand lift study and saw an increase in branded searches when we increased paid social spend.’

Other related terms: Attribution, Brand awareness, Conversion lift

Conversion lift

What it means: A test highlighting the number of conversions driven by social ads, including the impact on other channels. It can help advertisers improve multi-channel strategies.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’ve run a conversion lift test and can see that when paid social increases spending, we see a direct increase in direct revenue.’

Other related terms: Brand lift, Incremental lift, Top of funnel

Conversion tracking

What it means: The monitoring of actions from your social ads that relate to your desired conversions. This lets you understand which ads are generating which conversions.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘Before we launch campaigns we need to set up conversion tracking to understand our impact.’

Other related terms: Tracking, Conversion lift, Pixel

Conversions API (CAPI)

What it means: A server-side tracking solution that allows your social media platform to collect and analyse the results from your website, improving reporting accuracy rather than just using pixels.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We need to ensure Conversions API is set up correctly before we launch our large-scale campaign.’

Other related terms: Conversion tracking, Attribution, Pixel

Data-driven attribution

What it means: An attribution model that gives credit to multiple channels for the conversion action based on the importance of the interaction. This is the main attribution model within Google Analytics.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘When looking at data-driven, we can see social plays a key part in the website’s purchases.‘

Other related terms: Last click, Attribution, Reporting

Event tracking

What it means: The method of monitoring and recording user interactions on a website beyond standard page views. Events can vary from a button click to a form submission or certain amount of time spent on page.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We have event tracking in place so that we can monitor users on our site.’

Other related terms: Tracking, Pixel, Google tag manager

First click attribution

What it means: An attribution model where 100% of the credit for a conversion is attributed to the first channel that a user clicked through.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We can see that paid social has driven a high number of conversions when looking at first-click attribution, highlighting its role in new customer acquisition.‘

Other related terms: Last click, Multi-touch attribution, Attribution

Forecasting

What it means: The tactic of using historical data to predict and plan for future paid social strategies. It can also be used to predict future trends and customer behaviour.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We are putting together a forecast for next year’s paid social to understand where to put an additional budget.‘

Other related terms: Lift test, Attribution, Reporting

Google tag manager (GTM)

What it means: A platform that allows advertisers to implement tracking and measurement across their client’s website. This tracking is then sent back to the social media platforms to allow for reporting and optimisations.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We are setting up the tracking within GTM to ensure that it’s as accurate as possible.’

Other related terms: Conversions, Conversion tracking, Event tracking

Incremental lift

What it means: The increase in sales or desired outcomes that you can solely attribute to your marketing efforts. It is a metric used to measure the effectiveness of a campaign. It is measured by subtracting the sales that would have been generated without the paid efforts.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We launched new campaigns across paid social at the start of the month and we’ve already seen an incremental lift in sales.’

Other related terms: Conversion lift, Brand lift, Conversions

Last click

What it means: An attribution model that gives the credit for the conversion action to the last source to engage with the user.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We are seeing PPC drive a lot of conversions from a last click measurement perspective.’

Other related terms: Data-driven attribution, Attribution, Lookback window

Lift test

What it means: A type of test that you can run to show the impact of your ads on brand uplift or conversion uplift.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’re going to turn off paid social ads for 2 weeks to understand the impact this has on conversions – we’ll run a lift test.’

Other related terms: Conversion lift, Incremental lift, Reporting

Lookback window

What it means: The period of time in which a conversion action can be attributed to an ad click or view. For example, a 7-day lookback window means that any conversion that happens within 7 days of an ad click is attributed to that ad.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We have 7 day lookback window so purchases may have happened outside of that timeframe that aren’t attributed to our campaigns.’

Other related terms: Attribution, Data-driven attribution, Tracking

Marketing API

What it means: A tool that allows advertisers to connect the social advertising platforms to third-party tools or platforms.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We can use the Meta API to pull the data into our reporting sheet.’

Other related terms: UTM parameters, Event tracking, Tracking

Marketing efficiency ratio (MER)

What it means: The total amount of revenue driven in a business when measured against total marketing spend. To calculate MER, you divide your revenue by your marketing spend, including all your paid social spend, PPC spend, email costs etc. This gives you one figure to measure your success against.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’ve seen a steady MER throughout the month despite increased costs on PPC.’

Other related terms: ROAS, Attribution, Reporting

Meta pixel/TikTok pixel/Insight tag/ Pinterest tag

What it means: It is a piece of code that allows advertisers the ability to track user behaviour. From this, you can re-target customers who have engaged with your content previously and report on your campaign performance.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We want to start tracking website sign-ups from our ads, can we install a Pixel?‘

Other related terms: Attribution, Conversions, Conversion rate

Multi-touch attribution

What it means: A model where advertisers measure the value of each specific touchpoint of a customer’s journey across different channels.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘When using a multi-touch attribution, we can see that paid social tends to interact at the start of the journey and PPC towards the end.’

Other related terms: Attribution, Last click, Data-driven attribution

Optimisation

What it means: Changes that an advertiser makes to an ad or campaign to improve performance.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We need to make some optimisations as we’re seeing results decline.’

Other related terms: Bidding strategy, Pacing, Conversion optimisation

Reporting

What it means: The process of analysing your campaign performance based on KPIs and set targets.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’re looking at creating reports to dig into how we performed year on year.‘

Other related terms: Data-driven attribution, Last click, Attribution

Sentiment analysis

What it means: Identifying, understanding and interpreting customer’s attitudes, emotions and opinions towards your brand, product, marketing or service.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We are struggling with negative comments at the moment, can we pull some sentiment analysis to take a look at?‘

Other related terms: Social listening, Social proof, Audience insights

Tracking

What it means: The monitoring and recording of user online behaviour.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘Before we go live, let’s check that the tracking is all set up correctly.’

Other related terms: Conversion lift, Pixel, Conversion rate

UTM parameters

What it means: Information that you add to your social media post and ad links that allow your CRM and other platforms, such as Google Analytics, to attribute conversions to your ads. Usually, you manually input the source, medium and content for each link. E.g. Facebook, paid social, video ad.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We have pulled a report using UTM tags from the CRM and can see that Paid Social drove 5 converted leads.‘

Other related terms: Conversion tracking, Attribution, Event tracking

Bids and Budgets

Understanding how bids and budgets work is crucial to make sure you maximise ROI and drive results. Let’s explore all the key terms.

Automated bidding

What it means: A type of bidding strategy that uses then platforms to automatically adjust bids based on how ads are performing.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘Our budgets aren’t too strict so we can allow for automated bidding on these campaigns.’

Other related terms: Manual bidding, Bidding strategy, Bid

Bid

What it means: How much an advertiser is willing to pay for a paid social ad or campaign. It refers to the maximum amount an advertiser will pay. The higher the bid, the more competitive the ads are in the auction.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’ve increased our bids as the auction gets very competitive in November.‘

Other related terms: Bidding strategy, Manual bidding, Automated bidding

Bid cap

What it means: Maximum amount an advertiser is willing to pay for a bid in the auction.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We are reducing costs by implementing bid caps.’

Other related terms: Bid, Bidding strategy, Manual bidding

Bidding Strategy

What it means: The plan that outlines how much an advertiser is willing to pay for an ad/campaign based on several factors such as budget, LTV and campaign type.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We have changed our bidding strategy to be more aggressive in Q4.‘

Other related terms: Manual bidding, Bid cap, Automated bidding

Campaign budget optimisation

What it means: A setting that automatically allocates ad spend across ad sets in a campaign based on performance.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘With campaign budget optimisation, we’ve seen a lot of budget go into the broad audience adset.’

Other related terms: Daily budget, Lifetime budget, Reporting

Cost cap

What it means: A threshold that can be added to your campaigns that restricts your ads to only serve if they can hit your desired cost per result. This is usually used to hit desired CPLs or costs per purchase.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We only want leads at £10 or less, can we set a cost cap to ensure we don’t go over this?‘

Other related terms: Bid cap, Manual bidding, Bidding strategy

Daily budget

What it means: The amount of money an advertiser is willing to spend on their ads/campaigns each day. This is only budget guidance as the platform may spend up to 75% more on a daily basis, but over a 7 day period, it will average out.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We want to launch these ads on £30 per day daily budget.‘

Other related terms: Lifetime budget, Pacing, Dayparting

Lifetime budget

What it means: The total amount of money an advertiser is willing to spend on their ads/campaigns for a set period of time. The period of time and lifetime budget is set by the advertiser.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘This campaign needs to run for 30 days and has a lifetime budget of £300.’

Other related terms: Pacing, Daily budget, Dayparting

Manual bidding

What it means: A type of bidding strategy where advertisers have control over how much they set as the maximum bid for ads rather than letting the system decide.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We recommend using manual bidding as we have tight budgets and require additional control.’

Other related terms: Automated bidding, Bidding strategy, Bid cap

Pacing

What it means: The rate at which a campaign runs through your set budget

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’re pacing slightly ahead this month, should we scale back our daily budget?’

Other related terms: Daily budget, Lifetime budget, Reporting

Platform terminology

Every social media platform has a range of features and related terms you should be aware of. Let’s explore them.

Advantage+ campaigns

What it means: A Meta advertising tool that uses machine learning to present your ads to audiences most likely to convert, whilst also optimising your advertising budget.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’re running A+ campaigns to allow the machine to optimise for the audience.’

Other related terms: ASC, ROAS, Meta Ads

Advantage+ shopping campaigns (ASC)

What it means: A Meta advertising tool that uses machine learning to present your ads to audiences most likely to convert, whilst also optimising your advertising budget. This is an eCommerce-specific campaign type that also has the freedom to promote your best-performing products to your audience.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’ve seen real success with our ASC campaigns.‘

Other related terms: Advantage+ campaign, ROAS, Meta Ads

Ads manager/Campaign manager

What it means: The social media platforms that allow advertisers the ability to create, manage and track ads all in one place. On Meta, TikTok and Pinterest this is Ads Manager. On LinkedIn, this is called Campaign Manager.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘Can you check performance for me in Ads Manager?‘

Other related terms: Meta ads, LinkedIn ads, TikTok ads

Bio

What it means: A short description an advertiser can create and it appears at the top of their social media business page. It typically includes the brand’s name, location, and purpose. It should provide users with enough information so they understand who they are and what you do.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We have updated our bio to mention our latest campaign launching at the end of the month.‘

Other related terms: Instagram ads, Story highlights, Social proof

Branded Hashtag Challenges

What it means: A paid TikTok campaign that encourages users to create and share content. This challenge is sponsored by a brand. A unique hashtag is created to promote the challenge to a wider audience.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We are going to push the branded hashtag challenge to increase our engagement on TikTok.’

Other related terms: TopView ads, TikTok Ads, In-Feed Ads

Business manager

What it means: A Meta platform where advertisers can manage their Facebook and Instagram accounts, campaigns, pixels and more.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘You need access to the Business Manager to be able to share the ad account with the agency.’

Other related terms: Ads manager, Facebook ads, Meta

Collection ads

What it means: An ad format that allows users to browse and purchase products on Meta platforms. The product images are part of a product catalogue that an advertiser uploads and appears in the user’s feed.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We want to push a specific product category in our ads so let’s launch some collection ads.’

Other related terms: Advantage+ shopping campaign, Product catalogue, Meta ads

Conversions API (CAPI)

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We need to ensure Conversions API is setup correctly before we launch our large-scale campaign.’

Other related terms: Conversion tracking, Attribution, Pixel

Direct message (DM)

What it means: A private form of direct communication between users and advertisers. Advertisers can send personalised messages to build customer relationships and increase conversions.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’ve received a lot of DMs since we announced our new product launch.’

Other related terms: InMail, Meta ads, Engagement ads

Dynamic creative optimisation (DCO)

What it means: When you run multiple creative variations that are tailored towards different audiences and dynamically update based on their interests.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We are running dynamic creative optimisation to ensure we stay relevant to each user.’

Other related terms: Product catalogue, Collection ads, Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns

Explore ads

What it means: Paid advertisements that appear on Instagram’s Explore page. The explore page allows users to browse images and videos from various users/advertisers based on interest and behaviour.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’ve seen the best performance from the Explore placement.’

Other related terms: Instagram stories, Meta ads, Meta

Facebook ads

What it means: Paid advertisement businesses create and publish on Facebook to target users. Facebook forms part of the Meta family of apps.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We want to start running Facebook ads to reach our customers online.’

Other related terms: Meta, Meta ads, Instagram ads

For you page

What it means: The personalised feed of content for a TikTok user. It is tailored to each user’s interests, behaviours and preferences, using an advanced engagement-based algorithm.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We are seeing the most views on our social media posts from the For You page.’

Other related terms: TikTok ads, TopView ads, Video views

Hashtag (#)

What it means: A phrase preceded by a hashtag can be used by advertisers to categorise social media content. It is used by advertisers to increase reach and cross-referencing.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’ve seen a 20% increase in clicks on our hashtag!‘

Other related terms: Instagram ads, Engagement, Branded hashtag challenge

In-feed ads

What it means: These are native ads that appear within social content. They look and feel like user-generated content.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’re pushing in-feed ads to drive our engagement on social media.‘

Other related terms: Facebook ads, Meta ads, TikTok ads

InMail

What it means: A messaging feature on LinkedIn that enables advertisers to send targeted messages to users despite not being directly linked. This is a tool used when reaching out to potential partners, clients, or customers without having to send a connection request.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’re launching a lead generation campaign for our B2B business so we’ll be testing InMail ads.’

Other related terms: Lead generation, LinkedIn ads, Direct message

Instagram ads

What it means: Paid advertisement businesses create and publish on Instagram to target users.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’re launching Instagram ads to support our growth of the channel.‘

Other related terms: Facebook ads, Meta, Meta ads

Instagram collabs

What it means: A type of Instagram post that can be shared on multiple accounts and co-authored. It allows advertisers to create content with partners and increase reach.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’re running an Instagram collab post with our influencer partner.’

Other related terms: Sponsored post, Paid partnership, Brand advocate

Instagram highlights

What it means: A feature on Instagram that allows you to collect all your stories into specific categories. This allows you to make your stories visible for more than just 24 hours.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’ve created an Instagram highlight for our new campaign stories.’

Other related terms: Instagram ads, Meta, Meta ads

Instagram Stories

What it means: A feature on Instagram, where advertisers can post photos and/or videos that will disappear after 24 hours. Stories can be organised on your profile as Story Highlights. These can be run as ads or organically.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘Can we create some Instagram story ads with behind-the-scenes content?‘

Other related terms: Instagram ads, In-Feed ads, Instagram highlights

Lead gen forms

What it means: A social media form that allows advertisers to collect user information in exchange for something of value within the ad itself. If advertisers offer discounts or free services, such as free downloadable guides, users will be more likely to provide information. This form sits within the social media platform without users having to navigate through to a website.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’ve launched some lead gen form ads to drive downloads of our latest brochure.’

Other related terms: Lead form ads, Conversions, Cost per lead

LinkedIn ads

What it means: Paid advertisement businesses create and publish on LinkedIn to target users.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’re launching our new campaign on LinkedIn ads.’

Other related terms: In-Mail, Campaign manager, Lead gen

Meta Ads

What it means: Paid advertisement businesses create and publish on Instagram, Facebook and Messenger to target users.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’re launching Meta ads to drive traffic to the website.’

Other related terms: Meta, Instagram ads, Facebook ads

Product catalogue/ Product feed

What it means: A real-time list of your products on your website that is fed into your paid social advertising platforms. This ensures that your ads stay up to date with price changes, stock levels and imagery updates. Advertisers create catalogue ads to promote the products directly.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We are running product catalogue ads using the feed to push the latest product launch.’

Other related terms: Collection ads, ROAS, Advantage+ shopping campaigns

Reels

What it means: Short (15-90 seconds long) videos that users and advertisers can create, edit and publish on Instagram. Reels remain on a user’s feed but can also be used as an ad format.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘Our best-performing creative has been the Reel ads.’

Other related terms: TikTok Ads, Video Views, ThruPlay

Snapchat ads

What it means: Paid advertisement businesses create and publish on Snapchat to target users.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We are launching Snapchat ads for this campaign to drive more new users to the website.’

Other related terms: Shareable content, Video views, Ad creative

TikTok ads

What it means: Paid advertisement businesses create and publish on TikTok to target users.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We want to start using TikTok ads to reach a younger audience.’

Other related terms: Video views, For you page, TopView ads

TopView ads

What it means: A type of TikTok ad where a video is immediately shown to a user when opening TikTok. These are shown before the user views any other content. TopView ads guarantee increased reach and impressions.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We want to give this campaign a big push so we’re going to invest in TopView ads.’

Other related terms: TikTok ads, For you page, Video views

YouTube ads

What it means: Paid advertisement businesses create and publish on YouTube to target users.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’re going to supplement our paid social and Google ads with YouTube ads to drive more top-of-funnel awareness.’

Other related terms: Video views, Ad creative, Top of funnel

Creative, content and messaging

High-quality content is a key component of paid social success, so make sure you understand all the terms below so you can create engaging ads that drive results.

Ad copy

What it means: The written text that accompanies the ad creative. It should be written persuasively to engage the audience and encourage them to take action.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘Can we tailor the ad copy to be more sales-focused?‘

Other related terms: Ad creative, Creative testing, CTA

Ad creative

What it means: The visual elements of ad content. The design elements of the ad should support the ad message and communicate it effectively to the audience.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘What ad creative are we looking to use in this campaign?‘

Other related terms: Ad, Creative testing, Ad copy

Always on

What it means: Ads that you run consistently in your account irrespective of seasonality.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We have seen great performance from our always on campaigns despite the seasonality at the moment.‘

Other related terms: BAU, Evergreen content, Ad

Brand advocate

What it means: An individual who elevates your brand reputation and increases awareness through their own marketing. Brand advocates are those who leave positive reviews, refer new customers and create content on a brands behalf. These aren’t always paid and are likely just regular customers.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’ve seen really strong growth on social media organically due to our brand advocates posting regularly throughout the month.‘

Other related terms: Shareable content, Paid partnership, User-generated content

Business-as-usual (BAU)

What it means: Campaigns that you run consistently in your account irrespective of seasonality.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We will launch the test campaigns outside of our BAU campaigns.‘

Other related terms: Evergreen content, Always on, Bidding strategy

Call to action (CTA)

What it means: A prompt that encourages users to take a desired outcome. They usually link to a secondary location such as a website or social media page. Examples could be: ‘Buy now’, ‘Sign up now’, or ‘Get your discount today’.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We need to have a clear CTA on our sale ads.’

Other related terms: Conversions, Landing page views, Conversion rate

Creative testing

What it means: A data-driven approach of comparing different creative types against each other or testing new styles. This helps advertisers predict how well an ad will perform and ensure that the ad creative is at its most effective.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We are going to introduce video creative for the first time and run some creative testing.‘

Other related terms: A/B testing, Split testing, Lift test

Disappearing content

What it means: A post that automatically disappears after a set period of time. This could be an Instagram story or Snapchat.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’ve seen high engagements this month but it is mainly across our disappearing content.‘

Other related terms: Instagram stories, Snapchat ads, Story ads

Employee-generated content (EGC)

What it means: Content that is created by a brand’s team. This tends to mimic a UGC style.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’ve seen a huge boost in employee-generated content that is increasing our recruitment of applicants.’

Other related terms: FGC, UGC, Creative Testing

Evergreen content

What it means: Content that remains relevant and valuable to readers after a long period of time, irrespective of seasonality. Examples of evergreen content can be lists, how-to guides and FAQs.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We want to be running evergreen content so that we can use it always on content.’

Other related terms: BAU, Always on, Listicle

Founder-generated content (FGC)

What it means: Content that is created by a brand’s founder to promote their own products/services.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We need to get our founder featured in more content as we’ve seen a rise in FGC performing well.‘

Other related terms: UGC, EGC, Creative Testing

Listicle

What it means: Content that is presented in the form of a list. This tends to be a video on social media.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘Let’s test a listicle video format this month.’

Other related terms: Video ads, View views, Video view rate

Paid partnership

What it means: A legal agreement between a brand and an individual (usually an influencer or content creator) that promotes the brand’s products or services on social media or in content, in exchange for money or gifts.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We have an influencer in mind to run a paid partnership along with our promo in September.‘

Other related terms: Sponsored post, Instagram collab, Brand advocate

Shareable content

What it means: Content that brands post that encourages users to share with their own network. It is a great way to increase reach and engagement.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We have seen additional reach from our shareable content this month.’

Other related terms: User-generated content, Engagement ads, Engagement

User-generated content (UGC)

What it means: Content that is created by users rather than a brand or organisation promoting their products/services. It is traditionally unpaid and unsponsored content that enables potential customers to resonate and relate to the content.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We want to be more authentic so we are using UGC in our social media strategy.‘

Other related terms: EGC, FBC, Brand Advocate

Strategy

So you can achieve your paid social goals, your strategy needs to be extremely effective and aligned with your business objectives. Learn all the strategy-related terms below.

A/B testing

What it means: A test that compares two variables against one another to determine which one is better. Once advertisers know what is performing best they can refine their strategy to reflect this. This can be testing two types of creative or two different audiences. This can also be referred to as split testing.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’ve launched an A/B test to see if our users engage more to video or static images.’

Other related terms: Creative testing, Split testing, Lift test

Ad fatigue

What it means: When an audience becomes less responsive to an ad campaign because they have seen it several times in a short period.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We need to turn off this ad because it’s experiencing high frequency and therefore ad fatigue.‘

Other related terms: Creative fatigue, Optimisation, Frequency

Ad placement

What it means: The locations and formats that your ad is shown in.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’re running story-only placements for this campaign as our creative is vertical.‘

Other related terms: Ad creative, Reels, Instagram stories

Automated rules

What it means: Rules that can be set up within your ad accounts to perform certain actions automatically based upon set triggers.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’ve set an automated rule that will turn off the ad if it spends above our budget.’

Other related terms: Campaign, Ad, Audience

Average order value (AOV)

What it means: The average amount a customer spends when placing an order on a brand’s website or app. This is calculated by dividing the total revenue by the number of orders.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We have been pushing a lot of high-value products so we’ve seen an increase in AOV.’

Other related terms: CLTV, LTV, Value optimisation

Conversion rate optimisation (CRO)

What it means: The practice of reviewing your conversion rate on your website and identifying improvement opportunities to implement. This ultimately drives more conversions through your website and therefore increased profitability from ads.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We need to improve our conversion rate on the site so we’ve hired someone to take a look at CRO.’

Other related terms: Conversion rate, Click-through conversion, Landing page views

Cross-channel advertising

What it means: A strategy that uses multiple channels to reach customers.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We want to reach a wider audience with this campaign so we’re going to be running it cross-channel.’

Other related terms: Prospecting, Cold Audience, Top of Funnel

Customer lifetime value (CLTV)

What it means: The average revenue a single customer will generate throughout their lifespan as a customer. It is a useful metric because it allows advertisers to understand the differing values based on customer segments.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘The overall LTV of our customers is £300 but the CLTV of home decor customers is £500. Let’s spend more to reach that audience.’

Other related terms: LTV, Audience insights, Attribution

Dayparting

What it means: The distribution of your advertising budget at specific times and days of the week.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’re using dayparting to ensure we reach our users when they’re most active online.’

Other related terms: Bidding strategy, Daily budget, Pacing

Frequency

What it means: The rate at which a user views an ad within a set time frame.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘Our costs have increased as we’ve seen a high frequency so we’re exhausting the audience.’

Other related terms: Ad fatigue, Creative fatigue, Optimisation

Hook rate

What it means: The rate at which you are hooking users in with the beginning of your video content. This is calculated by looking at your 3-second video views vs. impressions.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘Our video has a low hook rate – maybe we need to change the opening of the video?‘

Other related terms: Video views, Thruplay, Click-through rate

Lifetime Value (LTV)

What it means: The average revenue your customers will generate throughout their life span. It can help advertisers understand what revenue they can expect to make from their audience, enabling them to spend more to acquire long-term high-spending customers.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘On average, one purchase is worth £30 but the LTV of a customer is £300, so we can pay up to £100 for that initial sale.’

Other related terms: Attribution, Reporting, CLTV

Social listening

What it means: A tool that monitors how a brand is discussed online, looking at sentiment analysis and understanding trends.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We have implemented a new social listening tool to understand whether our new campaign is going down well with our audience.’

Other related terms: Social proof, Engagement, Brand advocate

Social proof

What it means: Reviews, comments and opinions on a specific brand or product that influence potential customers’ decisions.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We want to build up more reviews and positive comments so that we have more social proof.‘

Other related terms: Engagement, Brand advocate, Social listening

Value Optimisation

What it means: A setting that pushes your campaigns to focus on higher value conversions over a high volume of conversions. E.g. focusing on driving high-order value purchases.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘With value optimisation, we’re driving a lower volume of purchases but our AOV has increased by 10%!‘

Other related terms: Average Order Value, Campaign objective, ROAS

Regulations

There are general guidelines and rules in the paid social world. Explore some regulatory terms below.

Ad disapproval

What it means: The ad status shown once your ad has gone through the ad review process and been rejected. The platform will show a reason for this disapproval and allow you to appeal the decision or amend your ad to follow the policies.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘Our ad has been disapproved so we’ve put it back into review.’

Other related terms: Ad review process, Data privacy, Consent

Ad review process

What it means: A process that any new ads go through where they are reviewed before going live. The review ensures that there is no discrimination, prohibited items are being promoted and the safety of users is upheld. All new ads automatically go through this review process across all paid social media platforms.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We’ve launched the new ads but they’re in review, we’ll let you know when they go live!‘

Other related terms: Ad disapproval, Consent, Data privacy

Consent

What it means: The permission from a user to collect and use their data on social media platforms.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘Meta’s targeting is based on user information that has been provided with full consent.’

Other related terms: Data privacy, Ad disapproval, Ad review process

Data Privacy

What it means: The ability of a user to determine what data is shared with the social media platforms and how it can be used.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We need to ensure that our new landing pages follow the data privacy policy.‘

Other related terms: Ad review process, Ad disapproval, Consent

Special category

What it means: A separate category that your Meta ads go into if you are sharing content about sensitive topics such as housing, finances, politics, employment and social issues. Once in this special category, targeting options are restricted to ensure that there is no discrimination.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘The new ads are in the special category so we’re unable to use lookalike audience targeting.‘

Other related terms: Consent, Ad review process, Ad disapproved

Jargon

Below are terms that marketers use frequently. It is useful to get to grips with these, so you can work more efficiently in the paid social world.

Above the fold

What it means: Content that appears on a landing page before a user has the scroll. Usually, this is in relation to a lead capture form that paid traffic is being driven to.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We are seeing a low conversion rate on the landing page, can we move more imagery above the fold?‘

Other related terms: Conversion rate optimisation, Conversion rate, Landing page views

Algorithm

What it means: The way in which it is determined what content a user sees within the social media feed and when. Every platform has its own set of algorithm rules and displays content differently.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘There has been an algorithm update so we haven’t seen as high reach as we usually would on this post.‘

Other related terms: Engagement, Reach, Viral content

Consent

What it means: Clicks that happen on your ads and content that are fraudulent. These are usually bot clicks or automated clicks, rather than actual users. This is measured and monitored through a third-party click fraud-specific tool.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘In the past month, we have seen that 20% of our clicks are fraudulent.‘

Other related terms: Third-party data, Link clicks, Landing page views

Creative fatigue

What it means: The point at which your audience is exhausted by your ad creative and therefore results start to decline. This usually happens when the same audience is seeing the same creative many times in a short period.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We need to add more creative variation to the account as we’re experiencing creative fatigue.’

Other related terms: Frequency, Ad creative, Creative testing

Header image

What it means: The main image that appears at the top of a social media page or profile.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘Can we update the header image with the new campaign imagery?‘

Other related terms: Meta, Bio, Instagram highlights

Learning phase

What it means: A stage that newly launched ads go into on paid social media where they are gathering audience data and being tested within the algorithm. During this period, your ads may not drive their optimum results and it is not advised to make significant changes, otherwise, the learning phase is restarted.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘Our ads are in the learning phase so we don’t recommend changing the copy or creative.’

Other related terms: Algorithm, Optimisation, Forecasting

Social customer service

What it means: Support provided to customers via a brand’s social media. This is usually sat within the comments section or direct messages.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We need to increase our social customer service as we are receiving a lot of queries on posts.’

Other related terms: Direct message, Social proof, Engagement

Viral content

What it means: A campaign or piece of content that forms a trend and is spread widely across social media platforms within a short space of time.

How to use it in a sentence: ‘We are jumping on a viral TikTok trend.’

Other related terms: Engagement, Algorithm, Reach

Let’s hear from Embryo’s head of paid social, Harriet Tuite:

Harriet Tuite

Head of paid social

"At Embryo, we’re experts in navigating and working with the complexities to drive paid social performance that drives results for your business. With expertise in everything from generating high-quality leads through LinkedIn Ads to hitting revenue targets and promoting ecommerce sales across Meta Ads, Embryo can support you hit your business goals with paid social. If you are looking to find out more about our paid social services and how they can support your business’s growth strategy, get in touch."

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Average ROAS
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Our Team

Meet Our Paid Social experts

Harriet Tuite
Head of Paid Social
Tom Jowle
Paid Social Manager
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Senior Paid Social Executive
Megan Atkinson
Senior Paid Social Executive
Jenny Byrne
Paid Social Manager

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