Online Marketing Articles

A

above the fold

the section of a Web page that is visible without scrolling. An advertising term used to describe the viewable area of a loaded web page. In other words, the viewable area without scrolling down the page.

Advertising space above the fold is more valuable than space below the fold because the probability that content is viewed and read is greater when placed above the fold.

If you advertise in traditional media like newspapers almost invariably you’ll pay more for ads that are in an above the fold position.  

active buyer

An active buyer is a customer who has made a purchase within a period of the last 12 months. Active buyers are highly likely to buy again and are considered “hot” leads in direct marketing. Some offline and online direct marketers believe that active buyers are most likely to make an additional purchase within 30 days of a prior purchase. Thus, the hot lead period. There are many mailing list companies that sell hot names, or the names and addresses of people who have purchased a particular product or service within the last 30 days.

ad blocking

the blocking of Web advertisements, typically the image in graphical Web advertisements. The deliberate screening or blocking of graphic-based Internet advertisements through software filtering. Banner ads are an example of such advertisements that can be blocked from appearing in a user’s browser.

ad blocking software

Ad blocking software is a specialized utility for screening and filtering out unwanted advertising content. Typically any graphical advertisements, web banners, buttons, popups, etc. are filtered out.

ad broker

For many organizations, it's often not feasible or desirable to personally select every web site in which it wants to advertise. In this scenario ad brokers, also called media brokers, gather and aggregate prospective web sites for advertisers based on marketing profiles, supplied by the advertiser. Demographics and other factors may be considered. The ad broker is a single point of access to advertising buys across various ad networks targeting both niche as well as broad-based consumer and business markets.

ad clicks

Also referred to as click-through. An ad click is a web advertising metric (unit of measure) that refers to the number of times a unique user clicks through a banner or other web advertisement. Ad clicks or click-through are the primary basis for Internet advertising.

ad inventory

Ad inventory refers to unused, vacant or available placements (ad slots) on a web site for banner ads, text links, buttons, box ads or other web advertisements.

ad space

the space on a Web page available for advertisements.

ad hoc survey

In market research, an ad hoc survey is a focused marketing questionnaire with a particular purpose or objective. No prior contact has been established with the target audience being surveyed.

ad metrics

Measurement standards for assessing the performance and effectiveness of advertising buys. For example, ad views and click-through are online advertising metrics that yield the ad buyer with statistical information about the performance of their online advertising investments.

ad rate card

A comprehensive pricing sheet that describes all advertisement buying options. An ad rate card lists things such as ad inventory, ad type, ad location and corresponding ad price. It can usually be found on a publishers website. Traditional publishers have hardcopy ad rate cards which are usually sent to prospective advertisers through the mail.

ad rotation

Ad rotation is a script and database-driven web site function where client ads are rotated into ad spaces or slots on a Web site. Banners, buttons and text links can all be rotated. Ad management scripts and software usually include features such as ad priority control, keyword functionality, media management, ad clicks and ad views management, timed delivery, etc. Ad rotation can be executed and managed through each individual web site or through a centralized server-based facility for a network of web sites

Ad Sizes Online IAB

Here are the standard banner ad sizes as per the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and CASIE. Ads are measured in pixels.

 Full Banner = 468 x 60

 Half Banner = 234 x 60

 Vertical Banner = 120 x 240

 Square Button = 125 x 125

 Button 1 = 120 x 90

 Button 2 = 120 x 60

 Micro Bar = 88 x 31

Newer IAB Ad Size Standards

 300 x 250 (Medium Rectangle)

 250 x 250 (Square JAVA Pop-up)

 240 x 400 (Vertical Rectangle)

 336 x 280 (Large Rectangle)

 180 x 150 (Rectangle)

 160 x 600 (Wide Skyscraper)

 120 x 600 (Skyscraper)

ad space

The area on a web page used for advertising elements, such as banner ads, buttons, text link ads and box ads.

ad tracking

A process for monitoring the performance of online advertisements. Tracking online advertising is a much simpler process than tracking offline advertising.

 Because the performance of Online advertising is measured primarily by click-through and impressions (views), Web address (URL) extensions in the ads are the key data used for tracking. Ad tracking is an important activity when advertising online and off, particularly when you’re paying and not relying heavily on free Web traffic. It tells you which ads are working and getting the job done.

 It also tells you which ones aren’t so that you can quickly make adjustments to the non-performing ads. Ad tracking takes the guesswork out of advertising Online.

ad tracking software

A program or service for tracking the results of online advertising campaigns.

 Ad tracking is an important activity when advertising online and off, particularly when you are paying for ads and not relying heavily on free Web traffic.

 Ad tracking software tells you which ads are working and which ones aren’t so you can quickly make adjustments to the non-performing ads.

ad views

Ad views are also referred to as impressions. An ad view is an advertising metric (standard of measure) that refers to the number of times an advertisement such as a web banner or text ad has been downloaded and presumably viewed.

advertising network

a network representing many Web sites in selling advertising, allowing advertising buyers to reach broad audiences relatively easily through run-of-category and run-of-network buys. An organization or broker representing a number of web sites that sells advertising placements. An advertising network can provide your business significant promotional leverage because of the ability to reach large target audiences with relative simplicity. An ad or group of ads can be implemented quickly, in as little as a few minutes or a few hours.

An example of an advertising network is an organization called Double Click. Their network consists of 1,500 web sites in 15 International Networks. The largest advertising network online is a company called Click Agents. They represent advertising on more than 37,000 Web sites.

advertising start page

A no cost marketing technique that utilizes web browser start pages to generate growth in targeted web site traffic. Participating in the service requires that you set your browser’s start page to open the start page network’s home page. Each time you start your browser, it will contain a set of new links to other participating web sites with content that matches your specific interests. When you set up a start page account, you enter information about the web page or site that you want to promote such as a URL, category, title, and description. This profile information is used to generate the links TO your site. Your links are then displayed all over the start page network, which is usually comprised of 1000’s of web sites. The concept is based on a credit system whereby each time you open your browser, you earn a credit. Each credit you earn equals another targeted link to your site. Start page advertising networks have received their fair share of criticism and praise, so like all things in advertising you must test them for yourself. 

add URL

(see Search Engine Submission)

affiliate

the publisher/salesperson in an affiliate marketing relationship.

A Web-based salesperson or organization in an affiliate marketing program. An affiliate is an independent contractor that promotes a product or service on behalf of a supplier organization (the merchant).Strategically located links and promotional copy in the affiliate’s web site are used to attract and redirect web traffic to a sales offer or product order page, usually published by the affiliate merchant. Affiliates are paid commissions based on contractually agreed activities and performance such as click-through, leads or sales generated by their advertising and promotional efforts.

affiliate agreement

An online contract that stipulates the terms and conditions for participating in an affiliate program. For example, a clause in every affiliate agreement will be a term or condition that states if the affiliate is caught or implicated in spamming activities, the contract is terminated immediately.

affiliate directory - a categorized listing of affiliate programs.

affiliate forum - an online community where visitors may read and post topics related to affiliate marketing.

affiliate fraud - bogus activity generated by an affiliate in an attempt to generate illegitimate, unearned revenue.

affiliate loyalty programs

Incentive programs used by an affiliate manager or merchant to encourage its affiliates to be loyal to their affiliate program. A good, incentive-driven affiliate loyalty program will keep your affiliates from switching to other programs and will increase sales by helping affiliates become more successful. Loyal affiliates sell more products and they have a contagious enthusiasm, which helps you get other top selling affiliates into your program.

affiliate manager

An individual or organization that owns and or manages an affiliate program. Sometimes used interchangeably with affiliate merchant. Affiliate manager is also a term sometimes used to describe software applications that manage the administrative functions of affiliate programs, such as commission payouts, charge backs etc.

affiliate marketing

revenue sharing between online advertisers/merchants and online publishers/salespeople, whereby compensation is based on performance measures, typically in the form of sales, clicks, registrations, or a hybrid model.

A performance-based online marketing arrangement. Independent contractors called affiliates place links on their website which refer visitors to other websites selling specific products or services. Affiliate marketing is 100% performance-based so an affiliate is paid on either a pay-per-click, pay-per-lead or a pay-per-sale basis. On pay-per-sale arrangements, commissions can vary from as low as 1% to as high as 60% or more. Affiliate activity and commissions are tracked by an affiliate manager or an affiliate network and affiliates are paid according the agreed upon activity (either click-through, leads or sales) generated by their advertising links.

affiliate merchant

the advertiser in an affiliate marketing relationship.

affiliate network

 a value-added intermediary providing services, including aggregation, for affiliate merchants and affiliates. A third party organization providing administration services for affiliates, affiliate merchants and affiliate programs. Such services typically include data collection & aggregation, performance & commission reporting and in some cases affiliate recruiting. Some affiliate networks offer additional services like sending checks, sending out tax forms and performing general customer service functions. Two popular and trustworthy affiliate networks are Click Bank and Commission Junction.

affiliate programs

Also referred to as associate programs or referral programs. Affiliate programs provide a mechanism or platform for performance-based Internet marketing relationships between an independent contractor (the affiliate) and a sales/fulfillment company (the affiliate merchant). The purpose of an affiliate program is to sell products and services through a network of online salespeople. The relationship is mutually beneficial to both the affiliate and the merchant because the affiliate is paid on either a pay-per-click, pay-per-lead or a pay-per-sale basis. On pay-per-sale arrangements, commissions can vary from as low as 1% to as high as 60%. Merchants benefit because they capture and convert traffic and sales that would have been otherwise unattainable without the affiliates.

affiliate software - software that, at a minimum, provides tracking and reporting of commission-triggering actions (sales, registrations, or clicks) from affiliate links.

affiliate tracking software

Software for implementing and managing affiliate programs.

 It typically provides functions for tracking and reporting of sales, registrations, and clicks from affiliate links as well as for reporting commissions, payouts and charge backs.

agents intelligent

An agent is a software program that performs a specific set of tasks for its user.

 Agents are used extensively on the web by search engines to discover new resources, which are then indexed and stored for future recall by search engine users. In this case the agents are robots (called spiders), which comb the web looking for new web documents to capture and index. When an agent program visits your web site, your web server will create a record called an agent log

agent log

An agent log is a web server file that records the agent programs that have accessed a web server. Agent programs typically include robot programs, search engine spiders, search engine indexers and link verifiers.

agent name delivery

One of two methods of delivering cloaked web pages is called Agent Name Delivery. The other method is IP Address Delivery. Agent Name Delivery takes advantage of the fact that all web crawlers and spiders (called agents) have an identifying name. For example, Google's spider is named Googlebot. Knowing the agents name allows you to deliver a specific page associated with the agent name. Because of the controversy surrounding web cloaking, agent name delivery is not a recommended practice. If caught your site can be removed from the search engine that discovered the cloaking.

AllTheWeb - (see FAST Search) One of the Big 10 search engines and archrival to Google for search engine dominance. AllTheWeb has moved ahead of competitors like AltaVista and Excite by focusing most of its resources on pure search power and search simplicity.

ALT Tags

Short for alternative representation tag. An ALT tag is an HTML tag that displays alternative text when non-textual elements, like images, cannot be displayed.

 The descriptive text is displayed for users with either older browsers that don’t support the image display or for non-visual browsers such as Lynx, a popular text-only browser.

ALT text

HTML attribute that provides alternative text when non-textual elements, typically images, cannot be displayed.

AltaVista - search engine located at www.altavista.com. AltaVista

AltaVista is one of the world leaders in search technology and as a search engine has been online since 1995. They developed the first searchable, full-text web page database on the World Wide Web. It was born out of Digital Equipment Corporation's Research lab in Palo Alto, California.

AltaVista claims to have more search related inventions and patents than any other company in existence, including the very first multi-lingual search function on the Internet and the first search technology to translate & support Chinese, Japanese & Korean languages. Their technologies continue to raise the bar, making AltaVista one the leading search engines among surfers. Their service includes integrated search results, offering users immediate access to the most relevant information including Web pages, multimedia, news, products and services as well as a free language translation feature. Like fast (AllTheWeb), AltaVista is also a provider of high-powered search software solutions for intranet, enterprise and e-commerce applications. Corporate customers include Daimler-Chrysler, Siemens, Amazon and Borders to name a few. Their search technology is embedded in information management solutions from companies like Oracle, Novell, HP and IBM. AltaVista supplemented their own technology with the Ask Jeeves search appliance back in 1999. This allows surfers to submit questions (called natural language parsing) to the search engine rather than just keywords.

American Marketing Association

A not-for-profit organization set up to provide marketing professionals with information, products and services required to succeed in their jobs, careers or businesses. Marketers can use the site and its associated services to find new job opportunities, develop new skill sets and utilize profit-enhancing tools for business. The AMA also tracks and reports trends in the marketing field.

anchor text or link text: The clickable – text – part of a webpage. Anchor text is usually underlined.

animated GIF

a graphic in the GIF89a file format that creates the effect of animation by rotating through a series of static images.

anonymous FTP

an option in FTP that allows users to download files without having to establish and account.

anonymous mailer

An anonymous mailer or re-mailer is an e-mail service that privatizes your email.

 Every Internet Service Provider (ISP) has the potential to monitor, store, and even share your email information with "authorized persons" without your knowledge. By using an anonymous mailer or re-mailer, you protect your e-mail communications from being monitored or accessed. Some also provide masking services to hide your identity from recipients if you wish. Unfortunately these services are heavily used by spammers for sending out their junk mails

anonymous surfing

Anonymous surfing allows you to mask your identity from the web sites you visit by surfing through a specialized web server application. Anonymous surfing shields your IP address and computer id and can optionally keep cookies off your PC. The host service that provides the anonymous surfing will assign anonymous IP addresses to surfers as they connect to the host web site. It’s important to note however that you cannot anonymously surf and order or buy products online simultaneously. E-commerce transactions require the use of cookies for tracking customer information important for the transaction and after the sale support. For this reason, when you buy something online make sure cookies are enabled and that you are NOT using an anonymous surfing filter.

anti spam

Refers to opinions and resources helpful in the fight against spam. Anti spam tools and resources include such things as spam filtering software, spam watch groups and spam blacklists.

AOL search

Search engine for the America Online Web properties and communities. A public version is also available to non-AOL subscribers at www.aol.com.

In May 2002 America Online, the world's leading interactive services company, and Google, developer of the industry-leading Internet search engine, announced a multi-year deal that will utilize Google's search technology and targeted paid listings program across all of the America Online Web properties.

 Under the contract, Google's search technology will power the search functions of AOL, AOL.COM, CompuServe as well as Netscape by mid 2002. The union of the two companies on this initiative creates good synergy, which translates into a richer search experience for AOL's more than 34 million members and tens of millions of visitors worldwide. Also, Google will supply AOL and CompuServe members as well as users of AOL.COM & Netscape its targeted paid listings product. The paid listings program offers a variety of advertisement listings ranked by relevancy and other factors, from Google's growing base of advertisers. Google will be the exclusive provider of sponsored Links for the search areas in each of the America Online Web properties.

apache

an open source web server software.

apache web server

An open-source Web server software product of the Apache Software Foundation. It runs on Unix, Linux, Windows NT, NetWare and OS2 operating systems. Apache is the defacto standard and their Web servers are considered the fastest, most efficient, and most functional web servers in existence.

application service provider

Sometimes abbreviated as ASP (not to be confused with Microsoft’s Active Server Pages (ASP).An application service provider is a technology vendor that supplies software and or hardware applications usage to businesses over the Internet. Businesses can use the software applications owned by ASP’s rather than make their own capital investment in hardware and software. Because of economies of scale (the main benefit of the ASP business model), ASP’s can pass on big savings and capital cost reductions to their customers.

applied market research

In market research, any research activities and information used to answer a specific question or solve a particular problem or set of problems.

 The resultant research data is analyzed and often formulated into product development and product marketing and promotion.

architext spider

The ArchitextSpider is a web crawler robot that collects information for the Excite and WebCrawler search engines. Its two main purposes are to discover and index resources on the web (web sites, pages, content etc.) and to generate statistics.

ask jeeves - metasearch engine located at http://www.askjeeves.com/ Ask Jeeves

One of the many metasearch engines available on the Web. Ask Jeeves is not a standalone search engine service like Google or AltaVista. It does not have it’s own directory index. Rather, it is a metasearch engine, or an engine that is used to search a number of other relevant search engines such as Google, Alta Vista, HotBot & Excite among others. Ask Jeeves’ search results are a compilation of results from the other engines it searches. Ask Jeeves also supports natural language parsing, which allows users to post questions in their queries rather than simply entering keywords for their searches. Many enterprise search appliances and knowledge base engines (also called Expert Systems) use natural language parsing for retrieving and delivering information on demand.

(ASP)Acronym for Microsoft’s Active Server Page (not to be confused with Application Service Provider An active server page is a web page that is created dynamically or spontaneously as a result of a user request. The user request is initiated by clicking a link typically. The resultant page is generated using Microsoft’s ActiveX controls. ActiveX is set of software components similar to Java that provide an interactive and multimedia-rich experience for web users.

ASP Hosting - Web hosting that supports Active Server Pages, a server-side scripting environment from Microsoft.

auctions online

Online marketplaces where products and services are sold to high bidders. Online Auctions have become extremely popular and competitive since their ushering to the mainstream by online auction giant, eBay. Over the last few years, thousands of auction sites have come Online and Auction mania continues to spread throughout the world with no apparent signs of slow down. Marketing Alert: Auctions are a quick and easy way for ANYONE who wants to start making money Online immediately. I’m not kidding. I know a guy in upstate New York with no special computer skills who is pulling in as much as $4,000 a week on eBay! His secret? Nothing special actually, he simply buys old motorcycles, strips them down for parts and sells these parts on eBay. It’s not rocket science. Just about anyone can do this if they put forth the effort.

auction software

Software for establishing and or operating an online auction. Functions provided by the software include the buying (bidding) platform, transaction processing & fulfillment and inventory management

auto responder

a program that sends an automatic form response to incoming emails.

An auto responder is a CGI script that automatically responds to incoming e-mail. When e-mail is received, an auto responder sends a return e-mail with the requested information. Auto responders and the correct use of them are important to your Internet marketing success. A new generation of “smart” auto responders has hit the market and they provide a lot of value for the money. These smart auto responders allow for: HTML or Plain Text Messages ,Running Your Own newsletter, E-zine or Opt-in List Full Personalization of Messages Automatic Subscription Code Generation ,Tracking the Exact Source of All Subscriptions

You can also automatically send timed and sequential follow up messages, keeping your sales message in front of the people who join your opt-in mailing list. E-business studies have shown that more than 70% of people do NOT buy on the first visit to a commercial web site. People will need to feel comfortable before making a purchase. Smart auto responders capitalize on this basic human need. They allow you to make your newsletter, ezine and web site "sticky", encouraging your visitors to make a purchase when they are comfortable and ready.

B

baby boomers

A large segment of the US population born between 1946 - 1964. Baby Boomers are a popular target market for the retail consumer products industry.

 Nostalgia-related items are one example of products that are ideal to market to baby boomers because of the sentiment and personal memories they conjure. This mental process reinforces the impulse or desire to buy.

back end marketing

Term used to describe strategies and tactics for generating sales of additional products and services to an existing customer list. Backend marketing is extremely important for long-term business growth and for the overall success of a sales and marketing venture, online or off. Back-end marketing is a very inexpensive form of marketing because the largest expense relating to marketing (customer acquisition) has already been incurred or absorbed. Another important benefit of backend marketing is that your response rates and conversions will typically be much higher because your customers already know, respect and trust you. Despite the benefits of back end marketing (low cost, higher conversions, higher profits, etc.) it’s the most ignored form of business-to-business and business-to-consumer marketing strategy. To be successful in marketing and sales in the long run, a business MUST become adept at back end marketing.

backlink or backward link: Links from other sites pointing to your site. This term is usually used in regards to a link exchange or reciprocal linking.

bait and switch web pages

Text only versions of web pages used in an effort to secure high search engine rankings. Also called code swapping. Once the desired ranking position is achieved, a web page designed for humans is swapped with the search engine friendly text page. Code swapping is the technical name for bait and switch. Code swapping is considered a form of search engine spam. Don’t do it. Another major downside is that a search engine may revisit your site at any time after it has indexed the text only pages. If it indexes the real pages, the positions achieved by the text pages will most likely drop. Or worse yet, you are discovered and your site is dropped from their index altogether. Not good. Side Note: Fortunately, you don’t need to code swap to do well with the search engines. A highly qualified search engine marketer or Internet marketing consultant can attain excellent ranking results for you without controversial methods and tactics like code swapping or web page cloaking.

 B2B

business that sells products or provides services to other businesses. B2B.  Abbreviation for business-to-business. It refers to businesses that market and sell products and/or services to other businesses. B2B companies do not sell to end consumers or individuals. An example of a typical B2B company is Oracle Corporation. Oracle markets, sells and implements its database software solutions in small to large business environments.

B2C

business that sells products or provides services to the end-user consumers. B2C Abbreviation for business-to-consumer. B2C refers to businesses that market and sell products and/or services to individuals or end user consumers.

An example of a successful B2C company is Amazon.com

bandwidth - how much data can be transmitted in a time period over a communications channel, often expressed in kilobits per second (kbps).

banner ads

A graphical web advertisement (usually 468 X 60 pixels in size) that is linked to the advertisers web site or offer page. Banner ads are one of the most popular forms of advertising online yet the effectiveness of banner ads is often debated among Internet marketing professionals. Typically the more targeted or focused your banner ads are, the higher your click-through rates (CTR). Blind banners and banners promoting products or services to a broad-based consumer market will have lower CTR’s.  Statistics garnered by the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) show that the average click-through rate on banners is a mere 1%.

 Banners that tend to outperform the average CTR are the newer, interactive, media-rich banners as well as creative standard banners placed in highly productive advertising networks.

banner blindness - the tendency of web visitors to ignore banner ads, even when the banner ads contain information visitors are actively looking for. A psychological phenomenon whereby web site visitors tend to ignore or filter out banner advertisements. Visitors may even ignore banner ads containing information they might normally be interested in learning about. Banner blindness occurs because people are continually bombarded with advertising messages: on television, radio, postal mail and on the Internet. People have responded by mentally screening out advertising messages in general. Most people don’t find ads that interesting, they don’t believe the message or they don’t trust the advertiser. That’s because many of the banners out there use tricks to get you to click them. For many people, banners = trickery. As an Internet marketer, you must become adept at learning and testing different concepts in banner advertising in order to find what works best for your sales offers. Banners can definitely bring your business good results but picking the right banner networks and markets, creating the right ads and testing are critical to success.

banner exchange

A banner exchange network allows participating web sites to display 3rd party banner ads in exchange for ad credits. Credits are redeemed for placing your own ads on other 3rd party sites. The typical exchange rate is 2:1.In most banner exchange networks for every 2 banners you display on your site, you earn one credit, or the right to display 1 of your banner ads on another site.

 Two of the largest banner exchange networks are LinkExchange and SmartClicks.    

barter

to exchange goods or services directly without the use of money.

benchmark

A quantitative reference or milestone used to measure the performance of a marketing campaign at a particular point in time. Benchmarks are also used as performance measures when testing software applications and computer operating systems.

better internet bureau

The Better Internet Bureau is an online, not-for-profit organization dedicated to making the Internet a safer place for people worldwide. Members who join the Better Internet Bureau may display the Better Internet Bureau logo on their home page, assuring visitors that the site has been reviewed and is certified as a quality site. Certification of a Web site builds a bond of trust with first-time visitors. Members also receive a free e-mail newsletter that alerts them to deceitful, fraudulent or dangerous locations on the Web. Another important benefit is that the Bureau monitors Internet sites around the world and reports back to members any activity that may be of a questionable or unscrupulous nature. Members are encouraged to report such sites for further investigation. If the Bureau reviews a site and agrees that it could cause harm to subscribers, an alert will be posted.

beyond the banner

online advertising not involving standard GIF and JPEG banner ads. Beyond the Banner. An industry expression used to describe online advertising that does NOT utilize conventional GIF and JPEG banner ads, but rather other forms of advertising such as text link ads and rich media interactive advertising.

bias search engine

The term bias is used to describe search engines that deliberately skew search results to include pay-for-inclusion or pay-per-click listings. In market research, bias refers to a misrepresentation of a target audience due to flaws in methodology or execution.

blacklisting spam

The act of placing known spammers on “avoid lists” that are published prominently in various Internet communities or consumer advocacy web sites.

 Because of the large sense of community and the pervasiveness of the Internet, being blacklisted can ruin an Internet marketing career. The lesson here is to avoid any and all forms of spam.

blind ads

Banner ads (and the target site’s they refer traffic to) that promise a tremendous benefit but offer little or no detail about the product or service that delivers that benefit. Blind ads are deliberately vague in an attempt to pique your interest and motivate a call to some sort of action, i.e. a click-through to a web form requesting you sign up for more free information. There are many companies online that use blind ads to simply collect e-mail addresses for future spam e-mail campaigns. I’m sure you’ve seen those banner ads like “Earn $6,000 per month in your spare time!” all over the web. Clicking-through on one of these blind ads usually presents a vaguely detailed web page asking to to sign up for a newsletter or email list. My advice is to stay away from blind ads because of the potential for unwanted and harmful spam activity. Also, products marketed by blind ads tend to be suspect in terms of quality or effectiveness. Many are outright scams and rip-offs.

blog

A frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web links. Blog

Contracted term for “web log”. A blog is an online diary or log of personal opinions, experiences and web links revolving around a specific topic or theme.

Someone who contributes to a blog is called a blogger.

boolean searching

The use of the logical operators OR, AND, NOT when performing online searches. Searching with the OR operand will retrieve documents in which at least ONE of the search terms is present.

 Searching with the AND operand will retrieve documents in which ALL of the search terms are present.

 A search using the NOT operand retrieves documents in which the specified term IS NOT present. Most search engines support some form of Boolean logic.

bookmark

a link stored in a Web browser for future reference.

bot

Short for Robot. See Robot.

box ad

A box ad is a square or nearly square banner advertisement on a web page.

brand awareness

The extent of which people are familiar with your product, company or brand.

 For example the brand awareness level for the household product Clorox Bleach is significantly greater than the brand awareness of competitive bleach products in the U.S. Think about it. Can you name another brand of chlorine bleach off the top of your head? I can’t. Except for the obvious supermarket brands of products i.e. Kroger, Safeway, Shop Rite, A&P brands of bleach. Clorox enjoys the highest levels of brand awareness and brand recognition as compared with its competitors.

bridge page

There are several variations of bridge pages. A bridge page can be a separate, secondary home page customized for visitors who click on a specific banner or advertising link. Bridge pages can also be pages that have been optimized for the search engines for particular keywords and keyword phrases. Bridge pages are also referred to as entry pages, jump pages, doorway pages, gateway pages and portal pages. The gap between the entry and the destination page is where the name comes from. Bridge pages are not a new concept. Many spammers have used them successfully for years to capture traffic. As a result, most search engines frown on doorway pages because of the potential for abuse. The best and most “clean” way to design bridge pages is to create a second website (with a different domain) as a text-only version for your main pages. Then insert a link on your text site to your main website. This will "bridge" visitors over to your main site. It’s important to note that search engines generally no longer index pages using fast “meta refresh” (a special tag in the section of a document that tells the web browser to automatically redirect to a different page). This was enforced in an effort to discourage abuses with doorway pages. To get around this some webmasters will do a code swap, which is submitting a text only page for search engine indexing then swapping it on the server with the "human" page once a ranking position has been achieved. Code swapping is also called "bait-and-switch." The downside of this practice is that a search engine may revisit at any time and if it indexes the "human" page, the position could drop. Or worse, you could get dropped from the SE index altogether.

broadband

Broadband refers to telecommunications in which a wide band of frequencies is available to transmit data over physical cables or wires.

Information can be transmitted on many different frequencies or channels within the band simultaneously thus allowing more information to be sent in a given time period. In the context of the Internet, broadband is connecting to the Internet and transferring data at speeds faster than 200 kilobits (kb) per second. With broadband, web pages download at lightening speed and surfing the web becomes a whole new experience. Examples of Internet broadband technologies include DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) and cable modem.**It’s important to note that most people today still have dial-up Internet access of 56 kilobits (56kb) or less. Many people still connect with 28,800 modems.

 Internet marketers must build their web pages to download at reasonable speeds over 28,800 bps modems. This ensures that the greatest number of people will see these web pages successfully. Internet marketing is a numbers game so the more people who see your pages, the more sales you’ll make

browser

(see Web browser)

bulletin board systems

Abbreviated as BBS. Bulletin board system and bulletin board server are older terms used to describe a computer on the Internet containing a communications forum accessible by modem or Telnet. BBS’s allow Internet communities with common interests or goals to exchange information. Today most bulletin boards are web-based and it’s estimated that there are over 40,000 bulletin board systems worldwide.    

bulk e-mail

Sending bulk e-mail messages to a large number of recipients (newsletter subscribers for example) is a necessary function of most Internet marketing businesses. However, many recipients consider bulk e-mailing as spam -- unsolicited and unwanted e-mail from an unknown sender. There are two distinct types of bulk e-mail: Opt-in bulk e-mail. This is the practice of e-mailing to large numbers of recipients who have given their permission to send those marketing communications. This would include, for example, a broadcast e-mail of a sales message or offer to your customer or subscriber list. Spam. The irrelevant, uninvited junk information you get in your e-mail inbox on a regular basis. Spam bulk mailing is the practice of non-personalized mailing to massive numbers of e-mail recipients who have not given permission to send those marketing communications. Note: Be careful if you buy ready-made Opt-in lists to send bulk e-mail. Unless the list owner has notified the list of the sale and that subscribers will now receive e-mail communications from a different organization (the list buyer), subscribers may think you are spamming them. If you buy these lists get proof from the list seller that they have informed their opt-in subscribers of your legitimate purchase and use of that list.

bulletin board software

Web application software that runs an interactive bulletin board system

burstable bandwidth

a hosting option that allows sites to use the available network capacity to handle periods of peak usage.

business hosting

Web hosting geared towards the mission-critical functions demanded by business-class customers.

business opportunities online

Any number of low cost online business ventures that can be started quickly and provide individuals or organizations with an opportunity to derive income by promoting, referring or directly selling products or services on the Internet.

 There are quite literally thousands of online business opportunities. But they all revolve around a single theme: SALES.

 Probably the hardest part of pursuing an online business opportunity is selecting the right one. There are no shortages of scams out there and many people don’t know who and what to trust. That’s one of the main reasons I built this site, to provide a baseline of accurate and trustworthy information that people can use to make their own informed decisions about income and business opportunities online.

button ad exchange

A button ad exchange is a network of participating sites that display button ads in exchange for credits. Credits earned are converted to a number of ads to be displayed on other sites. A fixed exchange ratio is used to calculate credits, such as 2:1. Button exchanges are not nearly as popular as banner exchanges but nonetheless provide opportunities for promoting your products and services. Like all things in Internet marketing, you must TEST the concept for yourself to determine if it’s a worthwhile advertising tactic.

button ad

a graphical advertising unit, smaller than a banner ad.

button exchange

network where participating sites display button ads in exchange for credits which are converted (using a predetermined exchange rate) into ads to be displayed on other sites.

buzzword
 

a trendy word or phrase that is used more to impress than explain.

 C

cache

A cache is a temporary holding bin or repository. In the context of Internet browsing, a cache is a folder on your computer that stores a copy of web pages, graphics, files etc. for future recall and reload when you revisit a web site.
 The browser and caching mechanism automatically pull these stored pages and objects from your computer’s cache folder rather than requesting them to download from the server each time you visit the site.
 Note: Once you delete the cache, your browser will be forced to download those previously cached web pages the next time you visit.

caching - the storage of Web files for later re-use at a point more quickly accessed by the end user.

call to action, direct marketing

A direct marketing device that instructs a user or prospective customer to execute one or more actions. A call to action could include filling out a contest form, ordering a product or service or signing up for a free newsletter.

cascading style sheets (CSS) - a data format used to separate style from structure on Web pages.

CGI-Bin

Acronym for “Common Gateway Interface-Binary.” CGI-BIN is a directory on a web server that stores CGI programs and scripts. These scripts can perform various interactive functions on a web site. Examples of CGI-driven website functions include feedback forms, hit counters, site search capability and shopping cart functions to name a few

CGI common gateway interface

Acronym for Common Gateway Interface. A CGI script or program is a web-based program that converts non-web information into web documents on demand. An example of CGI is interactive elements in a web site, such as an E-zine subscription form or a shopping cart application.

clickstreams

In Online advertisement tracking, clickstreams is a term used to describe the paths a web surfer takes when navigating individual web sites and when navigating the Web in general. The clickstreams of your visitors can easily be viewed in the log files of your web server or by using software designed for monitoring visitor traffic flow.

click-through

the process of clicking through an online advertisement to the advertiser's destination.

click-through rate (CTR) - The average number of click-through per hundred ad impressions, expressed as a percentage.

cloaking

A controversial search engine ranking technique of presenting one version of a web page to search engine spiders that is specifically optimized for keywords, while returning a different version of the same page to a human user.

A cloaking system uses IP address attributes to identify visitors as either human or robot. Once it detects that a visitor is a robot, the cloaking system presents text only, keyword-rich pages. Some unscrupulous web masters use this technique to blatantly mislead search engine users to their sites.

 Search engines officially frown on cloaking because of the potential for abuse and they may remove sites practicing it from their indices. Most search ranking experts will recommend you avoid this high-risk tactic for capturing traffic. There are plenty of clean ways to bring swarms of traffic to your site

co-branding

Co-branding is a marketing strategy where two or more brand names (companies or products) join together in promotional activities to associate the two brands.

 Co-branding allows a company to leverage the complementary strengths of their branding partners. 

 code swapping search engines

Submitting text only versions of web pages to the search engines in an effort to gain high rankings and once the desired positions are achieved, swapping the search engine friendly text page for a content page designed for humans.

 Code swapping, referred to as bait and switch, is also sometimes used in an attempt to keep others from learning how the page ranked well, although it’s not really useful or necessary today. The major downside of code swapping is that a search engine may revisit the web site at any time, and if it indexes the "real" page the positions will likely drop. Or worse, you are discovered and your pages are dropped from the index. Side Note: Fortunately, you don’t need to code swap to do well with the search engines. A highly qualified search engine specialist or Internet consultant can secure excellent ranking results for you without the need for controversial tactics like code swapping or web page cloaking.

cold fusion

Macromedia’s web development suite for building rich Internet applications that integrate with databases, XML, web services, Macromedia Flash, etc. The newest platform, ColdFusion MX, provides developers with a productive scripting environment along with integrated search and charting capabilities. ColdFusion can be deployed on industry-standard operating systems and allows you to leverage the power of the Java and .NET platforms.

coldfusion hosting

Web hosting that supports ColdFusion, a web application language introduced by Allaire and currently owned by Macromedia.

communities, virtual

Term used to describe a group of people sharing common interests, hobbies, goals or aspirations. To be successful in the long run web marketers should build their own online communities i.e. newsletter subscribers and loyal web site visitors that crave the information, products and services they provide.

competing on Google

The number of competing web pages for a particular keyword.

content is king

Catch phrase used to stress the importance of having quality, educational information on a web site in an effort to attract and inform new site visitors, build repeat visitor traffic and to rank well in the search engines.    

content management

A term used to describe manual or automated activities relating to the creation, publishing and management of information on a website. Web content management systems allow you to create pages or content objects and feed them to a Web publishing system. Content management systems may have custom or automated quality assurance features to ensure content is published correctly, navigation paths are created and maintained and that rights are assigned to control the authoring and publishing process (workflow capabilities). A good Web content management system separates content objects (copy, images, audio, video, etc.) from the presentation of content (style templates).

content protection

Software applications, tools and methods used to keep content secure. Content protection keeps content from being hacked, copied, stolen, and or illegally republished.

content web

Web content can be defined as any useful, educational information you make available to visitors on your web site. The importance of having good content on your web site cannot be overstated, as it is such an important element for success online. Unless a site has quality content, visitors usually never return. When developing your website content you must ask yourself:Why would someone visit my site a second, third or fourth time? Does my site have useful information or services that people are willing to come back for? Updating your content regularly is also quite important. It's a proven method for encouraging return visits to your site. The search engines also give higher relevance scores to web sites that update regularly.

conversion rate

The number of visitors who completed the desired action. For example: signing up for news letter, buying your product, downloading a trial version of a software, etc. (conversion rate tool) Calculating conversion rate: the number of visitors who took the desired actions divided by the total number of visitors in a given period.

conversion rate, web

The percentage of site visitors who follow a call to action specified in an advertisement or the marketing copy of a website.This action may be a click-through to another page or web site, a sign up for a newsletter or a purchase of a product or service.

cookie

information stored on a user's computer by a Web site so preferences are remembered on future requests.

copywriting for search engines

Search engine copywriting is the process of writing descriptive and structured web site copy that provides the best opportunities for ranking well in the search engines.

cost-per-action (CPA)

 online advertising payment model in which payment is based solely on qualifying actions such as sales or registrations.

cost per click (CPC)

The cost or cost-equivalent paid per click-through.

CPM

cost per thousand impressions.

cost per thousand targeted ad views CPTM

CPTM is the cost per thousand targeted ad views, an ad buying option with select banner advertising networks. Your banner ads will only be displayed to people that fit a particular profile or a demographic that matches your sales offer or advertisement.

crawler

A crawler, sometimes called a robot, bot or spider is a program that combs the Web’s hypertext structure and retrieves and indexes the information it finds on Web sites. A crawler retrieves documents it finds and recursively retrieves all the documents that are linked within them.

crosslinking

Crosslinking is the linking of web pages within a single web site. Usually a crosslink is a footer or navigation link on each page or most pages in a site. When done correctly crosslinking provides a sense of consistency and flow to the pages in your web site.    

customer acquisition cost

the cost associated with acquiring a new customer.

D

database marketing

Also called micromarketing. Database marketing is a structured form of marketing that leverages intelligence information derived from studying patterns in data. Data from both current and potential customers is used in the process.

 Databases may contain profiling information such as: Age, Sex, Hobbies & Interests, Purchase History, Geographic Info, Income Bracket, Credit Cards Used

Size (of market or target group) Database marketing is a means to an end. The end result should be actionable strategies for creating and delivering customized advertising communications to the target group and ultimately selling them products or services.

data transfer

The total amount of outbound traffic from a website*, typically measured in gigabytes (Gb).

dead links

Hyperlinks on a web site that have been orphaned or removed due to site changes. For example, movement of documents or folders on the web server can cause dead links

dedicated IP

an IP address dedicated to a single website.

deep linking

linking to a web page other than a site's home page. Linking to a web page deep within another web site. It is typically used to provide shortcuts to external information that the author wants the user to have quick access to. For example, in affiliate marketing the affiliate site may have deep links to external content such as editorials or news style articles. They will also have deep links to external sales letters and order pages. Another definition of deep linking is linking to any page in a web site other than the site’s home page.

deep web

(see invisible Web) the portion of the Web not indexed by search engines.

demographics

Specific information or characteristics pertaining to a population or a target audience that is used for marketing to that population or target audience. Demographics typically include information such as age, sex, geographic location and size of the target group. For example, in Internet marketing, where a company sells information or services to clients to help them make money online, the target audience for such products and services is predominantly male, ages 25-45, US citizen, average income 40K plus. Now of course there are lots of women that buy and sell Internet marketing material online and there are plenty of folks around the world that do so as well. Lots of 21 and 22 year olds buy Internet marketing products and services. But studying the characteristics of this target group will tell you that the largest target audience for Internet marketing products is comprised of relatively affluent and educated U.S. males between 25 and 45.

description tag

an HTML tag used by Web page authors to provide a description for search engine listings. An HTML tag used to describe the category or theme of a web site for search engine and directory listings. The description tag also provides a summary of your web site, which will be displayed after the title of your site in the listing. The content of the description tag should clearly convey what someone can expect when visiting your site. This is important for attracting qualified click-through.

DHTML

Acronym for Dynamic HTML. DHTML is HTML that can change after a page has been loaded into a browser. A sentence could turn red when the mouse pointer hovers over it or a header could slide across the screen. Anything that can be done in HTML can be redone after the page loads. Attributes of DHTML include client-side scripting, DOM (document object modeling) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).

digital millennium copyright act

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on October 28, 1998. Title II of the DMCA is the “Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act,” which creates limitations on the liability of online service providers for copyright infringement when engaging in certain types of activities. The limitations are based on the following four categories of conduct by a service provider: 1. Transitory communications; 2. System caching;

3. Storage of information on systems or networks at direction of users;

4. Information location tools. In lay terms, the DMCA Title II protects Internet Service Providers from legal action and liability as a result of making system-generated copies of copyrighted materials (contained in web pages) through the normal course of business. System generated copies are an obvious necessity in order to serve up web pages to site visitors. The ISP’s certainly can’t be considered infringing on copyright for merely presenting a “copy” of the page to a visitor.

directory (see Web directory)

direct hit

An older search engine service that tracked the click through made on it's members search engines to determine how many people click on links after doing keyword searches. The purpose was to show the sites that people were visiting for specific keyword phrases. It can also determine how long people are spending at the sites they visit. Owned by Ask Jeeves, Direct Hit used to be a default search engine provider for www.ask.com. But because of all the new search technology out there coupled with the acquisition of Teoma by Ask Jeeves, it was only a matter of time before Direct Hit got replaced. It was. By Teoma which is now the search provider for www.ask.com. As of May 2002, visitors to Direct Hit are being redirected to Teoma. However, for an indefinite length of time, Direct Hit results can still be viewed at MSN

direct marketing

Also referred to as direct response marketing. Direct marketing is a specific form of marketing that by design aims to illicit an immediate response or action on the part of the prospect. Direct marketing asks the reader, viewer or prospect to do something... like call an 800 number, go to a web site or mail in a coupon.

disintermediation - the elimination of intermediaries in the supply chain, also referred to as "cutting out the middlemen."

DMOZ

Short for Open Directory Project. See Open Directory Project.

Dogpile

metasearch engine located at www.dogpile.com

domain name

location of an entity on the Internet.

A domain name (such as http://www.skyabove.com) is a unique identifier of an entity or resource (i.e. web documents) on the Internet. No two organizations or entities can have the same domain name. In a marketing sense, a domain name can also be part of your brand if it’s something that’s easy to associate with.

domain name auction

An online marketplace or other web site that sells unclaimed or expired registration domain names to high bidders.

domain name parking

A temporary holding facility on a web server for new domain accounts. Domain name parking is used when a new domain registrant does not yet have a web site to link with the domain name.

domain name registration

A simple, online application process by which new domains are established on the Web. The cost of new domain registrations will vary from as low as $6 per year to as high as $35 per year depending on which registration company you utilize.

domain squatting

Also called cyber squatting. Controversial business practice of buying domain names that are desirable to specific people or businesses in the hopes that a significant profit can be made on its resale.

doorway domain

a domain used specifically to rank well in search engines for particular keywords, serving as an entry point through which visitors pass to the main domain.

doorway page

a page made specifically to rank well in search engines for particular keywords, serving as an entry point through which visitors pass to the main content.

 E

Email

the transmission of computer-based messages over telecommunication technology.

email marketing

the promotion of products or services via email.

email spam

unwanted, unsolicited email.

exclusivity

contract term in which one party grants another party sole rights with regard to a particular business function.

External Link

A link that is pointing to some other page located on a different website. The opposite of external link is the internal link.

ezine

an electronic magazine, whether delivered via a Web site or an email newsletter.

ezine directory

directory of electronic magazines, typically of the email variety.

 F

FAST search

search syndication company located at www.fastsearch.com and http://www.fast.com/

 also powers the search engine located at www.alltheweb.com.

favicon

a small icon that is used by some browsers to identify a bookmarked Web site.

favorite

(see bookmark) a link stored in a Web browser for future reference.

FFA

free-for-all links list, where there are no qualifications for adding a link.

first-mover advantage

a sometimes insurmountable advantage gained by the first significant company to move into a new market.

flash

multimedia technology developed by Macromedia to allow much interactivity to fit in a relatively small file size.

forum

an online community where visitors may read and post topics of common interest.

frames

a structure that allows for the dividing of a Web page into two or more independent parts.

free

without monetary cost.

frequency cap

restriction on the amount of times a specific visitor is shown a particular advertisement.

 G

GIF89a - (see animated GIF) a graphic in the GIF89a file format that creates the effect of animation by rotating through a series of static images.

Go Network

defunct portal located at www.go.com

Google

search engine located at www.google.com

Google 24 Queries

This is an estimated number of queries the particular keyword might appear in the current 24 hour period on Google

Googletestad

This keyword query is used for live checking of Google AdSense.

Goto

pay per click search engine that changed names and is now located at www.overture.com

guerilla marketing

unconventional marketing intended to get maximum results from minimal resources

 H

hit

request of a file from a Web server.

home page

the main page of a Web site.

house ad

self-promotional ad a company runs on their own site/network to use unsold inventory.

HTML banner

a banner ad using HTML elements, often including interactive forms instead of (or in addition to) standard graphical elements.

HTML email

email that is formatted using Hypertext Markup Language, as opposed to plain text email.

hybrid model

a combination of two or more online marketing payment models

 I

impression

a single instance of an online advertisement being displayed.*

inbound link

a link from a site outside of your site.

Incoming Link

A link to a particular page from elsewhere on the internet.

incentivized traffic

visitors who have received some form of compensation for visiting a site.

inktomi

search syndication service located at www.inktomi.com

interactive agency

an agency offering a mix of Web design/development, Internet advertising/marketing, or E-Business/E-Commerce consulting.

internal link

A link that is pointing to some other page within the same website. The opposite of internal link is the external link

interstitial

an advertisement that loads between two content pages.

invisible web

the portion of the Web not indexed by search engines.

ixquick

metasearch engine located at www.ixquick.com.

J

javascript
a scripting language developed by Netscape and used to create interactive Web sites.

K

KEI: Keyword Effectiveness Index
The higher the KEI, the more popular the keywords are, and the less competition they have, which means they have a better chance of getting to the top.

keyword
a word used in a performing a search.

keyword density
keywords as a percentage of indexable text words.

keyword marketing
putting your message in front of people who are searching using particular keywords and keyphrases.

keyword research
the search for keywords related to your Web site, and the analysis of which ones yield the highest return on investment (ROI).

keywords tag
META tag used to help define the primary keywords of a Web page.

 L

landing page
This is the page visitors find themselves after clicking on a PPC or CPC advertisement. Additional advice: In order to maximize the conversion rate it is crucial to have a well thought out and well developed landing page let Skyabove Marketing take care of it for you.

link checker
tool used to check for broken hyperlinks.

link exchange
The process when two websites’ owners agree to display a link to each others site.

link popularity
The number of websites that link to a particular site. On most search engines link popularity along with the quality of incoming links are important aspects of determining the ranking of a website on SERPs.

link text
the text contained in (and sometimes near) a hyperlink.

linkrot
when Web pages previously accessible at a particular URL are no longer reachable at that URL due to movement or deletion of the pages.

log file
file that records the activity on a Web server.

long domain name
domain names longer than the original 26 characters, up to a theoretical limit of 67 characters (including the extension, such as .com).

looksmart
Web directory located at www.looksmart.com

M

manual submission

adding a URL to the search engines individually by hand.

marketing plan

the part of the business plan outlining the marketing strategy for a product or service.

media kit
a resource created by a publisher to help prospective ad buyers evaluate advertising opportunities.

meta search engine
a search engine that displays results from multiple search engines.

META tag generator
tool that will output META tags based on input page information.
 

META tags
tags to describe various aspects about a Web page.

moderator
at a forum, someone entrusted by the administrator to help discussions stay productive and within the guidelines.
 

mousetrapping
the use of browser tricks in an effort to keep a visitor captive at a site, often by disabling the "Back" button or generated repeated pop-up windows.

N

navigation
that which facilitates movement from one Web page to another Web page.

netiquette
short for network etiquette, the code of conduct regarding acceptable online behavior.

network effect
the phenomenon whereby a service becomes more valuable as more people use it, thereby encouraging ever-increasing numbers of adopters.

northern light search
search engine located at www.northernlight.com

O

Off-page SEO
 The aspect of a website that is not located on the site itself, rather elsewhere on the web, but can influence the ranking of this website. More precisely this aspect is the incoming links from other websites. It is much more difficult to control the off-page factors, than the on-page SEO.

One Way Link Getting a link from a site without linking back to that same website. One way links are very valuable.

On-page SEO: Optimization of a website’s content, text, tags, links and other elements.

Open Directory Project: The largest human edited directory on the internet. Google and thousands of other websites are using its data throughout the web.

opt-in email
email that is explicitly requested by the recipient.
opt-out - (1) type of program that assumes inclusion unless stated otherwise. (2) to remove oneself from an opt-out program.

outbound link
A link to a site outside of your site.

P

PageRank or PR
Google’s patented method for measuring page importance on a scale from 0 - 10, where 10 is the highest. The PageRank algorithm analyzes the quality and quantity of links that point to a page.

page view
request to load a single HTML page.

pagejacking  theft of a page from the original site and publication of a copy (or near-copy) at another site.

pass-along rate
the percentage of people who pass on a message or file.

pay per click (PPC)
online advertising payment model in which payment is based solely on qualifying click-through.

pay per click search engine (PPCSE)
search engine where results are ranked according to the bid amount and advertisers are charged only when a searcher clicks on the search listing.

pay per lead (PPL)
online advertising payment model in which payment is based solely based on qualifying leads.

pay per sale (PPS)
online advertising payment model in which payment is based solely based on qualifying sales.

payment threshold
the minimum accumulated commission an affiliate must earn to trigger payment from an affiliate program.

permission marketing
marketing centered around getting customer's consent to receive information from a company.

pop-under ad
an ad that displays in a new browser window behind the current browser window.

pop-up ad
an ad that displays in a new browser window.

portal
a site featuring a suite of commonly used services, serving as a starting point and frequent gateway to the Web (Web portal) or a niche topic (vertical portal).

PPC: Short for Pay Per Click
A type of online advertisement, where the advertiser pays to the publisher each time a visitor clicks on the advertisement. It is also called Cost Per Click (CPC).

R

rate card
document detailing prices for various ad placement options.

reciprocal links
links between two sites, often based on an agreement by the site owners to exchange links.

rectangle ad
any one of the large, rectangular banner sizes suggested by the IAB.

rep firm
ad sales partner specializing primarily in single-site sales.

return days
the number of days an affiliate can earn commission on a conversion (sale or lead) by a referred visitor.

rich media
new media that offers an enhanced experience relative to older, mainstream formats.

Robot
A software program that crawls the internet, by following links and indexing web pages.

run of network (RON)
ad buying option in which ad placements may appear on any pages on sites within an ad network.

run of site (ROS)
ad buying option in which ad placements may appear on any pages of the target site.

S

Skyabove
The absolute best possible choice for all your online marketing needs.

SE
Short for search engine.

search engine
a program that indexes documents, then attempts to match documents relevant to the users search requests. Yahoo, Google, AOL, Ask Jeeves

SEM
Short for search engine marketing

SEO
Short for search engine optimization

search engine marketing
Utilizing Search Engine Optimization and paid advertising for improved search engine results

search engine optimization
the process of choosing targeted keyword phrases related to a site, and ensuring that the site places well when those keyword phrases are part of a Web search.

search engine results page
This is the page the search engines return after a visitor entered a search query.

SERP
Short for search engine results page

search engine spam
excessive manipulation to influence search engine rankings, often for pages which contain little or no relevant content.

search engine submission
the act of supplying a URL to a search engine in an attempt to make a search engine aware of a site or page.

search spy
a perpetually refreshing page that provides a real-time view of actual Web searches.

self-serve advertising
advertising that can be purchased without the assistance of a sales representative.

SEO (see search engine optimization)

shopping cart
software used to make a site's product catalogue available for online ordering, whereby visitors may select, view, add/delete, and purchase merchandise.

sig file
a short block of text at the end of a message identifying the sender and providing additional information about them.

site search
search functionality specific to one site.

skyscraper ad
an online ad significantly taller than the 120x240 vertical banner.

spam
inappropriate commercial message of extremely low value.

Spider
A software program that crawls the internet, by following links and indexing web pages.

splash page
a branding page before the home page of a Web site.

sponsorship
advertising that seeks to establish a deeper association and integration between an advertiser and a publisher, often involving coordinated beyond-the-banner placements.

stickiness
the amount of time spent at a site over a given time period.

super affiliate
an affiliate capable of generating a significant percentage of an affiliate program's activity.

surround session
advertising sequence in which a visitor receives ads from one advertiser throughout an entire site visit.

T

text ad
advertisement using text-based hyperlinks.

text link exchange
network where participating sites display text ads in exchange for credits which are converted (using a predetermined exchange rate) into ads to be displayed on other sites.

Title or Title of a page
An HTML tag used to describe the title of a page. Generally this appears at the top of the browser window. This information is used by many search engines to display the title of each site in the search result listing.

title tag
HTML tag used to define the text in the top line of a Web browser, also used by many search engines as the title of search listings.

top 10
the top ten search engine results for a particular search term.

trick banner
a banner ad that attempts to trick people into clicking, often by imitating an operating system message.

two tier affiliate program
affiliate program structure whereby affiliates earn commissions on their conversions as well as conversions of webmasters they refer to the program.

U

underdelivery
delivery of less impressions, visitors, or conversions than contracted for a specified period of time.

unique visitors
individuals who have visited a Web site (or network) at least once in a during a fixed time frame.

URL
location of a resource on the Internet.

usability
(see Web site usability) the ease with which visitors are able to use a Web site

V

vertical banner
a banner ad measuring 120 pixels wide and 240 pixels tall.

viral marketing
marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message.

volunteer directory
a Web directory staffed primarily by unpaid volunteer editors.

W

Web browser
a software application that allows for the browsing of the World Wide Web.

Web design
the selection and coordination of available components to create the layout and structure of a Web page.

Web directory
organized, categorized listings of Web sites.

Web hosting
the business of providing the storage, connectivity, and services necessary to serve files for a website.

Web ring
a means for navigating a group of related sites primarily by going forward and backward.

Web site traffic
the amount of visitors and visits a Web site receives.

Web site usability
the ease with which visitors are able to use a Web site.

Web Wide 24 Hour Queries
The number of times a particular keyword has appeared on major metacrawlers (metacrawlers query all the main search engines simultaneously).

whois
a utility that returns ownership information about second-level domains

Y

Yahoo
portal located at http://www.yahoo.com/

Z

zworks
metasearch engine located at www.zworks.com