As with any technical field, online advertising has its own terminology and set of TLA (three letter acronyms). Today let’s review some of the more important ones.
CPA: Cost Per Action. In this case, you get paid (or pay someone) when the user takes a predefined action, such as signing up for a credit card.
CPC: Cost Per Click. Self explanatory. This is the model under which Google Adsense generally operates.
CPM: Cost Per Thousand (page views). M is the roman numeral for 1000.
CTR: Click-Through Rate: how often do people click on your ads?
PFP: Pay For Performance; you get paid if your advertising is successful. See also CPA/PPL/PPS.
PPC: Pay Per Click
PPL/PPS: Pay Per Lead/Sale
PV: Page View
SEO: Search Engine Optimization; this is the process of getting your website to rank highly in search engines, particularly Google. A similar term is SEM, Search Engine Marketing, which also includes paid advertising.
