Growth marketing glossary.
44 terms that come up in every growth review, defined in plain English with the formula, a worked example and a calculator where one helps.
A
- ACoS (advertising cost of sale)ACoS is ad spend divided by ad-attributed sales, expressed as a percentage; it is the inverse of ROAS.
- Ad frequencyFrequency is the average number of times each person in an audience has seen an ad over a period.
- Agentic commerceAgentic commerce is shopping in which an AI agent researches, compares and sometimes buys products on a person's behalf.
- AOV (average order value)AOV is total revenue divided by the number of orders.
B
C
- CAC (customer acquisition cost)CAC is the total cost of acquiring a new customer, usually marketing spend divided by the number of new customers it produced.
- CAC payback periodCAC payback period is the number of months it takes for the contribution from a customer to repay the cost of acquiring them.
- Cohort analysisCohort analysis groups customers by when they were acquired and tracks how each group behaves over time.
- Contribution margin (CM1, CM2, CM3)Contribution margin is the revenue left from a sale after the variable costs of making and delivering it.
- Conversion rateConversion rate is the share of visitors or clicks that complete a target action, such as a purchase.
- Conversions API (CAPI)Meta's Conversions API sends conversion events from a website's server directly to Meta, alongside or instead of the browser pixel.
- CPA (cost per acquisition)CPA is ad spend divided by the number of conversions, such as purchases or leads.
- CPC (cost per click)CPC is ad spend divided by the number of clicks.
- CPM (cost per mille)CPM is the cost of 1,000 ad impressions.
- Creative fatigueCreative fatigue is the decline in an ad's performance as the same audience sees it repeatedly.
- CTR (click-through rate)CTR is the share of ad impressions that result in a click.
D
G
L
- Link shortenerA link shortener turns a long URL into a short one that redirects to it, usually with click counts.
- LTV (customer lifetime value)LTV is the total value a customer generates over their relationship with a business, best measured in contribution rather than revenue.
- LTV:CAC ratioThe LTV:CAC ratio compares the lifetime value of a customer with the cost of acquiring them.
M
- Marginal ROASMarginal ROAS is the extra revenue generated by an increase in ad spend divided by that extra spend.
- Marketing mix modelling (MMM)Marketing mix modelling uses statistical regression on aggregate data to estimate how much each channel contributes to sales.
- MarkupMarkup is the amount added to the cost of a product to set its price, expressed as a percentage of cost.
- MER (marketing efficiency ratio)MER is total revenue divided by total marketing spend across every channel.
- Meta Advantage+Advantage+ is Meta's family of automated campaign tools that let its algorithm choose audiences, placements and creative combinations.
- Minimum detectable effect (MDE)Minimum detectable effect is the smallest relative improvement a test is designed to detect reliably.
- Multi-touch attributionMulti-touch attribution assigns credit for a conversion across the several marketing touchpoints that preceded it.
R
- Repeat purchase rateRepeat purchase rate is the share of customers who place a second order within a set period, usually 12 months.
- ROAS (return on ad spend)ROAS is the revenue attributed to advertising divided by the cost of that advertising.
- RTO (return to origin)RTO is an order that is shipped but not delivered and returns to the seller, most often a refused or unreachable cash-on-delivery order.
S
- Server-side taggingServer-side tagging moves tracking tags from the visitor's browser to a server you control, which then forwards data to analytics and ad platforms.
- Statistical significanceA result is statistically significant when it is unlikely to have occurred by chance at a chosen confidence level, commonly 95%.
T
U
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