Getting your arms around what online marketing is can seem like learning a different language. I don't know what it is with analytic types, but everytime something cool comes out they throw all these accronyms all over it to make it seem more complicated than it has to be.
Here is the short and skinny of basic online advertising:
-Think of a website like Yahoo.com as a really big magazine. Each page has an ad on it. With online marketing, when a person turns a page, this is called a "page view" And then if you have more than one ad on a page (say the top and bottom), together these are called your impressions.
Once again:
I turn a page, its one pageview. When my customer looks at the page, if I have two ads on there, then as an advertiser I recevied two impressions.
Seeing an ad is great for branding, but if you want to move more into awareness and engagement, you need to get that person to CLICK on the ad. This is called a click through. When Joe Hiker clicks on an ad, a publisher will then send him to your site (or wherever you want him to go).
So the next time a network or publisher gives you a call, make yourself stand out from the crowd and ask them, ".....what are your click through rates?" If you REALLy want to sound savvy, just ask them, "...what are your CTR's? " ( Click Throug Rate = CTR)
