The PPC glossary, written by people who run accounts.

Broad match is the widest of Google's keyword match types. A broad match keyword can trigger your ad on searches Google judges related to it, including synonyms, related topics, and intent variations, not just the exact words. Modern broad match leans on Smart Bidding and account signals to decide which of those searches are worth entering.

Local Services Ads are Google's pay-per-lead ad format for local service businesses like lawyers, plumbers, and clinics. They sit at the very top of results, above regular Search ads, and you pay per lead, a call or message, rather than per click. Providers pass a screening and carry the Google Guaranteed or Screened badge.

Negative keywords are terms you add to a campaign or account to stop your ads from showing on searches that include them. Add free as a negative and your ads stop appearing for searches like free version, protecting budget from clicks that will not convert. They are the primary way to control where automated and broad matching sends your ads.

Performance Max is a goal-based Google campaign type that serves ads across every Google surface, Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Gmail, Discover, and Maps, from a single campaign. You supply assets, audience signals, and a conversion goal, and Google's automation decides where, when, and to whom the ads show.

Quality Score is Google's 1 to 10 rating of how relevant and useful your keyword, ad, and landing page are to a searcher. It is built from three parts: expected click-through rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience. A higher score lowers your cost per click and improves your ad rank at the same bid.

Smart Bidding is Google's family of automated bid strategies that set a bid for every individual auction using machine learning and live signals like device, location, time, and audience. Instead of one manual bid per keyword, the model predicts each auction's chance and value of converting and bids accordingly toward a goal you set.

CAPI, the Conversions API, sends conversion events to an ad platform directly from your server instead of the visitor's browser. Because it does not depend on cookies, ad blockers, or browser tracking limits, it captures conversions the pixel now misses. Paired with the pixel and deduplicated, it is the current standard for accurate measurement.

A lookalike audience is a targeting group an ad platform builds by finding new people who statistically resemble a source list you provide, such as your customers or high-value buyers. Meta popularised the term. The audience is only as good as the source: feed it your best customers and it finds more of them; feed it noise and it scales noise.

A pixel is a snippet of code on your website that reports visitor actions back to an ad platform from the browser. The Meta pixel, for example, tells Facebook when someone views a product, adds to cart, or buys, so the platform can attribute conversions and optimise delivery. Browser-based pixels are increasingly blocked, which is why server-side tracking now matters.

An attribution model is the rule that decides which marketing touchpoints get credit for a conversion. Last-click gives all credit to the final click; data-driven spreads it across the journey based on observed impact. The model you choose changes which channels look successful, so it quietly shapes every budget decision that follows.

CAC is the total sales and marketing cost required to win one new customer, calculated as spend divided by new customers acquired in the same period. A CAC of $80 means it cost $80 to acquire the average new buyer. On its own CAC means nothing. It only matters against the lifetime value that customer returns.

Conversion rate is the share of visitors who complete the action you care about, calculated as conversions divided by clicks or sessions. A 3 percent conversion rate means 3 of every 100 visitors converted. It is the multiplier that turns traffic into revenue, so small movements in it swing cost per acquisition hard.

CPA is the average cost to generate one conversion, calculated as ad spend divided by conversions. A CPA of $45 means each conversion cost 45 dollars. The conversion can be a sale, a lead, or a signup, so a CPA is only meaningful once you know what action it counts and what that action is worth.

CPC is the amount you pay each time someone clicks your ad. Average CPC is total spend divided by total clicks. On search platforms you rarely pay your maximum bid; the auction charges just enough to beat the advertiser below you, which is why a strong Quality Score lowers what you actually pay.

CPL is the average cost to generate one lead, calculated as ad spend divided by leads. A CPL of 30 dollars means each lead cost 30 dollars. It is the headline metric for lead-generation accounts, but on its own it is dangerous, because a cheap lead that never becomes a customer is more expensive than an expensive one that does.

CPM is the price of one thousand ad impressions, from the Latin mille for thousand. A 12 dollar CPM means a thousand people saw your ad for 12 dollars. It is the base currency of awareness and social buying, where you pay to be seen rather than paying only when someone clicks.

CTR is the percentage of people who click your ad after seeing it, calculated as clicks divided by impressions. A CTR of 5 percent means 5 of every 100 people who saw the ad clicked it. On search it is a core input to Quality Score, so it influences not just volume but the price you pay per click.

ROAS is total revenue attributed to a campaign divided by the ad spend that produced it. A ROAS of 4.0 means $4 of revenue for every $1 spent. Healthy ROAS depends entirely on your margin. The break-even number is 100 divided by your gross margin percent.

LTV is the total profit a customer generates across their entire relationship with your business, not just their first purchase. A customer who spends 60 dollars a quarter at 50 percent margin for three years has an LTV near 360 dollars in gross profit. LTV is the number that tells you how much you can afford to spend acquiring that customer.

MER is your entire revenue divided by your entire marketing spend, across every channel and platform. A MER of 4.0 means the business earned $4 for every $1 spent on marketing. Unlike ROAS, MER ignores platform attribution entirely, so it cannot be inflated by double-counting.

tCPA is a Smart Bidding strategy that automatically sets bids to hit an average cost per conversion you define. Set a target of 40 dollars and the algorithm bids more on auctions likely to convert cheaply and less on the rest, aiming to land the account average near 40 dollars over time.

tROAS is a Smart Bidding strategy on Google and Meta that automatically sets bids to hit a return-on-ad-spend goal you define. Set a target of 400 percent and the algorithm chases 4 dollars of revenue per dollar spent by bidding more on auctions likely to convert at high value and less on the rest.

An MQL is a lead that marketing has judged engaged enough to be worth sales attention, based on fit and behaviour like content downloads, demo interest, or repeat visits. It is a handoff signal, not a customer. The value of the label depends entirely on how honestly the MQL bar is set, because a loose bar floods sales with leads that never close.

PLG, product-led growth, is a go-to-market strategy where the product itself drives acquisition, activation, and conversion, usually through a free trial or freemium plan. Instead of a sales team carrying every deal, users experience value first and upgrade themselves. It reshapes paid acquisition around cheap qualified signups and product-usage signals rather than lead handoffs.

A PQL is a lead who has used your product, usually through a free trial or freemium plan, and reached a milestone that signals real value and buying intent. Unlike an MQL, which is scored on marketing engagement, a PQL is defined by product usage. It is the core qualification signal of product-led growth companies.

SLG, sales-led growth, is a go-to-market strategy where a sales team drives the revenue, working leads through a defined pipeline from MQL to SQL to closed deal. It suits complex, high-value, or heavily customised products where a human has to guide the purchase. It reshapes paid acquisition around generating qualified leads, not self-serve signups.

An SQL is a lead that sales has reviewed and accepted as a genuine opportunity worth pursuing, one step deeper than an MQL. Where an MQL is marketing's opinion that a lead is ready, an SQL is sales confirming it. The rate at which MQLs become SQLs is one of the cleanest measures of whether your lead generation is producing real pipeline.

A GTIN, or Global Trade Item Number, is the standardised identifier for a product, the number encoded in its barcode, such as a UPC or EAN. In a product feed it tells Google exactly which manufactured product a listing refers to, which improves matching, unlocks richer listings, and is required for most branded products with a known GTIN.

Google Merchant Center is the platform where you upload and manage the product data that powers Google Shopping ads, free listings, and Performance Max. It holds your product feed, enforces Google's data and policy requirements, and connects to Google Ads. For any eCommerce account, its health is the foundation everything else is built on.

A product feed is a structured file listing every product you sell, with attributes like title, description, price, availability, image, and identifiers. It is the data that powers Google Shopping ads, Performance Max, and shopping surfaces on Meta and beyond. Because these campaigns have no keywords, the feed itself is the targeting.