Online Glossary
Your quick resource for online lingo.
Affiliate Marketing:
Affiliate Marketing is the use by a website that sells products of other websites, called affiliates, to help market the products. Amazon.com created the first large-scale affiliate program and hundreds of other companies have followed since.
Avatar:
An Avatar is an image or username that represents a person online withing forums and social networks.
Banner:
A banner is an advertisement in the form of a graphic image that typically is across the top of a website or on the right margin. The size and shape of a banner ad may vary but standard sizes have been established by the Internet Advertising Bureau.
Blog:
Blog is a word that was created from “web log”. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events or other materials such as graphics or video. Entries are usually displayed with the most recent entries at the top. The word blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.
Blogger:
Blogger is a free blogging platform owned by Google that allows individuals and companies to host and publish a blog typically on a subdomain. Example: yourblogname.blogspot.com
Brand:
A brand is a product, service or concept that is publicly distinguished from other products, services or concepts so that it can be easily communicated and marketed. Branding can be applied to the entire corporate identity as well as to individual product and service names.
Chat:
A chat can refer to any kind of communication over the internet, but traditionally refers to one-on-one communication through a text based chat application commonly referred to as instant message applications.
Click:
A click is when a visitor interacts with an advertisement so that the visitor is headed toward the advertiser’s destination.
Click Stream:
A click stream is a recoded path of pages a user requested in going through one or more websites.
Clickthrough:
A clickthrough is what is counted by the sponsoring site as a result of an ad click.
Facebook:
Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. Facebook is the largest social network in the world with more than 500 million users.
Firefox:
Firefox is an open-source web browser. It has emerged as one of the most popular web browsers on the internet and allows users to customize their browser through the user of third-party extensions.
Flickr:
Flickr is a social network based around online picture sharing. The service allows users to store photos online and share them with others through profiles, groups, sets and other methods.
Forums:
Also known as a message board, a forum is an online discussion site. It originated as the modern equilivant of a traditional bulletin board.
Google Buzz:
Google Buzz is a social networking and messaging tool from Google, designed to integrate into the company’s web-based email program, gmail. Users can share links, photos, videos, status messages and comments organized in conversations and visible in the user’s inbox.
Google Chrome:
Google chrome is a free web browser produced by Google that fully integrates into it’s online search system as well as other applications.
HootSuite:
HootSuite is a web-based twitter client. With HootSuite, you can manage multiple Twitter profiles, pre-schedule tweets and view metrics.
HTML:
HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is a programming language for web pages.
Instant Messaging:
Instant Messaging (IM) is a form of real-time direct text-based communication between two or more people. More advanced instant messaging software clients also allow enhanced modes of communication, such as live voice or video calling.
Like:
A “Like” is an action that can be taken by a Facebook user. Instead of writing a comment for a message or a status update, a Facebook user can click the “Like” button as a quick way to show approval and share the message.
Link Building:
Link Building is an aspect of search engine optimization in which website owners develop strategies to generate links to their sites from other websites with the hope of improving their search engine ranking.
LinkedIn:
LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site. It is used mainly for professional networking.
MySpace:
MySpace is a social networking website owned by News Corporation. MySpace became the most popular social networking site in the US in June 2006 and was overtaken internationally by it’s main competitor, Facebook, in April 2008.
Opt-in email:
Opt-in email is an email containing information or advertising that users explicitly request to receive.
Pay-per-click:
In pay-per-click advertising, the advertiser pays a certain amount for each clickthrough to the advertiser’s website.
Pay-per-lead:
In pay-per-lead advertising, the advertiser pays for each lead generated.
Pay-per-sale:
Pay-per-sale is not customarily used for ad buys. It is, however, the customary way to pay web sites that participate in affiliate marketing.
Permalink:
A permalink is an address or URL of a particular post withing a blog or website.
ROI:
ROI (return on investment) is “the bottom line” on how successful an ad or campaign was in terms of what the returns (sales revenue) were for the money expended (invested).
Splash Page:
A splash page is a preliminary page that precedes the regular home page of a website and usually promotes a particular site feature or provides advertising.
Targeting:
Targeting is purchasing ad space on websites that match audience and campaign objective requirements.
Unique Visitor:
A unique visitor is someone with a unique address who is entering a website for the first time that day (or some other specified period).
View:
A view is either an ad view or a page view, usually an ad view.
Visit:
A visit is a web user with a unique address entering a website at some page for the first time that day.
