Beware the Acro-Gnome

A Tip Sheet to Yahoo! Search Marketing Abbreviations

There’s at least one lurking deep in the subterranean bowels of every office building. He slinks through the pipes and crawls up the drains. He infiltrates your filing cabinets and sneaks into your laptop at night. He’ll appear suddenly, attack, and then slither away in the blink of an eye, the damage done.

He’s the “Acro-Gnome,” and he goes slyly about slipping acronyms and abbreviations into your technical specs, your PowerPoint slides, even your marketing slogans. Acro-Gnomes have been around for ages. In fact, the sneaky little beggars are said to be responsible for GOP, AWOL, NASDAQ, AWACS, NATO, FEMA and even the YSM in ysmblog.com.

We once sent a task force down into the labyrinthine passageways beneath our campus to root this nefarious creature out. They disappeared without a trace.

So the Acro-Gnome is here to stay, and the acronyms and abbreviations continue to multiply like so many bacteria. We just have to get used to ‘em. You may have noticed a few skulking in your account interface. Here’s a little tip sheet to help you cope:

ADSL (account daily spending limit)—The maximum amount you want to spend each day.

CPC (cost-per-click)—The cost of advertising divided by the number of clicks. “Average CPC” is the average price you paid for all of the clicks your ad received. CPC shouldn’t be confused with CPM, which stands for cost-per-thousand. CPM sounds like it should be cost-per-million, but for some reason the advertising world uses the Latinate mille, which means thousand. Anyway, CPM is the cost you would pay per thousand impressions, if you were doing display advertising. You won’t see this in your Yahoo! Search Marketing account interface, however.

CTR (click-through rate)—The number of clicks received divided by the number of impressions generated. For example, an ad displayed 100 times and receiving 10 clicks has a click-through rate of .1 (10%).

CM (Content Match)—The pay-per-click campaign tactic that displays your ads alongside relevant articles such as product reviews, news articles and so on. “CM Bid” stands for “Content Match bid” and is the maximum bid for Content Match clicks.

CPA (cost-per-acquisition)— The cost of advertising divided by number of “conversions” (the successful completion of a desired action, such as a registration or a sale, by a user)
 

ID (identification)—There are a number of different IDs in your Yahoo! Search Marketing account:

Master Account ID—You’ll find this under the Administration tab on the “Master Account” page. If you manage multiple search marketing accounts under one master account, this is the overall account ID number.

Account ID—Also under the Administration tab, but on the “Accounts” page, this is the ID number for any account you have under your master account. If you manage more than one account, you’ll have more than one account ID number.

IP (internet protocol)—Used in “IP Address,” the unique number assigned to every computer connected to the Internet.

ROAS (return-on-ad-spend)—The amount of revenue generated per dollar spent on a specific advertising method. An ROAS percentage is calculated by taking revenue divided by the cost of advertising, multiplied by 100. Thus, a campaign that generated $5,000 in revenue and cost $500 has a ROAS of 1000 percent.

SS (Sponsored Search)—The pay-per-click product that displays your ads in the sponsored results at the top, along the side, and across the bottom of search results pages, and on our distribution partner sites. “SS Bid” stands for “Sponsored Search bid” and is the maximum amount you will pay for Sponsored Search clicks on a particular keyword.

URL (universal resource locator)—Although URL has a number of meanings in Internetese, we use it here as a synonym for “web address,” http://www.ysmblog.com, for example. A “tracking URL” is one that can provide information about the distribution tactic, keyword, and raw search query used.

For more definitions of Yahoo! Search Marketing terms, please take a look at our Glossary in the Help Center.

And beware the Acro-Gnome!

—Michael Mattis, Gnome Hunter