A Lot of Words

Account Management (Social)

The ongoing work of maintaining a brand’s social media presence. Scheduling posts, monitoring engagement, adjusting strategy, and keeping the voice consistent across platforms.

Attribution

The process of connecting ad exposure to a real-world outcome, a website visit, a store visit, a donation. It’s how you prove the campaign actually worked.

Bot Traffic

Fake ad impressions generated by automated programs, not real people. A significant chunk of digital ad spend across the industry is wasted on it. Address-based targeting largely avoids this since the audience is tied to real physical locations.

Content Strategy

A plan for what you post, when you post it, and why. Good content strategy makes sure your social media presence actually supports your business goals instead of just filling a feed.

Conversion Rate

The percentage of people who took the action you wanted, donated, bought, signed up, after clicking your ad or visiting your page.

CPM (Cost Per Mille)

What you pay for every 1,000 times your ad is shown. “Mille” is Latin for thousand. A $22 CPM means it costs $22 to serve your ad to 1,000 people.

CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

Your existing customer database, names, addresses, purchase history. In advertising, it’s the list you upload to match against IP addresses for targeting.

CTR (Click-Through Rate)

The percentage of people who saw your ad and clicked it. A 0.5% CTR means 5 out of every 1,000 people clicked.

CTV / OTT (Connected TV / Over-the-Top)

Streaming platforms like Hulu, Peacock, and Roku. CTV refers to the device. OTT refers to the content delivery. For practical purposes they mean the same thing: video ads on streaming TV.

Direct Mail

Physical mailers sent to specific addresses. IP targeting is often described as bringing direct mail precision into the digital world, same address-level specificity, delivered through a screen instead of a mailbox.

Display Ads

The banner ads you see on websites. Usually static images or simple animations in standard sizes.

DSP (Demand-Side Platform)

Software that buys digital ad inventory automatically across multiple websites and networks. It’s the engine behind programmatic advertising.

Geofencing

Drawing a virtual boundary around a physical location. Anyone who enters that area gets added to your ad audience.

Impression

One instance of your ad being shown to someone. A campaign with 10,000 impressions means your ad was displayed 10,000 times.

Influencer

Someone with an established social media following who promotes products, services, or causes to their audience. Influencer programs involve identifying, contracting, and managing these partnerships to extend your brand’s reach through trusted voices.

IP Address

Every device that connects to the internet has one. Think of it as a street address for your internet connection. It’s how the technology knows where to deliver your ad.

IP Targeting

Serving ads to a specific household by matching a physical address to the IP address connected to it. More precise than behavioral or cookie-based targeting.

Issue Affinity

Targeting based on someone’s demonstrated interest in a specific cause or policy area, like environmental issues, gun rights, or healthcare, rather than just their party registration.

List Match

The process of taking your existing customer or donor list and matching it to digital devices so you can serve ads to people you already have a relationship with.

Lookalike Audience

A new audience built to match the demographic and behavioral profile of your existing customers. If your best customers share certain traits, this finds more people like them.

MAID (Mobile Advertising ID)

A unique identifier assigned to a mobile device. Used in location-based targeting to track which devices were present at a specific place.

New Movers

Households that have recently relocated. They’re a high-value audience because they’re actively making new buying decisions, new doctors, gyms, grocery stores, restaurants, often for the first time in years.

Organic vs. Paid

Organic content is what you post on social media without putting money behind it. Paid is content you boost or run as an ad. Both matter, but they work differently and reach different audiences.

Precinct

A geographic subdivision used in elections. Targeting by precinct lets political campaigns focus ad spend on specific neighborhoods where turnout or persuasion matters most.

Programmatic Advertising

Automated buying and selling of digital ad space. Instead of negotiating directly with a publisher, software places your ad across thousands of sites in real time.

ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)

How much revenue you made for every dollar spent on advertising. A 3x ROAS means you made $3 for every $1 spent.

Self-Reported Data

Information users voluntarily provide to platforms like Facebook, age, job title, interests. It’s often inaccurate or outdated. Address-based targeting uses real-world data instead.

Third-Party Cookies

Small tracking files that follow users across websites to build behavioral profiles. Most major browsers are phasing them out. The targeting methods used here don’t rely on them at all.

UTM Parameters

Short tags added to the end of a URL that track where website traffic comes from. They tell you which ad, campaign, or platform sent someone to your site.

Venue Replay

After a live event, this retargets the people who were physically there with ads in the days that follow, when they’re most likely to still be thinking about it.

Voter File

A list of registered voters maintained by state or county election boards. It typically includes name, address, party affiliation, and voting history. In political campaigns, it’s the foundation of any targeted outreach.