CPA: cost per acquisition—The average amount you’re paying for each new customer you gain through a given campaign
CPC: cost per click—The average amount you’re paying each time someone clicks on an ad in a given campaign
CPE: cost per engagement—The average amount you’re paying for each customer interaction with a given campaign, whether that interaction is a click, a share, a like, or any other native action
CPI: cost per impression—The average amount you’re paying for each time an ad is served for a given campaign
CPL: cost per lead—The average amount you’re paying for each new contact you get from a given campaign
CPM: cost per thousand impressions—The standard pricing model for ad impressions, which describes the price you’ll pay for every thousand times your ads are served. (Why ‘M’? It’s actually the Roman numeral for 1,000.)
CTR: click-through rate—The number of clicks on a given campaign divided by the total number of impressions served in that campaign
DMP: data management platform—A data warehouse that lets you store, sort, manage, and sometimes even export data collected from a wide range of sources
DSP: demand-side platform—A unified interface that uses real-time bidding to buy media inventory from a variety of networks, exchanges, publishers, and platforms
RTB: real-time bidding—A media marketplace that relies on machine-learning to make thousands of auctions for individual ad impressions every second
SSP: supply-side platform—A piece of software used by publishers to manage the ad inventory they have up for auction
