Marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message.
Information

Viral marketing depends on a high pass-along rate from person to person. If a large percentage of recipients forward something to a large number of friends, the overall growth snowballs very quickly. If the pass-along numbers get too low, the overall growth quickly fizzles.

At the height of B2C it seemed as if every startup had a viral component to its strategy, or at least claimed to have one. However, relatively few marketing viruses achieve success on a scale similar to Hotmail, widely cited as the first example of viral marketing.

An online ad significantly taller than the 120×240 vertical banner.
Information

Skyscraper ads are tall — very tall — with heights often ranging from 500 to 800 pixels (and widths often ranging from 120 to 160 pixels). For a long time there was no standard sizes to which buyers and sellers adhered. This made skyscraper ads the province of large, well-branded sites that could sell custom advertising packages.

The IAB has since announced standard sizes for skyscraper ads. The standard skyscraper is 120×600 and the wide skyscraper is 160×600. With standards in place, skyscraper ads became more common at advertising networks.

Skyscraper ads are often called skyscraper banners, although some examples have mimicked the look of a banner by using a combination of ad buttons and text.

The process of choosing targeted keyword phrases related to a site, and ensuring that the site places well when those keyword phrases are part of a Web search.
Information

There is much confusion about search engine optimization (SEO) and its relation to search engine spamming. Generally, legitimate search engine optimization adds to the user experience, while search engine spamming takes away from the user experience, although there is much gray area between the clear-cut examples on either side.

Optimization involves making pages readable to search engines and emphasizing key topics related to your content. Basic optimization may involve nothing more than ensuring that a site does not unnecessarily become part of the invisible Web (the portion of the Web not accessible through Web search engines). Advanced optimization may include significant research into every element of page design, site structure, and off-the-page criteria.

Before pages can be optimized, research must be done to determine which keywords to target. This involves finding relevant keywords, determining their popularity, assessing the amount of competition, and deciding which keywords can be best supported with quality content.

The amount of visitors and visits a Web site receives.
Information

Web site traffic was initially viewed as an all-important metric for gauging success on the Web. This assumption was due in part to the lack of other business metrics to explain the .com phenomenon. Now much of the focus has shifted back to profitability, and Web site traffic is only part of the equation.

Web site traffic x conversion = results

Web site traffic is still important, as you can’t have conversions without visitors, but it is becoming less important as a standalone metric.

Individuals who have visited a Web site (or network) at least once in a fixed time frame, typically a 30 day period.
Information

Most measurements of unique visitors are estimates.

Sites often calculate unique visitors based on the IP address information found in the log files, and sometimes through cookies. However, many factors may skew the results.

Traffic rating companies typically calculate unique visitors by monitoring actual usage of a group of volunteers, then applying the results to to the Internet population. Results fluctuate considerably for small sites due to their small sample sizes.

The amount of time spent at a site over a given time period.
Information

Stickiness is often measured in the average minutes per month visitors spend at a site or network. Sometimes stickiness is measured in terms of page views.

When defined as minutes per month, site stickiness is a function of number of visits (repeat usage) and time spent per visit (session stickiness).

Online advertising payment model in which payment is based solely based on qualifying sales.
Information

In a pay per sale agreement, the advertiser only pays for sales generated by the destination site based on an agreed upon commission rate.

Paying per sale is often seen as the payment model most favorable to advertisers and least favorable to publishers. In such an agreement, the publisher must not only be concerned with the quality and quantity of his or her audience, but also the quality of the advertiser’s creative units and destination site.

If possible, many publishers avoid sales-based agreements, preferring to stick to the CPM model. However, some publishers, facing weak ad sales, have little choice but to accept sales-based agreements to utilize remnant space.

For advertisers, pay per sale has some unique advantages compared to pay per click and pay per lead. There are fewer concerns about whether conversions are legitimate, and whether traffic is incentivized or of low quality.

Online advertising payment model in which payment is based solely based on qualifying leads.
Information

In a pay per lead agreement, the advertiser only pays for leads generated at their destination site. No payment is made for visitors who don’t sign up.

A lead is generally a signup involving contact information and perhaps some demographic information; it is typically a non-cash conversion event. A lead may consist of as little as an email address, or it may involve a detailed form covering multiple pages.

One risk to the advertiser is the potential for fraudulent activity by incentivized 3rd-parties or marketing partners. Some false leads are easy to spot. Nonetheless, it is advisable to make a regular audit of the results.

Online advertising payment model in which payment is based solely on qualifying click-throughs.
Information

In a PPC agreement, the advertiser only pays for qualifying clicks to the destination site based on a prearranged per-click rate. Popular PPC advertising options include per-click advertising networks, search engines, and affiliate programs.

Paying per click is sometimes seen by some as a middle ground between paying per impression and paying per action. When paying per impression, the advertiser assumes the risk of low-quality traffic generated by the publisher. When getting paid for actions, the publisher assumes the risk of low-converting offers by the advertiser. In the PPC model, the publisher does not have to worry about the sales conversion rate of the target site, and the advertiser does not have to worry about how many impressions it takes to attract the specified number of clicks.

Request to load a single HTML page.
Information

Page views are only important to the degree they play a part in a site’s revenue model. If a site earns much of its revenue from advertising, then page views are important because of their contribution to ad inventory. If a site only earns revenue on sales, then page views are not a key statistic. Page views without corresponding sales may even be viewed as an expense.