What is a click-through? CPM? Page Hits?

There are three basic goals for any web business on the Internet:

1. Build brand awareness
2. Increase traffic to your website
3. Generate leads and sales

Each goal has a different solution and one solution cannot deliver all three objectives -- at least not with any degree of return on investment.

For example, if brand awareness is your goal, place a well designed logo banner -- that meets Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) standards -- on high-traffic search engines.

Online Advertising Terminology

Banner Ads
Banner ads are small advertisements that are placed on a website. Companies usually develop several banner ads, find appropriate sites for placement, and then either purchase or trade banner space.

Click-Throughs
When a viewer clicks on a banner ad or link ad wth the mouse and goes to the site advertised, it is called a "click-through." Pay Per Click (PPC) aka Pay Per Performance (PPP) advertising prices are often determined by the number of click-throughs.

Hits
Hits to a site are the number of times that another computer has accessed that site (or file on a site). This does not mean that if your site has 1000 hits, 1000 people have visited it. If your home page has a number of graphic files on it, this number could be very misleading.

A hit is counted when the home page file is accessed, but a hit is also counted for every graphic file that loads along with the home page. So if a person visits 6 pages on your website and each page has 4 images, at least 30 hits would be generated.

Impression or Page Views
When someone views a banner ad, it is called an impression. Banner advertising prices are sometimes calculated by impressions. If a person visits a page 6 times, this will generate 6 impressions.

CPM
Cost per thousand (CPM) impressions is a standard advertising term. CPM is often used to calculate the cost of banner advertising. If the CPM of banner advertising on a site was $40 and the number of impressions the ad had was 2000, then the advertiser would have to pay $80 for displaying the ad.

Keywords
Keywords are the words (and phrases) that people use to search for things they want more information about. You place these highly searched keywords that are related to YOUR business on your web pages, articles and ads so you can be included in the found listing.

The object is to be in the found listing so people see your listing, click the link and go to your website.

IP Numbers (Geotargeting)
Purchasng IP numbers is an established trend in Internet marketing. Every device that connects to the Internet has its own, unique IP number. These are assigned centrally by a designated authority.

We now see search engines, such as Google, sell geotargeted advertising that pinpoints to a specific target market by region, state or country.