Glossary
The ad metrics that decide what to change.
Honest, plain-English definitions of the Meta and Google advertising terms behind every AdScale recommendation. No hype, no invented benchmarks.
/ 01
Economics
AOV · Average order value
AOV (average order value) is total revenue divided by number of orders in a period.
CAC · Customer acquisition cost
CAC (customer acquisition cost) is the total sales and marketing cost to acquire one customer over a period.
LTV · Lifetime value
LTV (lifetime value) is the total gross profit a customer is expected to generate across their whole relationship with you.
nCAC · New-customer CAC
nCAC (new-customer CAC) is acquisition cost measured against first-time customers only, excluding repeat buyers.
/ 02
Efficiency
CPA · Cost per acquisition
CPA (cost per acquisition) is ad spend divided by the number of conversions (purchases, leads, or the chosen action).
MER · Media efficiency ratio
MER (media efficiency ratio) is total store revenue divided by total ad spend across all channels in the same period.
ROAS · Return on ad spend
ROAS (return on ad spend) is the revenue attributed to your ads divided by what you spent on them, expressed as a ratio.
/ 03
Delivery
CPM · Cost per mille
CPM (cost per mille) is the cost to serve one thousand impressions of your ad.
CTR · Click-through rate
CTR (click-through rate) is the share of impressions that resulted in a click.
Frequency
Frequency is the average number of times each person in your audience saw your ad over a period.
Learning phase
The learning phase is the initial period when an ad set's delivery system is still optimising and performance is unstable.
/ 04
Creative
Creative fatigue · Ad fatigue
Creative fatigue is the decline in an ad's performance that happens as the same audience sees it too many times.
Hold rate · Watch-through
Hold rate is the share of viewers who keep watching a video ad past a set point, such as 15 seconds or to completion.
Thumb-stop rate · Hook rate
Thumb-stop rate (hook rate) is the share of impressions where someone stopped scrolling to watch the first few seconds of your video.
/ 05Google
Impression share · IS
Impression share is the percentage of the impressions your ads were eligible for that they actually received.
Quality Score
Quality Score is Google's 1-10 estimate of the quality of your keyword, ad, and landing page relative to other advertisers.
Target ROAS · tROAS
Target ROAS (tROAS) is a Smart Bidding strategy where you set a return goal and Google bids to hit it on average.
See it on your own account
Every term, read from your live data.
AdScale reads these signals from your Meta and Google accounts and tells you what to scale, refresh, or kill, with a reason for every call.