Adsense Glossary

Cost-per-click (CPC)
The CPC is the amount an advertiser pays each time a user clicks on his/her ad. Google AdWords has a CPC pricing system.

Cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM)
The CPM is the amount an advertiser pays for every 1000 times a user views his/her ad and an impression is recorded.

Clickthrough rate (CTR)
In AdSense publisher reports, clickthrough rate (CTR) is the number of clicks an ad receives divided by the number of times the ad, ad unit, or page is shown, depending on the type of impressions you're viewing.

Page Impression
A page impression is generated every time a user views a page displaying Google ads. We will count one page impression regardless of the number of ads displayed on that page. For example, if you have a page displaying three ad units and it is viewed twice, you will generate two page impressions and six ad unit impressions.

Effective CPM
From a publisher's perspective, the effective cost-per-thousand impressions (eCPM) is a useful way to compare revenue across different channels and advertising programs. It is calculated by dividing total earnings by the number of impressions in thousands. For example, if a publisher earned $180 from 45,000 impressions, the eCPM would equal $180/45, or $4.00. However, please keep in mind that eCPM is a reporting feature that does not represent the actual amount paid to a publisher.

Channel
A publisher-specified group of pages used for reporting purposes. Publishers can create channels to track specific metrics across pages, sites, and domains.

URL channels
URL channels are a tool you can use to view more detailed reports about the performance of ads on specific domains. Our Optimizing with Channels guide provides a good, detailed explanation of how to use URL channels effectively.

Custom channel
Custom channels are a tool you can use to view more detailed reports about the performance of specific pages and ad units. Our Optimizing with Channels guide provides a good, detailed explanation of how to use custom channels effectively.

Section targeting
Our section targeting feature allows you to improve your ad targeting by highlighting specific sections of HTML and text content that you'd like our crawler to emphasize or ignore.

Revenue share
Each AdSense publisher receives a percentage of the cost an advertiser pays for user clicks or impressions on their ad. This percentage is referred to as the revenue share. Google does not disclose the revenue share for AdSense.

Ad format
The way the ads are displayed on a publisher's site. You can choose the format that best fits your site. For example, the banner ad layout will display up to 2 ads horizontally across the page and the skyscraper will display up to 4 ads vertically. All formats can be viewed on our Ad Formats page.

Ad impression
An ad impression is reported whenever an individual ad is displayed on your website. Different ad formats will display varying numbers of ads; for example, each time a vertical banner appears on your site, you'll see two ad impressions in your reports. In addition, keep in mind that the number of ads in any ad unit may vary depending on whether the ad unit is displaying standard text ads, expanded text ads, or image ads.

Color palette
AdSense offers publishers the ability to customize the colors of ads that appear on their sites. Color palettes allow you to make sure that the ad text, background, and border colors complement your website. For added variety and freshness, you can even choose to rotate through up to 4 different color palettes at a time.

Contextual Advertising (Content-Targeted AdWords; Content AdWords)
Google leverages our award-winning search technology to deliver relevant ads to content pages of sites and products in our network (including AdSense web sites). Our technology draws upon our understanding of the billions of pages in our search index and our ability to crawl webpages to figure out which keywords would lead a user to the page. Then, we match ads to the page based on those keywords.

Geo-Targeting
AdWords advertisers can choose to show their ads only to certain locations and languages. The AdWords ads served on an AdSense web site will therefore depend on the advertiser's geo-targeting and a user's settings.

Link unit
Link units are a type of ad format that displays a list of links relevant to the content of any page. When a user clicks on a link, they're taken to a page of related advertisements. You can view examples of all available link unit formats on our Ad Formats page.

Landing Page
As part of the Onsite Advertiser Sign-up feature, your landing page is the customizable page advertisers will view when they click on the 'Advertise on this site' link in your Google ads.

More Adsense Glossary at Google's Adsense Support