The terms we use in case studies and reports, with formulas and a worked example from a real project.
Return on Marketing Investment
How much money the ads returned on top of the spend. A ROMI of 0% means the ads returned exactly what was spent; 100% means twice as much. In our case studies ROMI is calculated on revenue.
Formula: (revenue − spend) ÷ spend × 100%
An example from the case study of a granite countertops store in the US: $14,977 of spend, $107,460 of revenue. ROMI = (107,460 − 14,977) ÷ 14,977 = 618%.
Return on Ad Spend
Revenue per dollar of ad spend. A ROAS of 100% means the ads returned what was spent. ROAS is always 100 percentage points higher than ROMI calculated on the same revenue.
Formula: revenue ÷ spend × 100%
An example from the case study of a granite countertops store in the US: the same $14,977 of spend and $107,460 of revenue. ROAS = 107,460 ÷ 14,977 = 718% — at a ROMI of 618%.
Cost per Lead
The cost of one lead.
Formula: spend ÷ number of leads
An example from the case study of a granite countertops store in the US: $14,977 of spend, 292 leads. CPL = 14,977 ÷ 292 = $51.29.
Cost per Action
The cost of one target action: a purchase, a sign-up, a booking, a subscription.
Formula: spend ÷ number of actions
Customer Acquisition Cost
The cost of acquiring one customer. Unlike CPL, it counts people who paid, not people who left a request.
Formula: acquisition costs ÷ number of new customers
Lifetime Value
The revenue a customer brings over the whole time they stay with the company. It is compared with CAC: acquisition pays back when LTV is higher than CAC.
Average Order Value
The average amount of one order.
Formula: revenue ÷ number of orders
Cost per Mille
The cost of a thousand ad impressions.
Formula: spend ÷ impressions × 1,000
Cost per Click
The cost of one click on an ad.
Formula: spend ÷ clicks
Click-Through Rate
The share of impressions that ended in a click on the ad.
Formula: clicks ÷ impressions × 100%
CR
The share of page visitors who took the target action: left a request, bought, subscribed.
Formula: actions ÷ visitors × 100%
The number of people who saw the ad at least once.
How many times, on average, one person saw the ad.
Formula: impressions ÷ reach
Meta Pixel
Code on a website that sends the ad platform what visitors do: a page view, a lead, a purchase.
CAPI
Sending events to Meta from a server rather than from the browser. It delivers the events a pixel loses to ad blockers and browser restrictions.
A user action recorded by the ad platform: Lead, Purchase, AddToCart. A campaign is optimized for an event — the algorithm looks for people who will complete it.
Parameters in a link that let analytics tell which channel, campaign and ad a person came from.
The rule by which a lead or a sale is credited to an ad channel, campaign or ad.
A report that ties ad spend to sales from the CRM, down to the campaign and the ad. It shows not the cost per lead but how much money each campaign brought.
A person who left their contact details or a request.
A lead that meets the client’s criteria. An example from our project: for a school on building HR departments it is a business owner with 10+ employees.
People who did not know the company or the product before they saw the ad.
An audience the platform builds by similarity to your base of customers or buyers.
Ads shown to people who have already visited the site or the profile, or left a request.
The period after launch or a significant edit when the algorithm is finding the audience and results are unstable. It ends once the campaign has collected enough conversions.
An ad’s results dropping because the audience has seen it too many times.
A person’s path from the first ad impression to payment, split into steps. At each step you count how many people reached the next one.
A free useful resource a person gets in exchange for their contact details or a subscription.
A low-priced product sold first, before the main one.
A short page between the ad and the destination — for example, in front of a Telegram channel. It explains what the person will get and sends the event to the ad platform.
The chain “sign-up → webinar → sale during or after the webinar”.
A chain of pages and messages that leads a person to a purchase without a sales manager.
The image or video of an ad together with its copy.
User-Generated Content
Videos in the style of user content: a person on camera talks about the product in their own words.
An assumption about what will work — an audience, a message, a format — that is tested with a separate launch.
A combination of creative, audience and landing page that delivers results.
Direct-to-Consumer
A manufacturer selling directly to the buyer, without intermediaries or marketplaces.
Egor Balandin
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