Glossary
Attribution glossary
The terms of paid social measurement, explained without jargon: CPL, click ID, CAPI, first-party tracking, Thompson Sampling.
A
- A/B testing — Comparing variants to see which performs better, and the two ways to decide: a significance threshold or an adaptive bandit. What separates a valid test from an expensive guess.
- ad_id — The platform identifier for a single ad. Why it is the join key between spend and leads, and why manual mappings break.
- Attribution window — The period after a click (or view) during which a conversion is credited to it. Why the window matters more than most marketers expect.
C
- CPA — cost per acquisition — CPA is the cost of acquiring a paying customer or a completed action, downstream of CPL. How it is calculated and why it is not the same as CPL.
- CPL — cost per lead — CPL is the cost of acquiring one lead. Here is how it is calculated, why the platform number differs from reality, and which one to trust.
- Creative attribution — Measuring cost per lead per individual creative and landing page combination, rather than per campaign. The definition and why the level matters.
M
- Meta CAPI — Conversions API — The server-side interface for sending conversion events to Meta. Why deduplication matters, and how it differs from the browser pixel.
- Multi-armed bandit — The explore-exploit problem: choosing between options whose payoffs are unknown. Why it is the right frame for advertising traffic allocation.
R
- Real CPL — The real CPL is computed from clicks you logged and forms you received, not from the ad platform model. Why it is the number to decide on.
- ROAS — return on ad spend — ROAS is revenue divided by ad spend. What it measures, why it is a poor fit for lead generation, and how it hides the difference between creatives.
T
- Tracking domain — The domain that logs the click and serves the landing page. Why keeping them on the same domain is the whole mechanism.
- Tracking identifiers — How a click becomes a record you can act on: UTM parameters, click IDs and first-party cookies. What each one identifies, and where each one breaks.