Glossary

Performance Marketing and SEO Glossary

26 terms defined the way we use them with clients, each linked to the article that goes deeper.

Nishant Sinha · Founder, Nivaro

Updated Oct 16, 2026

What this isNivaro is a Surat-based performance marketing agency for D2C and B2B brands. This glossary defines the metrics, platform rules and SEO concepts that come up most in our Google Ads, Meta Ads, SEO and AI search work, with 2026 platform changes included.

AOV (Average Order Value)

The average revenue per order. Raising AOV through bundles or set-based offers lowers the effective CAC per rupee of revenue without needing more customers.

CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)

Total marketing and sales spend divided by the number of new customers acquired in the same period. Nivaro treats CAC as the output of four levers rather than one number to push down: conversion rate, average order value, repeat purchase rate, and channel mix and media efficiency.

Canonical tag

An HTML tag (rel="canonical") that tells search engines which URL is the preferred version of a page when similar or duplicate content exists at more than one address, so ranking signals consolidate on one URL.

CAPI (Conversions API)

Meta's server-to-server event API that sends conversion events from a brand's server to Meta alongside the browser pixel. When the pixel and CAPI both report the same event, they must share an event ID so Meta can deduplicate them and avoid double-counting purchases.

ChatGPT Ads

Paid placements OpenAI shows below ChatGPT responses, labelled "Sponsored" and visually separated from the model's answer. They run on separate systems and cannot influence or buy an organic recommendation. ChatGPT Ads launched in India on August 27, 2026, with self-serve Ads Manager access opening September 4, 2026 at a daily minimum of ₹725.

Claims-based enforcement (Meta health ads)

Meta's approach to Health and Wellness advertising since July 22, 2026: the ad copy and the claims it makes decide whether an ad is approved, rather than the product category alone. Supplement ads also need the required disclaimer in the ad copy itself.

Content decay

The slow loss of rankings and organic traffic on a page that used to perform well, usually because the information went stale, competitors published better versions, or a core update shifted what ranks. The three responses are refresh, consolidate or prune.

Core Web Vitals

Google's three page-experience metrics: LCP (loading, good under 2.5 seconds), INP (responsiveness, good under 200 milliseconds) and CLS (visual stability, good under 0.1), assessed at the 75th percentile of real user visits over a rolling 28-day window. INP replaced First Input Delay in March 2024.

CPM, CPC and oCPC

Ad pricing models. CPM charges per 1,000 impressions, CPC charges per valid click, and oCPC is conversion-optimised click pricing. ChatGPT Ads offers all three, set through an auction rather than a published rate card.

Crawl budget

The balance between how fast Googlebot can crawl a site without straining the server (crawl rate limit) and how much Google wants to crawl it (crawl demand). It matters mainly for sites with thousands of URLs, such as ecommerce catalogues where filters and variants multiply the URL count.

Creative fatigue

The decline in an ad's performance as the same audience sees it repeatedly. It shows up as a few small shifts in the numbers over about a week, with no alert, and is usually fixed with smaller mechanical changes rather than a completely new ad.

CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation)

Improving the share of visitors who complete a desired action, such as a purchase or a lead form, through page, offer and funnel changes rather than by buying more traffic.

Digital PR

Creating a newsworthy asset, such as original data or a genuinely useful tool, that publications cover on their own initiative. One campaign can earn several editorial links and brand mentions, unlike traditional outreach that usually earns one link per successful contact.

E-E-A-T

Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness: the quality framework Google's human quality raters use to evaluate content. It is not a direct ranking factor, but the signals it describes, such as author credentials, accurate information and reputable mentions, correlate with signals ranking systems use. Experience was added in December 2022.

Entity clarity

How unambiguously a brand, its services, location and people are described and consistently named across its own site and external sources. Clear entities help search engines and AI systems recognise and cite a brand correctly.

JSON-LD structured data

A format for adding schema.org structured data to a page inside a script block; Google recommends it. Product, Review and AggregateRating, Article, Organization, LocalBusiness and BreadcrumbList still produce rich results, while FAQ rich results were deprecated in Google Search on May 7, 2026.

LLM SEO (generative engine optimization)

Also called AI search optimization or generative engine optimization (GEO): making content easier for AI systems to retrieve, understand and cite inside a synthesized answer. Traditional SEO instead aims at a ranking position in a list of links. No technique guarantees AI citation.

LTV:CAC ratio

A customer's lifetime value divided by the cost of acquiring them. A ratio of 3:1 to 5:1 is the healthy band for most D2C categories; below 2:1 acquisition costs more than the customer is worth, and above 5:1 often signals under-investment in growth.

MER (Marketing Efficiency Ratio)

Total revenue divided by total marketing spend across all channels. For a growing Indian D2C brand, roughly 2.5 to 4 is commonly cited as healthy. Unlike ROAS, it does not depend on any one platform's attribution.

Merchant Center product feed

The product data (titles, images, prices, availability and identifiers) a brand submits to Google Merchant Center. Shopping and Performance Max decide what to show from the feed, not from the website, so feed health is audited before bids.

OAI-SearchBot and OAI-AdsBot

OpenAI's crawlers. OAI-SearchBot retrieves content for ChatGPT's search and browsing features, and OAI-AdsBot accesses landing pages linked from ChatGPT Ads. Blocking them in robots.txt or at the firewall can make a page invisible to ChatGPT search and ineligible for ads.

Performance Max (PMax)

A Google Ads campaign type that serves across Google's inventory from one campaign using assets and, for ecommerce, a product feed. Compared with Search campaigns it gives less keyword and negative-keyword control.

Personal attributes policy (Meta)

A Meta ad policy that prohibits copy implying knowledge of a person's characteristics, health status or physical condition. Enforcement expanded in March 2026 to indirect second-person phrasing, so copy such as "struggling with your skin?" can be rejected even without naming a condition.

ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)

Revenue attributed to ads divided by ad spend. A healthy range for Indian D2C brands on Meta and Google is typically 3x to 5x, though first-order ROAS matters less in repeat-purchase categories where retention drives profit.

Topic cluster

A pillar page on a broad topic that links to, and is linked from, narrower cluster pages on related subtopics. In ecommerce, category pages usually act as the hub, with products and supporting articles as the cluster layer.

UGC video ads

Video ads in a creator's authentic style, scripted around buying psychology, with creators cast to look like the real customer rather than for follower count, and edited for the first half-second of attention.

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