You know, I used to keep this page like, SO up to date, just ask anyone!! But I just can't keep it up...

Online advertising and terms multiply at an almost astronomic rate these days, and it's hard to keep track of them all. To ensure that you really know your industry lingo, check out marketingterms.com -- a newly formatted website containing 150 industry related terms searchable alphabetically or categorically. The site also gives users a definition, information about the topic, related terms, and even articles on the subject.

And then too, there's Webopedia...

Banner

An advertisement on the web in the form of a graphics image.

Hits

A hit is one request for one file, any type of file, from a web site. If you have a typical web page with, say, 10 graphics, that would be 11 hits if someone loaded the page (10 for the graphics and one for the page itself). Note that CSS (cascading style sheets) count as hits.

Impressions

An impression is a term usually used by an affiliate or banner exchange program. This is the number of times the banner or whatever has been viewed.

Page Views

A page view is one view of an entire page, regardless of the number of elements on that page. A page with 10 graphics would be one page view. Each time a page is viewed counts as one page view. Thus if a visitor goes from page A to page B and then back to A, this is counted as three page views.

Unique Visitors

A unique visitor is one person examining your web site during a pre-determined period (usually 30 days). It does not matter how many hits or page views the visitor uses, during that 30 day period he counts as 1. Note that this assumes that the visitor can be recognized as unique. If his TCP/IP address changes or if he turns off cookies (one popular method for determining unique visits) he may be counted more often.

Affiliate

A web site or ezine owner that sells products for a company and gets a commission in return. This commission can be a percentage of the sale, a few pennies for clicking on a banner or a fee for a lead.

Affiliate Network

A web site or organization which brings together affiliate programs in mass. Some programs include:

• Commission Junction
• Linkshare

ASP

Active Server Pages; allows for the creation of dynamically generated web pages

CGI

Common Gateway Interface. Scripting language that adds advanced functions such as interaction with forms and databases.

Click-Thru

When you click on an advertisement (a banner ad or a text link) this is called a click-thru.

Click-Thru Rate

The ratio of impressions to click-thru. For example, if you had 100 impressions and one click-thru, then the rate would be 1%.

Commission

An amount of money earned for selling a service or product. Sometimes a commission is a percentage of the sale and sometimes it is a flat rate.

CPC - Cost Per Click

The amount of money an advertiser will pay for one click.

CPI - Cost Per Impression

The amount of money an advertiser will pay for one impression.

CPM - Cost Per Thousand

The amount an advertiser will pay per one thousand impressions or clicks.

CTR - Click Through Ratio

This term is primarily used by banner exchange and affiliate programs to represent the ratio between the number of times a banner or link is displayed to the number of times it is actually clicked. For example, a banner is displayed 1,000 times and clicked on 570 would be a CTR of 57%.

Demographics

Information about the visitors to your web site or the purchasers of your products. This information can include their names, addresses, zip codes and other data.

DHTML

Dynamic HTML; allows for interactive content.

Digital Certificates

Necessary for encrypting data (e.g. credit cards) using SSL encryption.

Flash

Multimedia tool that can be used to design animation for your site.

Form

Area of a website where a user can submit information in response to a question, or enter credit card and other purchase information.

Frames

Independently controllable sections on a website.

GIF

An image file type commonly used for banners.

HTML

Hypertext Markup Language. The formatting language used to create web pages

JavaScript

A script language that adds advanced features and functions to a website.

JPEG

An image file type commonly used for photos

Merchant

A company that provides products for sale. Many merchants run affiliate programs in order to get other webmasters to sell their products for them.

Rich Media

Elements that contain animation, video or sound. Some popular formats commonly considered rich media include Macromedia Flash and Shockwave.

Two-Tiered

In this type of program you receive commissions for your own sales and a smaller commission for the sales of the people that you have referred to the program.

URL

Universal Resource Locator. Also referred to as a web address or domain name.

SSL Encryption

Secure Socket Layer - commonly used for managing the security of message transmission.

XML

Extensible Markup Language - a formatting language similar to HTML but with greater flexibility, providing improved functionality.