Glossary
Marketing terms, in plain words
16 terms founders run into when marketing with AI: GEO and AI search, ads, outbound and the numbers that matter. Each one starts with a one-sentence definition, then why it matters and how Cosmo handles it.
- Ad creative fatigueAd creative fatigue is the drop in an ad's performance that happens when the same audience has seen it too many times.
- Advantage+Advantage+ is Meta's name for its automated advertising options, where Meta's system chooses audiences, placements, budgets or creative combinations instead of you setting each one by hand.
- AI CMOAn AI CMO is AI software that plans, makes and runs a company's marketing across channels, and reports what happened, instead of helping with one task like writing or scheduling.
- AI search visibilityAI search visibility is how often, and how prominently, AI assistants name or cite your brand when people ask questions about your category.
- Approval workflowAn approval workflow is a process where each piece of marketing work (a post, ad, email or article) waits for a named person's yes before it goes live.
- CAC · Customer acquisition costCAC (customer acquisition cost) is the average amount you spend to win one new customer: total sales and marketing cost in a period divided by the number of new customers in that period.
- Cold email deliverability · SPF, DKIM and DMARCCold email deliverability is the share of your outreach emails that land in the inbox rather than spam, and it depends mostly on domain authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), sending reputation and how people react to your emails.
- GEO · Generative engine optimizationGEO (generative engine optimization) is the work of getting your brand named, and your pages cited, in the answers that AI assistants like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI results give.
- Intent signalsIntent signals are actions that suggest a person or company may be in the market for what you sell, such as visiting your pricing page, engaging with a competitor's post, hiring for a relevant role, or raising money.
- Launch directoriesLaunch directories are websites that list new products and tools, such as Product Hunt, BetaList, There's An AI For That, SaaSHub and AlternativeTo, where makers submit their product to get early users and links.
- llms.txtllms.txt is a plain Markdown file at the root of a website (yoursite.com/llms.txt) that summarises what the site is about and lists its most important pages for AI assistants and the tools that feed them.
- MER and ROASROAS (return on ad spend) is the revenue an ad platform attributes to its own ads divided by what you spent there; MER (marketing efficiency ratio) is your total revenue divided by your total marketing spend.
- Performance MaxPerformance Max (PMax) is a Google Ads campaign type that runs one campaign across Google's inventory (Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps) and uses Google's automation to choose placements, bids and asset combinations.
- Programmatic SEOProgrammatic SEO is creating many search-targeted pages from one template and a structured dataset, such as "[product] for [industry]" or "[product] vs [competitor]" pages.
- Share of voice in AI answersShare of voice in AI answers is the percentage of relevant answers from AI assistants that name your brand, measured across a fixed set of questions and compared with your competitors.
- UGC adsUGC ads are paid ads styled like user-generated content: a person talking to camera, an unboxing, a quick review or demo, rather than a polished studio spot.
Related
Stop doing marketing at midnight.
Paste your URL. In five minutes Cosmo texts you a plan.
Text Cosmo7 days free · cancel any time · nothing goes out without your yes