§ Glossary
Marketing and MarTech, defined.
Short, quotable definitions of the terms we use every day.
AEO (answer engine optimization)
AEO is the practice of structuring content, entities and data so AI assistants and answer engines can find, trust and cite it in their answers.
Agency of record (AOR)
An agency of record is the primary agency formally appointed to handle a defined scope of a company's marketing or media work.
Agency RFP
An agency RFP, or request for proposal, is a formal process for inviting agencies to propose how they would deliver defined marketing work, so they can be compared on a consistent basis.
AI agent
An AI agent is software that uses a language model to plan and carry out multi-step tasks, often by calling tools and other systems.
Center of Excellence (CoE)
A Center of Excellence is a cross-functional group that sets standards, shares best practice and guides a discipline across an organization.
CRM
A CRM, or customer relationship management system, stores contacts, accounts and interactions, and supports sales, service and marketing processes.
Customer data platform (CDP)
A customer data platform collects and unifies customer data from many sources into a single profile that other systems can use.
E-E-A-T
E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, the qualities search quality guidelines use to assess content credibility.
Entity (in SEO)
An entity is a distinct, identifiable thing, such as a company, person or product, that search and AI systems recognize and connect to facts about it.
First-party data
First-party data is information a company collects directly from its own customers and audiences, with their consent, through its own channels.
Fractional CMO
A fractional CMO is a senior marketing leader who works with a company part-time or on a contract basis, providing strategy and leadership without a full-time hire.
GEO (generative engine optimization)
GEO is an alternative name for optimizing content to appear in the responses of generative AI search tools.
Holdout test
A holdout test withholds a campaign from a randomly selected group and compares their behavior with those who saw it, to measure the campaign's true effect.
Human in the loop
Human in the loop is a design principle in which a person reviews or approves an AI system's output before it takes effect.
Incrementality
Incrementality measures the additional outcomes caused by a marketing activity, beyond what would have happened without it.
Last-click attribution
Last-click attribution gives 100 percent of the credit for a conversion to the final touchpoint before it occurred.
llms.txt
llms.txt is a plain-text file at the root of a website that gives language models a concise, curated map of its most important content.
Marketing automation
Marketing automation uses software to run repeatable marketing tasks, such as nurture emails, lead scoring and campaign triggers, based on rules and customer behavior.
Marketing mix modeling (MMM)
Marketing mix modeling is a statistical method that uses historical spend, sales and external factors to estimate how much each marketing channel contributes to results.
Marketing operating model
A marketing operating model defines how marketing is organized and how work flows: structure, roles, processes, technology, partners and performance management.
Marketing operations
Marketing operations is the function that manages the processes, data, technology and reporting that let marketing run efficiently and prove its impact.
MarTech
MarTech, short for marketing technology, is the software and systems a company uses to plan, run, personalize and measure marketing, such as CRM, email, analytics, advertising and content platforms.
MarTech audit
A MarTech audit is a structured review of a company's marketing technology, examining cost and utilization, capability coverage, data flows and compliance.
MarTech governance
MarTech governance is the set of roles, rules and review routines that control how marketing technology is selected, owned, integrated, secured and retired.
MarTech operations (MarTech Ops)
MarTech Ops is the function that administers, integrates and optimizes marketing technology day to day, and ensures tools are configured, secure and used well.
MarTech stack
A MarTech stack is the collection of marketing technologies a company owns and how they connect, covering data, content, channels, analytics and automation.
Multi-touch attribution (MTA)
Multi-touch attribution assigns credit for a conversion across the several marketing touchpoints a customer encountered on the way.
Response curve
A response curve shows how a channel's results change as spend increases, typically with diminishing returns at higher levels.
SEO
SEO, or search engine optimization, is the practice of improving a website's visibility in organic search results.
Shadow IT
Shadow IT is technology purchased or used by teams without the knowledge or approval of the central IT or marketing-operations function.
Structured data (schema markup)
Structured data is code added to a web page, usually in JSON-LD using the schema.org vocabulary, that describes the page's content in a form machines can read.
UTM parameters
UTM parameters are tags added to a URL that tell analytics tools which source, medium and campaign brought a visitor.