OfferUp Ad Basics: Common Advertising Terms

Whether you’re brand new to online advertising or you’re one of our long-time customers, it’s worth taking some time out of your busy day to brush up on some marketing vocab. Here’s a list of commonly used marketing terms to help you get the most out of your digital marketing efforts.

Key Digital Marketing Vocabulary  

Advertising Campaign – An advertising campaign is a specific marketing plan or strategy. Depending on what your marketing strategy is, you may choose to create one or several OfferUp ads to help you achieve your campaign goals. 

Target Audience – The group of customers you’re trying to reach with your advertisements. This is the group most likely to be persuaded to complete a specific action, such as making a purchase or visiting your store location. 

Demographic Research – This type of research focuses on discovering demographic data about your customers, such as their gender, race, age, income, and education. Many businesses use free email surveys to gather this information, but it can even be as easy as just taking notes for a few weeks of what type of customers tend to visit your store most often. 

Psychographic Research – This type of research focuses on understanding the personalities and interests of customers. You can also gather this type of information using email surveys. 

Call to Action (CTA) – The final message of an ad, asking customers to take a certain action like clicking on a link, making a purchase, or visiting the store. OfferUp ads offer three types of CTAs: “Learn More” which leads to your OfferUp profile page, “Visit Site” which links to a website of your choice, and “Call Now” to click to call and speak with a real person at the business.

Conversion – When a shopper sees the CTA in your ad and completes the desired action, they are considered one conversion. You can often use the number of conversions as a measurement to help you determine the success of one of your ads. 

Lead Generation – The process of finding and gathering the interest of potential buyers in a given space.

Reach – Reach refers to the total number of viewers, listeners, or visitors who have interacted with your advertisement. In digital marketing, this usually measures how many people have clicked on it.

Impressions – The total number of times your advertisement has been seen. Impressions are generally higher than your reach because not everyone who sees your ad clicks on it. 

Click Through Rate (CTR) – A measurement tracking what percentage of your audience clicks on your advertisement. This is usually calculated by dividing total reach by total impressions. 

Bounce Rate – This measurement tracks how many people visit a website and then leave it without viewing any other pages. The lower your bounce rate, the better because it means shoppers are spending more time on your website or ad landing page. 

Cost Per Thousand (CPM) – This is a pricing model used to describe how much it will cost a seller to get 1,000 impressions on a certain channel.

Cost-per-click (CPC) – This is a pricing model for digital advertising where instead of paying for the number of impressions, the seller agrees to pay a set amount for every person who clicks on their advertisement. 

Return on Investment (ROI) – A formula used to assess the overall success of a particular endeavor. It is usually calculated by dividing the total profit by the total cost. Businesses use this calculation to help them determine which advertising methods are the most profitable so they can focus their marketing efforts more efficiently. 

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) – Similar to ROI, this formula analyzes the success of a specific advertisement by dividing the revenue generated by the ad by the total cost of placing the ad. It can help you decide which ads are the most successful so you can create more ads like them and generate a greater profit. 

Geo-targeting – An advertising method that uses a customer’s location to determine which advertisements to show them. This allows sellers to target customers in one specific area, like those within 20 miles of your store. Targeting by location increases the chances of you reaching your target audience.

Medium Rectangle - A rectangular ad that may be viewed on mobile devices or desktops/laptops. Depending on the screen and the layout of the site on which it appears, it could be placed in line with the content, or it might appear off to the side, in one of the margins of the page.

10 OfferUp-Specific Marketing Terms You Should Know

Buyer – An individual visiting the OfferUp website or app with the intent of making a purchase. 

Seller – An individual seeking to sell an item by creating a listing on OfferUp. 

Local Advertising – Refers to the marketing strategy of targeting shoppers within your local market.

Local Ad Campaign – An advertising campaign designed to appeal to users in one geographic location. Typically, local ad campaigns have a goal of increasing the number of people who visit and make purchases at your local store or business location. 

L1 Categories – These are large, broader umbrella categories used to sort items on OfferUp. Examples include Home & Garden, Vehicles, Pet Supplies, Health & Beauty, etc. 

L2 Subcategories – These subcategories fall underneath the L1 categories and help to further sort and organize items on OfferUp. Examples include Furniture, Appliances, Video Games & Consoles, etc.

Native Ad – An ad designed to match the look, feel, and style of the website it’s published on. OfferUp Local Advertising features native ads.