Digital Marketing Glossary: Key Terms To Know

Digital marketing comes with its own language—and if we’re being honest, it changes fast. New acronyms, technology, and terms seem to pop up almost daily, and it can be hard to keep up. Sometimes those definitions can really make your head spin, especially when you’re trying to figure out what they actually mean and how they apply to your business. This guide is meant to be a one-stop shop for the key digital marketing terms, so you can level up your knowledge and keep your strategy moving forward.

AI Hallucination – This is when AI provides an output that it presents as true, but actually isn’t. For example, you might ask AI to generate an itinerary for a 20-day trip to France and it returns a list that includes restaurants or places that don’t exist. This happens when the AI doesn’t have clear or verified information and fills in the gaps with something that sounds right. Sometimes this is made worse because the AI can only keep track of so much information at once while it’s answering.

Attribution (and Attribution Models) - Attribution is how marketers determine which digital channels contribute to a conversion, such as a sale or a lead form submission. It assigns credit across the marketing touchpoints that influenced a customer’s decision.

Because people often interact with multiple channels before converting—like seeing a display ad and later clicking a search ad—attribution models define how that credit is split. Last-click attribution gives all credit to the last touchpoint, while linear attribution shares credit evenly across all channels. Other models distribute credit based on position, timing, or data-driven impact.

CMS (Content Management System)
A tool that lets you update your website without coding. WordPress is the most common example.

Domain - What your website is called on the internet (yourname.com).

First-Party Data - Data you collect directly from your audience—think website behavior, email signups, purchases, and CRM data. As brands gain more control over tracking who visits their website and retargeting those users across digital channels, data owned directly by your business becomes critical for reaching the right audiences with personalized offers—and accurately measuring ad ROI.

Frontend vs Backend - Frontend is what users see and interact with. Backend is everything happening behind the scenes like databases, servers, and logic.

Hosting - Where your website “lives.” It’s the service that stores your site files and makes them available online.

Metadata (Title Tags & Meta Descriptions) - The text that appears in search results. It helps with SEO and click-through rates.

UI (User Interface) - The visual design of the site like buttons, colors, typography, and layout.

UX (User Experience) - How easy and intuitive your site is to use.