Facebook Ad acronyms

What do those Facebook Ad acronyms & abbreviations mean?

When you do anything for long enough, you learn the language. The same goes for Facebook Ads; talk about it enough and you'll start talking an acronym-filled language. So, what do those Facebook Ad Acronyms and abbreviations mean?


In this post, I'll cover some of the abbreviation used by people when discussing Facebook Ads in discussion forums, partly because it's easier for me to post a quick link than it is to re-write it all over.

This is likely be lacking a lot of the acronyms, so if you want any adding, let me know and I'll update this post.

• FB: Facebook
• IG: Instagram
• PPE: Page Post Engagement; 
• WC: Website Conversion; 
• ATC: Add To Cart; 
• CKT: Initiate Checkout
• CA: Custom Audience
• LAL or LAA: Lookalike Audience
• CPM: Cost Per Thousand Impressions
• CPC: Cost Per Click
• CTR: Click Through Rate
• CPE: Cost Per Engagement

Let's expand these a little:

FB & IG. In the context of this blog, Facebook & Instagram are two key platforms for advertising your goods and services. Facebook can be used to create an online presence and a 'page' for you to show off your wares.  Instagram (owned by Facebook since 2012) is an image sharing site, but one that's centre stage for a form of advertising called Influencer Marketing.

The only reason I've added IG to this post is that when you create your Facebook ads, you have the option to have it included on people's Instagram feeds. So, the term does get used quite a lot.

PPE. Page Post Engagement is designed to get people to react to your post; to engage with it. Facebook knows who these people are, it's tracking their every click. 

So, when you choose this ad objective, expect a lot of likes as they are easy for people to do and Facebook dishes your advert out to them. What you're really after is engagement that requires a little more effort from the recipient of your ad - comments and shares. 

If lots of people go to the trouble to comment, saying things like "Love this product" then you know that what you're advertising is having a positive impact. Something look right. One form of comment is to simply tag a friend. This is usually nothing more than 'Joe Blogs', but what's happening is one person is recommending your product to one of their friends - and that is good. If you have a lot of tags like that in your ad, things are now looking VERY good.

WC. Website Conversion  ads are different than PPE ads in that Facebook try's to target your ad at people it thinks will purchase stuff. Sure, they can also comment and tag, but they are also known to be buyers from the Facebook platform

WC ads are usually run after you've had some success with your PPE ads. As this article about acronyms, not a how-to, I'll not go into that, but Franklin Hatchett and Ben Malol have two great video channels:

ATC. Add to Cart is is a Conversion Event. The following is a list of Conversion Events currently available when running a WC:

• View Content
• Search
• Add To Cart (ATC)
• Initiate Checkout (CKT)
• Add Payment Info
• Purchase
• Add To Wishlist
• Lead
• Complete Registration

ATC is usually the option to choose when you first start running WC campaigns. This is because Facebook doesn't know a great deal about your customers yet. You can see from the screenshot above (had to do it in three as this option scrolls) that some are marked red. This is because your pixel has never 'fired' for these events.

WC ads are mainly concerned with Add To Cart, Checkout, Payment and Purchase. Obviously each of these steps is further down the line of a full purchase, so start at the beggining and as your pixel 'matures' start experimenting with the next in line...

CA. Custom Audiences... More on this soon...