Glossary
The words, in plain English.
47 terms you'll meet the moment you start advertising a clinic or a contracting business — from ad metrics to state law. Each one links to where we explain it properly.
Ad metrics & economics
- Blended CAC
- All marketing spend divided by all new customers in the same period, regardless of which channel claims them. It can't be gamed by attribution settings, which is why it's the number to trust. Read more
- CACalso: customer acquisition cost, cost per acquisition, cost per patient
- What it costs to win one paying customer. The number that actually connects your ad account to your bank account. Read more
- Close rate
- The share of leads or consultations that become paying customers. Exclusivity and speed of response move it more than anything inside the ad account. Read more
- CPCalso: cost per click
- Ad spend divided by clicks. Useful as an early signal; misleading as a goal, because the cheapest clicks are often the least likely to book. Read more
- CPLalso: cost per lead
- Ad spend divided by leads. The number most agencies report because it's the one they control — and the easiest to improve by lowering lead quality. Read more
- CPMalso: cost per mille, cost per thousand impressions
- What you pay for 1,000 impressions. It reflects how contested the audience is, not how good your ad is — New York City costs more than Syracuse because more advertisers want the same people. Read more
- CTRalso: click-through rate
- Clicks divided by impressions. A very low CTR is a reliable reason to kill an ad early. A high one is never, on its own, a reason to keep it. Read more
- Frequency
- The average number of times each person has seen your ad. Small local audiences saturate quickly, which is a common, mechanical reason performance fades. Read more
- Landing page
- A page built for ad traffic: one promise, one action, no navigation. Sending ads to a homepage instead gives a paid click dozens of ways to leave. Read more
- Learning phase
- The period after a campaign launches or is significantly edited, while Meta's delivery is still exploring. Performance is unstable until it has seen enough conversions — which is why too small a budget, or constant edits, keep a campaign erratic. Read more
- Lifetime value (LTV)also: customer lifetime value
- The margin — not revenue — a customer produces over a defined window, usually 12 months. For clinics with repeat patients it raises what you can afford to pay to acquire one. Read more
- Offer
- What someone gets for responding, and on what terms. It decides more than targeting or creative, and it's the one thing competitors can't copy from your ad library in an afternoon. Read more
- ROASalso: return on ad spend
- Revenue divided by ad spend. As reported inside an ad platform it measures the platform's own view of itself; check it against your blended CAC. Read more
- Show ratealso: attendance rate, no-show rate
- The share of booked appointments that actually arrive. Moving it from 70% to 85% cuts cost per patient by about 17% — more than most targeting changes. Read more
Tracking
- _fbc and _fbp
- Meta's cookies. _fbc carries the click ID from the ad someone clicked; _fbp identifies the browser. Passing both with server events lifts match quality well above email alone. Read more
- Attribution
- Deciding which ad or channel gets credit for a customer. Every platform attributes generously to itself; that's why their numbers never reconcile with each other. Read more
- Conversions API (CAPI)also: server-side tracking
- Meta's server-to-server route for conversion events. It can't be blocked by the browser, and you decide exactly which fields are sent. Read more
- Event deduplicationalso: event_id
- Sending the same event ID from the browser and the server so Meta counts the conversion once. Without it, running both routes double-counts everything. Read more
- Global Privacy Control (GPC)
- A browser signal telling websites not to sell or share the visitor's data. Businesses subject to California's CCPA must honor it. Read more
- Hashing (SHA-256)
- Converting an email or phone number into a fixed code before it's sent, as Meta requires. It must be normalized first — lowercased, trimmed, digits only with the country code — or the match silently fails. Read more
- Meta Pixelalso: Facebook pixel
- A script on your website that reports visits and conversions to Meta from the visitor's browser. Ad blockers and browser privacy features stop a meaningful share of its events. Read more
Platform policy
- Negative self-perception
- Meta's term for health and wellness ads that try to make the viewer feel bad about their body. It's why before-and-after splits for weight loss and anti-aging are restricted. Read more
- Personal Attributes policy
- Meta's rule against ads that assert or imply knowledge of the viewer's health, finances or other personal characteristics. "Struggling with your weight?" is the classic rejection. Read more
- Special Ad Categories
- Meta's declared categories — credit, employment, housing, and social issues, elections or politics — that remove targeting options like age, gender and small-radius location. A hiring ad for your own clinic counts as employment. Read more
Local search
- Doorway page
- A page built to rank for a place or phrase with nothing specific to it — usually one template with the city name swapped. Google has demoted them for over a decade. Read more
- E-E-A-Talso: experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness
- The qualities Google's quality guidance looks for in content. A named author with checkable credentials is one of the clearest signals. Read more
- Google Business Profilealso: GBP, Google My Business
- Your listing on Google Maps and in the local pack. It's advertising too — in California, B&P § 651's rules on images and prices apply to it. Read more
- Local packalso: map pack, 3-pack
- The three map results Google shows above the organic listings for local searches. Ranked mainly on relevance, distance and prominence — and distance is the one you can't change. Read more
- NAP consistencyalso: name, address, phone
- Your name, address and phone written identically everywhere they appear. "Ste 200" and "Suite 200" are different strings to a machine. Read more
- Scaled content abuse
- Google's name, since March 2024, for producing many pages primarily to manipulate rankings. The policy is about purpose and pattern, not whether a human or a tool wrote the words. Read more
- Service-area business
- A business that travels to customers and can hide its address on Google. Legitimate for contractors and mobile services; using a virtual office instead is against Google's guidelines. Read more
Compliance
- § 489.119 (Florida)
- Requires a Florida contractor's certification or registration number in every advertisement, regardless of medium — including websites and social posts under board rule. Read more
- AHCA Health Care Clinic License (Florida)
- A Florida license generally required where a practice isn't wholly physician-owned and bills insurance. Read more
- Article 131 (New York)
- New York's physician licensure law. It licenses individuals only, which is why only licensed physicians may own a New York medical practice. Read more
- Authenticated vs. unauthenticated page
- A page behind a login (a patient portal) versus a public one. The 2024 court ruling vacated HHS's tracking guidance for public pages; the guidance for authenticated pages stands. Read more
- B&P § 2400 (California)
- The California statute that gives corporations no professional rights — the basis of the state's corporate practice of medicine rule. Read more
- B&P § 651 (California)
- California's professional advertising statute. Results images must be genuine and unaltered, a model must be labeled as a model in prominent, readable type, and each price must be clearly identifiable. A violation is a misdemeanor. Read more
- B&P § 7030.5 (California)
- Requires a CSLB-licensed contractor's license number in every advertisement soliciting work, in every medium. Read more
- CCPA / CPRA
- California's consumer privacy law, which treats health data as sensitive personal information. It applies above $26.625M in revenue, or to businesses sharing data on 100,000+ California consumers, households or devices a year. Read more
- Corporate practice of medicine (CPOM)
- The doctrine that a lay corporation can't practice medicine or employ physicians to do it. Strict in New York and California; Florida has no such statute. Read more
- FDUTPA (Florida)
- Florida's Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. Private parties can sue for actual damages, and the court may award attorney's fees to whichever side prevails. Read more
- GBL § 349 and the FAIR Act (New York)
- New York's consumer protection statute. Since February 17, 2026 it prohibits unfair and abusive practices as well as deceptive ones; private lawsuits remain limited to deception. Read more
- HIPAA covered entity
- A health plan, a healthcare clearinghouse, or a provider that transmits health information electronically in standard transactions such as billing insurance. A cash-only practice may not be one — worth confirming with counsel. Read more
- Management services organization (MSO)
- A company owned by non-physicians that provides everything non-clinical to a physician-owned practice. Legitimate — but advertising where the MSO speaks as the provider of medical care is a known red flag. Read more
- Medical director
- The licensed physician who oversees clinical care at a practice. Required even where non-physicians may own the business, as in Florida — and not the same thing as the physician performing treatment. Read more
- Professional corporation (PC) / PLLC
- The entity that may lawfully own a medical practice in CPOM states. In New York, shares are restricted to licensed physicians; in California, at least 51% must be. Read more
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