Jargon busting: The ten worst phrases in digital marketing

Harriet, your speculation about the origins of the term “above the fold” makes me feel inexpressibly ancient. It’s a term that dates back to broadsheet newspapers, like the Australian is, and the SMH and Age used to be, and it was either heaven or hell – depending on the story – to see your client/story front page, above the fold.

I’ll just pop my teeth back out and shuffle me and my zimmer frame back into the cupboard.

Wow, what a silly article, trivialising some very important concepts in marketing today.

You might want to chat to companies like Twitter, Airbnb and Uber about whether Growth Hacking is a worthwhile thing to do.

Sometimes novel ideas and approaches require a new name.

“Attribution Modelling is a simple concept dressed up as something far more technical than it really is”.

Can’t the whole digital marketing world be pretty much summed up by this?

@Father Time – thanks for letting me know! I think a fair bit of digital jargon comes from more traditional industries, though if wee young’ns like me have to dig around for the origin it’s probably a good indicator we need to use a plain English explanation!

@Umm – agree these are some important concepts, but the point is to think about the language we use to describe them to clients and those external to the organisation that may not know/recognise them. That and to never be afraid to have a laugh at ourselves.

Bravo Harriet. Thanks for calling time on sales jargon.
People prefer plain English or simple words to jargon and buzzwords.
Mmmm. Now what does ‘digital’ mean?

Jargon is really just a definition of a word or term that’s accurate only at a specific time. It’s jargon while only a few understand what it means. A term can be a really useful shorthand once everyone is down with its meaning. For instance, GPS and WiFi were both jargon terms until everyone understood what they were and how they worked.

I be more inclined to buy the well-meaning intention of this piece if it was solely about removing things that have no real use or utility. Something like remarketing, however, does and it’s likely to continue. Given that’s the case, instead of saying to my clients:

“We’d like to run an online advertising campaign that targets only people that have been to your site before. This type of campaign generally has really great results because we know the audience is already interested. Because the audience is so relevant, the overall cost is a lot less.”

..I’d really much rather just say, “let’s remarket” and have them understand what I mean to begin with.

Much simpler, no?

What a ridiculous article. The phrases highlighted are pretty descriptive of the concept and easy for the client/stakeholders to understand.

I’d say some of the phrases listed in here are actually very descriptive and important elements of digital marketing. Remarketing might be used poorly by some advertisers, but that doesnt make it a useless phrase of jargon. Above the Fold? Thats an important phrase, especially when we start talking viewability. Sorry, I have to disagree with a fair chunk of this article.

I like the spirit of this. Totally agree we should laugh at ourselves.

I get where the jargon comes from, and I think many of us secretly like the feeling of superiority that comes with using words that others don’t understand.

But on the flipside jargon can make people feel excluded or stupid if they don’t know what it means. Surely that’s not helpful for paying clients who are just trying to decide on the best use of their money?

@Harriet

Or maybe renaming or reframing something, offers it the ability to stand for something that breaks from the past. You know, like those ridiculous buzzwords of the past – ‘gravity’ and ‘automobiles’.

Having a laugh is one thing, dismissing important, proven concepts without giving them due credit for their impact is very much another.

A better definition of remarketing: Trying to get me to buy something I once looked at but decided against, by stalking me for weeks afterwards.

I’m tipping Harriet hasn’t had much experience with genuine attribution modelling if she thinks it’s a simple concept.

gee, there are a few growth-hacking big data enthusiasts on mumbrella today!

i agree with the complainers on “above the fold” though, that term pre-dates digital marketing by a long way

@Father Time. Whilst SMH and The Age might have ‘quirked’ up their offering. The Australian is about as ‘Broadsheet’ as Fox News.

On Attribution modeling,… “whilst digital marketers get super excited when they get more data, they are also at high risk of ending up chasing their own tails creating complicated models to apportion percentages that in reality are pulled completely out of thin air”.

This is wrong. Sales / lead data is not ‘thin air’. If this were the case attribution modelers and a great many number of data scientists would be out of a job!

GREAT ARTICLE. 10/10

Re:Remarketing – one really annoying thing about things like Criteo is that you have no way to indicate you’re no longer interested in hearing about vacuums from Store X because you already bought the vacuum! A “this ad is no longer relevant” option – like what Google Ads does – would be useful.

“Above the fold” that’s a term from the print world, then desktop publishing, then web 1.0 onwards. #getoffmylawn #damnkids

if you ask me, the fact that Harriet didn’t know the origin of the phrase “above the fold” (to the extent that she embarrassed herself with a speculative potential reason) simply highlights the problem with digital marketing and digital marketers, full stop – they wear their profound ignorance of the rest of the media and marketing landscape like a badge of honour

i will never forget when a 27 year old ‘digital native’ media buyer at our agency of record (at the time) suggested we advertise on Facebook to drive supplemental traffic to boost our SEM efforts.

We had to gently remind her that we were spending $6m a year in free to air TV through her agency, because that’s the form of media most consumed by our target audience – and therefore what the old-fashioned “traditional” media buyer at her agency had recommended

I love this piece! Smart.

I want to hire you!

“Thankfully, Google woke up and saw the light on that glaringly obvious mistake.”
Only somebody who has literally no understanding of data mining, networks or even the history of search could say something so jarringly ignorant.

Rather than rank a page based on how many times a keyword appeared on a page, Google search used the PageRank algorithm counted human-generated links assuming that web pages linked from many important pages are themselves likely to be important. Although, yes, there was a serious flaw in this plan, it is considerably harder to fake than the previous method. I hope no one here is confused as to why it’s considerably more meaningful to count links from other sources rather than the occurrence of a keyword on your own page.

Hello Harriet,

It may interest you to know, that one of Switched on Media’s foundation services was the above mentioned ‘Growth Hacking’. So maybe it is you who should ‘ stand up immediately, thank the person as politely as possible given the circumstances, leave the room and never, ever respond to their calls or emails.’

Kind Regards,
The Ghost of Switched On Media

@Anonymous Johnno, Is that you?

Strange piece. Half are legit terms, and the other half seriously irritating (to some) emperor’s new suit words. Growth Hacking and Big Data are nauseous. Am I the only old marketing type with no issues with the term Marketing? I also picture pivot tables every time someone waxes on about big data, in case you do too and need a therapy mate.

Also, you forgot to mention labeling yourself Innovative or Disruptive or a similarly obnoxious term (unless you’re the ghost the lovechild of Tesla & Gutenberg or something equally ridiculous). I read a column where someone likened it to deciding you are now a Ninja Master. That said, language is living and I got over giggling at the word monetise in the late 90s and even use it now, so perhaps I will become…

A Growth Hacking, Innovating & Disrupting Freakonimical Monetisation Ninja with Mad Skillz at .. um .. Marketing.

..That was more fun than CMO, admittedly.

Your’e a very good writer Harriet. You took the piss of people who deserve it and educated me at the same time. Do lots more of this.