The Alli glossary
Plain-English definitions of the data, AI, and marketing terms behind Alli, with an example of each and how Alli puts it to work.
Every term, A to Z 72 terms
Agentic AI in marketing
AI agents that research, plan, produce, and monitor marketing work across tools, with people directing the work and approving what goes live.
What is agentic AI in marketing? ActivateAgentic apps
Software with an AI agent inside that does multi-step work for a user behind a normal interface, so people review and decide instead of prompting.
What are agentic apps? ActivateAgentic orchestration
AI agents in different tools passing signals and handing work to one another, so multi-step work runs as one connected flow instead of tool by tool.
What is agentic orchestration? Platform & AIAI agents vs. AI assistants
Assistants respond to prompts with answers or drafts. Agents pursue a goal across several steps and tools, deciding what to do next along the way.
What is the difference between AI agents and AI assistants? Platform & AIAI guardrails
The controls that keep AI working inside safe, approved limits: what data it can see, what it can do, what is logged, and what needs a person's sign-off.
What are AI guardrails? Platform & AIAI hallucination in marketing analytics
When an AI tool gives a confident but wrong answer about performance data, such as an invented number, a misread metric, or a made-up explanation.
What is AI hallucination in marketing analytics? IntelligenceAI Overviews
Google's AI-generated summaries at the top of some search results, which answer the query and link to the sources they draw on.
What are AI Overviews? PlanningAI personas
Audience profiles built or voiced with AI that teams can question in plain language, ideally grounded in real behavioral data rather than invented.
What are AI personas? IntelligenceAI visibility score
A metric that tracks how often and how favorably AI models mention, rank, and recommend a brand compared with its competitors.
What is an AI visibility score? DataAnomaly detection
Using statistical models to flag when a metric moves outside its normal pattern, so real problems and breakouts surface without someone watching every dashboard.
What is anomaly detection in marketing? IntelligenceAnswer engine optimization (AEO)
Structuring content so search features, voice assistants, and AI tools can lift it as the direct answer to a question.
What is answer engine optimization (AEO)? PlanningAudience segmentation
Dividing a market or customer base into groups that share traits, behaviors, or needs, so each group can be reached with the right message and media.
What is audience segmentation? PlanningBayesian marketing mix modeling
Marketing mix modeling that combines prior knowledge with observed data and reports a range of likely results, not a single point estimate.
What is Bayesian marketing mix modeling? IntelligenceBrand equity
The value a brand adds beyond the product itself: how strongly people know, trust, and choose it, and how that preference shows up in pricing power and sales.
What is brand equity? IntelligenceBrand tracking
Measuring brand health over time, such as awareness, perception, and preference, to see whether brand investment is working.
What is brand tracking? PlanningBudget pacing
Tracking how fast a campaign is spending against its budget and timeline, so it neither runs out early nor finishes with money unspent.
What is budget pacing in advertising? Platform & AIBusiness growth platform
One connected system that links a business's data, intelligence, planning, and execution on a shared foundation, so every decision and action builds on the last.
What is a business growth platform? IntelligenceCompetitive intelligence
The ongoing practice of tracking competitors and market shifts, then using what you learn to make better business decisions.
What is competitive intelligence? DataComposable martech
Building a marketing technology stack from a stable core plus modular tools that can be added, swapped, or removed as strategy changes.
What is composable martech? DataConsent mode
A Google feature that adjusts how its tags behave based on each visitor's cookie consent choices, and models some conversions when consent is not given.
What is consent mode? IntelligenceConversational analytics
Asking questions of business data in plain language and getting answers, tables, and charts back, without writing queries or building dashboards.
What is conversational analytics? DataConversions API (CAPI)
An ad platform's server-to-server connection for sending conversion events directly, which keeps measurement working when browser signals are lost.
What is a Conversions API (CAPI)? DataCookie deprecation
The broad shift away from third-party cookies for tracking people across websites, driven by browser restrictions, privacy rules, and changing consumer expectations.
What is cookie deprecation? IntelligenceCreative analytics
Connecting the elements inside an ad, like imagery, message, pacing, and format, to how audiences respond, so teams learn why an ad worked.
What is creative analytics? ActivateCreative automation
Software that produces ad versions from an approved design, handling resizing, localization, and data swaps while people control the creative.
What is creative automation? IntelligenceCreative fatigue
The drop in an ad's effectiveness as the same audience sees it again and again, even though nothing about the ad has changed.
What is creative fatigue? IntelligenceCreative scorecard
A structured way to rate an ad against the creative features linked to stronger performance, so teams can see what to keep and what to fix.
What is a creative scorecard? DataData clean room
A secure environment where two or more companies match and analyze their data together without either side seeing the other's raw customer records.
What is a data clean room? DataData freshness
How recently data was updated compared with the activity it describes, which decides whether reports and alerts reflect today or last week.
What is data freshness? DataData governance
The rules, roles, and controls that decide how data is defined, accessed, changed, and checked, so people can trust and use it safely.
What is data governance? DataData lineage
A record of where each piece of data came from and every step that shaped it, so any number can be traced back to its source.
What is data lineage? IntelligenceDecision intelligence
Using data, analytics, and AI to support specific business decisions, connecting what the data shows to what a team should do next.
What is decision intelligence? DataDeterministic data foundation
A data layer where the same inputs always produce the same outputs, with every mapping and definition explicit, version-controlled, and traceable.
What is a deterministic data foundation? PlanningDiminishing returns
The point where each additional dollar spent in a channel produces less incremental result than the dollar before it.
What are diminishing returns in marketing? ActivateDynamic creative optimization (DCO)
Ad technology that assembles creative from interchangeable parts when an ad is served and shifts delivery toward the best-performing combinations.
What is dynamic creative optimization (DCO)? DataEnhanced conversions
A Google Ads feature that sends hashed first-party customer data, such as email addresses, with conversions to improve how they are matched to ads.
What are enhanced conversions? DataFirst-party data
Data a business collects directly from its own customers and channels, such as purchases, site activity, and CRM records, with their knowledge.
What is first-party data? IntelligenceGenerative engine optimization (GEO)
Shaping content, facts, and brand signals so AI models like chat assistants find, trust, and cite a brand when they generate answers.
What is generative engine optimization (GEO)? PlanningGeo-lift testing
An experiment that changes marketing in some regions and holds others steady, then compares results to measure the true lift marketing caused.
What is geo-lift testing? Platform & AIGoverned AI
AI that runs on governed data, within defined permissions, with audit trails and human approval, so its answers and actions can be checked and trusted.
What is governed AI? Platform & AIHuman-in-the-loop AI
AI that keeps people involved at the points that matter, so experts guide the work and approve consequential decisions before anything goes live.
What is human-in-the-loop AI? PlanningIncrementality
The extra result marketing caused, compared with what would have happened anyway without it, usually measured with a test and a control group.
What is incrementality in marketing? Intelligencellms.txt
A proposed plain-text file at a website's root that summarizes the site for AI models. It's a convention, not an adopted standard.
What is llms.txt? PlanningMarginal ROAS
The revenue produced by the next dollar of spend in a channel, as opposed to the average return on every dollar already spent.
What is marginal ROAS? PlanningMarketing attribution
Assigning credit for a conversion or sale to the marketing touchpoints that came before it, so teams can see which channels contributed.
What is marketing attribution? ActivateMarketing automation with AI
Using AI to build and run multi-step marketing work, like pulling data, writing analysis, and delivering results, from a plain-language description.
What is marketing automation with AI? DataMarketing ETL
Extracting data from ad platforms and marketing tools, transforming it into a consistent shape, and loading it where teams can analyze it.
What is marketing ETL? PlanningMarketing mix modeling (MMM)
A statistical method that estimates how much each channel and outside factor contributed to sales, so teams can plan where to invest next.
What is marketing mix modeling? ActivateMarketing operations (MOps)
The people, processes, data, and technology that keep marketing running: planning, QA, reporting, budgets, and the tools that connect them.
What is marketing operations (MOps)? ActivateMCP server
A service that uses the Model Context Protocol to give AI assistants and agents secure, structured access to tools and data in another system.
What is an MCP server? PlanningMedia efficiency ratio (MER)
Total revenue divided by total marketing spend across all channels, a simple top-down view of how efficiently marketing turns into revenue.
What is media efficiency ratio (MER)? PlanningMedia mix optimization
Finding the split of budget across channels, markets, and time that is most likely to reach a goal, then adjusting it as results come in.
What is media mix optimization? DataMetrics layer
The part of a data stack where each KPI is defined once, with its formula, filters, and grain, so every tool calculates it the same way.
What is a metrics layer? ActivateModel Context Protocol (MCP)
An open standard that defines how AI applications connect to outside tools and data, so one integration works across many AI clients.
What is the Model Context Protocol (MCP)? PlanningMulti-touch vs. last-click attribution
Last-click gives all credit for a conversion to the final touchpoint. Multi-touch spreads credit across every tracked touchpoint in the journey.
What is the difference between multi-touch and last-click attribution? PlanningPlan vs. actuals
Comparing what a plan said would be spent and achieved with what actually happened, so teams can see variance and adjust in time.
What is plan vs. actuals in media planning? Platform & AIPoint solutions vs. a connected platform
The choice between separate single-purpose tools, each with its own data and logic, and one platform where products share a foundation and hand work to each other.
What is the difference between point solutions and a connected platform? PlanningPre-launch creative testing
Evaluating an ad before it goes live, so teams can predict how it is likely to perform and improve it without spending media to learn.
What is pre-launch creative testing? IntelligenceRetail media measurement
Measuring how advertising on retailer sites and networks drives product views, sales, and share, ideally read against how the whole category moved.
What is retail media measurement? IntelligenceRetrieval-augmented generation (RAG)
A technique where an AI model first retrieves relevant information from trusted sources, then generates its answer from that information instead of memory alone.
What is retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)? IntelligenceSelf-service analytics
Letting business users explore data and answer their own questions, without writing code or waiting for an analyst to build a report.
What is self-service analytics? DataSemantic layer
A shared set of business definitions between raw data and the tools that use it, so every report, dashboard, and AI tool calculates each metric the same way.
What is a semantic layer? DataServer-side tracking
Sending conversion and event data from a business's own server to ad platforms, instead of relying only on browser pixels that ad blockers and privacy limits interrupt.
What is server-side tracking? IntelligenceShare of LLM Presence
How AI models describe, rank, and recommend a brand compared with its competitors, and how that visibility changes over time.
What is Share of LLM Presence? IntelligenceShare of search
A brand's share of all branded search volume in its category, used as a fast, unaided signal of brand demand.
What is share of search? IntelligenceShare of shelf
How much of a category's visibility a brand holds at a retailer, in store or online, compared with competing brands.
What is share of shelf? IntelligenceShare of voice
A brand's share of the total advertising, media presence, or conversation in its category, compared with its competitors.
What is share of voice? DataSignal loss
The gap between what customers actually do and what measurement and ad platforms can see, caused by browser limits, ad blockers, and privacy changes.
What is signal loss in marketing? DataSingle source of truth
An agreed, governed version of the data and its definitions that every team and tool uses, so the same question gets the same answer wherever it's asked.
What is a single source of truth? DataUnified data platform for marketing
One governed place that connects marketing platforms, regions, and business systems, applies shared definitions, and keeps the data monitored and current.
What is a unified data platform for marketing? IntelligenceZero-click search
A search that ends on the results page because the answer is shown there, so the searcher never clicks through to a website.
What is zero-click search? DataZero-party data
Information a customer intentionally and proactively shares with a brand, such as preferences, quiz answers, or stated purchase plans.
What is zero-party data?No terms match that search yet. Ask us about it.
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