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Strategic Marketing in an AI World.
By Patrick Gilbert.

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Glossary

Marketing and AI terminology defined with context from the book.

ABCDIMPRSTZ

A

AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the strategy of ensuring that AI-driven search systems accurately and favorably represent your brand when generating answers to user queries. It goes beyond traditional SEO by addressing how AI models synthesize information from across the internet to form opinions about brands, products, and services.

B

Broad Match

Broad match is the default and most expansive keyword match type in Google Ads. It allows ads to show for searches that are semantically related to the keyword, including synonyms, related queries, and variations that do not contain the original keyword text. Google's AI interprets the intent behind the search and matches it to your keyword based on meaning rather than exact wording.

Brand Equity

Brand equity is the commercial value that derives from consumer recognition, recall, and positive associations with a brand. It represents the financial premium a company can command in the marketplace simply because customers know and remember the brand name. Strong brand equity makes consumers more likely to choose your product over competitors, even when alternatives offer similar features or pricing.

Brand Salience

Brand salience is the propensity for a brand to be noticed or come to mind in buying situations. It represents your brand's share of people's minds, defined by the quantity and quality of memory links to and from that brand. Salience determines whether your brand springs to mind when customers have a need, making it the foundation of mental availability.

C

Category Entry Points

Category Entry Points (CEPs) are the mental triggers or cues that bring a product category to mind in buying situations. Developed by researcher Jenni Romaniuk, CEPs represent the moments when consumers realize they have a need that could be satisfied by purchasing something. The brands most strongly linked to these entry points enjoy higher mental availability and greater likelihood of consideration.

Conversion Lag

Conversion lag is the time delay between when a customer interacts with an ad and when they complete a conversion action. This delay can range from hours to months, depending on the product complexity and purchase decision timeline. The lag creates measurement blind spots that systematically favor immediate-response campaigns over brand-building activities that drive long-term growth.

D

Demand Capture

Demand capture is a marketing approach focused on converting buyers who already have purchase intent. It targets people actively searching for products, comparing options, or ready to buy, using channels like paid search, shopping ads, retargeting, and conversion-optimized landing pages to turn existing demand into revenue.

Demand Generation

Demand generation is the practice of creating future demand by building brand awareness, mental availability, and positive associations with potential buyers who are not yet in-market. Rather than targeting people who are actively searching for a solution, demand generation invests in reaching a broader audience to ensure the brand is remembered and recalled when a buying situation eventually arises.

Distinctive Brand Assets

Distinctive brand assets (DBAs) are the sensory and stylistic elements, beyond the brand name itself, that consumers use to identify a brand. These include logos, colors, shapes, packaging, sounds, characters, taglines, and rituals. Developed by [Jenni Romaniuk](https://www.marketingscience.info/) at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, the framework argues that brands grow by being easier to recognize and recall, not by proving functional superiority.

Double Jeopardy Law

The double jeopardy law states that smaller brands face two disadvantages simultaneously: they have fewer customers and those customers buy from them less frequently than customers of larger brands. This marketing principle, discovered by [Andrew Ehrenberg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Ehrenberg), explains why market share leaders maintain their dominance not through superior loyalty but through broader market penetration.

I

Incrementality Testing

Incrementality testing is a controlled experimental methodology that measures the true causal impact of marketing activities by comparing business outcomes between test groups exposed to marketing and control groups that are not. Unlike attribution models that track correlation, incrementality testing reveals whether marketing campaigns actually drive additional sales or merely capture existing demand that would have occurred anyway.

M

Mental Availability

Mental availability is the probability that a brand will be noticed or come to mind in a buying situation. It is determined by the quantity and quality of memory structures linking the brand to purchase-relevant cues, known as category entry points. The concept was developed by Byron Sharp and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute as a core driver of brand growth.

Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM)

Marketing mix modeling is a top-down statistical approach that analyzes historical business data to measure the effectiveness of different marketing channels and tactics. MMM examines correlations between marketing spend and business outcomes while controlling for external factors like seasonality and economic conditions. It's primarily used for strategic budget allocation and planning decisions across quarters or years.

P

Physical Availability

Physical availability is the ease with which consumers can find and purchase a brand's product or service across the channels, platforms, and moments where buying decisions occur. In [Byron Sharp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_Sharp)'s model, it has three components: presence (being where the customer looks), relevance (carrying what they want), and prominence (being easy to spot). It is the counterpart to [mental availability](/learn/mental-availability) in driving brand growth.

Performance Max Campaigns

Performance Max (PMax) campaigns are Google's fully automated, AI-driven advertising format that optimizes across all Google properties simultaneously. Unlike traditional campaign types that require manual audience targeting and placement selection, PMax uses machine learning to automatically find the best combinations of audiences, creatives, and placements to achieve your conversion goals. The system represents Google's push toward maximum campaign liquidity, where the algorithm has unrestricted access to all available inventory and user signals.

R

ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)

ROAS is a marketing metric that measures the revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising, calculated as Revenue ÷ Ad Spend. While useful for measuring campaign efficiency, ROAS can mislead marketers by encouraging short-term optimization at the expense of long-term brand building and sustainable growth.

S

Satisficing

Satisficing is a decision-making strategy where consumers select options that meet their minimum acceptable criteria rather than seeking the optimal choice. Originally coined by Nobel laureate Herbert Simon, the term combines 'satisfy' and 'suffice,' describing how people make practical decisions when faced with too many options or limited time.

Smart Bidding

Google's suite of automated bidding strategies that use machine learning to optimize bids in real-time for conversions or conversion value. These algorithms process vast amounts of data signals to predict the likelihood of conversion for each auction, automatically adjusting bids to meet specified performance targets like Target CPA or Target ROAS.

T

The Long Tail

The long tail is a business and marketing concept, popularized by Chris Anderson in 2006, describing how the internet enables companies to profit from selling smaller quantities of many niche products rather than relying solely on mass-market hits. In marketing, it refers to the strategy of targeting highly specific, low-competition keywords, audiences, and product niches that aggregate into meaningful revenue.

Z

Zero-Click Search

A zero-click search occurs when a user's query is answered directly on the search engine results page, eliminating the need to click through to a third-party website. These answers appear through features like Google AI Overviews, featured snippets, knowledge panels, and People Also Ask boxes. The trend has accelerated with AI-driven search, where synthesized answers replace traditional blue links.