Plain-English definitions of the core terms for the Meta Certified Digital Marketing Associate (exam 100-101). Simplified for learning; Meta’s official documentation is authoritative.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Meta technologies | Meta’s family of apps and services used for advertising, mainly Facebook and Instagram. |
| Meta Blueprint | Meta’s official training and certification programme for advertising on its platforms. |
| Ads Manager | Meta’s main tool for creating, editing and reporting on ad campaigns. |
| Meta Business Suite | A free tool to manage a business’s Facebook and Instagram presence in one place. |
| Business Manager | A tool for organising ad accounts, Pages, people and payment methods for a business. |
| Facebook Page | A business’s public profile on Facebook; required before running most ads. |
| Campaign | The top level of an ad, where you choose the objective. |
| Ad set | The middle level, where you set audience, placement, budget and schedule. |
| Ad | The lowest level - the actual creative (image, video, copy, link) people see. |
| Campaign objective | The result you optimise for, such as awareness, traffic, engagement, leads or sales. |
| Core (saved) audience | An audience defined by demographics, interests, behaviours and location. |
| Custom Audience | An audience built from your own data, such as site visitors or a customer list. |
| Lookalike Audience | A new audience modelled on a source audience to find similar people. |
| Placement | Where an ad appears, such as Facebook Feed, Instagram Feed, Stories or Reels. |
| Budget | The amount you set to spend, either per day (daily) or over the run (lifetime). |
| Ad auction | The system that decides which ad to show and what it costs, based on bid, quality and estimated action. |
| Reach | The number of unique people who saw an ad. |
| Impressions | The total number of times an ad was shown (can include repeats). |
| CPM | Cost per 1,000 impressions. |
| CPC | Cost per click. |
| CTR | Click-through rate - clicks divided by impressions. |
| Conversion | A tracked valuable action, such as a purchase or a lead. |
| ROAS | Return on ad spend - revenue generated divided by amount spent. |
| Meta Pixel | A piece of code on a website that tracks actions for measurement and optimisation. |
| A/B test | Comparing two versions of an ad or setting to see which performs better. |