Health & performance marketing glossary
The metrics and rules that decide whether a health brand scales profitably - defined in plain English, every example drawn from real health verticals.
AOV (Average Order Value)
Average revenue per order.
Blended CAC
Acquisition cost across all channels, including organic.
CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)
What it costs to acquire one paying customer or patient.
CAC Payback Period
How many months of margin it takes to earn back acquisition cost.
CAPI (Conversions API)
Server-side event sending that recovers conversions the browser pixel misses.
Churn Rate
The share of customers who cancel in a period.
Contribution Margin
Revenue left after variable costs - what’s available to cover CAC and overhead.
CPC (Cost Per Click)
Cost per ad click.
CPM (Cost Per Mille)
Cost per 1,000 ad impressions.
Creative Fatigue
The performance decay as the same audience sees an ad too often.
Creative Testing
Systematically testing ad variants to find and scale winners.
HIPAA-Compliant Marketing
Running ads and tracking without illegally exposing protected health information.
Hook Rate (Thumb-Stop Ratio)
Share of impressions that watch the first 3 seconds of a video ad.
Incrementality
Whether ad spend actually caused a sale or just took credit for one.
iOS ATT (App Tracking Transparency)
Apple’s opt-in prompt that broke deterministic cross-app tracking on iPhone.
Landing Page Conversion Rate
Share of visitors who complete the primary action on the page.
LegitScript Certification
The third-party certification most platforms require for telehealth and pharmacy ads.
LTV (Lifetime Value)
Total gross profit a customer generates over their lifetime.
LTV:CAC Ratio
Lifetime value divided by acquisition cost - the core unit-economics health check.
MER (Marketing Efficiency Ratio)
Total revenue ÷ total marketing spend - the whole-business efficiency number.
Paid CAC
Acquisition cost from paid media only.
Payback Period
How long it takes a customer to repay their acquisition cost.
POAS (Profit on Ad Spend)
ROAS after cost of goods - the version that actually reflects profit.
Quiz Funnel
A guided-questionnaire landing experience that personalizes the offer before checkout.
Rebill / Retention Rate
The share of subscribers who successfully renew past their first order(s).
Retention Rate
The share of customers who keep subscribing or repurchasing.
ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)
Revenue generated per dollar of ad spend.
Server-Side Tracking
Sending conversion data server-to-server to recover attribution lost to iOS privacy.
Structure/Function Claim
A permitted supplement claim about supporting the body - not treating disease.
How to use this glossary
Every definition here is written for one reader: a health or telehealth operator deciding where the next dollar of ad spend goes. The entries fall into two families. The first is unit economics and paid media: CAC, LTV:CAC, MER, POAS, payback period, and the creative and funnel metrics (hook rate, creative fatigue, landing page conversion rate) that move them. The second is health-specific compliance and measurement: LegitScript certification, structure/function claims, HIPAA-compliant marketing, and the tracking layer (iOS ATT, CAPI, server-side tracking) that decides what you can measure and what you may legally send to an ad platform.
The metric entries pair with our free calculators: read the definition, then run your own numbers in the CAC calculator, LTV:CAC calculator, MER calculator, or POAS calculator, each pre-loaded with health benchmark context. The compliance entries pair with our advertising policy guides, which apply the same rules platform by platform: what GLP-1, TRT, telehealth, supplement, and med spa brands can and cannot say on Meta, Google, and TikTok. If a term you need is missing, it is likely covered in depth in a guide or on the blog.
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