Glossary

“Ads” (short for advertisements) refers to paid advertising served online: on search engines, social networks, websites and apps.

Each platform has its own ad network and tool: Google Ads, Meta Ads for Facebook and Instagram, LinkedIn Ads, TikTok Ads. You choose a goal, a target audience, a budget and formats, then pay per click, per impression or per view, tracking results day by day. Example: a car dealer in Cayenne advertising its open house can target residents of the Île de Cayenne and Kourou, without spending a single euro elsewhere.

In the French Caribbean and French Guiana alike, nobody says “we’re advertising” anymore; it’s “we’re running Ads.” The budget, however, hasn’t changed its name.

See alsoSEARetargetingTikTok Ads

An AI agent is a program, built on a language model, that doesn’t just answer: it acts (searching, filling in, sending) to reach a goal.

Where a conversational assistant produces text, an agent uses tools: a calendar, an inbox, a CRM, a document base. The MCP protocol exists precisely to connect these tools to AI. Example: an agent that spots quotes left unanswered for two weeks and drafts the follow-up. The more it acts on its own, the more you need to limit its permissions and keep a human to approve what goes out.

An AI agent isn’t James Bond: it doesn’t get a license to kill, only access rights. Choose them carefully.

See alsoLLMMarketing automation

AI Overviews are the summaries written by Google’s AI at the top of the results; AI Mode is its fully conversational search mode.

Launched in the United States in 2024 for Overviews and in 2025 for AI Mode, they answer the question directly, citing a few sources. The consequence: fewer clicks to websites. The Pew Research Center found that users click on a result in 8% of visits when an AI overview appears, versus 15% without one. Being one of the cited sources becomes a goal in its own right.

Google no longer just sends you to the right page: it reads you the summary. Like a friend who tells you how the movie ends.

See alsoGEOZero-click searchSEO

Analytics refers to collecting and analyzing traffic and behavior data (visits, clicks, conversions) used to understand and improve a website or a campaign.

The most widely used tool is Google Analytics 4 (GA4), which replaced Universal Analytics, discontinued in July 2023. It shows where visitors come from, what they do and what prompts them to take action. In Europe, part of this measurement depends on the consent given in the cookie banner: a falling number doesn’t always mean a falling audience.

It’s not a new Olympic sport. Think of it as a GPS: it tells you where you are and helps you figure out where to go.

See alsoKPICMP

Brainstorming is a group creativity session that aims to produce as many ideas as possible, without judging them, before sorting out the best ones.

The method was popularized in the 1950s by the American advertising executive Alex Osborn. Its golden rule: quantity first, criticism later. At an agency, it is used to find a name, a campaign concept or a messaging angle, and the best ideas are then tested against the brief.

Don’t worry, it has nothing to do with a storm in your head. More like a shower of ideas under a clear blue sky.

See alsoBriefMoodboard

The brief is the document that sets the framework for a project: the context, the goal, the target audience, the message, the budget, the timeline and what is expected of the agency.

It is the starting point of every engagement, and often the reason projects go off track when it is vague. A good brief isn’t necessarily long: it says what needs to change, for whom, and by when. In Overseas France, always specify the target territory: French Guiana, Martinique and Réunion have neither the same media nor the same cultural references. The same reflex applies to AI: a good brief makes a good prompt.

Despite the name, it’s not underwear. It’s our bible for every project.

See alsoTarget audience

A buyer persona is a semi-fictional portrait of a typical customer, built from real data: their profile, their needs, their objections and how they research before buying.

You give it a first name, an age, a job and habits, so the whole team talks about the same person. Example: “Murielle, 42, manager of a store in Baie-Mahault, who compares offers on her phone in the evening.” Two or three personas are usually enough: beyond that, you stop making choices.

A very fancy way of saying “ideal customer.” But an ideal customer with a first name is already easier to win over.

See alsoTarget audienceCustomer journey

Buzz marketing aims to spark fast, widespread word of mouth around a brand, usually through surprising, funny or offbeat content.

Buzz happens on social media, but also in real life: a street stunt, an unusual object, a video that circulates in family messaging groups. It is unpredictable and can backfire on the brand. So good buzz is prepared like a campaign: a clear message, a specific audience, and a planned response to criticism.

A great name for a mascot, we’ll grant you that. Here, though, buzz spreads more like wildfire.

See alsoEarned mediaInfluencer marketing

A call-to-action (CTA) is a button, link or phrase that invites visitors to take a specific action: request a quote, sign up, buy, call.

A good CTA says exactly what will happen (“Get the guide” rather than “Submit”) and doesn’t compete for attention with three other buttons. It sits where the decision is made, and it gets tested: the verb, the color, the position. On a landing page, it is often what makes the difference.

No, it’s not a rallying cry for superheroes. But the papaya “Contact us” button at the bottom of this page is one.

See alsoLanding pageUser Experience

The target audience is the group of people a communication aims to reach: those the message speaks to and from whom a reaction is expected.

It is defined by criteria (age, territory, occupation, habits, needs), then refined with personas. A target that is too broad dilutes the message: “everyone in Guadeloupe” is not a target audience; “parents of schoolchildren in Pointe-à-Pitre looking for tutoring” is. A distinction is often made between the primary target, who decides, and the secondary target, who influences the decision.

No, it’s not a game of darts. Then again, it is all about aiming true.

See alsoBuyer personaBriefTranscreation

A CMP (consent management platform) is the tool that displays the cookie banner, records visitors’ choices and passes them on to analytics and advertising tools.

In France, the CNIL (the French data protection authority) requires that refusing be as easy as accepting, and that no non-essential tracker be set before the choice is made. The CMP keeps proof of it: who consented to what, and when. The flip side: every refusal removes visits from your statistics, hence the value of analytics configured to respect those choices.

That banner everyone closes without reading? That’s the one. We promise, it has a real job.

See alsoThird-party cookieFirst-party data

Community management means engaging and moderating a brand’s community on social media: posting, replying, listening, and handling crises when they arise.

The community manager brings the editorial strategy to life day to day; the social media manager oversees the broader strategy, paid campaigns and results. The job requires responsiveness and tact: a public reply to an unhappy customer is read by hundreds of others. In a territory where everyone soon knows everyone, every reply counts double.

The community manager is a bit like the village mayor: welcoming, answering, rallying, and putting out fires when things heat up.

See alsoEngagement rateSocial proof

Content marketing means creating and distributing useful content (articles, guides, videos, podcasts) to attract an audience and earn its trust, rather than selling head-on.

The principle: help before you sell. A practical guide, a tutorial or a case study attracts people who are already asking the question, and establishes the brand as a reference. It is long-term work, measured in months rather than days. This glossary is an example: it answers a question, and it hasn’t sold you anything yet.

A gentle seduction tactic: a bit like writing a love letter to your customers. A letter that does them a favor.

See alsoSEOGEO

A third-party cookie is a small file set by a site other than the one you are visiting, usually an ad network, to recognize you from one site to the next.

It is what made it possible to follow you everywhere with the same ad. Safari has blocked them, and Firefox has partitioned them, by default for several years; Google, after several delays, gave up on removing them from Chrome. In Europe, they remain subject to consent. Brands are therefore increasingly relying on their own data, known as first-party data.

It’s not the kind you eat, and nobody invited it. More like the cousin who follows you from party to party.

See alsoFirst-party dataRetargetingCMP

The customer journey is the full set of steps a customer goes through, from discovering a brand to buying, then to loyalty and recommendation.

It is mapped touchpoint by touchpoint: an ad seen on Instagram, a Google search, a store visit, a phone call, a review left afterward. Every point of friction is a chance to lose the customer. In Overseas France, the journey often includes steps that get overlooked elsewhere, such as shipping costs and delivery times.

A trip without luggage, but with connections: at each one, the customer can get off.

See alsoUser ExperienceBuyer persona

First-party data is the data a brand collects itself, directly from its customers: on its website, through its forms, its sales, its newsletter or its loyalty card.

As third-party cookies decline, it is becoming the foundation of marketing: it is more reliable, and the brand controls how it is used. It still has to be collected with clear consent, kept only where useful and protected, as the GDPR requires. Example: the list of customers enrolled in a retailer’s loyalty card program, which lets it tell them about a promotion without going through an ad network.

Homemade data, like rum punch: you know exactly what’s in it.

See alsoThird-party cookieCMP

The EAA (European Accessibility Act) is the European directive that, since June 28, 2025, makes accessibility mandatory for many digital products and services, including in the private sector.

It covers, among others, e-commerce, banking services, passenger transport, e-books and communication services. Service microenterprises (fewer than 10 employees and no more than €2 million in revenue or balance sheet total) are exempt. In France, the technical reference remains the RGAA, aligned with the international WCAG guidelines. In practice, a Martinique retailer’s online store must be usable with a keyboard and a screen reader, with high-contrast text and described images.

It’s not a new airline. But as with a flight, there are now rules for getting everyone on board.

See alsoUser ExperienceEco-design

Earned media refers to the visibility a brand gets without paying for it: press articles, shares, mentions, reviews and recommendations.

It is grouped with two cousins: paid media (purchased visibility: advertising, sponsorship) and owned media (the channels the brand owns: website, newsletter, social accounts). All three work together: content published on your channels, boosted by a little advertising, can end up picked up by the local press. Earned media is the most credible, because it isn’t the brand talking about itself.

Mentions, free shares: ring a bell? It’s the visibility you can’t buy: you have to earn it.

See alsoSocial proofBuzz marketing

Greenwashing means giving a misleading green image of a product, service or company, through words, labels or visuals that exaggerate its environmental credentials.

It is already a misleading commercial practice under the French Consumer Code. Directive (EU) 2024/825, whose rules have applied since September 27, 2026, goes further: it bans generic claims (“eco-friendly,” “green,” “environmentally friendly”) without proof of recognized performance, sustainability labels based neither on a certification scheme nor on a public authority, and claims that a product is carbon neutral based on offsetting. The rule becomes simple: say what you do, with evidence to back it up.

Painting a pickup truck green doesn’t make it electric. Communication works the same way.

See alsoEco-design

Eco-designing a digital service means reducing its environmental impact from the design stage: less data, less computing, lighter pages, devices that last longer.

In France, the reference is the RGESN (general framework for the eco-design of digital services), published in May 2024 by Arcep and Arcom with ADEME, the CNIL, DINUM and Inria: 78 criteria. In practice: compressed images, fewer autoplay videos, lean code, carefully chosen hosting. It is also a speed gain, valuable on a slow connection, in a remote town in French Guiana as anywhere else.

An eco-designed site is like a well-packed suitcase: everything you need, nothing extra, and it fits in the overhead bin.

See alsoEAAGreenwashing

The engagement rate measures the share of an audience that interacts with a piece of content: likes, comments, shares, saves, clicks.

The most common formula: the number of interactions divided by reach (or by the number of followers, depending on the tool), multiplied by 100. Example: 120 interactions for 4,000 people reached gives a rate of 3%. Always specify the calculation before comparing two figures. A small, highly engaged account is often worth more than a large account that no longer responds.

The higher it is, the more you’re the star of the party. A star people listen to, not just look at.

See alsoKPICommunity management

GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) covers the techniques that help content get cited in AI answers: ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini or Google’s AI Overviews.

The term comes from a study by researchers at Princeton and IIT Delhi (2023): citing sources and adding statistics and quotations increased a text’s visibility in generative answers by up to 40%. In practice, GEO extends SEO: a clear answer in the first sentence, accurate and dated information, visible expertise, a technically clean site. Google itself states that no special optimization is needed for its AI features. The stakes are concrete: being the source the AI cites when someone asks “where can I buy solar panels in Guadeloupe?”

We used to make eyes at Google. Now we have to win over its assistant too.

See alsoSEOAI Overviews and AI Modellms.txt

A hallucination is a false answer produced by a generative AI with the confidence of a correct one: an invented figure, a source that doesn’t exist, an imaginary quote.

It stems from how language models work: they predict the most likely text, not the truest. The risk drops when the AI works from your own documents and is asked for its sources, but it doesn’t disappear. Hence a simple rule: any content produced with AI is reread and checked by a human before it goes out.

AI doesn’t lie: it improvises. With a self-assurance many an uncle would envy at Sunday lunch.

See alsoLLMGenerative AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to programs capable of performing tasks that normally require human intelligence: recognizing an image, understanding a text, predicting, deciding or creating.

The term covers very different techniques: spam filters and video platform recommendations have been part of it for a long time. Since ChatGPT arrived in late 2022, people mostly think of generative AI, which writes, draws or speaks. In Europe, the AI Act regulates these uses according to their level of risk. For a business, the real question isn’t “do we need AI?” but “for which specific problem?”

In 2023, we wrote that it could “sometimes even laugh at your jokes.” It has made progress, but we’re keeping the humor for ourselves.

See alsoGenerative AIAI agent

Generative AI is a form of artificial intelligence that produces new content (text, images, sounds, videos, code) from a written or spoken prompt.

ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Mistral’s Le Chat for text, Midjourney or Firefly for images: these tools learned from vast volumes of data and produce whatever seems most plausible to them. At an agency, they speed up ideation, first drafts, adaptations and translations. They replace neither strategy, nor fact-checking, nor an art director’s eye, and the result depends on the prompt, just as with a brief.

It writes a poem in ten seconds. It still can’t tell whether it’s any good: that’s your job.

See alsoLLMHallucinationIA

Influencer marketing means working with content creators who have a social media following to introduce a brand, product or service to their community.

In France, the law of June 9, 2023, amended by an ordinance of November 6, 2024, regulates commercial influence: a paid collaboration, whether in money or free products, must be clearly disclosed with the label “Publicité” (advertisement), “Collaboration commerciale” (paid partnership) or an equivalent label, and certain promotions are prohibited. The right partner isn’t always the biggest account: a creator followed by a few thousand people on their island often hits closer to the mark than a national celebrity.

Influencers are the personalities of social media. Well chosen, they put your brand in the spotlight, not in the line of fire.

See alsoSocial proofEarned media

A KPI (key performance indicator) is a figure chosen in advance to measure whether an action is meeting its goal: quote requests, sales, cost per lead, conversions.

A good KPI follows directly from the goal: to fill a concert hall, it’s the number of tickets sold that counts, not the number of likes. Three to five KPIs are enough to steer a campaign. They are set from the brief, with their baseline value, so you know where you’re starting from.

KPIs are our friends: kind teachers who grade us without ever punishing us. Well, almost.

See alsoROIAnalyticsEngagement rate

A landing page is a web page designed for a single action, where visitors arrive after clicking an ad, an email or a link.

Unlike the home page, it doesn’t show the whole site: one message, one proof point, a form or a button. Well built and designed for its local audience, it turns a casual visitor into a customer. Our article on the subject details the method.

It’s your storefront: if it’s well done, people come in.

See alsoCall-to-action

Lead generation covers the actions used to collect the contact details of people interested in an offer, so you can follow up and turn them into customers.

A lead is a prospect who has raised their hand: they downloaded a guide, requested a quote, filled out a form. The levers: useful content, landing pages, targeted campaigns, trade shows, webinars. Leads to call back right away are then separated from those that still need convincing. A short form that asks only for the essentials generally converts better than a long one.

Put like that, it sounds like a science fiction movie. It’s gentler: mangoes falling into your hands (strategically) when you’re sitting under the right mango tree.

See alsoLanding pageMarketing automation

An LLM (large language model) is an AI program trained on vast amounts of text to understand a request and respond in everyday language.

It is the engine behind the assistants you know: the GPT models behind ChatGPT, Claude from Anthropic, Gemini from Google, or the models of the French company Mistral AI. It works by predicting, one word fragment at a time, the most likely continuation of a text. So it excels at writing, summarizing, translating or classifying, and it can be wrong with great confidence. It only “knows” what it has learned or what it is given.

It has read a good chunk of the internet. Which explains a few things.

See alsoGenerative AIHallucinationAI agent

llms.txt is a text file placed at the root of a website that offers AI systems a summary of the site and a list of its important pages.

The idea, launched in 2024 by Jeremy Howard (Answer.AI), borrows from robots.txt: guiding machines. The file costs next to nothing to produce, and many sites have adopted it. But Google has said that, to its knowledge, no AI service uses it. Do it if you like, without expecting miracles: clear pages matter far more.

The file everyone talks about and almost no one reads. A bit like terms and conditions.

See alsoGEOSEO

Marketing automation means handing repetitive marketing tasks over to software, triggered by contacts’ behavior: emails, follow-ups, segmentation, posts.

Example: someone downloads a guide from your website; they receive it right away, then a practical tip three days later, then an invitation to book a meeting if they opened the first two messages. Tools such as HubSpot, Brevo or Mailchimp run these sequences on their own. AI agents add a step: they no longer just follow a sequence, they can write and adapt the message.

An assistant that never takes a break. In fact, it’s like coffee: it keeps you productive without the effort.

See alsoLead generationAI agent

A moodboard is a visual board that brings together images, colors, materials, typefaces and references to set the mood of a project before creating it.

It is the first tool of art direction: it helps everyone agree on an intent before designing a logo or shooting a video. Two or three are often presented, in different directions, so the client can choose. Once approved, it serves as a compass for the whole team.

It’s not a surfboard (we’d have liked that, between Le Moule and Saint-Leu). It’s a creative compass.

See alsoWording

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures how likely your customers are to recommend you, based on a single question scored from 0 to 10.

The question, created in 2003 by Fred Reichheld (Bain & Company): “How likely is it that you would recommend our company to a friend or colleague?” Scores of 9 and 10 are promoters, 0 to 6 are detractors. The NPS is calculated as follows: percentage of promoters minus percentage of detractors; it ranges from −100 to +100. Example: 50% promoters and 20% detractors give an NPS of 30.

A secret code? Nope. The higher the score, the more your customers love you. The lower it is… you know the rest.

See alsoKPISocial proof

Personal branding is the deliberate building of a person’s image, often a business leader or an expert, to make their skills, values and way of working known.

The term was popularized in 1997 by Tom Peters’s article “The Brand Called You.” Today it plays out on LinkedIn, at conferences and in the press: regular, consistent and sincere communication. For a small business, the leader’s voice is often its first medium, especially in places where people do business with someone before doing business with a brand.

The art of selling yourself without selling yourself short. You become the star of your own movie, and you write the script.

See alsoWordingEarned media

A zero-click search is a search that ends without any website being visited, because the answer appears directly on the results page.

Weather, opening hours, definitions, business profiles, AI answers: more and more questions are answered on the search engine itself. Websites lose visits, but not necessarily visibility: a well-maintained business profile (hours, address, reviews) brings in customers without generating a single click. That holds for any local business, in Cayenne as in Montpellier.

This glossary is a good candidate: you may find this definition without ever landing here. If you’re reading these lines, thanks for clicking.

See alsoAI Overviews and AI ModeGEOSEO

Retargeting is an advertising technique that shows ads to people who have already visited your website or interacted with your brand.

Example: someone looks at a vacation package to Marie-Galante without booking; over the next few days, the ad for that trip follows them on social media. The technique is effective because it targets people who are already interested, but it relies on trackers: it requires the visitor’s consent and suffers from the decline of third-party cookies. Use it in moderation: seen ten times, the same ad annoys more than it convinces.

A bit like a chase, but with charm: you remind your visitors that they had good taste.

See alsoThird-party cookieCMPFirst-party data

ROI (return on investment) measures what an expense brought in compared with what it cost.

The formula: (gain − cost) ÷ cost. Example: a €2,000 campaign that generates €5,000 in margin shows an ROI of 150%. In advertising, ROAS (return on ad spend) is also tracked: the revenue generated for every euro of advertising. The two don’t tell the same story: a flattering ROAS can hide a negative ROI if margins are thin.

The last judgment for every expense. Positive: champagne. Negative: back to square one.

See alsoKPISEA

SEA (search engine advertising) is advertising on search engines: paid ads displayed at the top of the results for the keywords you choose.

On Google Ads or Microsoft Advertising, you usually pay per click, through an auction system. The advantage: immediate visibility that you can pause or scale up at any time. Geographic targeting is invaluable in Overseas France: an ad can target Guadeloupe without spilling over into Martinique. Unlike SEO, the visibility stops as soon as the budget stops.

If SEO is the art of charming Google, SEA is the art of reserving a front-row seat. A paid seat, that is.

See alsoSEOROI

SEO (search engine optimization) covers the techniques that improve a website’s position in search engines’ organic results.

It rests on three pillars: technical (a fast site that crawlers can read), content (pages that genuinely answer questions) and authority (links and mentions from other sites). Since AI-generated answers arrived, it also helps get cited by them: that’s GEO, its extension. Locally, a well-maintained business profile and one page per territory often matter more than a national ranking.

The art of making eyes at Google. Yes, even Google has its little preferences, and it changes them several times a year.

See alsoGEOSEAAI Overviews and AI Mode

Social proof is our tendency to trust what others have already chosen; in communication, it means the reviews, testimonials and references that reassure.

The principle was described by the psychologist Robert Cialdini in his book Influence (1984). On a website, it takes the form of customer reviews, signed testimonials, case studies, client logos or labels. Social proof must be true and verifiable: in France, publishing fake reviews is a misleading commercial practice.

Your merit badges. Like in the Scouts, but signed by your customers.

See alsoNet Promoter ScoreEarned media

TikTok Ads is TikTok’s advertising platform: it serves sponsored videos in the “For You” feed, among creators’ videos.

Ads there take the shape of the network: short, vertical videos that need to hook viewers from the very first frames. The ad platform lists French Guiana, Guadeloupe and Martinique, but these territories are not available for paid reach campaigns; Réunion and Mayotte are not listed at all. To run a video in our territories, we therefore use other platforms, such as Meta Ads or YouTube ads through Google Ads, and keep TikTok for the brand’s own posts and collaborations with local creators.

In the meantime, TikTok does in Overseas France what it does best without a budget: word of mouth, in vertical format.

See alsoAdsInfluencer marketing

Transcreation means adapting a brand message to another language and another culture, keeping its intent and effect rather than its exact words.

A literal translation can raise a smile, or fall flat. Transcreation reworks the slogan, the images, the humor and the references to produce the same effect on a different audience. In our territories, this is an everyday challenge: Guadeloupean Creole and Martinican Creole are not interchangeable, and a French Guiana brand targeting neighboring Brazil or Suriname speaks Portuguese or Dutch. Even in French, a nod designed for mainland France doesn’t always land in the French Caribbean.

Translate the French “ça va le faire” (roughly, “it’ll work out”) word for word into English, and you can be sure it won’t.

See alsoWordingTarget audience

User experience (UX) refers to the quality of what a person goes through when using a website, an app or a service: is it simple, fast, clear, pleasant?

UX design handles the logic (the journey, the order of information, the steps of a form); UI design handles the interface (buttons, colors, typography). Good UX is tested with real users, on real phones and real connections: a site designed on the office fiber connection can become painful on 4G deep in a rural town. Accessibility is part of it.

Switch 2, PS5, UX… Sorry, it’s still not a game console. But when it’s done well, people come back to it just as often.

See alsoCustomer journeyEAACall-to-action

Wording is a brand’s choice of words: its headlines, its slogans, its buttons, its messages, and the way it addresses its audience.

It reflects the brand’s tone (informal or formal address, humor or restraint, short or long sentences) and is recorded in the brand book so it stays consistent from one medium to the next. Example: “Contact us” and “Shall we talk?” lead to the same form, but not to the same relationship.

An elegant word for a delicate art: the poet’s, but with a business goal.

See alsoTranscreationMoodboard