WhatsApp Commerce Glossary
The vocabulary of running a business on WhatsApp in India — explained in plain English, with India-specific notes for each term. Use this as a reference when you read Meta’s docs, evaluate BSPs, or estimate WhatsApp costs for your business.
Adstock
A transformation that models marketing's lagged effect — exposure today drives conversions over many days, not just immediately.
Read full definitionAdstock Half-Life
The number of days for an ad's effect to decay to 50% of its initial impact.
Read full definitionAttribution
The process of assigning credit for a conversion to one or more marketing touches.
Read full definitionAuthentication Conversation
A WhatsApp message category exclusively for one-time passcodes (OTPs) and login/verification codes, sent via Meta's fixed-format authentication templates.
Read full definitionBayesian MMM
Marketing Mix Modeling implemented with Bayesian inference (typically MCMC sampling), producing posterior distributions over channel contributions instead of point estimates.
Read full definitionBudget Optimizer
A solver that proposes a per-channel budget allocation maximizing predicted total ROAS subject to constraints.
Read full definitionCAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)
Total marketing + sales spend divided by new customers acquired in the period.
Read full definitionCatalog Sync (Meta Commerce Manager)
The process of keeping a business's WhatsApp catalog in Meta Commerce Manager automatically up to date with its source-of-truth product data — prices, stock, images, and SKUs.
Read full definitionCausal Inference
Statistical methods that estimate causal effects from observational or experimental data.
Read full definitionChurn
The rate at which customers stop using your product over a period (typically monthly or annual).
Read full definitionClick-to-WhatsApp Ads
Facebook and Instagram ads that open a WhatsApp chat with the advertised business when clicked, instead of a website.
Read full definitionContextual Bandit
A multi-armed bandit that conditions arm choice on observable context features (time, audience, device).
Read full definitionConversation Category
One of four labels Meta assigns to a WhatsApp conversation — Marketing, Utility, Authentication, or Service — that determines its price and rules.
Read full definitionConversation-Based Pricing
Meta's pricing model for the WhatsApp Business API: businesses are charged per 24-hour conversation, with rates that depend on category and country.
Read full definitionConversions API (CAPI) for WhatsApp
Meta's server-to-server event pipeline that sends conversion outcomes — purchases, leads, orders — from your systems back to Meta to optimise Click-to-WhatsApp ads and marketing messages.
Read full definitionCPA (Cost Per Acquisition)
Spend per conversion event (purchase, lead, signup) — channel-level.
Read full definitionCredible Interval
A range that contains the true parameter value with a stated probability (e.g., 95%). The Bayesian counterpart to a frequentist confidence interval.
Read full definitionDifference-in-Differences (DiD)
A causal method that compares the change in outcome over time between a treated group and a control group.
Read full definitionDPDPA (Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023)
India's data-protection law governing how businesses collect, store, and use personal data — directly relevant to WhatsApp marketing opt-in and customer records.
Read full definitionGeo-Lift Test
A causal experiment that runs a campaign in some geographies and not others, then measures the difference.
Read full definitionGoogle Meridian
Google's open-source Bayesian MMM library, released 2024.
Read full definitionGreen Tick (Verified Business)
The green checkmark next to a business name on WhatsApp, signalling Meta has verified the business as authentic and notable enough to qualify for verification.
Read full definitionHoldout Test
Withholds a marketing intervention from a randomly-selected group to measure incremental lift.
Read full definitionIncrementality
The lift caused BY a marketing intervention, vs. what would have happened without it.
Read full definitionInstrumental Variables (IV)
Uses an external 'instrument' that affects treatment but not outcome directly to identify causal effects.
Read full definitionLast-Click Attribution
100% credit to the final marketing touch before conversion.
Read full definitionLTV (Customer Lifetime Value)
Total revenue (or gross profit) one customer generates across their entire lifetime.
Read full definitionMarketing Conversation
A WhatsApp message category covering promotional content — offers, product launches, re-engagement — billed at the highest rate of Meta's template categories.
Read full definitionMarketing Mix Modeling (MMM)
A statistical method that quantifies how each marketing channel contributes to a sales outcome over time, using historical spend + revenue + exogenous variables.
Read full definitionMCMC (Markov Chain Monte Carlo)
A class of algorithms (Metropolis-Hastings, Gibbs, NUTS, HMC) that draw samples from a probability distribution by constructing a Markov chain whose stationary distribution is the target.
Read full definitionMedia Efficiency
How much marketing output (revenue, conversions, reach) you get per unit of media spend — the umbrella concept that ROAS, MER, CPA, and CAC each measure one slice of.
Read full definitionMER (Marketing Efficiency Ratio)
Total revenue divided by total ad spend across all channels. Channel-agnostic; resistant to attribution gaming.
Read full definitionMessaging Limits & Tiering
Meta's cap on how many unique customers a WhatsApp Business number can initiate conversations with in 24 hours — tiered at 250, 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, and unlimited.
Read full definitionMeta Business Verification
Meta's free process of confirming a business is a real legal entity — using registration documents — required to unlock full WhatsApp Business API messaging limits and display-name visibility.
Read full definitionMeta Robyn
Meta's open-source semi-automated MMM library, released 2021. R-based.
Read full definitionMM Lite API (Marketing Messages Lite)
Meta's alternative delivery API for WhatsApp marketing messages that applies Meta's ads-style optimisation — timing, ranking, and conversion signals — to improve marketing performance.
Read full definitionMulti-Armed Bandit
A class of algorithms (Thompson, UCB, ε-greedy) that balance exploring uncertain options against exploiting known winners.
Read full definitionMulti-Touch Attribution (MTA)
Distributes credit across multiple touches, weighted by position or data-driven model.
Read full definitionOpt-in
Explicit, recorded permission from a customer to receive WhatsApp messages from a business — required by Meta's Commerce Policy before any business-initiated conversation.
Read full definitionPer-User Marketing Message Limits
Meta's frequency cap on how many marketing template messages a single WhatsApp user can receive from all businesses combined within a set period.
Read full definitionPosterior Distribution
In Bayesian inference, the probability distribution over a parameter after combining the prior with observed data via Bayes' theorem.
Read full definitionPrior Distribution
In Bayesian inference, the probability distribution that encodes belief about a parameter before observing the data.
Read full definitionQuality Rating
A traffic-light score (Green / Yellow / Red) Meta assigns to each WhatsApp Business phone number based on customer block and report rates.
Read full definitionROAS (Return on Ad Spend)
Revenue generated per dollar spent on advertising. ROAS = revenue / spend. A ROAS of 3.0 means $3 revenue for every $1 spent.
Read full definitionSaturation Curve
A transformation that models diminishing returns — doubling spend doesn't double conversions; the curve flattens.
Read full definitionService Conversation
A WhatsApp conversation opened by the customer, inside which the business can reply free-form for 24 hours at no charge — service conversations are free.
Read full definitionService Window (24-hour)
A 24-hour period after a customer's last inbound message during which the business can reply free of charge with any non-template content.
Read full definitionSynthetic Control Method (SCM)
Builds a counterfactual for a treated unit from a weighted combination of untreated units.
Read full definitionTemplate Pacing
A Meta safeguard that delivers a new or edited marketing template to a small slice of its audience first, holding the rest until early feedback confirms users aren't blocking or reporting it.
Read full definitionThompson Sampling
A Bayesian multi-armed bandit algorithm that chooses arms in proportion to their probability of being optimal.
Read full definitionUtility Conversation
A WhatsApp message category for transactional updates tied to an existing customer action — order confirmations, shipping alerts, payment receipts — priced far below Marketing.
Read full definitionWhatsApp Broadcast
Sending one message to many WhatsApp contacts at once — capped at 256 recipients on the Business App, and effectively unlimited (tier-permitting) via approved templates on the Business API.
Read full definitionWhatsApp Business Account (WABA)
A logical container in Meta Business Manager that owns one or more WhatsApp phone numbers and the templates, settings, and billing attached to them.
Read full definitionWhatsApp Business API
A programmatic interface from Meta that lets businesses send and receive WhatsApp messages at scale through a third-party platform.
Read full definitionWhatsApp Business App
The free mobile app from Meta for small businesses to manage customer conversations, with built-in catalog, labels, and quick replies — but no API or broadcast scale.
Read full definitionWhatsApp Business Profile
The public-facing identity of a business on WhatsApp — display name, logo, description, category, address, hours, website, and email — shown when customers open the chat or tap the header.
Read full definitionWhatsApp Business Solution Provider (BSP)
A WhatsApp Business Solution Provider (BSP) is a Meta-authorised company that gives businesses WhatsApp Business API access, billing, and selling tools.
Read full definitionWhatsApp Catalog
A built-in product catalog that businesses can attach to their WhatsApp Business profile, letting customers browse SKUs and add them to a cart inside chat.
Read full definitionWhatsApp Chatbot
An automated agent that responds to customers inside WhatsApp — from keyword menus to AI assistants — handling FAQs, catalog browsing, order taking, and support without a human.
Read full definitionWhatsApp Cloud API
Meta's hosted version of the WhatsApp Business API — runs on Meta's infrastructure, eliminates self-hosted servers, and is the default for new accounts since 2022.
Read full definitionWhatsApp Flows
Multi-step interactive forms inside a WhatsApp chat, for collecting structured data like appointments, addresses, or KYC details.
Read full definitionWhatsApp Pay (India)
WhatsApp's in-chat payments feature in India, built on UPI, letting users send money and pay businesses without leaving the conversation.
Read full definitionWhatsApp Template Message
A pre-approved message format that a business can send to a customer outside the 24-hour service window — required for any business-initiated conversation.
Read full definition