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Confused by advertising buzzwords and jargon? Don’t worry, you’re not alone.
We’ve all been there – trying to decipher the complex language of digital advertising can feel like a daunting task. Industry-specific acronyms & jargon can be confusing, especially for those outside the industry. Our aim is to make things a little easier by providing a resource that defines key advertising & marketing terminology. With the Advertising Dictionary, you can now reference & understand digital advertising lingo like a pro in no time!
Occurs when a video ad plays through to the end.
When a company knowingly serves ads that no one will actually see as a way to drive “views” and revenue. For example, a website can use bots to automatically refresh its pages in order to register a high number of page views and appear more attractive as an inventory source on ad exchanges.
Short for advertising technology; refers commonly to all technologies, software and services used for delivering, controlling and targeting online ads.
A team within an ad agency that executes online media buying as a managed service.
An agency that is authorized to purchase advertising time (for radio or television advertising) or space (for print or web advertising) on behalf of the company with which they have an agency contract.
A process used in advertising technology that attempts to expand the target audience size while ensuring relevancy and maximizing engagement. The extension process takes a known audience segment and catalogues various shared characteristics that can be used to target people who bear similarities and are therefore likely to become customers. Audience Extension techniques are also sometimes called “Lookalike Modeling”.
A technique used by advertisers and publishers to utilize a web user’s previous web browsing behavior to customize the types of ads they receive. Behavioral targeting can generally be categorized as onsite behavioral targeting or network behavioral targeting, depending on whether the tracking is deployed on a single website or domain, or across a network of websites.
The percentage of people who visit a webpage and navigate away from it, seeing only that single page. For more information, see Why Page Views & Bounce Rate Matter and A Quick & Easy Guide to Bounce Rate.
Refers to any TV that can be connected to the Internet and access content beyond what is available via the normal offering from a cable provider. For related readings, see What is OTT Advertising?
Also known as cost per action, pay per acquisition (PPA) and cost per conversion, is the cost for a specified acquisition – for example a sale, click, page view or form submit.
The price paid by an advertiser to the publisher once a video has been viewed through completion.
With the CPE bidding strategy, impressions are free and advertisers only pay when users actively engage with ads (ie: click, watch, roll-over, etc.).
An advertising method that only charges advertisers each time their app is downloaded.
A bidding method where you pay for each time your video is played.
The percentage of ad impressions that are clicked as compared to the entire number of clicks. The standard calculation for CTR is (clicks/impressions) x 100. For related readings, see Quality Score & Click-Through Rate.
A “data warehouse” used to house and manage cookie IDs and to generate audience segments, which are then used to target specific users with online ads.
As defined by Nielsen, DMAs divide the country into different regional markets by population centers (e.g., San Francisco Bay Area).
DOOH refers to “out-of-home” advertising – that is, ads that are marketed to consumers when they are “on the go”, such as in transit, in commercial locations, or in waiting areas.
An ad type that is dynamically-created based off of the user’s search terms. PPC advertising platforms like Google or Bing crawl the content on your website & if it’s relevant to the user, they will serve your ad to them.
DSAs are a great way to capture leads who may not know your brand & allow them to conveniently find your website in a highly relevant manner to what they’re looking for.
Graphics Interchange Format, better known by its acronym GIF, is a lossless format for image files that supports both animated and static images.
These words or phrases are used to target your ads to relevant shopping queries. You may select the keywords you’d like to target using manual targeting or let Amazon Advertising select the keywords using automatic targeting. For more information, see Do I Need to Bid on Branded Keywords?
Content accessed via the internet without the involvement of a television service provider. OTT includes Subscription Video-on-Demand (SVOD) services like Netflix, as well as free ad-supported services like Hulu. For more information, see What is OTT Advertising?
Digital information that can be used, on its own or together with other information, to track back actions to a specific, known individual.
The buying and selling of online ad impressions through real-time auctions that happen within milliseconds.
A measure of how many dollars you earn for every dollar you spend on advertising. The standard calculation for ROAS is (total ad sales) / (total ad spend).For more information, see What is Return On Ad Spend?
A form of online targeting advertising and are served to people who have already visited your website or are a contact in your database (like a lead or customer).
The page presented to a user when they use a search engine like Google or Bing to search for something online by typing in a search query or keyword. SERPs offer two types of results: organic and paid results. Paid search ads are typically at the very top of the SERP, followed by organic posts. To rank high for organic search results, websites need to work on Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Software used to sell advertising in an automated fashion.
In-stream video ads that play before video content.
Information that an established data company collects indirectly or aggregates from others and then sells to ad buyers.
Sometimes called UDID; identifier assigned to a device or user that lasts until the device is reset or the account is deleted.
Cost per thousand viewable ads served – a simple calculation for vCPM = CPM / viewability rate.
