Adtech Glossary of Terms

Web content visible without having to scroll down the page. Considered more premium...

A marketplace platform that facilitates automated, auction-based buying and selling of ad inventory...

Ad fraud is the act of attempting to defraud or defrauding an advertising network for financial gain, usually committed by scamming websites.

An ad impression is a metric counted each time an online ad is loaded and displayed on a web page.

An ad network is ad technology that connects online publishers to online advertisers and facilitates ad transactions between the parties.

A research objective that assesses whether a customer remembers seeing a particular brand...

Ad servers are technology used by publishers & advertisers to distribute advertisements on websites & mobile applications, and measure their success.

The capability of using media to reach specific individuals.

Both agency trading desks and demand-side platforms are ways to purchase ads, but agency trading desks offer more services to their clients.

Businesses hire affiliates to promote their product(s) and compensate those affiliates for each...

A managed service layer of a larger agency, most often on top of...

A list of pre-approved domains that a brand has deemed acceptable for its...

The theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally...

Marketing attribution gives marketers the ability to analyze current marketing strategies, and make needed changes to ensure the budget is used effectively.

In a first-price auction, the highest bidder determines the impression price. In a...

A specific group of consumers who are most likely to want a product...

Audience validation is a brand metric report that evaluates the desired audience composition and campaign reach toward that demographic.

Refers to the moment a consumer learns about a brand’s product or service....

What is an awareness campaign? An awareness campaign is an ad campaign that...

Statistically similar groups that can be compared to help determine impact of a...

Banner ads that can include text, images, simple animation, and a URL linking...

Publishers and advertisers can reach their audiences more effectively based on observations of...

Web content that is visible after scrolling down. Although it is often viewed...

The number of bids that exist for one particular impression.

Average rate in a media buy. Calculated as the Effective Cost per Thousand...

A technique buyers use to determine what the bid price should be. Vendors...

Data that is passed from the publisher to the bidders via a real-time...

The amount of impressions counted towards fulfilling a contract. Because there can be...

A blocklist is a list of websites that advertisers determine their creative will not appear on, due to the fraudulent or inappropriate nature of the content, which could harm their brand reputation. Blocklists are used to ensure content is reaching the correct audiences. Through creating these blocklists, organizations gain a clear understanding of what is and is not acceptable content for advertisers.

Companies use brand advertising to create quality brand impressions and increase recognition and customer loyalty.

Digital measurement that leverages surveys to quantify the increase in brand perception against...

Brand safety is the process of aligning a brand’s image with the products they sell. They must also maintain the brand’s reputation while advertising.

The ability to update multiple line items in one campaign or across multiple...

The number of times a user has clicked on a digital advertisement. A...

“Click” or “click-through” conversions only count a conversion when a user has clicked...

Click-through rate of an advertisement. A core metric of the click model, this...

Content whose main purpose is to attract attention and encourage visitors to click...

What Is Connected TV? When users consume media through devices with internet connections...

A tool that centralizes and manages transparency for the consent and objection of...

Reaching consumers who have heard of your brand or product but need to...

Ad campaign designed to educate customers on the benefits and features of a...

A way to identify a person through the information on the websites they...

Within display incrementality testing, the audience receiving the PSA ad.

An action or event that can be counted–such as a purchase, sign-up, or...

The number of conversions driven for each impression served.

The average advertising cost of one driven conversion. Calculated as the total cost...

Also known as a DR (direct response) campaign, it is designed to drive...

First-party cookies enhance the overall user experience while third-party cookies track user activity to display advertisements based on that activity.

Cookies are small pieces of data that can be used to identify your computer on a network.

The average advertising cost of one driven conversion. Calculated as the total cost...

Cost Per Click on an advertisement. Price paid for each click generated. Also...

Cost Per Click on an advertisement. Price paid for each click generated. Also...

Cost per mille (CPM), also known as cost per thousand, is a marketing technique used by advertisers and web developers to configure how much ad space will cost.

The type of digital media shown to internet users to communicate a message...

Creative marketing is a method used by advertisers to gain an audience through originality and innovation.

Experimenting with different ad assets to find the highest-performing creative and utilizing that...

Advertising across different media platforms, including radio, television, paid search, social media, display,...

Data from an advertiser’s customer database, which can include their name, email address,...

Impressions that are unable to be tracked for viewability. If an ad is...

First-party data is information directly collected from a company’s own source on consumers’...

Data is the key to creating successful marketing campaigns. Learn the difference between first, second, and third-party data.

What is a data clean room? A data clean room is a secure...

A data warehouse used to aggregate and target relevant audience segments. Once aggregated,...

Central Repository for integrated data from multiple sources (Salesforce, AD Reporting, AdTrain, and...

A demand-side platform is software used by advertisers to buy advertising with the help of automation.

Known information on a user, determined from the source. The most common deterministic...

Data that is gathered firsthand rather than through a third party. Direct data...

What is direct response advertising? Direct response (DR) advertising is the implementation of...

A transparent pricing model in which every impression is a unique price that...

A technique used in digital advertising that creates different iterations of an ad in real time, personalizing the advertisement to each viewer.

A research objective that assesses the level of knowledge that someone has about...

A research objective that assesses the likeability of a brand.

Information generated by a website and stored by your browser, to help understand...

First-party data is information directly collected from a company’s own source on consumers’ behaviors, actions, or interests, so it’s “owned” by a single source.

Connects online ad exposure to offline in‐store visits. This is an increasingly popular...

The number of times a person must be exposed to an advertising message,...

Advertisers can set the frequency that a user is shown an ad at...

Advertisers can set the frequency that a user is shown an ad (or...

What is geotargeting? Geotargeting is a method that allows advertisers to serve ads...

What Is Header Bidding? Header bidding is the process of auctioning off advertisement...

Measures the impact of a single variable on an individual user’s behavior. For...

A type of A/B test that has 2 balanced groups, one who receives a...

Measuring how a specific marketing event (e.g., site conversion) was causally influenced by...

The identifying number that is tied to a person’s home internet connection.

Linear TV, or traditional TV, is the 24/7 line-up of programming available to...

A process that uses machine learning to identify audiences who look and act...

The time between a conversion event and a prior engagement event, such as...

The scientific study of algorithms and statistical models that computer systems use to...

The marketing funnel is a visualization for moving your customers through the consumer...

Marketing Mix Modeling is a method of statistical analysis that attributes business success to specific marketing efforts.

A combination of tag event labels from the advertiser’s data set that are...

Companies that specialize in advertising, acting as a resource to brands to help...

Media buying is the purchase of ad space on social, digital, and physical platforms with the intent of advertising to desired audiences.

Ads displayed on mobile browsers or apps on smartphones and tablets. These can...

An audience profile based on observed activity, created to understand your audience, set...

The number of original visits to a website by a given cookie or...

The analytic technique that assigns multiple partners credit for a conversion based on...

Native ads are paid ads that match the look and feel of the...

Information tied to a user that doesn’t reveal any sensitive information such as...

A test where we set up a test audience who will see branded...

Also known as offline-to-online purchase measurement, this links online advertising to offline sales...

Omnichannel is a holistic approach to advertising that takes into account the customer...

Companies that establish relationships with a large number of publishers in order to...

A person’s online identifier that distinguishes demographic, psychographic, or behavioral elements of a...

Questions regarding a consumer’s interest in being tracked for advertising purposes by websites.

Questions regarding a consumer’s interest in being tracked for advertising purposes by websites.

A visitor to a website from an unpaid traffic source who performs a...

A device that can connect to a TV (or a functionality within the...

Panel data is data about consumer demographics and spending habits and provides many advantages to companies looking to better understand their customers.

Using consumer behavior to deliver more relevant experiences. In advertising, ad personalization looks...

The fraudulent practice of having a click purporting to be from reputable companies...

This is short for personally identifiable information, which can identify a particular person,...

Pieces of code that are placed on a website in order to gather...

A test where viewable impressions are compared with the non- viewable impressions and...

10-15 second online ad that appears before video.

Deals that are negotiated as invitation-only auctions, providing certain buyers in the ad...

Relying on probability and statistical analysis to make inferences on a user. While...

Automatic process of buying and selling of digital advertisement placements through real-time bidding,...

Seen as the most scientific of incrementality tests. In this test, the test...

Refers to advertisers or agencies working directly with a publisher to buy advertising...

(Formerly known as IBA.) Reach your most valuable customers with segments built from...

(Formerly known as full performance.) Increase prospects and drive higher conversion rates by...

(Formerly known as Prospecting.) Quantcast’s most performant product for driving actions from net-new...

(Formerly known as Retargeting.) Standard retargeting uses a list of pseudonymous identifiers to...

Unit of measure for amount of search traffic per second.

A critical measurement for upper funnel campaigns, this is the percentage of ads...

Data signals that are delivered immediately after they are received, without delay.

Bidding or buying inventory in real time. Advertising buyers bid on an impression...

The amount of revenue generated by all customers who made a purchase and...

Rich media is a type of online advertising that uses text, music, video, and animations to attract users' attention. It can be more impactful than regular banners.

Data that is shared with a partner, often to help with personalization or...

Short for Search Engine Marketing, this marketing tactic uses paid media advertising to...

Short for Search Engine Optimization, this is the practice of increasing the quantity...

Display ads served on social media platforms. Since there are fewer social media...

A technique in which certain ad exchanges are suppressed in order for ad...

What Is a Supply-Side Platform? A supply-side platform (SSP) is advertising software that...

A piece of code inserted within a webpage that triggers an http(s) request...

Within display incrementality testing, the audience receiving the branded ad.

Information generated by a website and stored by your browser, to help understand...

Information that a company collects indirectly (such as through third-party cookies) or aggregates...

Vendors who monitor and validate metrics such as completion rates, in-target delivery, viewability,...

Video ads take advantage of sight, sound, and motion to draw in viewers....

A performance metric for video advertisements reflecting the percentage of digital video ads...

“View” or “view-through” conversions are counted when a user has viewed an impression...

Viewability is a metric used with digital advertising that measures when and how many times an ad has been viewed by consumers.

What Is Zero-Party Data? Zero-party data is information given by customers voluntarily.  This...