Here is a list of terms and definitions used in online advertising. If you have limited experience with ad servers, you may want to make yourself familiar with these terms:
| Term | Explanation |
|---|
3P Cookie | Shorthand for "Third-Party cookie". 3P cookies are created by domains other than the domain visible in the browser bar. |
Ad Exchange | An ad exchange is a platform the facilitates the buying and selling of digital ads in real-time. It's similar to a stock exchange, allowing advertisers to bid on ad impressions across a wide range of websites in real-time auctions. Ad exchanges were designed to enable advertisers to access the inventory of a huge number of publishers, while allowing publishers to maximize their revenue by selling ad inventory to the highest bidder. |
Ad Network | An ad network is a platform that connects advertisers with publishers to display ads on their web pages or apps. |
Ad Request | The request made by the user's browser or app to the ad server to deliver an ad. Note that this doesn't necessarily means that the ad server returns an ad, and it should not be confused with an ad impression. |
Ad Tag | An ad tag is a piece of code that is placed on a web page or app to display an ad. |
Asynchronous Code | Asynchronous code that doesn't delay the execution of other tasks in the browser. Async tags are loaded in parallel with other requests. It became a default since Chrome started to block synchronous requests on mobile phones. |
Booked Quantity | The booked quantity reflects the number of impressions or clicks as negotiated in the deal with the advertiser. The campaign will be automatically stop being served when this amount has been reached. |
Campaign | A campaign holds one or more creatives. It allows you to set targeting rules, control delivery and assign the set of creatives to one or more zones. |
Click Fraud | Click fraud is the practice of clicking on ads without any intention of engaging with the advertiser's product. The idea is to deplete advertising budgets of competitors, or to earn money as a publisher selling inventory with a CPC pricing model. |
Click Macro | A click macro is a piece of code that allows you to track clicks on third-party creatives. AdGlare doesn't need click macros, since clicks on third-party creatives will be detected automatically. |
Creative | A creative is the actual ad. It can be a JPG/PNG/GIF banner, a third-party tag, an MP4 video, a ZIP file containing the assets, etc. Creatives are added to a campaign, which is then assigned to a zone for delivery. |
DSP | A demand-side platform enables advertisers to manage and purchase inventory across multiple exchanges and publishers. |
Dayparting | Dayparting is a targeting technique, allowing you to run campaigns only during specific times or days of the week. |
Delivery Speed | The delivery speed indicates the speed at which a campaign is served. By default, campaigns are served as fast as possible. If you set an end date, you can spread the impressions over time by adjusting the delivery speed. |
Fill Rate | The fill rate is simply the number of ad requests answered divided by the number of ad requests sent, expressed as a percentage. To achieve a 100% fill rate, a zone should always have an untargeted campaign to serve in the lowest tier. |
Flight Date | Flight dates are date ranges for a campaign to be served. Based on a start and end date. |
Frequency Capping | Fequency capping limits how often an ad is served to the same user in a geven time period. For example, a limit of 3 times per day. Reduces banner blindness. |
Frontloaded | A delivery speed setting. To minimize the chance of under-delivery, frontloading will serve more impressions during the start of the campaign. The ad-serving rate gradually decreases as the end date approaches. |
Impression | An impression is counted each time a creative <i>starts</i> to load on the user's device. Note that it doesn't reflect the number of fully-loaded creatives, nor does it say anything about the ad's viewability. |
Lazy Loading | Lazy loading is a technique to delay ad loading until the zone appears in the device's viewport. This increases the chance that the ad will be visible, and inherently improves CTR. It also improves page load times. |
Native Ad | Native ads are ads that match the visual design of the web page. Native ads behave like natural content on the publisher's page and therefore tend to have higher CTRs. |
Programmatic (advertisting) | Programmatic advertising refers to the use of systems to automatically buy and sell ad inventory. |
Quality Assurance | Also called QA. Publishers usually evaluate if a creative meets their quality standards. For example, you don't want creatives to load 86 MB of data, fry the CPU or redirect to a new page without user interaction. |
Retargeting | Retargeting is the practice of serving ads to users who have previously interacted with your website or brand. |
SSP | A supply-side platform enables publishers to manage and sell their inventory to multiple exchanges and advertisers. |
Unfilled Impression | An ad request that didn't return an ad, because none were eligible to serve. The zone will remain blank, which is a missed opportunity. You can avoid this by assigning untargeted campaigns in the lowest tier to each zone. |
Viewability | Viewability means the percentage of impressions that were seen by users, relative to the number of ads served. As per IAB standards, AdGlare considers an impression viewable when the ad is displayed for at least 1 second with >50% of the ad's pixels on the screen. When an ad is loaded at the bottom of the page, viewability is usually low as not all users scroll down. |
Zone | A zone is a unique location on a page where an ad is served. The engines will return an ad based on the campaigns assigned to the zone. |
