From AB Testing to (Gen) Z

Your Guide to Native Advertising

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A/B Testing

A method used to compare different versions of digital ads or website landing pages in order to determine which performs better.

Above the Fold

A term originating from broadsheet newspapers. It describes the area of a web page that’s visible before the website visitor scrolls down the page.

Account-Based Advertising

One tactic in an account-based marketing (ABM) strategy. It’s the practice of serving display advertising only to specified titles at the target accounts you designate.

Account-Based Marketing

Account-based marketing is a marketing strategy where key business accounts are marketed to directly rather than marketing to multiple accounts at the same time. It is a far more personalized approach to marketing taking into account individual accounts or prospects needs and personas.

Ad Audience

The total number of people that have been exposed to or could have been exposed to a campaign.

Ad Click

When a user interacts with an ad by clicking on it with their mouse or pressing enter on their keyboard.

Ad Exchange

A computerized marketplace for buying and selling digital advertising. Ad Exchanges connect publishers via SSPs to advertisers via DSPs

Ad Inventory

Ad Inventory is the advertising space that each publisher has available which advertisers can buy.

Ad Network

A company which bundles inventory together from multiple publishers and offers them for sale. The most prominent example is Google Ads

Ad Server

An ad server is the advertising technology used by advertisers and publishers to serve adverts on websites

Ad Tags

An ad tag is a snippet of code inserted within the HTML code of a webpage where an ad is due to be displayed. They are used for many purposes in advertising, including providing the creative, collecting information about users who are shown ads, and for campaign reporting.

Ad Targeting

Delivering ads to a pre-defined audience based on various attributes like location, demographics, browsing behavior, and past purchases.

Ad Unit

The box within which an ad appears on a website. There are multiple different sizes of ad unit. The IAB defines what consitutes ‘standard’ ad unit sizes but publishers can choose to run non-standard ad units too.

ads.txt

Authorized Digital Sellers is a text file which lists the companies a publisher has allowed to sell its inventory and helps add transparency for buyers and prevent internet ad fraud.

Affiliate Advertising

When a site owner promotes ads for an advertiser on their site, this is called affiliate advertising. The website is operating as an ‘affiliate’ of the advertiser and pays the publisher based on its performance e.g. Pay Per Click, Pay Per Lead or Pay Per Sale.

Agency Holding Companies

Agency Holding Companies are the parent companies which own multiple smaller ad agencies. Examples include Dentsu, Havas Interpublic, Omnicom, Publicis Groupe & WPP

Agency Trading Desk

A trading system developed by large agency holding companies to make programmatic purchasing more efficient for their customers. Agency Trading Desks usually access several DSPs and thus a larger inventory, and can be connected to additional data streams via Data Management Platforms (DMPs).

Analytics

Data and statistics about the users of a website and how they interact with the website which can be used to target audiences, understand consumer behavior, improve user experience, and optimize advertising campaigns.

API

Application Protocol Interfaces enable connection to external applications and allow to transfer data from multiple platforms to a unified dashboard.

Attribution

The goal of attribution is to identify which touch, of the many possible, is most (or partially) responsible for a conversion, so ROI can be calculated. First touch, last touch, and multi-touch are common attribution models.

Audience Extension

Audience Extension is a type of advertising where publishers help advertisers target their desired audience on other sites in addition to the publisher’s to increase reach .

Automated Guaranteed

A programmatic deal where advertisers access and buy specific publisher inventory at a fixed price over a fixed period of time. A transaction designed to automate direct sales through a publisher’s ad server’s API.

Banner Ads

Banner ads are the most common form of online display advertising. They are delivered to web pages by an ad server or ad network and generally contain an image, some text and a link which, when clicked, take the user to the advertiser’s website or landing page.

Behavioral Targeting

Behavioral targeting is an advertising method that targets specific audiences based on the user’s previous online behaviour – what they have previously looked at or engaged with online.

Blacklists

For advertisers, blaclists are lists of web domains they do not want their ads appearing on. For publishers, blacklists are lists of ads or advertisers they do not want appearing on their websites.

Bounce Rate

A bounce is when a website visitor leaves a site having only looked at the the single page they originally landed on. Bounce rate is the % of site visitors who leave the site after a single page view.

Brand Awareness

The extent to which a consumer or audience can recall and identify a particular brand or company. Brand Awareness is one of the most important metrics for advertisers.

Brand Lift

Brand Lift is a measure of the impact an ad campaign has had on the perception of your brand.

Browser

The software people use to access the World Wide Web like Chrome, Safari and Firefox.

CAC

Customer Acquistion Cost. Customer Acquisition Cost is the cost of winning a customer to purchase a product/service.

CDP

Customer Data Platform. A CDP is a marketing system that creates a unified customer database from multiple different data sources and makes it available to other systems. Unlike DMPs, CDPs tend to focus on 1st party data rather than 2nd or 3rd party data.

CES

Customer Effort Score. Customer Effort Score (CES) is a type of customer satisfaction survey used to measure the ease of service experience with an organization. It asks customers to rate the ease of using products or services on a scale of “very difficult” or “very easy.”

Channel

A particular distribution method; In advertising, it’s the specific means being used to reach audiences such as TV, digital or print. Digital advertising includes channels such as display advertising, social media advertising, email and mobile in-app advertising.

Churn rate

The churn rate, also known as the rate of attrition or customer churn, is the rate at which customers stop doing business with an entity. It is most commonly expressed as the percentage of service subscribers who discontinue their subscriptions within a given time period.

CLV

Customer Lifetime Value.The measurement of how valuable a customer is to your company, not just on a purchase-by-purchase basis but across the whole relationship. Customer lifetime value is the total worth to a business of a customer over the whole period of their relationship.

CMP

Consent Management Platform. A CMP helps publishers collect and store user preferences and consent for the processing of their data.

Completion Rate

Completion Rate is a video advertising metric represented as a percentage. It indicates the number of times that a video plays to the end.

Content Recommendations

Content recommendations suggest other articles or content a web user might also like to read often similar to the content on the web page they are visiting.

Contextual Advertising

Contextual advertising is advertising placed on web pages where the content on those pages might be relevant to the product in the advertisement. For example car manufacturers advertising on car review web pages.

Conversion

When a user completes the advertiser’s desired action. This could be a click, signing up for something, registering interest or actually buying a product.

Conversion Pixel

A 1×1 image pixel placed on a web page (such as a thank-you page) which is triggered whenever a conversion occurs.

Conversion Rate

The percentage of people who ‘converted’ as a proportion of the total audience. 100 people see an advert and 2 people buy the product = a 2% conversion rate.

Conversion Tracking

Monitoring how many conversions have occurred during any specific time period, and analyzing which ads led to the conversions.

Cookie

Cookies are text files stored on a user’s browser which contain small pieces of data which make it easier for websites and other systems to identify specific users.

Copy

Text in an ad or text written to be delivered audibly. Best practice with ad copy is to stay away from advertising jargon.

CPA

Cost Per Acquisition. A payment model where the advertiser only pays when a customer has been ‘acquired’. Also a metric describing the average cost of acquiring a paying customer.

CPC

Cost Per Click. A payment model where advertisers only pay when a user clicks on an ad, regardless of the number of impressions. Also a metric the average cost it takes to get someone to click on an ad.

CPI

Cost Per Install. Payment model specific to mobile campaigns when advertisers only pay once the app has been installed. Also a metric describing the average cost it takes to get a customer to install an app.

CPL

Cost Per Lead. A payment model where advertisers only pay when a publisher generates a ‘lead’. regardless of the number of impressions. Also a metric for the average cost it takes to generate a new lead.

CPM

Cost Per Mille is an advertising term meaning the price of 1,000 impressions on a website.

CPV

Cost Per View is a payment model for video ads when the advertiser will only pay for video impressions when the impression is actually viewed.

CSAT

Customer Satisfaction Score. CSAT is short for customer satisfaction score. It’s a commonly used metric that acts as a key performance indicator for customer service and product quality in all kinds of businesses. While customer satisfaction as an idea is a general one, CSAT is a more defined metric that’s expressed as a percentage.

CRM

Customer Relationship Management. Often refers to the software used to manage a business’ customer database like Salsforce or Hubspot.

Cross-Device Targeting

Cross-device targeting allows advertisers to target audiences irrespective of the device the audience is using and maintain the desired sequence of ads.

CTA

Call to Action. The phrase or button in an ad which tells the audience what action the advertiser wants them to take next like ‘Click Here’, ‘Buy Now’ , ‘Register’.

CTR

Click-Through Rate is the measure of how many times users clicked on an ad or a link in display or email marketing campaigns.

Daypart

Daypart Targeting or Dayparting is when an advertiser restricts when a campaign is served to a specific time of day or specific day of the week to better target its desired audience.

Deal ID

A Deal ID is a reference number given to a Preferred Deal or Private Auction when it is set up to identify the deal between the buyer and the seller. The Deal ID will contain the the agreed criteria or terms of the deal such as the price and source of the inventory.

Device ID

Device ID is a reference number assigned to each individual device in the world like smartphones and tablets.

Direct Response

A campaign or ad where the objective is for the viewer to take action – call a number, register, buy. The success of the campaign is based on how frequently the audience take the desired action. An alternative would be ‘brand awareness’

Display Ad Networks

Display ad networks are platforms that provide a network of websites in which to promote paid advertisements. Examples of display ad networks include Google Display Network, Yahoo Display Ads, Facebook Ads, Linkedin Ads, ONE by AOL, native ad platforms, such as Outbrain, and many more.

Display Advertising

Display ads are ads placed on third-party websites often in the form of banners.

DMP

A Data Management Platform is a system which collects, stores, sorts and categorizes user data. It is a central data repository for a company’s customer, audience, and marketing data.

DOOH

DOOH stands for “Digital Out Of Home” and refers specifically to digital media that appears in public places such as digital billboards and outdoor signage.

DSP

A Demand Side Platform. A technology platform which allows brands and agencies (buy-side) to automatically bid on ad inventory (sell-side) via a single interface. DSPs determine the best possible inventory for reaching a target audience, place buys, and report on the performance. They are connected to SSPs via ad exchanges.

Dynamic Ad Insertion

Dynamic Ad Insertion or DAI is video advertising technology that allows advertisers to integrate video ads into live programming and VoD content.

eCPM

eCPM is an advertising term that stands for Effective Cost per Mille (thousand impressions).

Email Advertising

Clickable display and native ads that appear within emails and e-newsletters.

Endemic Advertising

Endemic advertising is an advertising and marketing term that refers to ad placement that’s natural to a market, sometimes referred to Vertical Advertising.

ESP

Email Service Provider. The technology used to send email.

Expandable Banner

Banners that increase in size when a user hovers over them.

Fill Rate

Fill Rate measures how many ads were actually served as a percentage of the publisher’s total available inventory

First Look

First look is an advertising term that describes a situation when certain advertisers are offered prioritized access to a publisher’s inventory.

First Party Data

First Party Data is the term defines data that is collected directly from users such as website visitors, and stored for advertising and marketing purposes.

First Price Auction

A First Price Auction is where bidders submit the highest bid price they are prepared to pay. The highest bidder wins and pays the price they bid. An alternative would be Second Price Auction.

First Price Auction

The winner of the bidding contest for an ad impression pays the price actually offered.

First Touch Attribution

An attrribution model where the credit for the sale goes to the media who can show they ‘touched’ the user first.

Floor Price

The minimum price the publisher will accept for its inventory.

Frequency

The number of times an ad is served to the same consumer during a specific time period.

Frequency Capping

Setting a limit on the number of times an ad should be shown to a consumer within a specific time period.

GDPR

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation became effective on May 25, 2018. It is the law which addresses data protection and privacy which businesses including those involved in digital advertising have to adhere to

Geotargeting

Geotargeting is a term that describes targeting specific audiences based on their location

Header Bidding

Header Bidding enables bid requests from multiple demand sources simultaneously as opposed to the traditional waterfall method, where demand-partners/SSPs are called in a predetermined order. Header-bidding more accurately reflects a true auction where all participants get to bid at the same time.

HTML

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is the code used to structure a web page and its contents. HTML does work in email

Impression

An Impression occurs each time an ad server responds to a request from the users browser to provide an advert

In-Stream Video Ads

Video ads played before, during, or after the video content the publisher is delivering to the consumer.

Interstitial Ads

Ads that appear between two different content pages, served when a website visitor navigates from one page on a website to another.

IO

An Insertion Order can best be considered a Purchase Order between the parties. A Insertion Order is usually issued by the Publisher but frequently issues by the Advertiser.

IP Address

An Internet Protocol address is a number given to each device connected to the internet which can be used to identify particular devices, households and locations.

JavaScript

JavaScript ot JS is a programming language used An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label assigned to each device connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.

Keyword

A specific word or phrase chosen by advertisers to trigger and include their ad within search engine results. Advertisers doing contextual advertising also choose keywords, so that their ad will show up within pages that are returned for that keyword.

Landing Page

JavaScript ot JS is a programming language used to to implement complex features on web pages like interactive maps, animated 2D/3D graphics, scrolling video jukeboxes, etc. JavaScript does NOT work in email!

Last Touch Attribution

An attribution method where all the credit goes to the media who ‘touched’ the user last before a purchase, or other intended action, occurred

Lead

A potential customer. In digital advertising, a lead is someone who has given you their contact information, often by signing up for a newsletter or filling out a form to download an eBook or other gated content.

Lookalike Audience

A Lookalike Audience consists of people who are similar to your existing customers. Lookalike audiences are often modelled using actual customer data. It works on the principle that similar people like similar things.

Marketing Cloud

An integrated suite of marketing tools which are available to marketers as web-based services.

MidRoll

Video ads that are served in the middle of the publisher’s video content the user has accessed

Mobile Advertising

Paid advertising that occurs on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets

Mobile Search

An Internet search conducted via a mobile device.

MRC

MRC or Media Rating Council is a nonprofit organization that gives media research and advertising accreditations to ad platforms.

Multi-touch Attribution

An attribution model where the advertiser assigns a value to each marketing ‘touch’ on a user journey to purchase rather than, for example just First or Last Touch Attribution

MPP

Mail Privacy Protection. A new feature that will send all emails opened with the Apple Mail app (regardless of what email service is used, like Gmail or Outlook) to a proxy server that will pre-load all content, including any impression or tracking pixels, according to Litmus.

Native Advertising

Native advertising is a digital ad that has the look and feel of the surrounding editorial content. The ad is ‘native’ to the web page – in design and function, it seems just like the other content on the page. They often appear on web pages marked by a title such as ‘Paid Content’ or ‘Suggested content’. When the user clicks on a native ad, they are redirected to a web page or landing page owned by the advertiser.

Native DSP

DSPs developed specifically for Native Advertising. In contrast, conventional DSPs were mostly developed for display ads or videos. Native DSPs can optimize for post-click engagement.

NPS

Net promoter score. Net promoter score is a widely used market research metric that typically takes the form of a single survey question asking respondents to rate the likelihood that they would recommend a company, product, or a service to a friend or colleague.

Online Advertising

Any type of advertising that occurs on the internet is considered online advertising and comes in many forms including display advertising, search engine advertising, email advertising, social media advertising, content recommendations, mobile advertising (app advertising).

Open Auction

In an Open Auction, a publisher allows access to all bidders connected via the SSP to have access on its inventory. The highest bidder wins the impression.

Open Internet

A term that refers to parts of the web which are not controlled by a single company or platform and which are generally available to everyone. Often used in comparison to ‘walled gardens’, areas of the web which are closed ecosystems ster and login to use like Facebook and Google

Outstream Video

Outstream video, also referred to as in-read or native video, is an advertising term describing video advertisements placed in otherwise non-video original content.

Overlay

Advertising that floats over webpage content, graphics, or videos.

Paid Advertising

Paid advertising is any type of advertising that is paid for. Alternatives include ‘owned advertising’ which are ads on the advertiser’s own channels: website, Facebook page or Youtube channel for example and ‘earned advertising’ which includes independent, unsolicited and unpaid coverage written by other people in magazines, websites, social media, etc

Paid Search

Paid-for ads within search engine results like Google. AKA Search Advertising

Personal Data

Data about the user which could reasonably be used to identify them either on their own or in combination with other data e.g. name, address but also things like email address, IP address, cookies, etc. Exact definition: ‘Personal data are any information which are related to an identified or identifiable natural person.’

PII

Personally Identifiable Information is information about the user which could reasonably be used to identify the user. PII is a term more widely recognised in the US. See also Personal Data

PMP

Private Marketplace. A PMP deal is a private advertising auction (as opposed to an open auction) in which only certain advertisers can participate. These deals are traditionally made directly between a publisher and an advertiser or agency and managed through an SSP. PMPs can be further subdivided into Preferred Deal, Private Auction and Programmatic Guaranteed.

Pop-Under

Identical to a pop-up except it loads under your current webpage. It’s generally assumed to be less intrusive than a pop-up because visitors often don’t see it until after they’ve clicked to close their current browser session.

Pop-Up

Opens in a new browser window that loads on top of the current webpage. Pop-ups are operated by a script (e.g., Javascript); thus, can be blocked and commonly are by a wide variety of available software.

Post Roll

Post Roll is an advertising term that describes video advertisements which are served to the consumer after the original video has finished playing.

PPC

PPC, which stands for Pay Per Click, is an internet advertising model where an advertiser only pays the publisher when a user clicks on an advert

Pre Roll

Pre Roll is an advertising term describing video ads that play right before the video, typically 15, 30 or 60 secs in duration and sold on a CPM or CPV basis.

Preferred Deal

A PMP deal where a publisher or SSP offers inventory at a predefined price.

Private Auction

A PMP where only certain advertisers are able to bid on publisher inventory is restricted to selected advertisers

Programmatic Advertising

The automated sale and purchase of online ad impressions, based on software that enacts real-time bidding (RTB) on behalf of advertisers and publishers. Programmatic advertising uses data to optimize ad campaigns in real time.

Programmatic Direct

A transaction between a publisher and advertiser that takes place through a programmatic ad buying system. Inventory is directly sold and guaranteed.

Programmatic Guaranteed

A programmatic deal done when publishers and buyers agree a fixed price for specific inventory reserved for that advertiser and facilitated using RTB technology such as a Deal ID

Programmatic Media Buying

An automated method of buying media that ensures that advertisers are reaching the right person, at the right time, in the right place. The ads are bought based on a set of parameters pre-defined by the company placing the ads. Programmatic advertising uses data to make decisions about which ads to buy in real-time, which improves efficiencies and increases the effectiveness of the ads.

QPS

Queries per second. Queries per second (QPS) is the metric reflecting how many times a DSP gets called to make a bid on an ad placement to reach a user. A higher QPS represents the speed and frequency of analyzing and acting on those bids.

Rate Card

Rate card is a price list for a publisher’s ad inventory

Reach

The total number of people who see your advert or campaign

Retargeting

Serving ads to people who have previously visited your website.

Rich Media

Interactive advertising such as quizzes, games and ads with video and special effects.

RON

Run of Network is where a campaign is not restricted to a specific website in an Ad Network but can run on any of the sites within that Ad Network.

ROS

Run of Site is where an advertising campaign is not restricted to a specific page or specific pages of a particular site but can appear anywhere on that site.

RTB

RTB is an advertising term that describes an automated process of selling and buying ad inventory through a programmatic online auction.

Search Advertising

Search advertising is the advertising which run on search engine listings or on the sidebar of search engine results pages like Google. Bing, Yahoo and others.

Sell Through Rate

The amount of advertising sold as a percentage of the total .

SOV

Share of Voice is a phrase often used in media planning and buying. Share of Voice is expressed as a percentage and represents the relative portion of ad impressions bought compared to all ads available for that given period of time.

Social Media Advertising

Any type of promotion on social networks such as Facebook, Linkedin, Google +, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, YouTube, and others.

SSP

A Supply Side Platform is the platform used by publishers (sell-side) to monetize their ad inventory with ad exchanges, ad networks, and DSPs (buy-side).

Tech Tax

A term for the costs incurred by using the many technological solutions and aids in order to facilitate programmatic advertising which might include a SSP, Ad Exchange, DSP, DMP and Agency Trading Desk.

Third Party Data

Third Party Data is data collected for advertising purposes. Third Party Data is collected from multiple sources and based on demographics and behaviors.

U

VAST

Video Ad Serving Template is an IAB specification that explains how video players communicate with ad servers, and serve ads.

vCPM

vCPM is an advertising metric that stands for Viewable Cost per Mille. vCPM tracks the cost for viewable thousand impressions.

Video Advertising

Video advertising is the promotion of ads via video.

Video Completion Rate

The percentage of times that a video ad plays to the end.

View–Through

A window of time after an ad has been seen for the user to perform a certain action. If a user sees a particular ad for some trainers and buys those trainers within the agreed View Through window (e.g. 90 days), some of the value of the end purchase can be attributed to that specific ad

Viewability

Viewability or viewable impressions is an advertising metric used to define impressions which can actually be seen by users,

VPAID

VPAID or Video Player-Ad Interface Definition is advertising technology that complements VAST (Video Ad Serving Template)

Walled Gardens

Enclosed online environments where the user experience is controlled by the platform. Examples are Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Often Walled Gardens require users to log in giving them access for far more user data than the Open Web

Whitelist

A Whitelist is a list of website domains that the advertiser is willing to serve its ads on. Many advertisers who buy advertising programmatically will only buy from a whitelist or against a blacklist.

Win Rate

The percenatage of total bids placed which were successful i.e. when the bid won the auction

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Ad server

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Ad server

Inventory Monetisation

Real Time Ad Serving

Native Plugin

Self Service

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Ad Exchange

Native Display Campaigns

Recurring Revenue Campaigns

Self Service

Cases

Partners

DSPs

ESPs

Cases

LEARN...

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From AB Testing to (Gen) Z

New to in-email advertising?