Section 07 — Glossary

Definitions, plus why you should care

Short definitions written for people who have to make a decision this quarter. Search by term, abbreviation or plain description.

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118 terms

Ad Exchange

A technology marketplace that facilitates automated buying and selling of digital advertising inventory.

Ad Fraud

Invalid or deceptive activity designed to generate illegitimate advertising impressions, clicks or conversions.

Ad Inventory

The advertising opportunities available for sale across websites, apps, CTV and other digital environments.

Ad Server

Technology used to manage, deliver, track and measure digital advertising.

Ads.txt

A publisher-declared file identifying authorised sellers of its digital advertising inventory.

AI Agent

An AI system capable of performing multi-step tasks using tools, data and predefined objectives.

AI Hallucination

An AI-generated output that appears plausible but is factually incorrect or unsupported by available evidence.

AI-Assisted Reporting

The use of AI to transform campaign data into summaries, insights and recommendations.

Attention Metric

A measurement intended to estimate the degree of user attention or engagement associated with an advertisement.

Attribution

The process of assigning credit for a conversion or business outcome to one or more marketing interactions.

Attribution Model

The rules used to determine how conversion credit is distributed across marketing interactions.

Attribution Window

The defined period during which a conversion can be attributed to an advertising interaction.

Auction

The mechanism through which competing buyers bid for an advertising opportunity.

Bid Floor

The minimum price a seller is willing to accept for an advertising impression.

Bid Price

The amount a buyer offers for an advertising opportunity.

Bid Request

The information sent to a buyer describing an available advertising opportunity.

Bid Response

The response from a buyer indicating whether and how much it is willing to bid for an impression.

Bot Traffic

Website or advertising activity generated by automated software rather than genuine human users.

Brand Safety

Measures and controls designed to prevent advertising from appearing alongside content that may damage a brand.

Brand Suitability

The degree to which an advertising environment aligns with a specific brand's tolerance and contextual requirements.

Budget Pacing

The management of campaign spend over time to ensure the budget is deployed according to plan.

Campaign QA

The process of checking campaign configuration before launch.

Click

An interaction in which a user selects or clicks an advertisement.

Closed-Loop Measurement

Measurement connecting advertising exposure to transactions using a retailer's own customer or sales data.

Consent Management Platform

Technology used to collect, manage and communicate user consent preferences.

Contextual Targeting

Targeting users based on the content or environment in which an advertisement appears rather than an individual's behavioural history.

Conversion

A defined user action that a campaign is intended to generate, such as a purchase, lead or registration.

Conversion Path

The sequence of marketing interactions that occurred before a conversion.

Conversion Tracking

The technical process of recording defined user actions for campaign measurement and optimisation.

Cookie

A small data file stored by a browser that can be used to maintain state or recognise activity.

CPA

Media cost divided by the number of conversions or actions generated.

CPC

Media cost divided by the number of clicks generated.

CPL

Media cost divided by the number of leads generated.

CPM

A pricing metric calculated by dividing media cost by impressions and multiplying by 1,000.

CPV

Media cost divided by the number of video views generated.

CRM Data

Customer information maintained within a customer relationship management system.

CTR

The percentage of impressions that result in a click, calculated as clicks divided by impressions.

CTV

Television content delivered through internet-connected devices rather than traditional broadcast or cable distribution.

Curated Marketplace

A programmatic supply source where a third-party curator pre-filters and packages inventory from multiple SSPs based on quality, brand safety, or audience criteria before offering it to buyers.

Customer Data Platform

Technology designed to unify customer data from multiple sources into persistent customer profiles for activation and analysis.

CVR

The percentage of clicks or visits that result in a conversion.

Data Clean Room

A secure environment where two or more parties can match and analyse their combined first-party data without either party seeing the other's raw, underlying data.

Data Layer

A structured data object used to pass information about users, pages, products and events between a website and analytics or marketing technologies.

Data Management Platform

Technology used to collect, organise and activate audience data, traditionally for advertising use cases.

Deal ID

A unique identifier attached to a negotiated programmatic deal (PMP or Programmatic Guaranteed) that lets a DSP recognise and apply the agreed terms automatically.

Deterministic Matching

Identity matching based on a known shared identifier, such as a logged-in email address.

Domain Spoofing

A fraudulent practice in which an ad opportunity falsely represents itself as coming from a legitimate publisher or domain.

DSP

Software that lets advertisers buy digital ad inventory programmatically, typically bidding into ad exchanges in real time.

eCPM

A normalised CPM used to compare the effective cost of inventory or outcomes across different pricing models.

FAST

Free ad-supported streaming television services.

First-Party Data

Data a company collects directly from its own customers or users, such as CRM records, site behaviour, or app activity.

First-Price Auction

An auction in which the winning bidder pays the price it submitted.

Frequency

The average number of times a unique user is exposed to an advertisement.

Frequency Cap

A rule that limits how many times a user can be exposed to an advertisement within a defined period.

Geo Experiment

An experiment that compares advertising exposure and outcomes across defined geographic areas, typically holding some regions out as a control.

Header Bidding

A technique that allows multiple demand sources to compete for publisher inventory before the publisher's primary ad server makes its decision.

Human-in-the-Loop

A workflow where human judgement remains part of an automated or AI-driven decision process.

Identity Graph

A system that connects multiple identifiers associated with the same person, household or device.

Identity Resolution

The process of connecting multiple identifiers or records that are believed to represent the same user or entity.

Impression

One instance of an ad being served, regardless of whether it was seen or clicked.

Incrementality

A measurement approach that isolates the additional (incremental) outcome caused specifically by an ad campaign, versus what would have happened anyway without it.

Incrementality Test

A controlled experiment designed to determine whether advertising generated outcomes that would not otherwise have occurred.

Invalid Traffic

Traffic considered illegitimate or non-human according to defined measurement standards.

Last-Click Attribution

An attribution model that assigns conversion credit to the final recorded click before conversion.

Made-for-Advertising

Digital properties designed primarily to generate advertising revenue rather than provide meaningful user value.

Match Rate

The percentage of a first-party or third-party data list that a platform can successfully identify and match to its own user base.

Media Mix

The combination of channels, platforms and formats used within a campaign.

Media Plan

A structured plan defining where, when, how and how much advertising budget will be deployed.

Media Spend

The amount paid to purchase advertising inventory, excluding or including fees depending on the reporting methodology.

Multi-Touch Attribution

An approach that distributes conversion credit across multiple marketing interactions.

Naming Convention

Standardised rules for naming campaigns, ad groups, creatives, audiences and other campaign objects.

New-to-Brand

Customers who purchase from a brand for the first time within the defined measurement period.

Off-Site Retail Media

Retailer audience activation across external websites, apps or media environments, using the retailer's own data.

On-Site Retail Media

Advertising delivered within a retailer's own website or application.

OTT

Video content delivered over the internet outside traditional television distribution systems.

Pixel

A tracking mechanism used to record user actions or advertising events.

PMP

An invitation-only programmatic marketplace where a publisher makes inventory available to a select group of buyers, typically at a negotiated floor price.

Post-bid Verification

Brand safety and viewability measurement that runs after an ad has already won the auction and served, reporting on what happened rather than preventing it.

Pre-bid Verification

Brand safety and viewability checks that run before a bid is placed, evaluating the ad placement and blocking the bid entirely if it fails the check.

Probabilistic Matching

Identity matching based on statistical signals indicating that different identifiers may belong to the same entity.

Programmatic

The automated buying and selling of digital ad inventory through software, typically via real-time auction.

Prompt Engineering

The practice of designing instructions that produce more useful and reliable outputs from AI systems.

Prospecting

Advertising intended to acquire users who have not previously interacted with the brand.

Publisher

A company or entity that owns or operates digital content where advertising can be displayed.

Quartile Completion

Measurement of video progress at defined points such as 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%.

Reach

The number of unique users exposed to an advertisement or campaign.

Reseller

An intermediary that sells inventory it does not directly own.

Retail Audience

An audience defined using a retailer's customer, transaction or behavioural data.

Retail Media

Advertising delivered through a retailer's owned digital or physical media environments using retailer data and audiences.

Retail Media Network

A retailer-operated advertising ecosystem that allows brands to reach shoppers using retailer-owned inventory and data.

Retargeting

Advertising to users based on previous interactions with a brand, website, application or content.

ROAS

Revenue generated per dollar of media spend, calculated as revenue divided by ad spend.

RTB

An auction mechanism where ad impressions are bought and sold individually, in real time, as a page or app loads.

Second-Party Data

First-party data obtained directly from another organisation through a partnership or transaction.

Selection Bias

Distortion caused when the people exposed to advertising differ systematically from those who are not exposed.

Sellers.json

A publicly available file, hosted by an SSP or exchange, listing the sellers and intermediaries authorised to transact on its platform.

Server-Side Tracking

Tracking where event collection and processing occurs through a server rather than relying entirely on browser-side execution.

Source of Truth

The designated dataset or system treated as the authoritative reference for a particular metric or business outcome.

SSP

Software that lets publishers make their ad inventory available to buyers programmatically, typically via an ad exchange or header bidding.

Supply Chain Object

An OpenRTB bid-request object that represents every intermediary a specific impression passed through, from publisher to buyer.

Supply Path

The sequence of intermediaries through which an advertising impression travels from publisher to buyer.

The practice of analysing and consolidating the number of intermediaries (exchanges, resellers, curators) an impression passes through between publisher and buyer, in order to reduce cost and improve transparency.

SVOD

Subscription video-on-demand.

Take Rate

The percentage of transaction value retained by an intermediary or technology provider.

Target Audience

The defined group of users a campaign is intended to reach.

Third-Party Cookie

A cookie set by a domain different from the website the user is visiting.

Third-Party Data

Data collected or aggregated by an organisation that does not have a direct relationship with the end user.

Universal ID

A persistent identifier designed to support recognition across advertising environments without relying on third-party cookies.

UTM Parameters

URL parameters used to identify the source, medium, campaign and other attributes of website traffic.

VCR

The percentage of video impressions that reach the defined completion point.

Viewability

The extent to which an advertisement was actually in a position where it could be seen.

Viewable Impression

An impression that meets a defined viewability threshold.

VTR

The percentage of a video ad watched to completion, calculated as completed views divided by impressions served.

Waterfall

A sequential system in which demand sources are called one after another according to predetermined priorities.

Win Rate

The percentage of submitted bids that successfully win an auction.