Adtech Glossary

Ad avails are the aggregate number of ad impressions a site has available for ads. The website owner or publisher can sell the inventory directly to advertisers or outsource sales via an online intermediary such as an ad network or ad exchange. 

An ad call is a call for an ad to fill an empty slot on a web page or app. The user’s browser or a web content server sends the request to an adtech platform (ad server or ad exchange), including the information required for ad serving and reporting, such as publisher ID and location. The adtech platform then sends an appropriate ad to fulfil the request.

A type of sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT), ad clutter refers to when the number of ads within the user’s viewport is too high. For example, more than four ads in the viewport could count as ad clutter, and the impression might count as invalid.

An ad exchange is a dynamic auction-based online marketplace where unsold ad inventory is bought and sold for a range of mediums, including video and display.

A form of invalid traffic (IVT), ad injection is when ads are inserted on apps, web pages, etc. without the consent of the publisher or site operator.

An ad network is an intermediary or broker that connects multiple publishers with multiple advertisers.

Ad operations/ad ops is a department, team, or function within a company responsible for managing ad campaigns, including set-up, delivery, monitoring, optimisation, and reporting. Can be on the advertiser or publisher side and will use various ad-related technology platforms.

An ad pod is a group of ads that are sequenced together to be played back-to-back within a single ad break/placement, similar to ad breaks in traditional linear TV. Ad pods give publishers the opportunity to maximise revenue from each ad break and give advertisers more control over ad positioning.

An ad server is advertising technology that stores, manages, and delivers ads to browsers and apps, making automated decisions as to what ads to send based on campaigns and deals.

Ad stacking is a form of fraud where multiple ads are stacked on top of each other in one single ad placement, but only the top ad is visible to the user.

Ad verification is an automated impartial service that provides information on the delivery and display of ads. Core use cases for ad verification include invalid traffic (IVT) detection, blocking, and viewability.

Addressable TV (ATV) is targeted advertising within broadcaster content. Real-time ads are targeted on a one-to-one device-level basis, so different households watching the same TV programme are shown personalised ads according to specific criteria, such as demographic profile, viewing behaviour, interests, and location.

An abbreviation of advertising technology, adtech refers to the platforms and systems used throughout the digital advertising chain by advertisers, agencies, publishers, and other companies.

An advertiser is any entity (individual, brand, agency, etc.) looking to promote a specific message, brand, product, or service via advertising on TV, radio, apps, websites, billboards, etc.

Advertiser-funded Video on Demand (AVOD) is the term used for streaming services funded by advertising, where platforms offer viewers free access to content online and on-demand (via connected TVs, set-top boxes, mobile devices, or PCs) in return for watching ads.

Agency trading desks (ATDs) are media agency departments that handle digital advertising buying – including programmatic, bid-based buying – for the agency’s clients, using demand-side platforms (DSPs) and other buying technologies.

Aggregators are organisations, websites, or software applications that collect information from different sources and consolidate it in one place. In digital advertising, ad networks can aggregate publishers’ unsold ad inventory and offer it to advertisers at scale.

An algorithm is a set of defined rules/instructions to be followed to solve a problem or perform a task, function, or sequence of operations. In digital marketing, algorithms form the basis of multiple functions, such as search engine rankings, audience segmentation, and data analysis.

An application programming interface (API) is a programming method/code or set of defined rules that allow applications and programmes to automatically exchange data and share features.

ASAP is a smartx pacing setting where the ad server will try to deliver as many impressions as possible from the beginning of the campaign, until 100% of the campaign’s goal has been reached. ASAP pacing might be selected if an advertiser is running a time-sensitive campaign and wants to reach consumers as quickly as possible. See also, Pacing.

Attribution is a term used in advertising and marketing to refer to the process of linking (attributing) an advertising or marketing tactic to a user action, such as purchasing a product.

Auction-based pricing is a dynamic pricing model that ensures the prices paid for ad impressions are based on market demand.

The core function of any supply-side platform (SSP), auctions are online marketplaces where buyers place real-time bids for publishers' ad inventory.

Audience buying is the buying of audience segments to target specific users. Using first- and third-party data and supported by programmatic platforms, advertisers are able to select audience segments and build targeted campaigns.

Audience measurement counts how many people are being reached by online content and collects data on those viewers and their interactions with the content.

Audience segments are subgroups of an overall audience, defined via criteria such as demographics (age, gender, income), geolocation, behaviour, interests, purchasing habits, or lifestyle. Advertisers can focus their ad buying on inventory that will display to the audience segments identified as being most likely to engage with their product, service, or message.

Auto-refresh is any online operation that is programmed to be refreshed automatically based on predetermined triggers. In digital advertising, a page ad unit will be programmed to regularly request a new rendered asset to display according to the publisher’s auto-refresh settings, which could be based on user activity, when other content refreshes, or time intervals. This can allow a publisher to maximise ad revenue per user session.

Back loaded is a smartx pacing setting where the ad server will try to deliver more impressions toward the end of the campaign. Back loaded pacing might be selected if an advertiser is running promotions leading up to an event, as more impressions will be delivered as the event gets closer. See also, Pacing.

Behavioural segments divide an audience into segments based on their past online behaviour.

A bid is an offer an advertiser makes at an auction to pay a certain price for ad impressions. In digital advertising auctions, a supply-side platform (SSP) will send a bid request, related to specific ad inventory, to potential buyers (advertisers) on demand-side platforms (DSPs), and if a buyer is interested in the inventory, they will place a bid. 

Bid behaviour is an analysis of how a demand-side platform (DSP) or a certain programmatic buyer reacts to bid requests from supply-side platforms (SSPs). KPIs will include bid rate, bid price, and win rate. Bidding behaviour can give clues as to why a buyer might not be spending as expected and help to troubleshoot issues.

Bid requests occur when publishers submit information about their available ad inventory to SSPs, ad networks, or ad exchanges.

A bid response is the advertiser’s response to a publisher’s bid request. When an advertiser decides that ad inventory offered via a bid request suits their criteria, they can respond with a bid through the RTB system. This bid response will include details about the bid as well as information on the ad campaign and the bidder.

Bid shading refers to the algorithms/tools offered by demand-side platforms (DSPs) to help advertisers avoid overspending on impressions.

Blocking is the ability to stop ads from appearing on websites.

A bot, short for robot, is a computer program capable of automatically carrying out a designated task without direct human control. There are many different types of bots – both good and bad – and they operate (and communicate) via internet-based services. Examples include chatbots, shopbots, crawlers, spambots, and hackers.

Bot detection software differentiates bot-generated traffic and impressions from human-generated traffic and impressions, protecting websites from fraud. Bot traffic, whether good or bad, is always considered to be invalid traffic (IVT).

A type of sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT), a bot network (or botnet) is a network of computer devices that have been hijacked for fraudulent purposes.

Bot traffic is the result of a bot network (or botnet). A significant proportion of bot traffic is unwelcome or intentionally malicious and is designed to replicate human activities such as clicks and impressions.

Advertisers can classify certain websites or pages as a brand risk, whether that’s due to inappropriate content or values/behaviours that do not match those of the brand in question. Association with these websites or pages – for example, by placing ads on those pages – has the potential to have a negative impact on the brand’s values, image, or reputation.

Brand safety is an overall term for a variety of measures/controls designed to safeguard a brand’s image, reputation, values, and data when advertising online. Brand safety is backed by a set of industry standards and benchmarks.

Brand suitability is a tool used to determine if the content in which an ad appears is an appropriate fit for the brand that is advertising.

Broadcaster Video on Demand (BVOD) is the term used for streaming services offered by traditional TV broadcasters that allow viewers access to their linear and on-demand content (via a connected TV, set-top box, mobile device, or PC).

Available in all in-stream environments, played out as a pre-roll, mid-roll, or post-roll, the bumper ad is a short commercial with a maximum length of 6 seconds. Due to its short, user-friendly format, this ad receives high VTR and works well as a campaign supplement.

In digital advertising, a campaign refers to a buying strategy for purchasing ad inventory, i.e. the ad inventory bought from a specific ad network/publisher and the specific start/end date, budget, placement, targeting, etc.

A type of human sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT), cash for surfing occurs when users create an account and simply get paid for watching ads. The involvement of the user is low, and some ad verification vendors might count such an impression as SIVT.

A click is an advertising metric that is counted whenever someone interacts with an ad by clicking on it. Clicks determine how successful an ad has been at engaging customers in the product, service, or message being promoted.

Calculated as clicks divided by impressions, click-through rate (CTR) is an important advertising metric and is usually expressed as a percentage.

Connected TV (CTV) is a term used for any television with a built-in internet connection – a smart TV – or any external device that can be plugged into a television to provide an internet connection.

A term used by smartclip, a content channel is a targeting capability in smartx which allows advertisers to combine several inventory sources like placement groups and sites from one or even different publishers.

Contextual targeting is a form of targeting that allows advertisers to place ads alongside online content relevant to the campaign. See also, smart Context.

Calculated as the total cost of an online ad campaign divided by the number of clicks, cost per click (CPC) is the price an advertiser pays each time a user clicks on an advertisement displayed on a publisher’s website. The CPC can be pre-defined and agreed upon before the campaign commences.

A pricing model for online video ad campaigns, cost per completed view (CPCV) is the price an advertiser pays for complete views of video ads.

Cost per mille (CPM) is the price an advertiser pays for every 1,000 ad impressions delivered.

A pricing model for online video campaigns, cost per view (CPV) is the price an advertiser pays for video views and is usually expressed per 1,000 views.

In digital advertising, a creative is the actual advertisement shown to users and can consist of images, text, animation, video, audio, etc.

Creative Approval is a smartclip tool that allows publishers to approve and reject the advertisements that run on their inventory, giving them more granular control to protect their brand.

A type of non-human sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT), creative hijacking refers to when ad calls (requests to the ad server) or ad tags (HTML that contains and delivers the actual ad) on a website are copied and, without the consent of the publisher or the advertisers, placed elsewhere in untrustworthy environments.

Custom key values enable publishers to set up their own customised targeting parameters and values (e.g. gender or age) on smartx.

A customer data platform (CDP) collects first-party data and personally identifiable information (PII) to enhance marketing communications.

A data aggregator is a company that collects large volumes of data from multiple sources, repackages it and passes it on to other companies for use in marketing or ad targeting.

Data management platforms (DMPs) are used by advertisers, ad agencies, and publishers to collect, store, organise, and apply a variety of audience data.

Data providers collect user data from a mix of sources then consolidate it into categories to facilitate audience segmentation/targeting.

Data-centre traffic is a type of non-human sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT), coming from IP addresses that originate from data centres.

A term used in the smartx ecosystem and a key element of a demand business rule (DBR), the deal type sets out which auction mechanism will be used to decide the final price paid for programmatic ad inventory.

A term used in the smartx ecosystem, a Demand Business Rule (DBR) is a programmatic deal that sets out a framework of contractual, pre-negotiated information between a buyer and smartx.

A term specific to smartx, the Demand Marketplace represents the demand side of the supply-demand relationship on the smartx platform.

Used by advertisers and ad agencies to buy impressions and manage campaigns, demand-side platforms (DSPs) aggregate ad inventory across multiple formats and from multiple sources including ad exchanges, ad networks, and publishers’ supply-side platforms (SSPs).

In the smartx ecosystem, a direct campaign refers to a campaign where an advertiser (or agency) has made a direct, non-programmatic agreement with a publisher to purchase ad inventory.

A (fixed price) direct deal is a method of media buying where the advertiser agrees to bid on the publisher’s offered inventory using a pre-negotiated fixed CPM.

A direct guaranteed deal is one of three types of programmatic direct deals available on the smartx platform, alongside direct deals and programmatic guaranteed deals. Direct guaranteed deals add pacing capabilities to direct deals, allowing the advertiser more control over delivery.

A type of non-human sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT), domain/app spoofing refers to when buyers are deceived with fake traffic sources and the actual impression is generated on an inferior website of low quality with non-brand-safe content.

Dynamic ads are ads that change creatives in order to create personalised ad experiences based on personal interest and/or location. This competitive video ad format effectively combines reach and relevance and is available in all in-stream and out-stream environments.

Even is a smartx pacing setting where the ad server spreads the delivery of impressions evenly across the whole timespan of the campaign. Even pacing might be selected if an advertiser is looking to maintain a consistent level of engagement across the campaign. See also, Pacing.

An exclusion list typically contains domains that an advertiser wants to avoid serving their advertisements to, whether it be due to a conflict of interest, or if the domain is known to engage in fraudulent practices or display inappropriate content.

Fake news is deliberately false or inaccurate content that is broadcasted or published. This content is a brand safety issue and is often created and distributed via websites as ‘clickbait’, encouraging users to click on the story and therefore increase impressions (or to mislead readers, potentially for fraudulent purposes or to influence political views).

First look is a sales incentive used to grant chosen buyers priority access to a publisher's inventory.

First-party cookies are created by the website being visited and enable the host site to collect and remember user information.

First-party data is information that a company collects about its audience, customers, or visitors via its own sources, both online and offline.

A type of auction model in programmatic advertising, a first-price auction is where buyers bid for ad impressions and the highest bid wins.

In digital advertising, a fixed price deal or campaign is a set price for impressions that the seller and buyer agree to in advance. The alternative to fixed price is auction-based pricing, where prices are determined via private or public auctions. See also, Auction-Based Pricing.

A floor price is the minimum CPM that a publisher is willing to accept for its ad inventory when it is auctioned on an adtech platform. A floor price can be reassessed at certain intervals or adjusted according to certain characteristics, such as what time of the day the impression will be served, in order to maximise yield.

Free Ad-Supported Streaming TV (FAST) is a term used to describe subscription-free digital channels that stream ad-supported content via Connected TV devices.

A frequency cap ensures that an ad is not shown to the same user multiple times within a giventime period.

Front and back-loaded is a smartx pacing setting where the ad server will try to deliver more impressions at the beginning and end of the campaign than it does in the middle of the campaign. After 10% of the time, 17% of the impression goal should have been reached. After 50% of the time, 50% of the goal should have been reached. And after 90% of the time, 83% of the goal should have been reached. See also, Pacing.

Front-loaded is a smartx pacing setting where the ad server will try to deliver the majority of the impressions in the first half of the campaign. An advertiser might choose front-loaded pacing when launching a product. See also, Pacing.

One of two forms of invalid traffic, general invalid traffic (GIVT) can be defined as non-human digital traffic generated by, for example, known/declared search engine crawlers, bots, or data-centre traffic.

rs when most of the website’s traffic does not match the geo-location of the website’s origin. This can occur, for example, when a website from Germany with German content receives traffic mostly from Russia. Another issue might be that the campaign delivery does not consider the booked geo-targeting of the client.

Header bidding is an advanced method of programmatic ad buying that allows buyers to bid for impressions simultaneously. Usually, ad servers allocate inventory in a sequential waterfall system that flows through ad exchanges, one after another. In header bidding, code is placed on a web page that loads a wrapper when the page loads.

A method of ad fraud, hidden ad impressions are where ads are supposedly served to users but the ads are hidden behind other ads or content. They can also appear in iframes or pop-under windows not visible to the user. The purpose is to fraudulently increase the number of ad impressions and therefore revenue.

A type of non-human sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT), hidden ads occur when ads are displayed in a way that they overlay each other almost completely or are overlaid by components of the website such as pictures, articles, and graphics. This is often an unintentional issue that needs to be fixed by the publisher. If the ads are hidden on purpose, the reason could be fraudulent.

In digital advertising, websites or pages featuring high-risk content must be identified and blocked to avoid any damage to an advertiser’s reputation through association.

When a legitimate device (browser, phone, app) is hijacked for the purposes of carrying out fraud, that device is known as a hijacked device.

A household frequency cap takes into account all the devices used by one household. Advertisers can set a household frequency cap to ensure that their ads are not shown to users in the same household multiple times within a short period.

Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV (HbbTV) is an industry standard/initiative designed to enable a seamless approach to the delivery of Hybrid TV. Hybrid TV is where TV, internet, and interactive content is delivered by broadcast, IPTV, and broadband networks via connected TVs (CTVs) and set-top boxes (STBs).

As connected TV monetisation models continue to evolve, Hybrid Video on Demand (HVOD) is a term being used to describe platforms that combine various connected TV monetisation models.

Developed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) – the industry body for digital advertising – IAB categories are standard classifications that publishers and brands use to categorise web content and, therefore, improve targeting.

Used by advertisers to serve personalised ads on iPhones and iPads, the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) is a unique, random identifier assigned to iOS mobile devices. The IDFA is anonymous, so it does not reveal any personal information, but it allows advertisers and app owners to identify specific mobile devices and collect information about their use, enabling customised, targeted ads to be displayed.

In digital advertising, an impression is counted each time an ad is served to a user’s web-enabled device, whether that’s on a desktop PC, tablet, phone, or smart TV.

In-stream ads are video ads that play ‘in-stream’, i.e. while the user is watching content via a video player online. In-stream ads can appear in a full-screen view before (pre-roll), during (mid-roll), or after (post-roll) content. They can also appear as a 6-second bumper ad.

Incentivised browsing occurs when people are offered incentives – monetary rewards or other benefits – to visit ad-supported websites, enabling publishers to increase site traffic or boost ad impressions.

An inclusion list is a list of sites or domains and bundle IDs that an advertiser considers to be safe, acceptable, and trustworthy environments to serve ads to.

The injected ads status is an indication of potential fraud caused by unauthorised injected ads, a form of fraud where ads are inserted on web pages or apps without the consent of – or payment to – the publisher or site operator. See Ad Injection.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is the trade association for digital/interactive advertising, and its members include media owners, agencies, brands, and technology firms involved in selling, delivering, and optimising digital ad campaigns.

Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) is television delivered via the internet, usually through smart TVs or subscriber-based internet-connected devices.

When advertising impressions are generated by machines, data centres, bots, or any other form of non-human activity, this is categorised as invalid traffic (IVT). The Media Rating Council (MRC) divides IVT into two formats – general invalid traffic (GIVT) and sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT).

Similar to the amount of stock a business has in its warehouse, a publisher’s inventory is the amount of advertising space it has available on its websites or digital channels at any given time.

Also known as a closed auction, an invitation-only auction is where the publisher only invites selected advertisers to bid on their available inventory via a private marketplace.

Latency is the time it takes for a unit of data to travel across a network connection following an instruction for its transfer – for example, the time it takes for a video ad to appear in a browser. In digital advertising, publishers will be looking to reduce latency – slow delivery could result in lost impressions and lost revenue.

Line items set out the framework of a direct campaign, containing campaign information such as start/end date, ad unit dimensions/placements, etc. Line item bundles contain multiple line items, providing presets, various delivery methods, and an organised workflow for the direct campaigns.

Linear TV (or just ‘TV’ before digital technologies arrived) is the name given to the traditional form of television broadcast, where content is delivered via broadcast, cable, or satellite television and viewers watch the content at the time it airs based on a broadcaster-set schedule.

Location data allows advertisers to target potential customers in a chosen location, often paying a higher rate for such specifically targeted ads. Location fraud is where fraudsters send false location data, so the ad actually serves somewhere outside the targeted region, which reduces the effectiveness of the campaign.

In general terms, low-risk content is defined as content that is acceptable for all ages and audiences. It does not contain anything that could be considered offensive, and therefore most advertisers would be comfortable seeing their ads appearing next to such content.

A type of non-human sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT), malicious bots are non-human programs and scripts that generate impressions while pretending to be human. Malicious click bots are similar to malicious bots, but they create clicks instead or on top of ad impressions.

Working for advertisers, a media agency advises its clients on how to allocate their media spend across available platforms/channels to optimise campaign performance. Digital media agencies will buy ad slots from publishers/ad networks and will manage campaigns and track performance.

The Media Rating Council (MRC) is a US-based, non-profit organisation that was established in the 1960s (as the Broadcast Rating Council) to review and accredit audience rating services for TV and radio. Today, the MRC works across all forms of media and ensures the validity, reliability, and effectiveness of audience measurement services.

Mid-loaded is a pacing setting where the ad server will try to deliver more impressions around the midpoint of the campaign. After 30% of the time, 21% of the impression goal should have been reached. After 50% of the time, 50% of the goal should have been reached. And after 70% of the time, 79% of the goal should have been reached. See also, Pacing.

Mid-roll video ads resemble conventional commercial breaks and stream in the middle of the publisher’s video content. Since viewers that make it to a mid-roll ad are highly engaged and more likely want to view featured content to the end, this placement typically achieves high completion rates.

In general terms, moderate-risk content is defined as content that is typically acceptable for most brands. However, the type of content that will fall into this category is subjective – it will depend on the product/service being promoted and the market being targeted.

The Next Generation Optimiser (NGO) is an add-on on the smartx platform that collects and centralises data from deals and campaigns in one location. The NGO offers a simple way to keep track of deals and campaigns, allowing advertisers to optimise and monitor performance and to detect any anomalies in delivery.

In open ad exchanges, all advertisers have an equal opportunity to buy (either manually or programmatically) available ad inventory from publishers via an open auction.

The Open Measurement Interface Definition (OMID) is the API central to the IAB Tech Lab’s Open Measurement Software Development Kit (OM SDK).

A standardised set of coding, the Open Measurement Software Development Kit (OM SDK) facilitates third-party audience measurement and verification for ads appearing on web video and mobile apps.

Developed and regularly updated by the IAB Tech Lab, OpenRTB Protocol is an API specification that establishes a standardised, simplified protocol for programmatic/RTB auction environments.

In digital advertising, optimisation translates as advertisers making the most effective use of the platforms, budget, inventory, ad placements, technologies, and data available to them to ensure each campaign reaches its full potential.

Out-stream ads are video ads that play ‘out-stream’, i.e. outside of streaming online video content. They are video ads that appear in non-video text-based editorial content/articles or on social media feeds.

Over-the-top (OTT) is a term used to describe both a type of content and the devices used to deliver content directly to users via the open internet.

Pacing is the speed or rate at which an ad campaign uses up its predefined number of impressions or spends its predefined budget during its run-time.

Personally identifiable information (PII) refers to any information that could potentially identify a specific individual (or enable someone to contact that individual).

A form of ad impression fraud, pixel stuffing is when one or more ads are served in a display unit the size of a single 1x1 pixel.

In digital advertising, pixels — also known as marketing pixels, tracking pixels, web beacons, and web bugs — are snippets of code (HTML or JavaScript) or tiny invisible images (measuring 1x1 pixel) that are placed on web pages, usually in the footer, and are used to gather information about website visitors and track their activity.

Each placement on a site is defined into subcategories - for example, finance, technology, society, family, fashion, news. These subcategories are called placement groups in smartx.

Placements are the locations where advertisers choose to run ads on a website, web page, or mobile app, or in video content, or even within an individual ad unit.

Post-roll video ads stream directly after the publisher’s video content. Since Post-Roll ads follow featured content, they work well if your ad encourages viewers to perform an immediate action, as viewers are more likely to respond to a call-to-action when it does not distract them from the original featured content.

Pre-roll video ads stream directly before the publisher's content begins. Since pre-roll ads precede featured content, they are more likely to be perceived by viewers as informative rather than intrusive, and drive key metrics such as brand awareness, brand engagement, brand favorability, and purchase intent.

A private marketplace is a type of ad exchange controlled by a publisher. The publisher determines which advertisers/DSPs have access to the exchange and can therefore participate in invitation-only auctions (also known as closed auctions) that take place via that exchange.

Programmatic advertising is the automated process of buying, selling, and serving ad impressions via adtech platforms.

A programmatic guaranteed deal is a one-to-one deal where the advertiser and publisher agree on the number of impressions and the price in advance. Each makes a guarantee to the other – the advertiser will buy a certain number of impressions and pay the agreed price, and the publisher will deliver those impressions and charge the agreed price.

Programmatic TV is an umbrella term used to describe the technology-driven approach to regular linear TV advertising, where advertisers can plan, buy, measure, and optimise TV ad campaigns via automated, data-driven methods using a demand-side platform (DSP) as a tool or software.

In digital advertising, a publisher is an organisation that prepares, issues, and distributes content via online media such as websites and apps. A key revenue stream for publishers is selling ad space (inventory) to companies looking to promote their products/services to the publisher’s audience.

Queries per second (QPS) plays a key role in digital advertising, where advertisers want to run campaigns through ad networks or ad exchanges with a high QPS measure, as this demonstrates that the platform not only has good reach but also has the capacity to service that level of demand.

An important metric in digital advertising, reach is the total number of ‘unique’ users – or the percentage of the advertiser’s target audience – who have seen an ad at least one time.

Integral to addressable advertising, real-time bidding (RTB) is the almost instantaneous process of bidding on and buying ad impressions.

When publishers reserve specific ad space on a website exclusively for specific advertisers, based on an agreed deal/price, this inventory becomes reserved inventory.

If you browse an online webshop and then, later on, see an ad for that webshop on an unrelated site, it’s because you have been retargeted. A retargeting pixel had been placed on that store’s website, and when you left, the pixel sent signals to a third-party platform to serve the store’s ads on other websites you visited afterwards.

Retargeting fraud takes advantage of the premium price advertisers pay for retargeting, i.e. ads targeted at people who have already visited their website. Bots are programmed to imitate human behaviour – for example, by visiting product pages or filling a shopping basket. The advertiser’s retargeting campaign settings then instruct the ad server to deliver more ads to this fake ‘lead’, wasting impressions and budget.

SafeFrame is an IAB standard that allows for controlled interaction and measurement when third-party ads are served within publisher content. SafeFrame consists of an iframe (a ‘container’) on the web page that is managed by an API, a set of defined rules that allow the page content and the content within the iframe (the ad) to seamlessly interact.

Seats refers to the ‘seat accounts’ and the related unique buyer IDs created to identify buyers. When a new buyer participates in an auction through a DSP (demand-side platform), they are registered with a unique buyer ID. To ensure that the bid requests sent from an SSP (supply-side platform) are only addressed to the appropriate (whitelisted) buyers, each buyer ID is mapped to a ‘seat account’ on the SSP. Each seat account can have multiple DSP connections and therefore can include multiple buyer IDs.

When one organisation agrees to share its first-party data with another organisation it becomes second-party data.

A type of auction model in programmatic advertising, second-price auctions are where the highest bidder wins but only pays the price equal to the second-highest bid plus one cent.

A second-price public auction is based on the same pricing model as a second-price auction, but it is public and therefore open to all advertisers using the DSP, not just those approved/invited by the publisher. See also, Second-Price Auction and Invitation Only Auction.

Server-side ad insertion (SSAI) – also known as dynamic ad insertion – enables the seamless delivery of video ads into content streamed on internet-enabled devices.

Used by TV viewers around the world, set-top boxes (STBs) are devices that connect to the television and convert cable, satellite, or digital signals, or internet data, to TV signals so video content can be viewed on the television.

Site fraud status provides information on whether ad impressions were served on sites that have previously been associated with indications of ad impression fraud. This type of fraud can include hidden ads, non-human bot traffic, impression laundering, etc.

Publishers can have a variety of inventory sources where their video content is distributed. Potential placements for advertisements are generated on these sites. These inventory sources belonging to a specific publisher are called sites and apps.

smart Audiences is smartclip targeting solution that integrates socio-demographic data and contextual targeting capabilities to address the growing demand for non-intrusive targeting practices.

smart Context is a privacy-safe smartclip alternative for reaching relevant audiences — matching specific tastes and preferences.

smart SocioDemo is a smartclip targeting solution which targets audiences formed on socio-demographic signifiers and segments the population into a microgrid including social status and geographical location.

Launched in 2012, the smartx platform is a holistic full-stack ad serving and SSP sales house solution offered by smartclip. smartx is designed to empower European broadcasters and online publishers to offer innovative advertising solutions to international advertisers, and to monetise their content across all platforms and devices in the most efficient and effective way possible.

A sophisticated bot is a computer program capable of automatically carrying out a designated task without direct human control. Sophisticated bots are programmed to imitate human behaviour, for example, by viewing ads, clicking on ads, watching videos, or filling out forms.

One of two forms of invalid traffic (IVT), sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT) can take various forms and is more difficult to detect than general invalid traffic (GIVT), with identification requiring advanced analytics, and human intervention.

Subscription-based Video on Demand (SVOD) is the term used for streaming services that offer viewers access to content online and on-demand (via connected TV, set-top box, mobile devices, or PCs) in return for a regular subscription fee.

A term used in the smartx ecosystem, a Supply Business Rule contains essential contractual information agreed between a publisher and an intermediary sales house.

A supply marketplace - known as an owner marketplace on the smartx platform - contains the bundled inventory of publishers.

Supply-side platforms (SSPs) allow publishers to showcase their inventory to multiple advertisers on ad networks, auction off unsold inventory programmatically via RTB auctions on ad exchanges, or sell inventory directly to advertisers via demand-side platforms (DSPs).

A type of human sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT), surf and click farms are where people are paid or forced to visit websites and create ad impressions and clicks. These are often large-scale operations, and when they are discovered – and subsequently closed down – it is sometimes reported in the news.

A type of non-human sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT), surfbars are programs that automatically load additional sites when the user visits the actual website. Therefore the user does not actually view or engage with these additional websites.

In digital advertising, tags are pieces of code placed on web pages that, when the page loads, request information from or send information to third parties, carry out processes, or specify how something is displayed.

Third-party cookies are created by a party other than the website a user is visiting, and are used to gather and store information about the user.

Third-party data is data that is aggregated and packaged by a third party and sold to companies.

Sitting between the brand/advertiser (or agency), and the DSP, trading desks oversee the process of programmatic campaign delivery on behalf of brands and advertisers.

Traffic is a count of the number of visitors to a website or web page, and the metric can be further defined by its source. A key aim for digital marketers is to increase traffic, and measuring it allows them to ascertain how successful different elements of their marketing campaign have been in bringing people to the website.

Traffic sourcing occurs when publishers look for more traffic to their website. In digital advertising, if a publisher over-sells ad impressions or if they have a high demand for ad impressions but not enough traffic to meet that demand – they might decide to source extra traffic from a third-party publisher or a traffic broker.

Transactional Video on Demand (TVOD) is the term used to describe a monetisation model where viewers pay a one-off fee (or transaction) to buy or rent content via their connected TV devices.

Developed and managed by IAB Europe, the Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) is a combination of resources designed to provide an industry-standard approach to complying with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and ePrivacy Directive.

Created by the American Association of Advertising Agencies, Association of National Advertisers, and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) is a global initiative that seeks to build trust, increase transparency, and fight fraud in the digital advertising industry.

Unique users (or unique visitors) is a metric that refers to the number of individuals who have visited a website or web page at least once over a given period of time.

User-agent spoofing is a form of fraud where the string of data is modified to provide false information or hide details – for example, a bot making multiple automated requests for content from a single device could modify the user agent string to pretend those requests (and the resulting impressions) are from multiple devices.

Vegan Ads is a targeting capability on the smartx platform that enables the delivery of targeted advertisements to users without using cookies, device identifiers, or other personally identifiable information (PII) that is connected to a user.

Advertisers often use third-party partners to provide verification services – these companies offer an independent service that tracks ads to check they are being displayed in accordance with the campaign’s predefined parameters, detect invalid traffic (IVT) and fraud, and measure viewability.

VAST stands for Video Ad Serving Template, a framework used to deliver video ads from a video ad server to multiple publishers/video players. VAST was introduced by the IAB in 2008 as a common protocol designed to improve compatibility between video ad servers and the growing variety of video players (and websites/devices they are viewed on), and it has since been updated to reflect ongoing innovations in video advertising.

VPAID stands for Video Player Ad Interface Definition, a common interface used to deliver interactive video ads to multiple types of video players. The VAST and VPAID specifications were both developed by the IAB, but unlike VAST, which only supports one-way communication, VPAID allows for dynamic two-way communications, enabling the user, the video ad, and the video player to interact, so a rich interactive in-stream ad experience can be delivered.

View-Through Rate (VTR) is a KPI that can be used to estimate the success of a video ad campaign by indicating how much time users spent viewing the ads.

Measured using script embedded within the ad, viewability is an advertising metric that measures whether an ad appeared in the part of the screen that was seen by the user.

Views is the number of times visitors view content on a web page. For video ads, the MRC and IAB define a view as when two continuous seconds of the video ad play while at least 50% of the ad’s pixels are in the viewable space of the browser page.

Multi-Channel Video Programming Distributor (MVPD) is a term used to describe cable and satellite television operators that deliver multiple channels via fixed cables or satellite dishes. With the growth in internet-based OTT services, the term Virtual Multi-Channel Video Programming Distributors (vMVPDs) is now applied to operators that stream multiple linear TV channels over the internet.

The term walled garden is used to describe any type of closed platform, system or technology where access to or use of that platform, system, or technology – or the data held within it – is tightly restricted by its owner/operator. In digital advertising, the term is often used when discussing the market’s three biggest players: Google, Facebook, and Amazon.

Waterfalling is the process of publishers selling premium ad inventory via direct sales to advertisers, then offering unsold inventory to ad networks, one after another, based on a ranking system set up by the publisher.