Ad tech can be confusing. As we write our Kevel articles, we often discover contradictory definitions around the web, in part because most ad tech literature is written for advertisers and marketers. It can be confusing for someone on the sell-side (aka publishers) - for whom terms like “ad server” and “retargeting” can have widely different meanings.
This article aims to fix that by providing a resource catered for publishers to learn more about ad tech and relevant industry terms.
Table of Contents:
Ad tech stands for 'advertising technology’ and refers to using technology to buy and sell digital ads.
There are a two main reasons:
While no advertiser is exactly alike, they often have similar goals. After all, they are giving you money and expect something in return. Metrics they most care about are:
Advertisers generally buy in one of three ways:
Numbers 1 and 2 usually involve Insertion Orders, which are contracts that stipulate metrics such as length of the campaign (or "flight"), amount to be paid, how many clicks/impressions the advertiser gets, etc.
Number 3 usually offers a pay-as-you-go option with your credit card.
Larger brands will also usually buy through ad agencies, who will be the ones who decide where and how to buy. Large media agencies include names like Starcom, Carat, OMD, Mediacom, and many more.
The most common pricing methods are CPM, CPC, and CPA (see above).
From a publisher standpoint, CPM is the safest route and most common way that direct deals are sold. As you hopefully know how many impressions your site/app gets, you can be confident on being able to deliver a certain impression number over a certain amount of time.
Cost-per-click (CPC) is riskier for publishers, since it introduces an unknown factor: click-through-rates. If you show an advertiser's ads and nobody clicks on them, you make nothing. Many large ad platforms such as Google's AdWords employ this, though, because it appeals to long-tail performance-focused advertisers.
Cost-per-action (CPA) is less common, but loved by direct response advertisers. Here, advertisers pay only for some conversion event, such as a purchase or app download. This is even riskier for publishers, since not only are there CTR concerns, but you have to think about conversion rates too. Even if 100% of people click, if 0% of them convert, you make nothing.
With native advertising - it really is up to you! However, there are certain terms (native and non-native) that you may hear from advertisers more often, which you may or may not want to build into your platform.
For a breakdown of standard ad size units as defined by the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau), see here.
Targeting is important to ensure ad relevance and drive better performance metrics. There are many ways that ad platforms incorporate targeting. With Kevel, you can implement all of those listed below.
While we all know you aren't lying about the impressions and clicks you drove for your advertiser, THEY don't know it. So, they may ask to add special parameters to the click URL, or an impression pixel to the ad. This lets impartial third parties validate whether that impression or click did occur.
Kevel offers instructions on how to add these.
Ad Ops is the team that is setting up and managing campaigns. They often speak directly with the advertiser to determine when to start/pause, what to target, etc. Ad Ops can be very different based on what kind of publisher or company you are, how you sell your ads, and how big your team is. Some have multi-member ad-ops teams within their company, while others outsource ad operations, or have a sales team that also handles ad operations.
RTB (or real-time-bidding) refers to the automated buying and selling of ad inventory in real time.
In OpenRTB (what most people refer to with 'RTB'), a publisher sends an ad impression to a marketplace (as the ad is loading) and hundreds, even thousands, of advertisers bid for it auction-style. The company with the highest bid wins and appears on the page. All this happens in approximately 200ms.
In Private Marketplaces, there's the same flow above, but the advertisers are invite-only (therefore, generally only a handful of advertisers are bidding).
In Programmatic Direct, there's no auction, just guaranteed impressions for a given advertiser, but the buying/selling is done through a RTB platform.
Major players in this space include Rubicon, Index Exchange, Mopub (Twitter), Sharethrough, AppNexus, Google, PubMatic, Nexage, and OpenX.
In addition to the above terms, we’ve compiled this comprehensive ad tech glossary and welcome your additions.
Above The Fold: Web content visible without having to scroll down the page - considered more premium because of its visibility.
Ad Blockers: Tools that identify ads and block them from appearing.
Ad Campaign: An advertising strategy carried out across multiple channels to achieve a specific objective like brand awareness. The ads within a campaign generally contain a shared idea or theme.
Ad Capping: The automatic stopping of a campaign upon hitting a certain metric - such as preventing the ad from showing if it already hit its cap of 10K impressions / day.
Ad Decision Engine: Tool that chooses which ad to serve at time of request based on creative sizes, ad / flight / campaign targets and goals, channel priorities, and so on.
Ad Exchange: Technology that enables the buying and selling of ads via real-time bidding.
Ad Network: Historically, a vendor who facilitates the buying and selling of ads across their network of publishers and advertisers.
Ad Pacing: The automatic balancing of impressions for an ad in a given time frame in order to ensure it spends its budget evenly over time. For instance, if an advertiser wanted its campaign to spend $10K over a month, you would want to spend on average $333/day - or risk angering your advertiser.
Ad Server: The tech that enables the storage, selection, and serving of ads.
Ad Tag: An ad tag is a piece of HTML or Java script that is placed on the web page to get an ad from the server. This code signifies where the ad will be placed on the web page, the size of the ad, topic / subtopic of the page requesting the ad, basic page info, custom key values, and more.
Ad Tech: Short for ‘advertising technology’ - an umbrella term for software and tools that help brands target, deliver, and analyze digital advertising efforts.
Advertiser: The person or company who provides the creative to be served as an ad.
API: ‘Application Programming Interface’; a programming method used to interact with software, applications, or tools.
Attribution: The identification of a set of user actions (“events” or “touchpoints”) that contribute to a conversion, and the assignment of value to each of these actions.
Banner Display Ads: Includes text, images, simple animation, and a URL linking to a website to learn more about a brand or product.
Behavioral Tracking: Allows advertisers to target specific interest-based segments, like sports lovers or luxury car buyers.
Below The Fold: Web content that is visible through scrolling down.
Bid Depth: The number of bids that exist for one particular impression.
Bid Shading: A technique used by buyers to determine what the bid price should be.
Booking: The dollar amount that has been agreed upon (by the advertiser and publisher) in order to serve an ad campaign.
Campaign: A collection of an advertiser’s ads. Typically campaigns have a common theme, like device type or specific promotion.
CCPA: California Consumer Privacy Act; a state law that grants California residents greater control of their personal data.
Channel: Site(s) with similar content that share the same publisher payout settings.
CMS: Content Management System; designed to serve content that doesn’t need to change with each request.
Connected TV (CTV): When users consume media through devices that leverage internet connections. This includes smart televisions, gaming consoles, streaming devices, and more - they are operated using CTVs.
ContentDB: A server-side data store for storing metadata for contextual targeting.
Contextual Targeting: Targeting users based on a site’s context / content (e.g. running shoes on a running blog).
Conversions / Actions: Number of post-click actions (like making a purchase, filling out a form, etc.)
Cookies: Small text files that are stored on a user’s computer for record-keeping purposes.
Creatives: Another name for ‘ad’ - refers to the image file that will be displayed.
Data Clean Room: A secure technology solution that allows various parties to share data without sharing certain parameters like personal information.
Data Warehouse: Hub for integrated data from multiple sources (e.g. Salesforce, AD Reporting, etc.)
Dayparting / Hourparting: Targeting that shows ads only on specific days of the week or hours of the day.
Decision API: A RESTful API for delivering ad contents. By placing a request to the Decision API, Kevel makes an ad decision and returns a creative in JSON format. Replicates the function of the ad code in the web interface.
Demographic Targeting: Targeting users based on user-level demographic data, such as gender, age, and household income.
DMP: Data management platform - a tool for storing user-level data and using it for ad targeting.
Do Not Track: A browser setting that enables users to opt-out of being tracked by websites and advertisers that they are not directly engaging with.
DOOH: Digital-out-of-home (e.g. digital billboards, car dashboards, etc.)
DSP: Demand-side platform - these are platforms that work on behalf of advertisers to optimize RTB spend.
Fill Rate: The percentage of ad requests that get filled. For instance, if you have 1M monthly impressions, but only enough advertisers to fill 800K of them, you have an 80% fill-rate. Slots that are not filled are either left blank or replaced with an in-house promotion.
First-Party Cookies: Information generated by a website and stored by your browser to help understand users’ online behaviors; markers placed on a website by the website itself.
First-Party Data: Audience data you collected. For example, if a user registers on your site and provides gender, that’s your first-party data. If you purchase data on that user from a data provider, though, that would be considered third-party data.
Flights: A collection of rules for one or more creatives that determine how an ad is served. These include impression goals, tracking methods, dates to run, and targeting.
Forecasting: Offers insight into your historical and future selection opportunities across various dimensions, such as sites, ad types, keywords, etc.
Frequency Capping: Enables you to set the maximum number of times a given advertiser, campaign, flight, or ad can be displayed to any particular user in a particular time period.
Frequency: The number of times a person must be exposed to an advertising message in order to achieve the desired outcome.
Gated Garden: Ad platforms that mirror closed platforms (see ‘walled gardens’) but also find ways to integrate with major DSPs.
GDPR: General Data Protection Regulation - European privacy law that regulates how organizations may obtain, use, and store the personal data of EU residents and more.
Geodistance Targeting (Geofencing): Uses geometry to target users within a radius of a specific point or address. The geometry involves knowing the latitude and longitude of a user’s current location.
Geolocation: A technique used to determine a person’s geographical location based on their digital data.
Geotargeting: Enables you to target users based on their current location - by country, region, or U.S. metro/DMA code.
Header Bidding: A way to send ad requests to multiple exchanges simultaneously rather than in a waterfall.
IAB: Interactive Advertising Bureau - the IAB sets the standards for digital advertising, as well as the OpenRTB protocols.
Impressions: When an ad is displayed on the site / app.
Incrementality: Measures the impact of a single variable on an individual user’s behavior.
Intent Targeting: Targeting based on what a person just did - usually an indication of desire to buy/purchase. For instance, if you show a Nike ad to someone who just did a search for “running shoes”, you are employing search targeting, a form of intent.
Inventory: The section of the web interface that lets you manage sites and channels and generate ad code.
Keyword Targeting: Targeting specific key terms passed in an ad request - like a keyword someone just searched for.
Linear TV: Linear TV, or traditional TV, is the 24/7 lineup of programming available to view as it airs.
Look-Alike Modeling: A process that uses machine learning to identify audiences who look and act similarly to a known audience.
Lookback Window: The time between a conversion event and a prior engagement event, like an ad click or view.
Machine Learning (ML): The scientific study of algorithms and statistical models that computer systems use to progressively improve their performance on a specific task.
Macros: A variable you can use to dynamically generate or return data wherever the macro is used.
Management API: A RESTful API for uploading creatives, creating campaigns / flights, and pulling reports. Replicates the functions of the web interface (except for generating ad code).
Media Buying: The purchasing of media space and time for displaying ad creatives. This includes both digital and traditional media, like TV.
Mobile Ads: Ads displayed on mobile browsers or apps on smartphones and tablets.
Multi-Touch Attribution: The analytic technique that assigns multiple partners credit for a conversion based on a consumer’s exposure to an ad prior to the conversion.
Native Ads: Ad units unique to the site, such as promoted posts, sponsored listings, etc.
Omnichannel: A holistic approach to advertising that considers the customer journey and how it spans multiple channels and touchpoints.
Open RTB: Refers to the majority of ‘programmatic’ - an open marketplace of buyers and sellers.
Pixel: Code snippet used to track user data.
PMP: Private Marketplace. A subset of “programmatic” - where a publisher offers its inventory to a select few buyers, who normally compete for that inventory in real-time.
Pre-Roll: 10 - 15 second online ad that appears before video.
Priorities: Rules for what set of ads should get priority to be shown. For instance, a major advertiser may have priority over in-house ads.
Programmatic Advertising: The automated buying and selling of online advertising. Targeting tactics using first-party data are used to segment audiences so that advertisers only pay for ads delivered to relevant audiences.
Programmatic Direct: A subset of “programmatic” - where a publisher sells inventory to a single buyer through a programmatic channel. Usually this involves a fixed spend/impressions and there is no real-time bidding.
Publisher Direct: Advertisers or agencies working directly with a publisher to buy advertising space on their website or publication.
Queries Per Second: Unit of measure for amount of search traffic per second.
Reach: Measurement for upper-funnel campaigns - the percentage of ads that reached your intended audience.
Real-Time Data: Data signals that are delivered immediately after they are received, without delay.
Relevancy Score: Relevancy score is an ad setting that incorporates some measure of relevance in the Ad Decision Engine. For instance, an ad with a low click-through-rate may be deemed non-relevant and you won’t choose to display it, even if it has a high bid.
Remnant / Remainder: Historically referred to programmatic ads (or in-house ads) that you would serve when your premium/direct ad campaigns had reached their limit (aka - low value traffic).
Responsive Ads: Ads that automatically change size based on screen / browser size.
Retargeting Platforms: Retargeting platforms are increasingly popular to direct ad content at users who have previously visited the advertiser’s website.
Retargeting: Targeting users who have previously visited or interacted with your website.
ROAS: Return-on-ad-spend - the amount of revenue made by all customers who made a purchase and received advertising messaging.
RTB: Real-time bidding. An ad exchange gets an ad request, then sends this out to many different bidders, who send back the amount they’ll pay for that slot. The highest bidder wins.
Second-Party Data: Data shared with a partner, typically to help with personalization or to support a mutually beneficial partnership.
Second-Price Auctions: Second price auctions award an impression to the ad with the highest bid, but records the revenue of the impression not as the ad's bid, but as the second highest ad's bid plus one cent. For instance: if there is a $6 and a $5 bidder, the $6 bidder would pay $5.15.
Secure Cookie: Cookie that uses a secure (HTTPS) connection.
SEM: Short for ‘search engine marketing.’
SEO: Short for ‘search engine optimization.’
Session Cookie: Cookie that expires when you close your browser.
Sites: The website(s) where ad(s) will display.
Social Community: A social media platform that monetizes primarily with native ads. Includes Facebook, Twitter, Quora, Pinterest, and Reddit.
Sponsored Listings: An eCommerce-centric ad unit where vendors/sellers pay to have their organic listing(s) promoted in search and browsing results, on the homepage, in e-mails, etc.
SSAI: Server-side ad insertion or server-side ad serving. Refers to dynamically inserting an ad into one’s content via APIs - be it video, audio, DOOH, or web/app.
SSP: Supply-side platform. The DSP equivalent for publishers. They help publishers get the most revenue from programmatic channels.
Status: A progress indicator for a campaign, flight, or creative.
Supply Path Optimization (SPO): When certain ad exchanges are suppressed in order for ad inventory to be placed at the lowest and most effective cost.
Third-Party Data: Data collected by a business or other entity that isn’t directly connected to the visitor / customer.
Tracking Pixel: A code snippet which is loaded when a user visits a website or opens an email; used to track user behavior and conversions.
Traditional Publisher: A brand that makes its money almost entirely from programmatic ads. Includes well-known media companies, free content producers, free-to-play games, individual bloggers, etc.
UI: User interface. It’s the front-end product that users / visitors interact with.
UserDB: A server-side data store for user-level targeting activation.
Utility Publisher: A brand with a large digital presence and whose revenue is predominantly non-ad-based, such as subscriptions, commissions, purchases, and so on.
Verification Services: Verification services use technology to track the websites the ads were placed, where the ads were viewed geographically as well as what percentage of the ads were actually viewable and what other ad content was displayed around the ad in question. All of this information can be used to detect fraud, optimize campaigns, and ensure brand safety.
Video Views: How many times a video ad was viewed. Sometimes broken down by how far the user got into it, like 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% completed.
Viewable Impressions: Technical term for number of impressions where at least half of the ad was shown for at least 2 seconds - although subjectively there is much debate about what ‘viewable’ actually is.
Walled Garden: An ad platform where the buying, serving, tracking, and reporting are handled by the publisher; targeting is augmented by proprietary first-party data.
Waterfalls: Display rules where you send an ad request to Ad Network #1 - and if they don’t fill it, you send it to Ad Network #2 - and so on. Header Bidding arose to replace waterfalls and send to all bidders at once.
Zero-Party Data: Information given by customers voluntarily.
