The ad tech glossary
309 terms, each answered in one sentence, then explained properly with an analogy and a worked example.
AllBasicsProgrammaticInvalid traffic & fraudMeasurementData & identityPrivacy & regulationCTV & videoMobile & appRetail & commerceFormats & creativeBusiness & financeSearch & socialSupply chainAudio & DOOH
A
- Ad verification
- Ad verification is independent third-party measurement that checks whether ads were served to real people, in viewable positions, in safe and suitable environments, and in the intended geographies.
- Attention metrics
- Attention metrics estimate how much people actually noticed or engaged with an ad, using signals like time in view, screen share, interaction and eye-tracking panels, beyond simple viewability.
- Attribution
- Attribution is the process of assigning credit for a conversion, such as a sale, sign-up or install, to the ads, channels or touchpoints that a customer encountered beforehand.
B
- Block rate
- Block rate is the share of ad impressions or bid requests prevented from being served or bought because they failed brand-safety, suitability, fraud or targeting checks.
- Brand safety
- Brand safety is the practice of keeping ads away from content that is harmful or universally unacceptable, such as terrorism, child abuse, hate speech or illegal activity, to protect an advertiser's reputation.
- Brand suitability
- Brand suitability is choosing which content is appropriate for a specific brand's ads, based on its own values and risk tolerance, above the universal floor set by brand safety.
C
- Conversions API (server-side tracking)
- A conversions API sends conversion events, such as purchases or sign-ups, directly from an advertiser's server to an ad platform, instead of relying only on browser pixels.
D
- Discrepancy
- A discrepancy is the difference between numbers reported by two systems for the same campaign, such as a publisher's and an advertiser's ad server counting different impressions or clicks.
G
- Gross rating point (GRP)
- A gross rating point (GRP) measures advertising weight: reach as a percentage of a target population multiplied by average frequency, so 1 GRP equals impressions equal to 1% of that population.
H
- Holdout group
- A holdout group is a randomly chosen portion of an audience deliberately not shown a campaign's ads, used as a baseline to measure the ads' true incremental effect.
I
- Incrementality
- Incrementality is the extra result, such as sales, installs or visits, caused by advertising that would not have happened without it, usually measured by comparing exposed and unexposed groups.
- Invalid click
- An invalid click is an ad click that is not the result of genuine user interest, such as bot clicks, accidental double-clicks, clicks by publishers on their own ads, or manipulated clicks.
L
- Last-click attribution
- Last-click attribution gives 100% of the credit for a conversion to the final ad a customer clicked before converting, ignoring every earlier ad or touchpoint.
- Lift study
- A lift study is an experiment measuring how much a campaign changed an outcome, such as awareness or sales, by comparing exposed people with a similar unexposed group.
M
- Marketing mix modeling (MMM)
- Marketing mix modeling (MMM) is a statistical method that estimates how much each marketing channel, plus factors like price and seasonality, contributed to sales, using aggregate historical data.
- MRC (Media Rating Council)
- The MRC (Media Rating Council) is a US non-profit industry body that sets measurement standards and audits and accredits media measurement services, including viewability and invalid-traffic filtering.
- MRC accreditation
- MRC accreditation is the Media Rating Council's formal approval, after an independent audit, that a measurement service's specific metrics comply with industry standards.
- Multi-touch attribution (MTA)
- Multi-touch attribution (MTA) splits credit for a conversion across several ads and touchpoints a customer encountered, using rules or statistical models, instead of giving it all to one.
O
- Open Measurement SDK (OM SDK)
- The Open Measurement SDK (OM SDK) is an IAB Tech Lab standard toolkit that lets verification vendors measure viewability and invalid traffic inside apps and other environments through one shared integration.
R
- Reach and frequency
- Reach and frequency are paired metrics: reach is how many different people saw an ad, and frequency is the average number of times each of those people saw it.
T
- Tracking pixel
- A tracking pixel is a tiny piece of code, historically an invisible 1x1 image, that loads when a page or ad is viewed and reports that event to a server.
V
- Video completion rate (VCR)
- Video completion rate (VCR) is the percentage of video ads that played all the way to the end, out of those that started playing.
- View-through conversion
- A view-through conversion is a conversion credited to an ad that the person saw but did not click, when they convert within a set time window after the impression.
- Viewability
- Viewability measures whether an ad actually had a chance to be seen on screen; the MRC standard is 50% of pixels in view for one second (display) or two seconds (video).
- Viewable impression
- A viewable impression is an ad impression that meets a viewability standard, by default the MRC's: 50% of the ad's pixels on screen for one continuous second, or two seconds for video.