Ad tech 101 speedrun
Never worked in advertising? Start here. Ten quick questions that turn the jargon into plain English in about five minutes. beginner · 10 questions
Question 1 of 10Score 0
Who mostly pays for the free articles, videos and apps you use every day?
All questions with answers
- Who mostly pays for the free articles, videos and apps you use every day?
Answer: Advertisers, who pay to show you ads. An advertiser pays a publisher to show ads, and that money funds the content. The ad tech industry is the machinery that connects them. - An ad is shown 10,000 times and clicked 50 times. What is its click-through rate (CTR)?
Answer: 0.5%. CTR = clicks ÷ impressions = 50 ÷ 10,000 = 0.5%. Typical display CTRs are well under 1%, so a sudden 5% or more is worth a closer look. - What does a DSP do?
Answer: Helps advertisers buy ad impressions automatically across many sites and apps. A DSP (demand-side platform) is the buyer's tool. The publisher's selling tool is the SSP, a mix-up almost everyone makes at first. - You look at trainers on a shop's website, then see ads for those trainers on other sites. What is this?
Answer: Retargeting. Retargeting shows ads to people who already visited a brand's site. Contextual targeting would instead show trainer ads because the page you are reading is about running. - What does frequency capping do?
Answer: Limits how many times the same person sees the same ad. Frequency capping stops one person from seeing an ad 40 times, which wastes money and annoys people. Price limits are a different setting, such as a floor price on the sell side. - What does 'programmatic' mean in advertising?
Answer: Ads bought and sold automatically by software. Programmatic replaces phone calls and paperwork with software, often in real-time auctions. It carries premium ads too, not just cheap ones. - What is ad fraud?
Answer: Deliberately faking impressions, clicks or installs to steal advertising money. Ad fraud is intentional, often using bots or fake sites to collect payment for audiences that do not exist. A bad or unpopular ad is a creative problem, not fraud. - A shop's list of customers who bought from it is what kind of data?
Answer: First-party data. Data a business collects directly from its own customers is first-party data. Data bought from an outside company that collected it elsewhere is third-party data. - An advertiser pays only when someone completes a purchase. What pricing model is this?
Answer: CPA. CPA is cost per acquisition, paid per purchase or sign-up. CPC pays per click, which can happen without any purchase. - What is a landing page?
Answer: The page a person arrives on after clicking an ad. The landing page is where an ad click leads, and it is where a conversion like a sign-up usually happens. It may or may not be the home page.