Ad tech foundations quiz
Ten friendly questions on how the free internet gets paid, what a CPM really is and who sits between a brand and a website. Perfect if you finished the foundations track or just want to check your basics. beginner · 10 questions
Question 1 of 10Score 0
Why can most news sites and mobile games be used for free?
All questions with answers
- Why can most news sites and mobile games be used for free?
Answer: Advertisers pay to show ads to the people reading or playing. The open internet is largely funded by advertising: a publisher sells ad space and an advertiser pays to reach its audience. Your broadband bill pays for the pipe, not for the content that flows through it. - What does CPM stand for in advertising?
Answer: Cost per mille, the price of 1,000 impressions. CPM is cost per mille, mille being Latin for thousand, so it is the price of 1,000 impressions. It is not about clicks: paying per click is CPC. - A campaign buys 250,000 impressions at a $10 CPM. What does it cost?
Answer: $2,500. Divide impressions by 1,000 and multiply by the CPM: 250 × $10 = $2,500. The common slip is multiplying every impression by $10, which gives $2.5 million, or forgetting the thousand entirely. - In ad tech, what is an impression?
Answer: One time an ad is served and counted on a page, app or screen. An impression is a single counted delivery of an ad. Being counted does not mean it was seen: whether it had a chance to be seen is the separate question of viewability. - A publisher's sales team signs an insertion order with a car brand for a homepage takeover next Tuesday. What kind of sale is this?
Answer: Direct-sold advertising. A negotiated deal between people, written up in an insertion order, is direct-sold advertising. It is not remnant: remnant is what is left over after direct deals like this one are filled. - What best describes programmatic advertising?
Answer: Buying and selling ads automatically through software, often impression by impression. Programmatic means the buying and selling is automated, often via real-time bidding. It began with leftover inventory, but today premium deals such as programmatic guaranteed run programmatically too, so equating it with remnant stock is out of date. - What is the LUMAscape?
Answer: A famous map that groups hundreds of ad tech companies by the job they do. The LUMAscape, published by the bank LUMA Partners, maps ad tech companies into categories between the advertiser and the publisher. It is a map of the industry, not a product or a standard. - Why are Google, Meta and Amazon often called walled gardens?
Answer: They own the audience, the data and the ad-buying tools, and keep most of that data inside their own platforms. A walled garden controls the whole loop: users, data, ad tools and measurement, with limited outside visibility. That contrasts with the open web, where many independent companies trade inventory between thousands of sites. - A site receives 1,000,000 ad requests in a day and 800,000 of them get an ad. What is its fill rate?
Answer: 80%. Fill rate = filled requests ÷ total requests = 800,000 ÷ 1,000,000 = 80%. The 20% is the share that went unfilled, the flip side of the same number. - A publisher earns $300 from 60,000 impressions. What is its eCPM?
Answer: $5.00. eCPM = earnings ÷ impressions × 1,000 = $300 ÷ 60,000 × 1,000 = $5. It lets a publisher compare CPM, CPC and flat-fee deals on the same scale; $0.50 comes from forgetting to multiply by 1,000 correctly.