Adtech Glossary

In the ever-changing world of all things MarTech, it can be confusing to keep up with all of the current terms. To help cut through the jargon, Lotame has created an Adtech Glossary for an easy-to-use guide to understanding all of the current advertising and programmatic abbreviations that exist within today’s digital ecosystem.

A-D

Ad Exchange

Technology platform that facilitates the buying and selling of media advertising inventory from multiple ad networks.

Ad Network

Company that connects advertisers to websites that want to host advertisements.

Ad Server

Web server used to decide which advertisement is shown to the user. It holds data surrounding advertisements, scheduling, viewability, and number of impressions served for a specific campaign.

Affinity

People who have demonstrated an interest in a certain activity, group, brand, etc. Marketers can identify and target people with these affinities in order to reach more engaged audiences.

Attention Metrics

Advanced analytics that measure how long and how well users engage with ads, beyond simple viewability.

Audience

An audience is a grouping of behaviors created for use in targeting. An audience includes the behaviors and all the IDs that are associated with the behaviors.

Audience Targeting

Serving ads to a specific predefined audience based on behavioral attributes (see “behavioral targeting”) demographics, interests, or any other category. 

Behaviors

Behaviors are the attributes, preferences, interests and other characteristics of an individual or inferred about an individual based on that individual’s location, intent data, socio-demographic data, purchase data, Browse data, and other data that corresponds to a particular use of or visit to a digital property by that individual, survey data submitted by individuals. Individual Behaviors are the building blocks of an Audience.

Behavioral Targeting

Using a consumer’s behavior or online interactions, demographics, and history to determine that consumer’s needs or interests, with the purpose of matching appropriate advertisements to that user. This will cause a better response for advertisements.

Cache

Memory used to temporarily store the most frequently requested content/files/pages in order to speed its delivery to the user. Caches can be local or on a network. In the case of local cache, most computers have both memory (RAM), and disk (hard drive) cache.

Clean Room

A data clean room serves as a secure environment where companies can analyze two separate data sets without directly accessing it. Instead of merging raw data sets, different entities can derive collective insights from their data without any risk of revealing personal data or proprietary information.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Metric for measuring how many users clicked on an ad. The CTR is obtained by dividing the number of users who clicked on an advertisement by the number of times the advertisement was delivered (impressions). For example, if your advertisement was delivered 100 times and 1 person clicked on it, the CTR would be: (1 click) ÷ (100 impressions) = 0.01 = 1% CTR.

CMS (Content Management System)

Content Management Systems (CMS) are the technology that a publisher uses to manage the content of their media properties and websites. A CMS can be integrated with a data collaboration platform to customize the content that is shown to specific groups of readers, or audiences.

Consent Management Platform (CMP)

Tools that gather and manage user consent for data collection to comply with regulations like GDPR and CCPA.

Connected TV (CTV)

CTV or “connected television” is a television that is connected to the internet for the streaming of digital content to display on the television.

Content Personalization / Customization

Refers to the process of showing a specific set of content to a certain audience. Publishers can achieve this by integrating a CMS with a DMP, and is used as a technique to decrease bounce rates and increase time spent on site, thereby increasing the advertising opportunities for a publishers.

Contextual Intelligence

AI-enhanced contextual targeting that understands not just keywords but also the sentiment and context of a page.

Contextual Targeting

Placing ads on a web page based on the relationship of the ad content and/or keywords of that specific web page.

Conversion

Prospect completing an action and/or becoming a customer. Leads become customers through the process of conversion. Conversion Rate Measure of success of an online ad when compared to the click-though rate. What defines a “conversion” depends on the marketing objective, which can be defined as a sale or request to receive more information.

Conversion Rate

Measure of success of an online ad. Calculated as conversions divided by clicks or impressions.

Cookies

Cookies are text files with small pieces of data – like account information for the site, your shopping cart, or even just what pages you’ve visited on the site – that are placed on a browser and used to pseudonymously recognize an individual as a website user or to provide personalized content to improve your web Browse experience.

First-Party Cookies

First-party cookies are directly stored on a browser by the website (or domain) you visit. First-party cookies allow website owners to collect analytics data, remember language settings, and perform other useful functions that provide a good user experience.

Third-Party Cookies

Placed by a different domain than the one being visited, commonly used for ad tracking.

Cookie Deprecation

The phasing out of third-party cookies by browsers, significantly impacting tracking and targeting.

Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

An online advertising model where the advertiser pays for each specified action (such as a purchase, form submission, etc).

Cost Per Click (CPC)

An online advertising model where the advertiser pays each time an ad is clicked.

Cost Per Thousand (CPM)

Advertisers pay per 1,000 ad impressions.

Cross-Device

Refers to technology which enables tracking of users across multiple devices, such as smartphones, television sets, smart TVs, and personal computers so that a consumer can be targeted across multiple screens. This concept is especially useful for advertisers and publishers.

Customer Data Platform (CDP)

Systems that unify first-party customer data from various sources into individual customer profiles for marketing and analytics.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Data

A customers’ history with a company which may include information from multiple communication channels like a company’s website, telephone, email, live chat, marketing materials, and social media. CRM data is primarily used to foster customer care, loyalty, and/or customer support.

Data Cleanse / Normalization

The process of cleaning and standardizing data to improve accuracy and usability.

Data Collaboration Platform (DCP)

Data collaboration platforms allow for internal data collection and connection and also enable the enrichment, analysis, and activation of data with external partners. Data collaboration platforms, like Lotame’s Spherical, support data onboarding, unification, modeling, enrichment, collaboration, and activation, catering to both the data-rich and those in need of data acquisition.

Data Management Platform (DMP)

A platform for collecting, organizing, and managing data, which enables the creation of custom audiences based on first- and third party data. DMPs are used to target campaigns to these audiences, deliver reporting, and gain insight about the audiences of specific websites/ creative/email/media.

Data Enrichment

Enhancing datasets with additional, often third-party, data to add value and improve segmentation.

Demographics

The statistical characteristics of a population including age, gender, and residence.

Demand-Side Platform (DSP)

A platform that allows digital advertisers to buy display impressions across multiple ad exchanges through one interface using RTB.

E-H

Encryption

Secure digital information that is unreadable without digital keys.

First-Party Data (1PD)

First-party data is data about a company’s customers that is collected and owned by that company. Information about customers is compiled through digital properties and systems that the company itself owns or operates.

Frequency Capping

Limiting how often a user sees a particular ad to reduce fatigue and increase effectiveness.

Geo Targeting

The process of showing specific content to an audience based on their physical location.

Header Bidding

A technique allowing publishers to offer inventory to multiple ad exchanges at once before going to their ad server, improving yield.

I-L

Identity Graph

A database that connects multiple identifiers (like cookies, emails, device IDs) to one user across platforms and devices.

Impression

Each time an ad is shown and viewed on a web page.

IP Address

IP address refers to the unique numeric address that identifies a device on the internet. IP addresses are assigned and reassigned by internet service providers and mobile service operators regularly.

Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

Benchmarks for strategy success or failure. Best practice here is to choose a single, primary KPI to guide your optimization efforts, and to make sure it is both quantifiable and actionable.

Latency

A measure of time delay in a system, often used in reference to pageload times.

Lookalike

Potential customers modeled after an advertiser’s First-Party Data (usually data from their customers who visit and make purchases from their websites). Attributes of the advertisers’ customers are matched against a larger audience, creating a pool of highly targetable and ‘prequalified’ users. Some companies refer to this also as ‘pre-targeting’.

M-Q

Mobile IDs

Material in an online publication which resembles the publication’s editorial content but is paid for by an advertiser and intended to promote the advertiser’s product.

Native Advertising

Paid content that matches the form and function of the media platform it’s on.

Offline Data

Originates from offline sources. This ranges from in-store purchases to loyalty card data and more, and can be pulled from Customer Relationship Management data files or bought from offline data vendors.

Onboarding

The process of bringing offline data into the online ecosystem for digital marketing.

Online Data

Captures the behaviors, interests and interactions of consumers that are exhibited across the internet, as gathered by cookies.

OpenRTB

An open-source protocol that standardizes the real-time bidding process in programmatic advertising.

Opt-Out / Do Not Track

An individual has stated that they do not want a company to use his/her data for marketing purposes.

Personally Identifiable Information (PII)

Personally Identifiable Information, including names, email addresses, phone numbers, and home addresses.

Private Marketplace Programmatic (PMP)

A programmatic auction where select buyers are invited to bid on premium publisher inventory, typically at a fixed or floor price.

Programmatic Advertising

Use of software to automate the sale or purchase of digital advertising, as opposed to the traditional process that involves RFPs, human negotiations and manual insertion orders.

Programmatic Curation

The process of layering custom data and targeting strategies onto programmatic inventory to create premium audience segments at scale. Curated deals are built for better performance, transparency, and control.

R-Z

Real-Time Bidding (RTB)

Allows buyers to decide in real-time whether to bid for a specific impression based on additional data they have. The buyer decides the bid price based on perceived value of the impression. RTB provides the opportunity for publishers to better monetize their inventory.

Retargeting

A form of audience targeting where first- and third-party cookies are used to determine a consumer’s previous interest with a site’s offering. Retargeting allows advertisers to reposition ads in front of that consumer on sites other than their own, in an effort to get the consumer to return to their own site and continue the relationship. Retargeting is considered to be the most basic form of Behavioral Targeting available.

Retail Media Network (RMN)

Retailer-owned platforms that let brands advertise on the retailer’s digital properties using first-party shopping data.

Return on Investment (ROI)

Money you get back from your invested money.

Second-Party Data (2PD)

Another company’s first-party data purchased or shared directly from the source, rather than through a data exchange. Two companies set the terms of sale or data collaboration to share specific data points.

Supply-Side Platform (SSP)

Advertising technology platform representing the suppliers of online ads. Similar to a DSP, SSPs, automate the selling of online media space by providing inventory.

Targeting

Delivering advertising to users based on identified interests and behaviors.

Third-Party Cookies

Third-party cookies are created by domains that are not the website (or domain) that you are visiting. These are usually used for online-advertising purposes and placed on a website through a script or tag. A third-party cookie is accessible on any website that loads the third-party server’s code.

Third-Party Data (3PD)

Data obtained from an outside “third-party” source, which is not otherwise available on your own first-party media.

Universal ID / Identity Resolution

Persistent user identifiers designed to replace third-party cookies and maintain targeting capabilities across platforms.

Viewability

Online advertising metric that aims to track only impressions that can actually be seen by users. For example, if an ad is loaded at the bottom of a web page but a user doesn’t scroll down far enough to see it, that impression would not be deemed viewable.

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