Glossary

ASPECT RATIO

The width-to-height ratio of a picture or video frame. TV broadcasts at a 4:3 (1.33:1) aspect ratio; digital TV will be broadcast with a 16:9 (1.78:1) ratio; and most feature films are shot in at least a 1.85:1 ratio

APPLET

Small, self-contained software application that is most often used by browsers to automatically display animation and/or to perform database queries requested by the user

APP

Short for "application". In social terms, an app may be a mobile or web based app that enables social functions, e.g. The SMH for iPad

API (APPLICATION PROGRAMMING INTERFACE)

An Application Programming Interface allows a software application to interact with another software application. It is a set of rules and specifications that software programs can follow to communicate with each other

ANIMATED GIF

Animation created by combining multiple GIF images in one file. The result is multiple images, displayed sequentially, giving the appearance of movement

AD UNIT

Any defined advertising vehicle that can appear in an ad space inside of an application. For example for the purposes of promoting a commercial brand, product or service

AD TRACKING

Method for recording campaign delivery metrics between adservers. Third party adserving tags or 1x1 tracking pixels are commonly used to facilitate capturing such data

AD SPACE

Area of a web page that is set aside for banner advertising.Each space on a site is uniquely identified. Multiple ad spaces can exist on a single page

AD SERVER

Technology that stores display advertisements, delivers them to website visitors in a way that would maximise the Advertiser's (or Publisher's) revenue, monitor campaigns and create reports

AD ROTATION

When advertisements are changed on a website for different user sessions. This may be in response to ad targeting or simply displaying different advertisements from those on a list

AD RECALL

Measure of advertising effectiveness in which a sample of respondents is exposed to an ad and then at a later point in time is asked if they remember the ad. Ad recall can be on an aided or unaided basis. Aided ad recall is when the respondent is told the name of the brand or category being advertised

AD INVENTORY

Total number of ad impressions that a website can sell over time (usually specified per month)

AD CREATIVE

Design and content of an advertisement

AD RECALL

Measure of advertising effectiveness in which a sample of respondents is exposed to an ad and then at a later point in time is asked if they remember the ad. Ad recall can be on an aided or unaided basis. Aided ad recall is when the respondent is told the name of the brand or category being advertised.

AD / ADVERTISEMENT

Commercial message targeted to an advertiser's customer or prospect.

AD INVENTORY

Total number of ad impressions that a website can sell over time (usually specified per month).

AD IMPRESSION RATIO

Click-throughs divided by ad impressions. See click rate, click-through rate or CTR.

AD IMPRESSION

An advertisement impression transpires each time a consumer is exposed to an advertisement.

AD EXCHANGE

Virtual marketplace where participating suppliers auction their impressions to eligible buyers. The ad exchange announces each impressions, in real time, and asks buyers if they are interested to buy said impression and at which price.

AD DOWNLOAD

When an ad is downloaded by a server to a user‘s browser. Ads can be requested, but aborted or abandoned before actually being downloaded to the browser, and hence there would be no opportunity to see the ad by the user.

AD BLOCKER

Software on a user's browser which prevents advertisements from being displayed.

AD BANNER

Graphic image or other media object used as an advertisement

ACTIVEX

Programming language standard developed by Microsoft, which permits complex and graphical customer applications to be written and then accessed from a web browser.

ABOVE THE FOLD

Term derived from printed media, which is used to indicate whether a banner advertisement or other content is displayed on a web page without the need to scroll.

BUFFER (DATA)

computer memory used temporarily to store output or input data

BOT

Software that runs automatically without human intervention. Typically, a bot is endowed with the capability to react to different situations it may encounter. Two common types of bots are agents and spiders. Bots are used by companies like search engines to discover websites for indexing. Short for robot

BIT RATE

Measure of bandwidth which indicates how fast data is traveling from one place to another on a computer network. Bit rate is usually expressed in kilobits per second (kbps) or megabits per second (Mbps), also see: bandwidth

BETA

Test version of a product, such as a website or software, prior to final release, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle

BEHAVIOURAL TARGETING

A form of online marketing that uses advertising technology to target web users based on their previous behaviour. Advertising creative and content can be tailored to be of more relevance to a particular user by capturing their previous decision making behaviour (eg: filling out preferences or visiting certain areas of a site frequently)

BANDWIDTH

Transmission rate of a communications line or system, expressed as kilobits per second (kbps) or megabits per second (Mbps) for digital systems; the amount of data that can be transmitted over communications lines in a given time

CPM

a.k.a. (Cost per Mille) / Cost per Thousand (CPT) - Media term describing the cost of 1,000 impressions. Online advertising can be purchased on the basis of what it costs to show the ad to one thousand viewers (CPM). It is used in marketing as a benchmark to calculate the relative cost of an advertising campaign or an ad message in a given medium. Rather than an absolute cost, CPM estimates the cost per 1,000 views of the ad. For example, a website that charges $1,500 per ad and reports 100,000 visits has a CPM of $15 ($1,500 divided by 100)

CPC

Cost per Click - The amount paid by an advertiser for a click on their advertisment. See also PPC

CPA

Cost-Per-Acquisition) Cost of advertising based on a visitor taking some specifically defined action in response to an ad. "Actions" include such things as a sales transaction, a customer acquisition, or a click. This pricing model only charges advertising if an action has being conducted e.g. a sale or a form being filled in

COOKIE, THIRD PARTY

A cookie placed on a website by a third party, such as an ad server or data provider. Information from these cookies is collected and can be used to place you in one or more demographic groups, based on your online activity. These cookies can be used to target advertising and manage campaign aspects

COOKIE, FIRST PARTY

A cookie placed on a website by the owner of a site so they recognise users when users return to their site(s)

COOKIE EXPIRY PERIOD

The time stated in an affiliate marketing program between when a visitor clicks the affiliate link and the sale is credited to the affiliate. Common times are 7, 30 or 90 days

COOKIE

In the United States, Canada and Australia a cookie is a small, flat, baked treat, usually containing fat, flour, eggs and sugar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cookie)

A cookie, also known as an HTTP cookie, web cookie, or browser cookie, is a small piece of data sent from a website and stored in a user's web browser while a user is browsing a website. When the user browses the same website in the future, the data stored in the cookie can be retrieved by the website to notify the website of the user's previous activity.[1] Cookies were designed to be a reliable mechanism for websites to remember the state of the website or activity the user had taken in the past. This can include clicking particular buttons, logging in, or a record of which pages were visited by the user even months or years ago. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie)

CODEC

Short for compressor/decompressor. Codecs are computer algorithms that are used to compress the size of audio, video, and image files for streaming over a data network or storage on a computer.

CLICK TRACKING URL

Also known as click through URL or click command. This is used to record the number clicks delivered on an advertising banner.

CLICK TO CALL

Service that enables a mobile user to initiate a voice call to a specified phone number by clicking on a link on a mobile internet site. Typically used to enhance and provide a direct response mechanism in mobile advertisement

CLICK

A click refers to the opportunity for a user to download another file by clicking on an advertisement, as recorded by the server. A click is also the result of a measurable interaction with an advertisement or key word that links to the advertiser's intended website or another page / frame within the website

CGI

CGI (Common Gateway Interface) is a standard method for web server software to delegate the generation of web content to executable files. Such files are known as CGI scripts or simply CGIs; they are usually written in a scripting language

CALL TO ACTION (CTA)

A statement or instruction to carry out an action following an explanation or piece of promotional material, e.g. "click here to..."

CACHED AD IMPRESSIONS

The delivery of an advertisement to a browser from local cache or a proxy server's cache. When a user requests a page that contains a cached ad, the ad is obtained from the cache and displayed

CACHE BUSTING

Process by which sites or servers serve content or HTML in such a manner as to minimise or prevent browsers or proxies from serving content from their cache. This forces the user or proxy to fetch a fresh copy for each request. Among other reasons, cache busting is used to provide a more accurate count of the number of requests from users

CACHE

A computer memory component that transparently stores data so that future requests for that data can be served faster. Caches can be local (i.e. on a browser) or on a network. In the case of local cache, most computers have both memory (RAM), and disk (hard drive) cache.

CTR

Click-throughs divided by ad impressions. See click rate, click-through rate

CLOSE BUTTON

[Close - X] A creative control that enables a user to close an ad (remove it from view) or to reduce an expanded panel back to its original size.

FTP

File Transfer Protocol: Internet protocol which facilitates downloading or uploading digital files

FREQUENCY CAP

Restriction on the amount of times a specific visitor is shown a particular advertisement. Typically defined as Volume / Unique browser (client) / time period, eg: 1imp / UB / day

FOLD

Line below which a user has to scroll to see content not immediately visible when a Web page loads in a browser. Ads or content displayed above the fold are visible without any end-user interaction. Monitor size and resolution determine where the fold lies on a given web page

FLASH COOKIE

Also known as a 'local shared object' or 'LSO', a flash cookie operates in the same way that a regular cookie does. It should be noted that Fairfax's adserver disallows the use of flash cookies in advertisements.

FLASH (TM)

Adobe Flash (formerly called "Macromedia Flash") is a multimedia and software platform used for authoring of vector graphics, animation, games and Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) which can be viewed, played and executed in Adobe Flash Player. Flash is frequently used to add streamed video or audio players, advertisement and interactive multimedia content to web pages, although usage of Flash on websites is declining. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash)

FIREWALL

Security barrier controlling communication between a personal or corporate computer network and the Internet. A firewall is based on rules which allow and disallow traffic to pass, based on the level of security and filtering a network administrator wishes to employ. Provides security for a computer or local network by preventing unauthorised access. It sits as a barrier between the web and your computer in order to prevent hacking, viruses or unapproved data transfer

GIF

(Graphic Interchange Format)
A standard web graphic format which uses compression to store and display images

GEO-TARGETING

Process of only showing content to people on a website and in search engines based on their physical location. This could be done using advanced technology that knows where a computer is located (e.g. IP address or GPS etc. data) or by using the content of website to determine what a person is looking for, e.g. someone searching for a restaurant in Islington, London

HYPERLINK

A clickable link, e.g., on a Web page or within an e-mail, that sends the user to a new URL when activated

INVENTORY

The number of ads available for sale on a website (based on historical traffic data)

INTERSTITIAL ADS

Ads that appear between two content pages. Also known as transition ads, intermercial ads

IMPRESSION

a.k.a ad-impression: An impression occurs when an ad is served (an ad server responds with valid ad content to a client request) and this presentation is tracked (recorded). It is also the metric used to measure views of a webpage (page impression) and its elements- including the advertising embedded within it. Ad impressions is the basis on which most online advertising is sold (CPM).

IAB

Interactive Advertising Bureau - IAB is a non-profit trade association devoted exclusively to maximising the use and effectiveness of interactive advertising and marketing - see iab.net.au and iab.net

JPEG

(Joint Photographic Experts Group)
Standard web graphic file format that uses a compression technique to reduce graphic file sizes

LBS (LOCATION BASED SERVICES)

Range of services that are provided to mobile subscribers based on the geographical location of their handsets within their cellular network. LBS include driving directions, information about certain resources or destinations within current vicinity, such as restaurants, ATMs, shopping, movie theatres etc. LBS may also be used to track the movements and locations of people, as is being done via parent/child monitoring services and mobile devices that target the family market

LANDING PAGE

Page or view to which a user is directed when they click on an active link embedded in a banner, web page, email or other view.

MPU

This abbreviation is most often used in Europe / UK for the 300x250 ad shape (commonly referred to as MREC in Australia). A square online advert usually found embedded in a web page in a fixed placement. Called ‘multiple purpose’ as it is a flexible shaped blank ‘canvas’ in which you can serve flat or more interactive content as desired.

MOUSEOVER

The process by which a user places his/her mouse over a media object, without clicking. The mouse may need to remain still for a specified amount of time to initiate some actions

POLITE DOWNLOAD

To preserve user experince on our digital properties, initial ad creative file load sizes are constrained across the board. However, to compensate for the trend towards more rich media, two additional categories for file size loading were added: subsequent polite load and subsequent user-initiated load.

SUBSEQUENT POLITE DOWNLOAD

The initial ad respond file size is restricted, typically to a standard banner's file size. This first phase of the ad usually comprises the first key-frame of the ad animation or similar placeholder asset. A larger secondary download occurs after the requesting parent page has loaded completely (i.e. the [document.body.onload] JavaScript event is fired). This secondary download file size is also limited, typically to 100 KB.

USER INITIATED DOWNLOAD

Includes all files that load as a result of the viewer further interacting with the rich media ad creative.