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Digital Media & Advertising Glossary

Digital Media & Advertising

Ad tech

Advertising technology, also known as ad tech, is any technology that gives ad makers the resources to control their ads and ad placement. A few examples of ad tech include Adroll and Tapad.

General Advertising

Addressable TV

Addressable TV is technology that allows advertisers to show different ads to different audiences within the same TV program. Audiences can be segmented by geography, demographics or other qualifiers.

Media Buying

Advertising Impressions

The audience delivery of media vehicles, programs or schedules. Usually expressed as thousands (000).

Media Buying

Advertising Weight

The measure of advertising support for an item/brand over a period of time, expressed in gross rating points, impressions, target audience reached, etc.

Media Buying

Advertorial

A print advertisement that is deliberately intended to resemble editorial matter or story in a newspaper or magazine.

Media Buying

Affidavit

A formal sworn statement of fact, signed by someone who can verify this fact, and witnessed by someone such as a notary public. For newspapers, this is often used to prove that an insert or legal notice has run in a paper as scheduled.

Media Platforms & Technology

Affiliate Marketing

Businesses hire affiliates to promote their product(s) and compensate those affiliates for each customer the affiliate brings in.

Media Buying

Agate Line

A unit of measurement for newspaper advertising which measures one column wide with 14 agate lines per inch (each equal to 1.81 millimeter or 0.07 of an inch).

General Advertising

Agency Network

An agency network is a group of independently owned advertising agencies, which do not compete with each other but serve as allies to help in unfamiliar markets.

Media Platforms & Technology

Agency Trading Desk

A managed service layer of a larger agency, most often on top of a demand-side platform (DSP) partner and other audience buying technologies. Manages programmatic, bid­-based media, and audience buying for the agency.

Digital Media & Advertising

Algorithm

A set of rules to follow while completing calculations or other operations that are built by humans but run by computers. An example is Google’s search engine ranking algorithm. In terms of advertising, Google uses an algorithm to determine the relevance of an ad, which impacts where it displays.

Media Buying

Alliance for Audited Media (AAM)

Independent, non-profi t organization comprised of publishers, advertisers, advertising agencies to audit and certify circulation of various publications. Annual audit reports show the average net-paid-circulation of the publications (including daily and weekly editions of newspapers, and magazines) and is used by advertisers in planning their marketing campaigns.

Media Platforms & Technology

Allow List

A list of pre-approved domains that a brand has deemed acceptable for its advertising to appear on. Leveraged as a tool for advertisers to manage brand safety, an allow list provides significant control, limiting the appearance of ads to domains with content the advertiser feels aligns with their brand. However, an allow list can dramatically […]

Digital Media & Advertising

Alternative text:

Descriptive text added to pictures to make the page more accessible for readers and help search engine crawlers understand the context of images.

General Advertising

Application Programming Interface (API)

An application programming interface, or API, is a set of commands that allows multiple applications to communicate with each other. For example, scheduling posts for a brand via social media management platforms utilizes APIs.

General Advertising

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is performed by machines programmed to learn from experience and adjust to inputs, by recognizing patterns.

Digital Media & Advertising

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI is the development of technology that can perform tasks related to human intelligence. This artificial technology can handle tasks such as visual perception, speech recognition and decision making.

Media Platforms & Technology

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

The theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, etc.

General Advertising

Association of National Advertisers (ANA)

Association of National Advertisers, or ANA, is a trade association offering marketing and brand-building, and seeks to enhance career development and provide networking for its members.

Media Platforms & Technology

Attribution

The identification of a set of user actions (“events” or “touchpoints”) that contribute to a desired outcome (“conversion”) and the assignment of value to each of these actions. Attribution reflects the touchpoints along the customer journey that may have impacted purchase and is correlative rather than causal. It answers the question: “What touchpoints were associated […]

Media Platforms & Technology

Auction (First-Price vs. Second-Price)

In a first-price auction, the highest bidder determines the impression price. In a second-price auction, the second-highest bidder determines the price of an impression.