Glossary of Advertising Terms
Above the Fold
Content that can be seen on a screen (desktop, mobile, tablet) without having to scroll down
AdWords
Google’s Advertising service for serving text ads at the top of keyword search in Google. AdWords is also referred to as Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising or Search Engine Marketing (SEM). Businesses only pay when they click to visit your company website or call.
Analytics
Analytics refers to collection of data about a website and its users. Analytics programs typically give performance data on clicks, time, pages viewed, website paths, and a variety of metrics. The vast majority of websites use Google Analytics, a free website data tracking service to measure website traffic.
Banners
Picture advertisements placed on websites. They may also be referred to as buttons, inlines, leaderboards, skyscrapers,big box or display advertising. Banner ads can be static pictures, animated, or interactive. The most common banner ads are a LeaderBoard (728×90), Big Box (300×250), Skyscraper (160×600), Wide-Skyscraper (300×600 and Mobile (320×50).
Click
When a consumer clicks on an ad with their mouse or touches the ad on a screen of a mobile device to visit a company’s website.
Cookie
Think of cookies like a tracker placed on your computer. When you visit a website, the tracker places a cookie on your browser to follow you around and watch where you’re going and where you’ve been. Cookies provide benefits to advertisers as well as consumers. Consumers are able to maintain history on their device for easier access as well as manage passwords and preferences. Advertisers can use cookies of online consumers to track behaviors, interests and how people navigate the web.
Cost per Acquisition (CPA)
An online advertising cost structure where you pay per an agreed upon actionable event, such as a contact form completion, call, registration, or sale.
Cost per Click (CPC)
The amount an advertiser pays each time someone clicks on your advertisement to visit your site.
Cost per Impression (CPM)
The amount an advertiser pays for every 1,000 Impressions your ad receives.
Cost per View (CPV)
The amount an advertiser pays for every view Impressions your video ad receives.
Click Through Rate (CTR)
How often consumers who see an ad end up clicking on it. An ad’s CTR is calculated by dividing the number of clicks an ad received by the number of times it’s been served (impressions), then converting that into a percentage. For example, if an ad received 10 clicks and was shown 1000 times, the CTR is 1%.
Display Advertising
Display advertising is a type of online advertising that comes in several forms, including banner ads, rich media and more. Unlike text-based ads, display advertising relies on elements such as images, audio and video to communicate an advertising message
Impressions
The number of times an ad has appeared on a website
Interstitial Ads
F full-screen ads that cover the interface of their host app
Native Advertising
Native Advertising is simply paid advertising that is made to look like website content or articles on media websites like Yahoo.
ThruPlay
ThruPlay is an optimization and billing option for video ads that allows advertisers to pay only for ads that are played to completion, or for at least 15 seconds.
Views
When a consumer watches the entire pre-roll video or at least 30 seconds of the online video (whichever comes first) without skipping. On Facebook, a view is measured after viewing 15 seconds of a video.
View-Through Conversions
Measured the number of consumers that viewed your ad online, but rather than clicking on the ad, made it to your website at a later date. View through Conversions are measured through code placed in the display ads as well as on selected pages of a company’s website.