Above The Fold - Any area of a web page that is viewable without the viewer having to use the vertical scroll bar. Ad space in this area is usually more expensive since it is more likely to be viewed by the visitor.

Acquisition Cost

Acquisition Cost - The cost to an advertiser to gain a new customer. Advertisers take into consideration the amount of revenue potential from a potential customer over a life time in order to determine the maximum acquisition cost.

Ad Server

Ad Server - A computer, normally operated by a third party, that delivers and tracks advertisements independent of the web site where the ad is being displayed. Use of an ad server helps establish trust between an advertiser and publisher since the statistics are maintained by a objective third party.

Ad Space

Ad Space - The space on a web page reserved for the displaying of advertisements. Typically at the top or bottom of a page or if a small advertisement in the right or left column. The most desirable ad space is above the fold.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing - A type of advertising system based on the CPA payment method whereby web sites run advertiser's banners for free but get paid on any sales or registrations that result from visitors that click on the banner.

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Agency

Agency - An advertising company that represents other companies by providing advertising related services such as planning, creating, buying and tracking an advertisement on behalf of their client.

Agency Discount

Agency Discount - A discount, normally equal to 15%, that is offered to advertising agencies that place an order on behalf of their clients. Many large companies establish their own in house agency in order to qualify for the discount when they place the advertisements directly.

AIDA

AIDA - Stands for attention, interest, desire, and action (AIDA). This is a historical model of how advertising works, by first getting the consumer's attention, then their interest, etc.

Alt Text

Alt Text - Short for alternative text (Alt Text). Alt text is HTML code that allows an HTML coder to add text to a graphic that is visable to those that have images disabled or those that hover their mouse over a banner advertisement. Often used by advertisers to reinforce a message or call someone to action such as: "Click Here".

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Online Advertising - B terms

Business to Business

B2B - Business to business is a business model by which a business's main customers are other businesses. Common B2B web sites include online marketplaces where companies can buy raw materials, supplies and equipment.

Business to Consumers

B2C - Business to consumer is a business model in which a business's main customers are consumers. Common B2C web sites include online stores selling books, music and videos.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth - The amount of data (text, video, sound, images, animations) that can be moved through an Internet connection. The amount is typically measured in bits per second (bps). A high speed Internet connection such as a cable or DSL modem provides more bandwidth than a 56K dial up modem. Also know as throughput.

Banner

Banner - A graphic that appears on a web page that is usually hyperlinked to an advertisers web site. May be in a variety of formats including GIF, JPEG, Flash, HTML, Java, JavaScript and more.

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Banner Burnout

Banner Burnout - A term used to describe an event when a banner has been shown to the same visitor(s) to the point where the click through rate has dropped dramatically. Rotating banners helps to reduce banner burnout.

Banner Exchange

Banner Exchange - A Internet service that provides free banner impressions to those willing to place free banners on their sites. A typical exchange ratio is for every 2 banners one shows for free, they get one of their banners shown for free on some one else's site. The company running the banner exchange takes the other impression and tries to sell it.

Bits per Second

BPS - Bits Per Second is a measurement of how much data, called bits, can be transferred through a network connection in one second. When the amount goes over 100,000 bps it will often be shorted to 1 mega bit per second (mbps).

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Online Advertising - C terms

Cache

Cache - A type of computer memory that stores previously accessed documents locally so that they can be accessed faster should they be needed again. If you go back to a web page that you have previously visited, much of the pages content may be able to be accessed from your cache instead of requesting the data from the server againthus decreasing the time it takes to load the page.

Cache Bursting

Cache Bursting - This process, also known as "defeating cache", is accomplished by adding a random number to the banner HTML each time the page is reloaded. This causes a separate banner request to be sent to the server, thus insuring the banner is not cached and banner advertisement impressions are not undercounted.

Campaign

Campaign - The process of planning, creating, buying and tracking an advertising project from start to finish.

Coalition for Advertising Supported Information and Entertainment

CASIE - The Coalition for Advertising Supported Information and Entertainment is an advertising industry trade group founded in 1994 by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA) for the benefit of those involved in the interactive advertising industry.

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Common Gateway Interface

CGI - The common gateway interface is a popular scripting language that enables programmers to create dynamic web pages. An example of a CGI powered web site feature might be be a web site's feedback form or banner rotation program.

Click Through Rate

Click Through Rate - The percentage of impressions that resulted in a visitor. Calculated by dividing the number of clicks by the number of impressions. For example if a banner was clicked on 157 times after being displayed 1000 times, the banner would have a click rate of ( 157 ÷ 1000 = .157 ) 15.7%. This is known as the banner's click through rate. Usually a number above 5% is considered very good while the standard for graphical banner ads 0.25%.

Clicks

Clicks - The number of click throughs that have occurred as a result of a user clicking on a banner and being redirected to an advertisers web page.

Comparative

Comparative - An advertising appeal that consists of explicitly comparing one product brand to a competitive brand. This type of advertising has been effective when one brand has a major advantage over another and they are similarly priced.

Conversion

Conversion - Term used to describe the process of getting a web visitor to accept an offer or become a paying customer. Advertisers strive for high conversion ratios.

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Cookies

Cookies - A process by which a small file is sent from a web server to the local users computer to store information unique to that browser. Often used by advertisers to keep track of the number and frequency of advertisements that have been shown to a visitor or by sites to help them determine the number of unique visitors.

Copy Writing

Copy Writing - The process of writing text for an advertisement that gets readers attention, generates interest and desire and prompts action.

Cost per Acquisition

CPA - Cost per acquisition is one of the online payment methods by which advertisers pay for every sale or acquired client. Prices typically range from $1 to $500 or if calculated on a percentage of the sale 1% to 25% of the sale price. This is an ideal method of payment for advertisers who want to guarantee only the number of customers generated as a result of a advertisement.

Cost per Click

CPC - Cost per click is the most popular way to purchase traffic - made very popular by overture.com and then google adwords - with this method of purchasing traffic the advertiser only pays for the traffic that goes to their website. Prices typically range from 5¢ to over $25 per click. This is an ideal method of payment for advertisers who need to guarantee they only pay for those surfers who click on the advertising link or banner and then go to their site.

Cost per Inquiry

CPI - Cost per inquiry is the same as cost per lead, or CPL.

Cost per Lead

CPL - cost per lead allows advertisers to pay for every lead or customer inquiry that resulted from a visitor who clicked on a their advertisement. Prices typically range from $0.50 to $500. This is an ideal method of payment for advertisers who want to guarantee only the number of potential customers with an interest generated as a result of an advertisement.

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Cost per Thousand Impressions

CPM - Cost per thousand impressions is one of the online payment models by which advertisers pays for every 1000 impressions of their advertisement. Prices typically range from $1 to over $500 per thousand impressions. This is an ideal method of payment for advertisers who want to guarantee only the number of people who sees their banner. The "M" in CPM is from the Roman numeral for 1000. The Roman numeral M was derived from the latin word "mille" meaning "thousand". Today there are few people who purchase per thousands of impressions since that doesn't guarantee delivery of traffic and most advertisers prefer to pay per visitor (CPC).

Cost per Sale

CPS - cost per sale allows advertisers to pay whenever a visitor who clicked on their advertisement generates a sale. Prices typically range from $1 to $5000 or if a percentage of a sale 1% to 25%. This is an ideal method of payment for advertisers who want to guarantee only the number of paying customers as a result of a advertisement.

Cost per Transaction

CPT - cost per transaction method allows advertisers to pay whenever a visitor who clicked on their advertisement generates a transactionusually a sale. Prices typically range from $1 to $25 or if a percentage of a sale 10% to 25%. This is an ideal method of payment for advertisers who want to guarantee only the number of paying customers as a result of a advertisement.

Online Advertising - E terms

Earnings per Click

EPC - earnings per click, is calculated by dividing the total earnings by the number of clicks.

Earnings per Visitor

EPV - earnings per visitor is calculated by dividing the total earnings by the number of visitors.

Exclusivity

Exclusivity occurs when an advertiser requests their banner or text message be shown ALONE on the desired pages, they are requesting exclusivity. Publishers tend to charge more for this since since it limits the number of advertisers they can accept for those pages.

Exit Exchange

Exit Exchange is an arrangement between two or more sites in which each site shows advertisments for the other sites in exchange for the others doing the same, also known as reciprical exit swap.

Exit Traffic

Exit Traffic - is the type of web visitor traffic in which visitors leaving a site click on a popup or popunder advertisment (commonly known as a exit console).

Extramercial

Extramercial - are banner ads placed in the extra space in the right column of Internet web pages.

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Online Advertising - F terms

Flash

Flash - is a software plugin that enables browsers to play multimedia animations. Some rich media advertisements require users to have this plugin.

Frequency

Frequency - is a term used to describe the number of times the same advertisement is shown to the same visitor during a particular session or time frame. This can be monitored through the use of cookies.

Online Advertising - G terms

Graphical Interchange Format

GIF - The graphical interchange format is a graphical file extension. Most banner advertisements are created in the GIF format. More popular than the JPEG format. GIF89a or animated GIFs are a sequences of standard GIF images combined to create animated banners. These animated banners tend to generate higher click through rates when compared to non-animated banners.

Online Advertising - H terms

Hit

Hit - is the term used by webmasters that refers to a request made to a web server for a page, graphic, audio or sound file. A web page that has 5 graphics will create 6 total hits in a server log file one for each graphic and one for the page itself. While useful for estimating the load on a server, hits serve little value to advertisers or marketers and are often confused for clicks - there are always more hits vs clicks to any page (assuming there is at least one graphic on the page.

Hot Linking

Hot Linking - is the process by which one links to an image stored on one site yet it appears on one or more other sites. If done without permission, this is considered unethical since one is running up a bandwidth bill on someone elses tab.

House Ads

House Ads - is the type of banner advertisement that a web site publisher runs in an ad space when no paying advertisement is available to fill the space. Typically filled with an advertisement promoting one of the web sites services, products or features. Newspaper classified sections often use this tactic to solicit additional advertisers or subscribers.

Hyper Text Markup Language

HTML - Hyper Text Markup Language is the computer programming language that helps control the format of documents and images on the world wide web. An HTML editor is a software program that enables one to easily create HTML pages, or web pages.

Hyperlink

Hyperlink - HTML code that when clicked will redirect the surfer to another web page. Most banners and text links are hyperlinked to an advertisers web page.

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Online Advertising - I terms

Interactive Advertising Bureau

IAB - The Interactive Advertising Bureau: was founded in 1996, and is considered one of the leading authorities on online advertising with an active trade association with over 300 member companies in the United States alone. IAB activities include evaluating and recommending standards and practices, fielding research to document the effectiveness of the online medium and educating the advertising industry about the use of online and digital advertising.

Impressions

Impressions - are the number of times a banner or text ad was requested and presumably seen by users. It is often hard to obtain an accurate impression count as they can be undercounted due to issues relating to cache or overcounted due to requests that were not completed.

Incentivized Click

Incentivized Click - A type of click through in which the person clicking on the advertisement does so in order to receive some reward. Often results in low visitor quality.

Insertion Order

Insertion Order - A online or printed document that specifies the terms and conditions surrounding an online advertising campaign.

Intersitial

Interstitial - is an intrusive type of advertisement that loads between web pages without having been requested by the visitor. Similar to superstitials except they do not load in the backround.

Inventory

Inventory - is the number of ad spaces available for sale on a web site during a certain time frame. This number will be determined buy taking into consideration the number of advertisements on a page, the number of pages with advertisements and the number of page views during a specific time frame.

Internet Protocol Address

IP Address - A Internet protocol address is the numeric address (66.98.217.176) that is translated into a domain name (departmentofinsurance.org) by a domain name server (DNS). Each server connected to the Internet is assigned a unique IP address.

Integrated Services Digital Network

ISDN - Integrated Services Digital Network is a digital network offered by some ISP's that enables its users to transfer up to 128,000 bps over a standard telephone line. Not as fast as a cable or DSL modem but faster than a 56,000 bps modem.

Internet Service Provider

ISP - An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet via one or more types of technology. These may include a phone line, cable, fiber optic, radio waves or satellite.

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Online Advertising - J terms

Java

Java - is a programming language, created by Sun, that enables developers to write software on one platform and run it on another. It is popular on the Internet as it allows programmers to create programs called applets to run within a web browser and develop server-side applications for online forums, stores, polls, processing HTML forms, and more.

Javascript

JavaScript - is a cross-platform, object-based scripting language developed by Netscape for client and server applications. It is commonly used on web pages to add interactivity and dynamic content such as banner rotation.

Joint Photographic Experts Group

JPEG - Joint Photographic Experts Group, pronounced "jaypeg", is a graphics format which displays photographs and graphic images with millions of colors. Great for photos, but graphics in the GIF format are still the preferred standard for web sites.

Online Advertising - K terms

Keyword

Keyword - is a word or phrase entered into a search engine in an effort to get the search engine to return matching and relevant results. Many web sites offer advertising based on keyword targeting so an advertisers banner will only show when a specific keyword(s) are entered.

Keyword Density

Keyword Density - is the measurement of how frequently any given keyword appears within a web page. Too high a density can result in a web page being classified as spam while too low a density will cause a page to not be indexed as well for the given keyword.

Glossary of online advertsing terms

Online Advertising Glossary

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