Mini-Dictionary of useful Internet advertising vocabulary

Ad | Ad rotation | Ad space | Ad view | Banner | Booked space
Caching | Click | Clickthrough | Click rate | Cookie | CPM | Demographics | Hit | Impression | Media broker
Splash page | Targeting | User session | Unique Visits | View | Visit

Ad: For Web advertising, an ad is almost always a banner or graphic image of a designated pixel size and byte size limit. It is often animated.

Ad rotation: Ads are often rotated into ad spaces from a list. This is usually done automatically by software on the Web site or at a central site administered by an ad broker for a network of Web sites.

Ad space: An ad space is the space on a Web page that is reserved for ads.

Ad view: An ad view is a Web page delivered in a way that guarantees that the receiving viewer will actually see the ad. Ad views are what most Web sites sell or prefer to sell. Assuming that each ad is fully visible when a page arrives, the number of ad views equals the number of page views times the number of ads on the page.

Banner: A banner is an advertisement in the form of a graphic image that typically runs across a Web page or is positioned in a margin or other space reserved for ads. Banner ads are usually GIF images. In addition to adhering to size, many Web sites limit the size of the file to a certain number of bytes so that the file will display quickly. Most ads are animated GIFs since animation has been shown to attract a larger percentage of user clicks. The most common larger banner ad is 468 pixels wide by 60 pixels high. A smaller size is 120 by 90 pixels.

Booked space: This is the number of ad views for an ad space that is currently sold out.

Caching: In Internet advertising, the caching of pages in a cache server or the user's computer.

Click: A click is a Web page user's mouse click on an ad, which results in a hypertext link (that is, immediately "going to") the site sponsoring the ad.

Clickthrough: A clickthrough is what is counted by the sponsoring site as a result of an ad click. In practice, click and clickthrough tend to be used interchangeably. A clickthrough, however, seems to imply that the user actually received the page.

Click rate: The click rate is the percentage of ad views that resulted in clickthroughs. Although there is obviously some value in ad views that don't result in a clickthrough, this value is difficult to measure. A clickthrough has several values: it's an indication of the ad's effectiveness and it results in the viewer getting to the advertiser's Web site where other messages can be provided. A new approach is for a click to result not in a link to another site but to an immediate product order window. What a successful click rate is depends on a number of factors. In general, click rates vary from .1% to as high as 15%, but averages (in our opinion) are probably below 1%.

Cookie: A cookie is a file on a Web user's hard drive (it's kept in one of the subdirectories under the browser file directory) that is used to by Web sites to be able to know when the user returns to the website. Some ad rotation software uses cookies to see which ad the user has just seen so that a different ad will be rotated into the next page view.

CPM: Cost Per Thousand page views. This measure is taken from print advertising. Since not all page views result in seeing the ad (for example, if a page scrolls, an ad may be initially out of view), CPM is often interpreted to mean the cost per thousand ad views. (The "M" has nothing to do with "mega" or million. It's a Roman numeral M.)

Demographic: This is a term used for personal interest information that is provided by users at the request of Web sites.

Hit: A hit is the sending of a single file whether an HTML file, an image, an audio file, or other file type. Since a single Web page request can bring with it a number of individual files, the number of hits from a site is a not a good indication of its actual use (number of visitors). It does have meaning for the Web site space provider, however, as an indicator of traffic flow.

Impression: An impression is a view, in usage either a page view or more usually an ad view.

Media broker: Since it's often not efficient for an advertiser to select every Web site it wants to put ads on, media brokers aggregate sites for advertisers based on audience niches and other factors.

Splash page: A splash page (also known as an interstitial) is a preliminary page that precedes the regular home page of a Web site and usually promotes a particular site feature or provides advertising. A splash page is timed to move on to the home page after a short period of time.

Targeting: Targetting is purchasing ad space on Web sites that match audience and campaign objective requirements.

Unique visitor: A unique visitor is someone with a unique address who is entering a Web site for the first time that day (or some other specified period). Thus, a visitor that returns within the same day is not counted twice. A unique visitors count tells you how widespread your audience is during the time period, but not how much they use the site during the period.

User session: A user session is someone with a unique address that enters or reenters a Web site each day (or some other specified period). A user session is sometimes determined by counting only those users that haven't reentered the site within the past 20 minutes or a similar period. User session figures are sometimes used, somewhat incorrectly, to indicate "visits" or "visitors" per day. User sessions are a better indicator of total site activity than "unique visitors" since they indicate frequency of use.

Page View: The viewing of any web page counts as a single page view. A single User Session may result in multiple Page Views and numerous Ad Views.

Ad View: The viewing of any advertisement by any Internet users. Multiple Ad Views can be calculated for a single Page View.