{ "name": "Agency Echelon Reference glossary", "license": "CC BY 4.0", "reviewed": "2026-09-23", "count": 501, "terms": [ { "term": "CPM", "also": [ "Cost per mille", "Cost per thousand" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "The price of one thousand ad impressions. CPM is the base unit of most display, video, social, and connected TV buying, and the number every other unit price can be converted back into. A $12 CPM means the advertiser pays $12 for every 1,000 times the ad is served, whether or not anyone looks at it, clicks it, or buys anything. Compare vCPM, which charges only for viewable impressions, and CPC, which charges per click.", "related": [ "vCPM", "CPC", "CPA", "Impression" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/cpm/" }, { "term": "vCPM", "also": [ "Viewable CPM" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "Cost per thousand viewable impressions. Only impressions that meet the Viewability standard count toward the bill, which shifts the risk of unseen inventory from advertiser to seller. Google Ads and most DSPs offer vCPM bidding on display; it is rarely offered on walled-garden social inventory, where viewability is reported but not priced.", "related": [ "CPM", "Viewability", "MRC" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/vcpm/" }, { "term": "CPC", "also": [ "Cost per click" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "The amount paid each time a user clicks an ad. CPC is the native pricing model of paid search and the most common optional model on social platforms. It transfers the risk of an ignored ad to the seller, so sellers price it at a premium over the equivalent CPM. Effective CPC (eCPC) is total spend divided by clicks regardless of how the media was actually bought, and is the figure used when comparing channels.", "related": [ "CPM", "CPA", "CTR", "Quality Score" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/cpc/" }, { "term": "CPA", "also": [ "Cost per acquisition", "Cost per action" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "Total media cost divided by the number of conversions, where a conversion is whatever the advertiser defined: a purchase, a lead, an install, a booked call. CPA is both a reported metric and a bidding model. When bought on CPA, the platform or network accepts the performance risk and the advertiser pays only for results, which is why true CPA deals are scarce and why the platform version, target CPA bidding, still bills on impressions or clicks and merely aims for the target.", "related": [ "CPC", "Target CPA", "ROAS", "Conversion Rate" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/cpa/" }, { "term": "CPL", "also": [ "Cost per lead" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "Cost per acquisition where the acquisition is a lead: a form fill, a phone call, a lead-form submission inside a social platform. CPL is the standard unit for B2B, services, and any business with a sales cycle that runs after the click. A cheap CPL with poor lead quality is more expensive than an apparently high one, so CPL is best reported alongside a qualified-lead rate.", "related": [ "CPA", "Lead Form Ad" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/cpl/" }, { "term": "CPV", "also": [ "Cost per view" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "The price of one video view. Definitions of a view differ by platform and change the price: YouTube counts 30 seconds or completion, whichever comes first, for skippable in-stream; Meta and TikTok report views at 3 seconds and sell a separate ThruPlay or 6-second unit. Always confirm which view is being sold before comparing CPVs across platforms.", "related": [ "CPCV", "Video Completion Rate", "Online Video" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/cpv/" }, { "term": "CPCV", "also": [ "Cost per completed view" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "Cost per video view that ran to the end. CPCV is the honest unit for non-skippable and connected TV inventory, where completion is the norm, and a useful diagnostic on skippable inventory, where completion rate exposes creative that loses the audience.", "related": [ "CPV", "Video Completion Rate", "Connected TV" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/cpcv/" }, { "term": "CPI", "also": [ "Cost per install" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "Cost per app install, the standard buying and reporting unit for mobile app user acquisition. Since Apple's App Tracking Transparency framework, iOS installs are attributed mostly through SKAdNetwork and its successor AdAttributionKit, which report in aggregate and with delay, so CPI on iOS is an estimate rather than a count.", "related": [ "CPA", "SKAdNetwork", "Mobile Measurement Partner" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/cpi/" }, { "term": "Flat Fee", "also": [ "Sponsorship", "Fixed placement" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "A fixed price for a placement over a period, regardless of impressions delivered: a homepage takeover for a day, a newsletter sponsorship, a podcast host-read. Flat fees are common where inventory is scarce and exclusive. The advertiser converts the fee to an effective CPM afterward using delivered impressions to compare it against auction-bought media.", "related": [ "CPM", "Programmatic Guaranteed", "Insertion Order" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/flat-fee/" }, { "term": "Open Auction", "also": [ "Open exchange", "Open marketplace", "RTB" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "Programmatic inventory that any buyer with access to the exchange can bid on in real time, with no prior agreement between buyer and seller. The open auction is the largest pool of programmatic supply and the lowest-priced, and also the one most exposed to fraud, low-quality sites, and unclear supply paths. Most sophisticated buyers restrict open-auction buying with inclusion lists and Supply Path Optimization.", "related": [ "Private Marketplace", "Programmatic Guaranteed", "Real-Time Bidding", "Supply Path Optimization" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/open-auction/" }, { "term": "Private Marketplace", "also": [ "PMP", "Private auction" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "An invitation-only programmatic auction in which a publisher offers specific inventory to selected buyers, usually with a negotiated Floor Price. The buyer still bids and is not guaranteed delivery, but competes against fewer bidders on better-defined inventory. Access is granted through a Deal ID entered in the buyer's DSP.", "related": [ "Deal ID", "Preferred Deal", "Programmatic Guaranteed", "Open Auction" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/private-marketplace/" }, { "term": "Preferred Deal", "also": [ "Unreserved fixed rate" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "A one-to-one programmatic arrangement in which the buyer gets a first look at a publisher's inventory at a fixed CPM before it goes to auction, without committing to buy any volume. The buyer may decline any impression. Preferred deals sit between Private Marketplace auctions and Programmatic Guaranteed in commitment and price certainty.", "related": [ "Private Marketplace", "Programmatic Guaranteed", "Deal ID" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/preferred-deal/" }, { "term": "Programmatic Guaranteed", "also": [ "PG", "Automated guaranteed" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "A reserved buy executed through programmatic pipes: fixed CPM, fixed impression volume, one buyer, one seller, with the DSP and ad server handling delivery and billing instead of a manual Insertion Order. PG combines the certainty of a direct buy with programmatic frequency management and data targeting, at the cost of a technology fee on both sides.", "related": [ "Private Marketplace", "Preferred Deal", "Insertion Order", "Deal ID" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/programmatic-guaranteed/" }, { "term": "Deal ID", "also": [], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "A unique identifier a seller generates to represent a specific programmatic deal, private marketplace, preferred deal, or guaranteed buy. The buyer enters the Deal ID in the DSP, which then recognizes matching bid requests and applies the agreed terms. A Deal ID that is not matching is the first thing to check when a PMP is not spending.", "related": [ "Private Marketplace", "Preferred Deal", "Programmatic Guaranteed" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/deal-id/" }, { "term": "Real-Time Bidding", "also": [ "RTB" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "The auction mechanism underlying programmatic advertising: when a page or app loads, the seller's ad server sends a bid request describing the impression, DSPs respond with bids within roughly 100 milliseconds, and the winner's creative is served. The exchange of requests and responses follows the OpenRTB specification maintained by the IAB Tech Lab.", "related": [ "OpenRTB", "Demand-Side Platform", "Supply-Side Platform", "Open Auction" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/real-time-bidding/" }, { "term": "First-Price Auction", "also": [], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "An auction in which the winning bidder pays exactly what it bid. Since 2019 nearly all programmatic exchanges have run first-price auctions, replacing the second-price model. The change moved the burden of price discovery onto buyers, which is why DSPs now apply Bid Shading to avoid overpaying.", "related": [ "Second-Price Auction", "Bid Shading", "Floor Price" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/first-price-auction/" }, { "term": "Second-Price Auction", "also": [ "Vickrey auction" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "An auction in which the winner pays one increment above the second-highest bid rather than its own bid. Second-price auctions dominated early programmatic and remain the model, with modifications, in Google Ads search auctions, where the price paid is the minimum needed to beat the next competitor's Ad Rank.", "related": [ "First-Price Auction", "Ad Rank", "Bid Shading" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/second-price-auction/" }, { "term": "Bid Shading", "also": [], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "An algorithm inside a DSP that lowers each bid below the buyer's maximum in a First-Price Auction, estimating the minimum price likely to still win. Bid shading recovers some of the savings buyers lost when exchanges abandoned second-price auctions, and its quality varies materially between DSPs.", "related": [ "First-Price Auction", "Demand-Side Platform" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/bid-shading/" }, { "term": "Floor Price", "also": [ "Price floor", "Reserve price" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "The minimum bid a seller will accept for an impression. Floors are set in the SSP or ad server, may vary by buyer, deal, format, or geography, and can be hard (below the floor loses) or soft (below the floor may still win under certain conditions). In a first-price world, floors are the seller's main pricing lever.", "related": [ "First-Price Auction", "Supply-Side Platform", "Private Marketplace" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/floor-price/" }, { "term": "Header Bidding", "also": [ "Pre-bid", "Prebid" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "A publisher technique that offers each impression to many exchanges simultaneously before the page's ad server makes its decision, rather than sequentially in a Waterfall. Header bidding raised publisher yield and gave buyers access to more inventory, at the cost of page latency and duplicated bid requests, which is the origin of Supply Path Optimization. Prebid.js is the dominant open-source implementation.", "related": [ "Waterfall", "Supply-Side Platform", "Supply Path Optimization" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/header-bidding/" }, { "term": "Waterfall", "also": [ "Daisy chain" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "The pre-header-bidding method of selling unsold inventory: the ad server offers the impression to demand sources one at a time in priority order, each at a fixed price, until one accepts. Waterfalls undervalue impressions because higher-ranked partners never see competing bids. Most publishers replaced them with Header Bidding, though waterfalls persist in some in-app mediation.", "related": [ "Header Bidding", "Ad Network" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/waterfall/" }, { "term": "Insertion Order", "also": [ "IO" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "The contract that authorizes a media buy: advertiser, publisher or vendor, placements, dates, impressions or units, rate, total cost, and terms. In the United States the underlying terms are typically the IAB/4A's Standard Terms and Conditions for Internet Advertising, version 3.0. Programmatic buys replace the IO with platform terms and a Deal ID, which is one reason agencies keep separate IO and programmatic workflows.", "related": [ "Flat Fee", "Programmatic Guaranteed", "Media Plan" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/insertion-order/" }, { "term": "Pacing", "also": [], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "The rate at which a campaign spends its budget over its flight. Even pacing spreads spend uniformly; ASAP pacing spends as fast as inventory allows; front-loaded and dayparted pacing shape spend to a plan. Underpacing usually indicates targeting that is too narrow, bids that are too low, or a creative rejection; overpacing usually indicates a missing cap.", "related": [ "Flighting", "Frequency Cap", "Budget" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/pacing/" }, { "term": "Flighting", "also": [], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "Scheduling media in discrete bursts with gaps between them, as opposed to continuous delivery. Flighting concentrates weight when it matters, around a launch, a season, or a sales event, and is the standard structure of a Media Plan. Pulsing is a hybrid: a continuous base with periodic heavier flights.", "related": [ "Media Plan", "Pacing", "Reach" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/flighting/" }, { "term": "Budget", "also": [ "Media budget", "Working media" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "The amount available to spend on media. Working media is the portion that actually buys impressions; non-working spend covers fees, data, technology, verification, and creative production. Platforms enforce daily or lifetime budgets and may exceed a daily budget on any given day within a monthly cap, a behavior that surprises advertisers who monitor daily spend.", "related": [ "Pacing", "Agency Fee", "Media Plan" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/budget/" }, { "term": "Impression", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "One instance of an ad being served. Under the MRC definition, an impression is counted when the ad begins to render on the user's device, which replaced the older served-impression count taken at the ad server. Impressions are the denominator of CTR, Viewability, and Frequency, and the unit priced by CPM.", "related": [ "CPM", "Viewability", "Reach", "Frequency" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/impression/" }, { "term": "CTR", "also": [ "Click-through rate" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Clicks divided by impressions, expressed as a percentage. CTR measures how compelling an ad is to the people who saw it, not whether they were the right people. Search CTRs run in the single digits and above; display CTRs are typically well under 1 percent; social CTRs sit between. Because CTR feeds Quality Score and its equivalents, it influences price as well as reporting.", "related": [ "CPC", "Quality Score", "Conversion Rate" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ctr/" }, { "term": "Conversion Rate", "also": [ "CVR", "CR" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Conversions divided by clicks, sessions, or impressions, depending on the denominator in use. Platform-reported conversion rates usually use clicks; analytics tools usually use sessions; view-through models use impressions. The three are not comparable, and a conversion rate quoted without its denominator is not a number.", "related": [ "CPA", "CTR", "View-Through Conversion" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/conversion-rate/" }, { "term": "ROAS", "also": [ "Return on ad spend" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Revenue attributed to advertising divided by the advertising cost. A ROAS of 4 (often written 400 percent or 4x) means $4 of attributed revenue per $1 spent. ROAS depends entirely on the attribution model behind the revenue figure; platform-reported ROAS is measured by the platform that is being paid, using windows it chooses. It also ignores margin, which is why finance teams prefer MER or contribution-based measures.", "related": [ "MER", "CPA", "Attribution", "Incrementality" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/roas/" }, { "term": "MER", "also": [ "Marketing efficiency ratio", "Blended ROAS" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Total revenue divided by total marketing spend across all channels for a period, with no attribution at all. MER cannot say which channel drove what, but it cannot be gamed by attribution settings either, and it moves when incremental revenue moves. Direct-to-consumer brands adopted it after platform attribution degraded under privacy changes.", "related": [ "ROAS", "Incrementality", "Marketing Mix Modeling" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/mer/" }, { "term": "CAC", "also": [ "Customer acquisition cost" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Total sales and marketing cost divided by new customers acquired in the period. CAC is broader than CPA. It includes salaries, tools, creative, and every channel alongside media, and it counts customers rather than conversions. The CAC to LTV ratio is the standard test of whether growth spending is sustainable.", "related": [ "CPA", "LTV" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/cac/" }, { "term": "LTV", "also": [ "Lifetime value", "CLV", "Customer lifetime value" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The total profit or revenue a customer is expected to generate over the relationship. LTV sets the ceiling on what an advertiser can rationally pay to acquire a customer, and predicted LTV at the point of acquisition is what sophisticated advertisers optimize toward instead of first-purchase ROAS. Value-based bidding on Google and Meta is an attempt to bid on this signal.", "related": [ "CAC", "ROAS", "Value-Based Bidding" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ltv/" }, { "term": "Attribution", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The set of rules that assigns credit for a conversion to the ads, clicks, and impressions that preceded it. Every attribution model is an assumption, not a measurement; the model chosen changes reported channel performance without changing what actually happened. Common models include Last-Click Attribution, Data-Driven Attribution, and multi-touch rules. Incrementality testing is the only approach that measures causation.", "related": [ "Last-Click Attribution", "Data-Driven Attribution", "Multi-Touch Attribution", "Attribution Window", "Incrementality" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/attribution/" }, { "term": "Last-Click Attribution", "also": [ "Last-touch attribution" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "An attribution model that gives all credit for a conversion to the last click before it. Last click is simple, consistent, and systematically biased toward bottom-funnel channels such as brand search and retargeting, which harvest demand created elsewhere. It remains the default in many analytics setups because it is easy to explain, not because it is accurate.", "related": [ "Attribution", "Data-Driven Attribution", "Retargeting" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/last-click-attribution/" }, { "term": "Data-Driven Attribution", "also": [ "DDA" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "An attribution model that uses the advertiser's own conversion paths to estimate how much each touchpoint contributed, comparing converting and non-converting paths. Google Ads and GA4 made DDA the default in 2021 and 2023 respectively. DDA only sees the touchpoints the platform can observe, so within Google it distributes credit among Google touchpoints.", "related": [ "Attribution", "Last-Click Attribution", "Multi-Touch Attribution" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/data-driven-attribution/" }, { "term": "Multi-Touch Attribution", "also": [ "MTA" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Any attribution model that spreads credit across several touchpoints on the path to conversion: linear, time-decay, position-based, or algorithmic. Independent MTA vendors flourished in the 2010s and largely collapsed once third-party cookies, iOS tracking limits, and walled-garden data policies removed the user-level path data the models required. What survives is platform-internal DDA and Marketing Mix Modeling.", "related": [ "Attribution", "Data-Driven Attribution", "Marketing Mix Modeling" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/multi-touch-attribution/" }, { "term": "Attribution Window", "also": [ "Lookback window", "Conversion window" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The period after an ad exposure during which a conversion can be credited to it. Windows are set separately for clicks and views; Meta's default is 7-day click and 1-day view, Google Ads defaults to 30-day click, and each platform's defaults changed after 2021. Two platforms reporting on the same conversions with different windows will together claim more conversions than occurred.", "related": [ "Attribution", "View-Through Conversion", "Conversion Lag" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/attribution-window/" }, { "term": "View-Through Conversion", "also": [ "Post-view conversion", "VTC" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "A conversion credited to an ad the user saw but did not click, within the view attribution window. View-through captures real influence for display and video and is also the easiest metric to inflate, since a large enough reach campaign will be seen by many people who were going to convert anyway. Treat platform view-through counts as an upper bound and validate with a Holdout.", "related": [ "Attribution Window", "Attribution", "Holdout" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/view-through-conversion/" }, { "term": "Conversion Lag", "also": [ "Time to conversion" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The delay between an ad interaction and the conversion it eventually produces. Because of lag, recent periods always look worse than they will once late conversions arrive, and any optimization decision made on the last few days of data is made on incomplete data. Google Ads reports conversions by the interaction date, so yesterday's numbers keep rising for weeks.", "related": [ "Attribution Window", "Conversion Rate" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/conversion-lag/" }, { "term": "Incrementality", "also": [ "Incremental lift", "Causal measurement" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The conversions, revenue, or brand outcomes that occurred because of advertising and would not have occurred without it. Incrementality is measured with controlled experiments: a randomized Holdout, a Geo Experiment, or a platform Conversion Lift study. It is the only measurement approach that establishes causation, and it consistently shows that attribution overcredits retargeting and brand search.", "related": [ "Holdout", "Geo Experiment", "Conversion Lift", "Attribution", "MER" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/incrementality/" }, { "term": "Holdout", "also": [ "Control group", "Ghost ads", "PSA test" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "A randomly selected group of eligible users who are deliberately not shown the campaign so their behavior can be compared with the exposed group. The difference in conversion rate between the two groups is the campaign's incremental effect. Platform-run holdouts use ghost ads (the auction is won but nothing is shown); older methods showed a public service ad instead.", "related": [ "Incrementality", "Conversion Lift", "Geo Experiment" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/holdout/" }, { "term": "Geo Experiment", "also": [ "Geo lift test", "Matched-market test" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "An incrementality test that turns advertising on or changes its weight in some geographic markets and not others, then compares outcomes. Geo tests work without any user-level data, which makes them the standard method for measuring channels that cannot run user holdouts, such as TV, out-of-home, or a whole platform. Google's open-source GeoLift and Meta's GeoLift package are the common tools.", "related": [ "Incrementality", "Holdout", "Marketing Mix Modeling" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/geo-experiment/" }, { "term": "Conversion Lift", "also": [ "Lift study" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "A platform-administered incrementality study in which the platform randomly holds out a share of the target audience and reports the difference in conversions. Meta, Google, TikTok, Amazon, and Pinterest all offer versions, usually above a spend minimum. Results are trustworthy on their own terms but are run by the party being measured, so the advertiser should keep its own copy of the design.", "related": [ "Incrementality", "Holdout", "Brand Lift" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/conversion-lift/" }, { "term": "Brand Lift", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "A study that measures the change in awareness, ad recall, consideration, or purchase intent between people exposed to a campaign and a control group, using surveys served on the platform or by a panel vendor. Brand lift is the standard outcome metric for upper-funnel video and CTV, where conversions are not the goal. YouTube's study is free above a spend threshold; most others are paid.", "related": [ "Conversion Lift", "Incrementality", "Reach" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/brand-lift/" }, { "term": "Marketing Mix Modeling", "also": [ "MMM", "Media mix modeling" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "A statistical model that explains sales or another outcome as a function of marketing spend by channel, price, seasonality, and external factors, using aggregate time-series data rather than user-level tracking. MMM predates digital and returned to favor after privacy changes broke user-level attribution. Open-source models such as Meta's Robyn and Google's Meridian lowered the cost of entry, though a model is only as good as its inputs and its calibration against Incrementality tests.", "related": [ "Incrementality", "Multi-Touch Attribution", "MER" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/marketing-mix-modeling/" }, { "term": "Viewability", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Whether an ad had the opportunity to be seen. The MRC standard counts a display impression as viewable when at least 50 percent of its pixels are in view for at least one continuous second, and a video impression when 50 percent is in view for two continuous seconds. Viewability is measured by verification vendors and reported by platforms; it says nothing about attention, only opportunity.", "related": [ "MRC", "vCPM", "Ad Verification", "Attention Metrics" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/viewability/" }, { "term": "MRC", "also": [ "Media Rating Council" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The US industry body that audits and accredits measurement services and sets minimum standards for counting impressions, viewability, invalid traffic, and audience. MRC accreditation is the credential that lets a vendor's numbers be used as a basis for billing. The council was created in the 1960s at the urging of Congress after the television ratings hearings.", "related": [ "Viewability", "Invalid Traffic", "Ad Verification" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/mrc/" }, { "term": "Invalid Traffic", "also": [ "IVT", "Ad fraud", "GIVT", "SIVT" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Impressions, clicks, or conversions that do not come from a real human with real interest. General invalid traffic (GIVT) is identifiable by routine filters: known bots, crawlers, data-center traffic. Sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT) requires analysis: hijacked devices, spoofed domains, click farms, made-for-advertising sites. Verification vendors screen for both; platforms filter GIVT and typically refund it.", "related": [ "Ad Verification", "MRC", "Made-for-Advertising Site", "Brand Safety" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/invalid-traffic/" }, { "term": "Brand Safety", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Keeping ads away from content that could damage the advertiser: violence, hate, adult material, illegal activity, and the other categories defined in the GARM brand safety floor. Brand safety is enforced with keyword blocklists, category exclusions, and pre-bid or post-bid verification. Overzealous blocklists are a known problem that starves quality news publishers of revenue.", "related": [ "Brand Suitability", "Ad Verification", "Inclusion List" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/brand-safety/" }, { "term": "Brand Suitability", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The advertiser-specific layer above Brand Safety: content that is safe in general but wrong for a particular brand, such as a family brand near alcohol reviews or an airline near air travel accident coverage. Suitability is set per advertiser using the GARM risk levels (floor, high, medium, low) and applied through verification vendors and platform controls.", "related": [ "Brand Safety", "Ad Verification", "Contextual Targeting" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/brand-suitability/" }, { "term": "Ad Verification", "also": [ "Verification", "Measurement vendor" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Third-party measurement of whether ads were viewable, brand safe, free of invalid traffic, and served in the intended geography. Verification runs pre-bid (blocking the bid before it is placed) and post-bid (measuring what was served). The two dominant vendors are DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science; both are MRC accredited and both carry per-impression fees that come out of working media.", "related": [ "Viewability", "Brand Safety", "Invalid Traffic", "MRC" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ad-verification/" }, { "term": "Reach", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The number of distinct people exposed to a campaign at least once. Reach is a person-level count and depends on the measurer's ability to recognize the same person across devices and sessions; platform reach within one platform is reliable, cross-platform reach requires a panel or identity graph and is estimated. Reach multiplied by average Frequency equals impressions.", "related": [ "Frequency", "Impression", "GRP", "Frequency Cap" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/reach/" }, { "term": "Frequency", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The average number of times each reached person was exposed to a campaign. Effective frequency is the number of exposures needed for the ad to work, and excessive frequency wastes money and irritates people. Frequency is managed with a Frequency Cap and is hardest to control across platforms, where no single system sees every exposure.", "related": [ "Reach", "Frequency Cap", "Impression" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/frequency/" }, { "term": "Frequency Cap", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "A limit on how many times one person is served an ad in a period, set at the campaign, line item, or creative level. Caps depend on the platform recognizing the person, so they leak across devices and browsers where identity is weak. In CTV, household-level caps are the practical standard.", "related": [ "Frequency", "Reach", "Pacing" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/frequency-cap/" }, { "term": "GRP", "also": [ "Gross rating point", "TRP" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "One percent of a defined population reached once. GRPs are the currency of television and the way reach and frequency are expressed as a single number: 200 GRPs might mean 50 percent reach at a frequency of 4. Target rating points (TRPs) are GRPs against a specific demographic. Digital video buys are increasingly planned in GRPs to make them comparable with linear TV.", "related": [ "Reach", "Frequency", "Connected TV" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/grp/" }, { "term": "Share of Voice", "also": [ "SOV" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "An advertiser's share of total advertising in its category, measured in spend, impressions, or GRPs. The long-standing finding is that brands whose share of voice exceeds their market share tend to grow, and those below it tend to shrink. In paid search the equivalent is Impression Share.", "related": [ "Impression Share", "Reach" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/share-of-voice/" }, { "term": "Video Completion Rate", "also": [ "VCR", "VTR", "Completion rate" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Completed video views divided by video starts. Completion rates near 100 percent on non-skippable and CTV inventory measure the inventory, not the creative; on skippable inventory the rate measures how well the creative holds attention. Quartile reporting (25, 50, 75, 100 percent) shows where viewers drop off.", "related": [ "CPCV", "CPV", "Online Video" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/video-completion-rate/" }, { "term": "Attention Metrics", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Measures that go beyond Viewability to estimate whether a person actually looked at an ad: eye-tracking panels, modeled attention scores, time in view, and interaction signals. Vendors include Adelaide, Lumen, and Amplified Intelligence. Attention is not yet an accredited standard, and buyers should treat each vendor's score as proprietary.", "related": [ "Viewability", "Ad Verification" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/attention-metrics/" }, { "term": "Impression Share", "also": [ "Search impression share" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The percentage of eligible search auctions in which an ad actually appeared. Lost impression share is reported by cause: budget (the campaign ran out of money) or rank (the bid or Quality Score was too low). Impression share on brand terms is the standard defensive metric; on non-brand terms it indicates headroom.", "related": [ "Share of Voice", "Quality Score", "Ad Rank" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/impression-share/" }, { "term": "First-Party Data", "also": [], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "Data an organization collects directly from its own customers and audiences: purchase history, CRM records, site and app behavior, email lists, loyalty data. First-party data is the foundation of post-cookie targeting and measurement because it is collected with a direct relationship and, if consent is handled properly, a legal basis. It is activated through Customer Match, Custom Audience uploads, Conversions API connections, and Data Clean Room matches.", "related": [ "Second-Party Data", "Third-Party Data", "Customer Data Platform", "Data Clean Room" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/first-party-data/" }, { "term": "Second-Party Data", "also": [], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "Another organization's first-party data, shared directly under a bilateral agreement rather than through a data marketplace. A retailer's purchase data offered to a consumer brand, or an airline's traveler data offered to a hotel group. Retail Media networks are the largest second-party data businesses in advertising.", "related": [ "First-Party Data", "Third-Party Data", "Retail Media", "Data Clean Room" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/second-party-data/" }, { "term": "Third-Party Data", "also": [], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "Audience data collected by a company with no direct relationship to the user and sold to many buyers, typically through DSP data marketplaces at a CPM surcharge. Providers include Experian, Acxiom (LiveRamp), Oracle (exited in 2024), and hundreds of specialists. Third-party segments depend on cookies and device IDs for delivery and on inference for accuracy, and both have degraded. Agency Echelon's free audience finder indexes segments from major providers.", "related": [ "First-Party Data", "Data Management Platform", "Third-Party Cookie", "Lookalike Audience" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/third-party-data/" }, { "term": "Contextual Targeting", "also": [], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "Placing ads based on the content of the page, video, or app rather than on who the user is. Contextual targeting requires no personal data, which has made it the default privacy-safe method as user-level signals decline. Modern contextual vendors classify pages with natural language models against the IAB Content Taxonomy and custom categories, well beyond the keyword matching of earlier generations.", "related": [ "Behavioral Targeting", "Brand Suitability", "Keyword Targeting" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/contextual-targeting/" }, { "term": "Behavioral Targeting", "also": [ "Interest targeting", "Audience targeting" ], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "Selecting users based on their past actions: sites visited, content consumed, purchases, app usage. Behavioral segments are built by platforms from their own logs and by third parties from cookies and device IDs. The method is accurate inside walled gardens and increasingly coarse on the open web.", "related": [ "Contextual Targeting", "Third-Party Data", "Retargeting" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/behavioral-targeting/" }, { "term": "Retargeting", "also": [ "Remarketing" ], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "Showing ads to people who previously visited a site, used an app, or engaged with content, identified through a pixel, SDK, or platform engagement. Retargeting reliably reports the best ROAS of any tactic and reliably fails Incrementality tests, because it targets people already on their way to converting. It is worth running at a capped frequency and worth measuring with a Holdout.", "related": [ "Pixel", "Custom Audience", "Incrementality", "Frequency Cap" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/retargeting/" }, { "term": "Lookalike Audience", "also": [ "Similar audience", "Audience expansion" ], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "A platform-generated audience of users who resemble a seed audience the advertiser supplies, typically customers or converters. Lookalikes were the workhorse of social prospecting in the 2010s. Since 2022 Meta and Google have folded them into automated targeting (Advantage+ audiences, optimized targeting), where the seed is a signal rather than a boundary.", "related": [ "Custom Audience", "Customer Match", "First-Party Data" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/lookalike-audience/" }, { "term": "Custom Audience", "also": [], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "Meta's term for an audience built from the advertiser's own data: uploaded customer lists, website visitors from the Pixel, app users, engagement with the advertiser's content on Meta. Uploaded identifiers are hashed before matching. The equivalent on Google is Customer Match; on LinkedIn, Matched Audiences.", "related": [ "Customer Match", "Lookalike Audience", "Retargeting", "First-Party Data" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/custom-audience/" }, { "term": "Customer Match", "also": [], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "Google's feature for targeting or excluding known customers by uploading hashed email addresses, phone numbers, or postal data, which Google matches against signed-in users. Customer Match audiences work across Search, YouTube, Shopping, Gmail, and Display and can be used as seeds for automated targeting and Value-Based Bidding.", "related": [ "Custom Audience", "First-Party Data", "Lookalike Audience" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/customer-match/" }, { "term": "Keyword Targeting", "also": [], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "Selecting search auctions by the queries users type, the core of paid search, and selecting content by the words it contains, an older form of contextual display targeting. In search, keywords are entered with a Match Type that controls how loosely the query may differ from the keyword.", "related": [ "Match Type", "Negative Keyword", "Contextual Targeting", "Search Terms Report" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/keyword-targeting/" }, { "term": "Geotargeting", "also": [ "Location targeting" ], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "Restricting delivery to users in specified places: countries, regions, cities, postal codes, or radii around a point. Location is inferred from IP address, GPS (with permission), and declared data, and accuracy ranges from reliable at the country level to unreliable below the city level on desktop. Geofencing is the fine-grained mobile version.", "related": [ "Geofencing", "Dayparting" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/geotargeting/" }, { "term": "Geofencing", "also": [], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "Targeting mobile devices that enter a drawn boundary around a physical location, such as a store, a competitor's store, or a conference venue, using GPS or other location signals collected by apps with location permission. Precise location data is now regulated as sensitive in several US states and under the GDPR, and the supply of it shrank accordingly.", "related": [ "Geotargeting", "Mobile Advertising ID" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/geofencing/" }, { "term": "Dayparting", "also": [ "Ad scheduling" ], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "Restricting or weighting delivery by hour of day and day of week. Dayparting matters when conversion rates vary by time (business hours for B2B phone leads), when budgets are limited, or when a placement's audience changes across the day. Automated bidding on most platforms already adjusts for time, so manual dayparting is now mainly a budget-control tool.", "related": [ "Flighting", "Pacing", "Geotargeting" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/dayparting/" }, { "term": "Exclusion", "also": [ "Suppression", "Negative targeting" ], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "Removing users, placements, or content from a campaign's eligible set: existing customers from an acquisition campaign, converters from a retargeting campaign, specific sites or apps, content categories. Exclusions are where most wasted spend is recovered and are set separately from inclusion targeting on every platform.", "related": [ "Negative Keyword", "Inclusion List", "Brand Safety" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/exclusion/" }, { "term": "Inclusion List", "also": [ "Allowlist", "Whitelist" ], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "A list of sites, apps, or channels a campaign is permitted to run on, replacing the open web with a curated set. Inclusion lists are the strongest brand safety and quality control available in programmatic and the standard approach for premium buyers. The trade-off is reduced scale and higher CPMs.", "related": [ "Exclusion", "Brand Safety", "Supply Path Optimization" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/inclusion-list/" }, { "term": "Data Clean Room", "also": [], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "A secure environment in which two or more parties match and analyze their data without either party seeing the other's raw records. Clean rooms are how advertisers measure and target on walled gardens (Google Ads Data Hub, Amazon Marketing Cloud, Meta Advanced Analytics) and how retailers, publishers, and brands collaborate on Second-Party Data. Vendors include LiveRamp, Snowflake, Habu (LiveRamp), and InfoSum.", "related": [ "First-Party Data", "Second-Party Data", "Retail Media", "Identity Resolution" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/data-clean-room/" }, { "term": "Identity Resolution", "also": [ "Identity graph" ], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "Connecting the identifiers that represent the same person or household across devices, browsers, and channels: cookies, mobile advertising IDs, hashed emails, IP addresses, CTV device IDs. Identity graphs are maintained by LiveRamp, Experian, TransUnion, and others, and by the platforms internally. The quality of an identity graph determines the accuracy of cross-device Reach, Frequency, and Attribution.", "related": [ "Unified ID 2.0", "Hashed Email", "Data Clean Room", "Reach" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/identity-resolution/" }, { "term": "Hashed Email", "also": [ "HEM" ], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "An email address run through a one-way hash function (SHA-256 by convention) so that it can be matched between parties without exposing the address itself. Hashed emails are the most common key for customer list uploads, clean room matches, and alternative identifiers such as Unified ID 2.0. Hashing is not anonymization: anyone holding the same email can produce the same hash.", "related": [ "Unified ID 2.0", "Customer Match", "Identity Resolution" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/hashed-email/" }, { "term": "Unified ID 2.0", "also": [ "UID2" ], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "An open-source identity framework initiated by The Trade Desk that converts a consented email address or phone number into an encrypted, rotating token usable across participating publishers, DSPs, and data partners. UID2 is one of several proposed replacements for the Third-Party Cookie and has its widest adoption in connected TV and among US publishers. The European counterpart is EUID.", "related": [ "Hashed Email", "Third-Party Cookie", "Identity Resolution" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/unified-id-2-0/" }, { "term": "Value-Based Bidding", "also": [ "Target ROAS", "Maximize conversion value" ], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "Automated bidding that optimizes toward conversion value rather than conversion count, so a $500 sale is worth more than a $20 one. It requires passing value with each conversion, ideally predicted margin or LTV rather than revenue. Google's Target ROAS and Meta's value optimization are the main implementations.", "related": [ "Target CPA", "LTV", "ROAS", "Smart Bidding" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/value-based-bidding/" }, { "term": "Target CPA", "also": [ "tCPA" ], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "Automated bidding that sets bids to achieve an average cost per conversion the advertiser specifies. Target CPA needs a steady flow of conversions to learn from, typically 30 or more a month per campaign, and it responds to the target as a signal, not a promise: a target set below what the auction can deliver reduces volume rather than cost.", "related": [ "CPA", "Value-Based Bidding", "Smart Bidding" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/target-cpa/" }, { "term": "Smart Bidding", "also": [ "Automated bidding" ], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "Google's collective name for its machine-learned bid strategies: Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximize Conversions, Maximize Conversion Value. Smart Bidding sets a bid for every auction using signals unavailable to advertisers, such as device, time, query intent, and browser. Every major platform now runs an equivalent, and manual bidding is a niche practice.", "related": [ "Target CPA", "Value-Based Bidding", "Quality Score" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/smart-bidding/" }, { "term": "Display Advertising", "also": [ "Banner advertising" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Static or animated image ads served in fixed-size slots on websites and in apps. The IAB's Fixed Size Ad Specifications and the newer Flexible Ad Specifications define the common units; 300x250, 728x90, 320x50, 160x600, and 300x600 remain the workhorses. Display is bought mostly programmatically and is the format most associated with low viewability and low click rates.", "related": [ "Native Advertising", "Rich Media", "CPM", "Viewability" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/display-advertising/" }, { "term": "Native Advertising", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Ads that take the visual form of the content around them: an in-feed post, a recommended article, a promoted listing. Native units are assembled by the publisher from components the advertiser supplies (headline, image, description, sponsor name) rather than served as a fixed creative. The OpenRTB Native specification standardizes the components; FTC guidance requires clear sponsorship labeling.", "related": [ "Display Advertising", "Sponsored Content", "In-Feed Ad" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/native-advertising/" }, { "term": "Rich Media", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Display ads with interactivity beyond a click: expansion, video, forms, games, carousels. Rich media is built in HTML5, often by specialist studios or in creative management platforms, and served through ad servers that support the format's larger file weight and event tracking. The IAB's HTML5 guidelines govern file size and behavior.", "related": [ "Display Advertising", "Dynamic Creative Optimization", "Ad Server" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/rich-media/" }, { "term": "Online Video", "also": [ "OLV", "Digital video" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Video advertising delivered over the internet to any screen except television: pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll on publisher video players, in-feed video on social platforms, outstream units that play inside article content. OLV is distinguished from Connected TV by screen and from linear TV by delivery. Creative is served with the VAST standard on most inventory outside social platforms.", "related": [ "Connected TV", "VAST", "Pre-Roll", "CPV" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/online-video/" }, { "term": "Pre-Roll", "also": [ "Mid-roll", "Post-roll", "In-stream" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Video ads that run before (pre), during (mid), or after (post) the content a user chose to watch. In-stream is the collective term. Pre-roll is skippable or non-skippable depending on the platform and length; YouTube's non-skippable limit is 15 seconds in most markets, and the 6-second Bumper Ad is a non-skippable subtype.", "related": [ "Online Video", "Bumper Ad", "VAST", "Video Completion Rate" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/pre-roll/" }, { "term": "Bumper Ad", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "A 6-second non-skippable video ad, introduced by YouTube in 2016 and adopted as a format on other platforms. Bumpers are bought on CPM, work for reach and frequency at low cost, and are usually cut from a longer master rather than written as standalone pieces.", "related": [ "Pre-Roll", "Online Video", "Reach" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/bumper-ad/" }, { "term": "Connected TV", "also": [ "CTV", "OTT" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Television content streamed over the internet to a TV screen, through a smart TV, a streaming stick, a game console, or a set-top app, and the advertising sold within it. Over-the-top (OTT) refers to the delivery method on any screen; CTV refers specifically to the television screen. CTV inventory is sold by streaming services, device makers, and programmatic channels, is mostly non-skippable, and is measured at the household level.", "related": [ "Online Video", "FAST", "GRP", "Frequency Cap" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/connected-tv/" }, { "term": "FAST", "also": [ "Free ad-supported streaming TV" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Streaming channels that are free to watch and funded by advertising, programmed as linear-style channels rather than on-demand libraries: Pluto TV, Tubi, The Roku Channel, Samsung TV Plus. FAST is the fastest-growing source of Connected TV inventory and the closest digital analogue to broadcast television.", "related": [ "Connected TV", "Online Video" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/fast/" }, { "term": "Dynamic Creative Optimization", "also": [ "DCO", "Dynamic creative" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Assembling an ad at serve time from a template and a feed of components (products, prices, headlines, images, offers) chosen for the individual impression, and learning which combinations perform. DCO powers product retargeting, weather- and location-responsive creative, and large-scale personalization. Meta's Advantage+ creative and Google's responsive ads are platform-native versions.", "related": [ "Rich Media", "Responsive Search Ad", "Retargeting", "Product Feed" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/dynamic-creative-optimization/" }, { "term": "Responsive Search Ad", "also": [ "RSA" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Google's standard search ad format since 2022: the advertiser supplies up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions, and Google assembles combinations per auction, testing which perform. Pinning fixes a headline in a position and reduces the combinations available. Microsoft Advertising uses the same model.", "related": [ "Search Advertising", "Ad Assets", "Dynamic Creative Optimization" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/responsive-search-ad/" }, { "term": "Ad Assets", "also": [ "Ad extensions" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Additional elements attached to a search ad beyond the headline and description: sitelinks, callouts, structured snippets, call buttons, location, price, promotion, image, and lead form assets. Assets raise click-through rate and take up more of the results page. Google renamed extensions to assets in 2022; the mechanism is the same.", "related": [ "Responsive Search Ad", "Search Advertising", "CTR" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ad-assets/" }, { "term": "Performance Max", "also": [ "PMax" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "A Google Ads campaign type that serves across Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail, and Maps from one campaign, using automated bidding, automated targeting, and creative assembled from supplied assets. Performance Max replaced Smart Shopping and Local campaigns in 2022. It delivers scale with limited transparency; brand exclusions, search themes, and channel reporting were added over time in response to advertiser pressure.", "related": [ "Smart Bidding", "Shopping Ads", "Advantage+", "Search Advertising" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/performance-max/" }, { "term": "Advantage+", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Meta's family of automated campaign features: Advantage+ shopping campaigns (automated ecommerce campaigns), Advantage+ audiences (automated targeting with optional signals), Advantage+ creative (automated creative variations), and Advantage+ placements. In 2025 Meta began merging these into a single Advantage+ campaign setup. It is the Meta counterpart to Google's Performance Max.", "related": [ "Performance Max", "Lookalike Audience", "Dynamic Creative Optimization" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/advantageplus/" }, { "term": "Shopping Ads", "also": [ "Product listing ads", "PLA" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Product ads generated from a Product Feed and shown with an image, price, and merchant name on search results and shopping surfaces. Google Shopping ads are managed through Merchant Center and served by Standard Shopping or Performance Max campaigns; Microsoft, Amazon, and the social platforms run equivalents. Feed quality determines eligibility and performance more than bidding does.", "related": [ "Product Feed", "Performance Max", "Retail Media" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/shopping-ads/" }, { "term": "Product Feed", "also": [ "Catalog", "Merchant feed" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "A structured file or API connection listing an advertiser's products with attributes: ID, title, description, price, availability, image, category, and identifiers such as GTIN. Feeds power Shopping Ads, Dynamic Creative Optimization, social catalog ads, and retail media listings. Feed management tools normalize one source into each platform's specification.", "related": [ "Shopping Ads", "Dynamic Creative Optimization", "Advantage+" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/product-feed/" }, { "term": "In-Feed Ad", "also": [ "Sponsored post", "Promoted post" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "An ad inserted into a scrolling feed of content on a social platform, appearing in the same visual form as organic posts and marked as sponsored. In-feed is the primary format on Meta, TikTok, X, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, and Snapchat. Formats within it include single image, video, carousel, collection, and lead form.", "related": [ "Native Advertising", "Carousel Ad", "Lead Form Ad", "Spark Ads" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/in-feed-ad/" }, { "term": "Carousel Ad", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "An in-feed unit with several images or videos a user can swipe through, each with its own link. Carousels suit product ranges, sequential storytelling, and feature lists, and are available on Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest, and X. Meta can order cards automatically by performance.", "related": [ "In-Feed Ad", "Collection Ad" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/carousel-ad/" }, { "term": "Collection Ad", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "A mobile in-feed format that opens a full-screen, fast-loading catalog experience (Meta's Instant Experience) from a cover image or video, showing products from a Product Feed. Collection ads and their equivalents on TikTok and Pinterest are the standard social commerce format for browsing rather than a single product.", "related": [ "Carousel Ad", "Product Feed", "In-Feed Ad" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/collection-ad/" }, { "term": "Lead Form Ad", "also": [ "Lead gen form", "Instant form" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "An ad that opens a form inside the platform, prefilled from the user's profile, instead of sending the user to a landing page. Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Google (lead form assets) all offer it. Lead forms produce more leads at lower cost than landing pages and lower-intent leads on average; the difference is settled by integrating the form with the CRM and measuring downstream.", "related": [ "CPL", "In-Feed Ad", "Conversions API" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/lead-form-ad/" }, { "term": "Spark Ads", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "TikTok's format for promoting an existing organic post, from the advertiser's own account or a creator's account with permission, so that engagement accrues to the original post and the ad carries the creator's handle. Spark Ads are the standard vehicle for creator content on TikTok and consistently outperform ads uploaded as standalone creative.", "related": [ "In-Feed Ad", "Creator Advertising", "UGC" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/spark-ads/" }, { "term": "UGC", "also": [ "User-generated content", "Creator content" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Ad creative made in the style of ordinary user posts, filmed on phones by creators, customers, or hired UGC producers rather than by a production company. UGC became the dominant social ad style because it reads as a peer recommendation and is cheap to produce in volume. Paid creators must disclose the relationship under FTC endorsement guidance.", "related": [ "Creator Advertising", "Spark Ads", "In-Feed Ad" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ugc/" }, { "term": "Creator Advertising", "also": [ "Influencer marketing", "Branded content" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Paying individuals with audiences to feature a brand in their content, and often amplifying that content as paid media through Spark Ads, Meta partnership ads, or YouTube. The practice has moved from informal to platform-managed, with creator marketplaces on TikTok, Meta, and YouTube, and is subject to disclosure rules in every major market.", "related": [ "UGC", "Spark Ads", "Sponsored Content" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/creator-advertising/" }, { "term": "Sponsored Content", "also": [ "Advertorial", "Branded content" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Editorial-style content produced by or for an advertiser and published on a media property's own pages, labeled as sponsored. Sponsored content is sold by publisher studios at a flat fee and distributed through the publisher's channels and paid amplification. It is distinct from Native Advertising, which is an ad unit, though the two are often conflated.", "related": [ "Native Advertising", "Creator Advertising", "Flat Fee" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/sponsored-content/" }, { "term": "Interstitial", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "A full-screen ad shown at a natural transition point in an app or between pages, dismissible after a delay. Interstitials produce high viewability and high annoyance; Google's Better Ads Standards and app store policies restrict when and how they can be shown, and a poorly timed interstitial is one of the surest ways to lose a user.", "related": [ "Rewarded Video", "Mobile Advertising", "Display Advertising" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/interstitial/" }, { "term": "Rewarded Video", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "An opt-in video ad in a mobile game or app that gives the user something for watching: an extra life, in-app currency, content access. Rewarded video has the highest completion rates and user acceptance of any mobile format and commands correspondingly high CPMs.", "related": [ "Interstitial", "Mobile Advertising", "Video Completion Rate" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/rewarded-video/" }, { "term": "Digital Out-of-Home", "also": [ "DOOH", "Programmatic OOH" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Advertising on digital screens in public places: billboards, transit, retail, gyms, airports, elevators. DOOH inventory is increasingly sold programmatically through SSPs such as Vistar and Broadsign and bought through the major DSPs, with audience measurement from Geopath and mobile location data. Impressions are estimated from foot traffic rather than counted.", "related": [ "Connected TV", "Impression", "Geotargeting" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/digital-out-of-home/" }, { "term": "Audio Advertising", "also": [ "Streaming audio", "Podcast advertising" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Ads in streaming music, radio, and podcasts. Streaming audio is bought programmatically or directly through Spotify, iHeart, SiriusXM Media, and DSPs, with VAST-style ad insertion. Podcast ads split into host-read (recorded by the host, sold at a flat rate or CPM) and dynamically inserted (served at download time, measurable, and increasingly programmatic through platforms such as Spotify Audience Network and SiriusXM).", "related": [ "Flat Fee", "VAST", "CPM" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/audio-advertising/" }, { "term": "Mobile Advertising", "also": [ "In-app advertising" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Advertising delivered on smartphones and tablets, in mobile web browsers and inside apps. In-app inventory is served through SDKs and mediation platforms and identified by the Mobile Advertising ID; iOS restricted that identifier in 2021 under App Tracking Transparency, which pushed mobile measurement toward SKAdNetwork and probabilistic methods. Most social and video impressions are mobile.", "related": [ "Mobile Advertising ID", "App Tracking Transparency", "SKAdNetwork", "Interstitial" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/mobile-advertising/" }, { "term": "Demand-Side Platform", "also": [ "DSP" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Software through which advertisers and agencies buy programmatic inventory across many exchanges and publishers from one interface, with audience targeting, bidding, frequency management, and reporting. The major independent DSPs are The Trade Desk, Amazon DSP, Google Display & Video 360, Yahoo DSP, StackAdapt, and Viant; Criteo, Quantcast, and others compete in specific segments. DSP fees are charged as a percentage of media, typically 10 to 20 percent.", "related": [ "Supply-Side Platform", "Ad Exchange", "Real-Time Bidding", "Bid Shading" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/demand-side-platform/" }, { "term": "Supply-Side Platform", "also": [ "SSP", "Sell-side platform" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Software publishers use to sell inventory programmatically: connecting to exchanges and DSPs, running auctions, setting floors, managing deals, and reporting yield. Major SSPs include Google Ad Manager (which is also the dominant ad server), Magnite, PubMatic, Index Exchange, OpenX, and Freewheel. The line between SSP and Ad Exchange has largely dissolved.", "related": [ "Demand-Side Platform", "Ad Exchange", "Header Bidding", "Floor Price" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/supply-side-platform/" }, { "term": "Ad Exchange", "also": [], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "A marketplace that connects buyers and sellers of programmatic inventory and runs the auction between them. Originally a distinct layer between SSPs and DSPs, exchanges have mostly merged into SSPs. Google's AdX, now part of Google Ad Manager, is the largest and the subject of the US Department of Justice's 2024 ad tech antitrust ruling, which found Google illegally monopolized publisher ad servers and ad exchanges.", "related": [ "Supply-Side Platform", "Demand-Side Platform", "Real-Time Bidding" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ad-exchange/" }, { "term": "Ad Network", "also": [], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "A company that aggregates inventory from many publishers, packages it, and resells it to advertisers, taking a margin. Networks predate programmatic and persist in mobile app advertising, performance and affiliate advertising, and niche verticals. Google AdSense and the Google Display Network are the largest examples. Networks are less transparent than exchanges about what was bought and at what price.", "related": [ "Ad Exchange", "Supply Path Optimization", "Waterfall" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ad-network/" }, { "term": "Ad Server", "also": [], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "The system that stores creative, decides which ad to show for a given request, serves it, and records the impression and click. Publishers run a sell-side ad server (Google Ad Manager dominates); advertisers run a third-party ad server (Google Campaign Manager 360, Flashtalking, Innovid) to serve creative consistently across publishers and to hold an independent count for reconciliation.", "related": [ "Supply-Side Platform", "Pixel", "Discrepancy" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ad-server/" }, { "term": "Discrepancy", "also": [], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "The difference between impression or click counts recorded by two systems measuring the same delivery, usually the publisher's ad server and the advertiser's. Discrepancies of a few percent are normal and arise from timing, ad blocking, counting methods, and filtering. IAB guidelines treat discrepancies under 10 percent as within tolerance; billing is usually reconciled to the party specified in the Insertion Order.", "related": [ "Ad Server", "Insertion Order", "Impression" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/discrepancy/" }, { "term": "Data Management Platform", "also": [ "DMP" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "A system that collects, organizes, and activates audience data, historically built on third-party cookies for segmenting anonymous users and syncing them to DSPs. DMPs were the center of 2010s ad tech (Krux, BlueKai, Lotame, Adobe Audience Manager). The decline of third-party identifiers moved their function to the Customer Data Platform and the Data Clean Room.", "related": [ "Customer Data Platform", "Third-Party Data", "Data Clean Room" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/data-management-platform/" }, { "term": "Customer Data Platform", "also": [ "CDP" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "A system that unifies a company's first-party customer data from every source into persistent profiles keyed to known individuals, then makes those profiles available to marketing, advertising, and analytics tools. CDPs (Segment, mParticle, Salesforce Data Cloud, Adobe Real-Time CDP, and composable approaches on the data warehouse) are the practical home of First-Party Data strategy.", "related": [ "First-Party Data", "Data Management Platform", "Data Clean Room" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/customer-data-platform/" }, { "term": "Consent Management Platform", "also": [ "CMP" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Software that presents privacy notices and choices to site or app users, records their decisions, and communicates them to advertising and analytics tags, typically through the IAB Europe Transparency and Consent Framework in Europe and the Global Privacy Platform in the United States. Major CMPs include OneTrust, Usercentrics (Cookiebot), Didomi, and Sourcepoint. Google requires a certified CMP for ads in the EEA and UK.", "related": [ "Transparency and Consent Framework", "Global Privacy Platform", "Consent Mode", "Global Privacy Control" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/consent-management-platform/" }, { "term": "Transparency and Consent Framework", "also": [ "TCF", "IAB TCF" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "IAB Europe's standard for collecting user consent under the GDPR and ePrivacy Directive and transmitting it through the programmatic supply chain as a TC String. TCF version 2.2 is current. The framework has been contested: the Belgian data protection authority found aspects of it unlawful in 2022, and the Court of Justice of the EU ruled in 2024 that the TC String is personal data and IAB Europe a joint controller.", "related": [ "Consent Management Platform", "Global Privacy Platform", "GDPR" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/transparency-and-consent-framework/" }, { "term": "Global Privacy Platform", "also": [ "GPP" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "IAB Tech Lab's framework for encoding and transmitting privacy signals across jurisdictions in a single string, covering the US national and state privacy laws, Canada, and, as a section, the European TCF. GPP replaced the earlier US Privacy String (CCPA) and is the mechanism through which opt-outs and sensitive-data limits under US state laws reach ad tech partners.", "related": [ "Transparency and Consent Framework", "Consent Management Platform", "Global Privacy Control" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/global-privacy-platform/" }, { "term": "Global Privacy Control", "also": [ "GPC" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "A browser or extension signal that tells websites the user opts out of the sale or sharing of personal data. California's attorney general and the CPPA treat GPC as a legally binding opt-out under the CCPA/CPRA, and Colorado, Connecticut, and other states require businesses to honor it. Sites detect it through the navigator.globalPrivacyControl property or the Sec-GPC header.", "related": [ "Global Privacy Platform", "Consent Management Platform", "State Privacy Laws" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/global-privacy-control/" }, { "term": "Consent Mode", "also": [], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Google's mechanism for adjusting how its tags behave based on user consent: with consent denied, tags send cookieless pings that Google uses to model conversions rather than setting identifiers. Consent Mode v2, required in the EEA and UK since March 2024, adds signals for ad personalization and ad user data. It is configured through the Consent Management Platform or directly in the tag.", "related": [ "Consent Management Platform", "Pixel", "Google Tag Manager" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/consent-mode/" }, { "term": "OpenRTB", "also": [], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "The IAB Tech Lab protocol that defines the structure of bid requests and bid responses between SSPs, exchanges, and DSPs: what an impression is, what the page or app is, what the user is (where permitted), what formats are accepted, and what the bid is. Version 2.6 is the widely deployed release; 3.0 introduced a separate object model. Nearly every programmatic transaction outside the walled gardens runs on it.", "related": [ "Real-Time Bidding", "Demand-Side Platform", "Supply-Side Platform" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/openrtb/" }, { "term": "VAST", "also": [ "Video Ad Serving Template" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "The IAB standard XML format for delivering video ads from an ad server to a video player, including the media files, tracking events, and click-through. VAST 4.x is current and adds server-side ad insertion support, the Open Measurement interface, and mezzanine files for CTV. VPAID, the older interactive extension, has been deprecated in favor of SIMID and OMID.", "related": [ "Online Video", "Open Measurement", "Connected TV", "Server-Side Ad Insertion" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/vast/" }, { "term": "Open Measurement", "also": [ "OMID", "OM SDK" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "An IAB Tech Lab software development kit that lets third-party verification vendors measure viewability and invalid traffic inside apps and CTV environments without each vendor installing its own code. OM SDK adoption is the prerequisite for MRC-accredited in-app viewability measurement.", "related": [ "Viewability", "Ad Verification", "VAST" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/open-measurement/" }, { "term": "Server-Side Ad Insertion", "also": [ "SSAI", "Ad stitching" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Inserting ads into a video stream on the server before it reaches the player, so the ad and the content arrive as one continuous stream. SSAI is standard in Connected TV and live streaming because it defeats ad blocking and avoids buffering, and it complicates measurement, since the client never requests the ad; VAST 4 and OMID have provisions for it.", "related": [ "Connected TV", "VAST", "Open Measurement" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/server-side-ad-insertion/" }, { "term": "ads.txt", "also": [ "Authorized Digital Sellers", "app-ads.txt" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "An IAB Tech Lab standard in which a publisher lists, in a plain text file at its domain root, every company authorized to sell its inventory. Buyers check bid requests against the file to reject unauthorized resale and domain spoofing. app-ads.txt is the mobile and CTV version, referenced from the app store listing. sellers.json is the seller-side counterpart.", "related": [ "sellers.json", "Supply Path Optimization", "Invalid Traffic" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ads-txt/" }, { "term": "sellers.json", "also": [], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "An IAB Tech Lab standard requiring SSPs and exchanges to publish a file identifying every seller they represent, so buyers can trace the path from a bid request back to the publisher and see whether each intermediary is a publisher, an intermediary, or both. Combined with ads.txt and the SupplyChain object in OpenRTB, it gives buyers the data for Supply Path Optimization.", "related": [ "ads.txt", "Supply Path Optimization" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/sellers-json/" }, { "term": "Supply Path Optimization", "also": [ "SPO" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "A buyer's practice of reducing the number of routes through which it buys the same inventory, favoring the most direct, transparent, and cheapest path and cutting resellers. SPO became necessary once Header Bidding let one impression reach a DSP through many SSPs. The seller-side counterpart, demand path optimization, is publishers cutting DSPs.", "related": [ "Header Bidding", "ads.txt", "sellers.json", "Open Auction" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/supply-path-optimization/" }, { "term": "Made-for-Advertising Site", "also": [ "MFA" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "A website created primarily to generate ad revenue from arbitraged traffic rather than to serve readers: dense ad loads, auto-refreshing slots, paid traffic in, programmatic revenue out. The ANA's 2023 programmatic transparency study found roughly a fifth of open-web impressions ran on MFA sites. Exclusion of MFA inventory is now a standard verification setting and inclusion-list rationale.", "related": [ "Invalid Traffic", "Inclusion List", "Ad Verification", "Open Auction" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/made-for-advertising-site/" }, { "term": "Pixel", "also": [ "Tracking pixel", "Tag", "Conversion tag" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "A snippet of JavaScript (or, originally, a 1x1 image) placed on a website that sends events to an advertising or analytics platform: page views, add-to-carts, purchases, form submissions. The Meta Pixel, Google tag, TikTok Pixel, and LinkedIn Insight Tag are the common ones. Browser restrictions reduced what pixels can observe, which is why platforms now pair them with a server-side Conversions API.", "related": [ "Conversions API", "Google Tag Manager", "Retargeting", "Consent Mode" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/pixel/" }, { "term": "Conversions API", "also": [ "CAPI", "Server-side tracking" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "A server-to-server connection that sends conversion events from the advertiser's systems directly to an ad platform, bypassing the browser and its cookie limits, ad blockers, and consent-dependent tags. Meta's Conversions API is the best known; Google's Enhanced Conversions, TikTok's Events API, and LinkedIn's Conversions API do the same. Run alongside the Pixel with event deduplication, CAPI is now baseline infrastructure.", "related": [ "Pixel", "Server-Side Tagging", "First-Party Data", "Attribution" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/conversions-api/" }, { "term": "Server-Side Tagging", "also": [], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Running tag management on a server the advertiser controls, so that the browser sends one request to the advertiser's own domain and the server forwards events to each vendor. Server-side tagging improves page speed, data control, and resistance to browser tracking limits. Google Tag Manager's server container, Stape, and Tealium are common implementations.", "related": [ "Google Tag Manager", "Conversions API", "Pixel" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/server-side-tagging/" }, { "term": "Google Tag Manager", "also": [ "GTM", "Tag manager" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "A tag management system that lets marketers deploy and control pixels, tags, and triggers through a web interface instead of editing site code. GTM is free and dominant; Tealium and Adobe Launch serve enterprises. A tag manager is the standard place to implement consent logic and the Data Layer that feeds every vendor the same events.", "related": [ "Pixel", "Server-Side Tagging", "Data Layer", "Consent Mode" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/google-tag-manager/" }, { "term": "Data Layer", "also": [], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "A JavaScript object on a web page that holds structured information about the page and user actions (product IDs, prices, transaction totals, user status) for tags to read. A well-designed data layer is what makes tagging reliable and consistent across vendors; an absent one is why ecommerce tracking breaks.", "related": [ "Google Tag Manager", "Pixel", "Conversions API" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/data-layer/" }, { "term": "UTM Parameters", "also": [ "UTM tags", "Campaign tagging" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Query-string parameters appended to landing page URLs (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_content, utm_term) that tell web analytics which campaign sent the visit. UTMs originated in Urchin, the product that became Google Analytics, and are read by GA4 and most other analytics tools. Consistent naming conventions are the difference between usable and useless campaign reporting.", "related": [ "Google Analytics 4", "Attribution", "Click ID" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/utm-parameters/" }, { "term": "Click ID", "also": [ "gclid", "fbclid", "ttclid" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "A unique identifier a platform appends to an ad's landing URL when a user clicks (gclid for Google, fbclid for Meta, ttclid for TikTok, msclkid for Microsoft, li_fat_id for LinkedIn). The advertiser stores it and passes it back with the conversion, which is how offline and CRM conversions are matched to the click without cookies.", "related": [ "UTM Parameters", "Conversions API", "Offline Conversion" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/click-id/" }, { "term": "Offline Conversion", "also": [ "Offline conversion import", "OCI" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "A conversion that happens outside the web or app, such as a signed contract, a store purchase, or a qualified lead in a CRM, uploaded to the ad platform and matched to the originating click or user through a Click ID or Hashed Email. Offline conversion import is how lead-generation advertisers move optimization from form fills to revenue.", "related": [ "Click ID", "Conversions API", "CPL", "Value-Based Bidding" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/offline-conversion/" }, { "term": "Google Analytics 4", "also": [ "GA4" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Google's current web and app analytics product, replacing Universal Analytics in 2023 with an event-based data model, cross-platform user reporting, and built-in BigQuery export. GA4 is the most common source of site-side conversion and attribution data and links natively to Google Ads for audience sharing and conversion import.", "related": [ "UTM Parameters", "Attribution", "Google Tag Manager" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/google-analytics-4/" }, { "term": "Mobile Advertising ID", "also": [ "MAID", "IDFA", "GAID", "AAID" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "The resettable identifier a mobile operating system assigns to a device for advertising: IDFA on iOS, GAID (Google Advertising ID) on Android. MAIDs are the in-app equivalent of the cookie. Apple's App Tracking Transparency made the IDFA opt-in in 2021, and most users decline; Google has proposed and delayed equivalent limits under its Privacy Sandbox for Android.", "related": [ "App Tracking Transparency", "SKAdNetwork", "Third-Party Cookie", "Mobile Advertising" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/mobile-advertising-id/" }, { "term": "App Tracking Transparency", "also": [ "ATT" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Apple's iOS framework, effective April 2021, that requires apps to ask permission before tracking users across other companies' apps and websites or accessing the IDFA. Opt-in rates have settled around a quarter of users. ATT reduced the precision of iOS targeting and attribution across the industry and was the proximate cause of the shift to SKAdNetwork, modeled conversions, and Marketing Mix Modeling.", "related": [ "SKAdNetwork", "Mobile Advertising ID", "Marketing Mix Modeling" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/app-tracking-transparency/" }, { "term": "SKAdNetwork", "also": [ "SKAN", "AdAttributionKit" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Apple's privacy-preserving attribution framework for iOS app installs and post-install events: the device reports the winning ad network to Apple, which sends the advertiser a delayed, aggregated, and partly randomized postback with limited conversion detail. SKAN 4 added multiple postbacks and coarse values. AdAttributionKit, introduced in 2024, is its successor and also covers alternative app marketplaces.", "related": [ "App Tracking Transparency", "CPI", "Mobile Measurement Partner" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/skadnetwork/" }, { "term": "Mobile Measurement Partner", "also": [ "MMP" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "A third-party attribution provider for mobile apps that receives install and event data from the app SDK, matches it to ad clicks and impressions from many networks, and handles SKAdNetwork postbacks. AppsFlyer, Adjust, Singular, Branch, and Kochava are the major MMPs. Google and Meta require an MMP for most app campaign attribution outside their own tools.", "related": [ "SKAdNetwork", "CPI", "Attribution" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/mobile-measurement-partner/" }, { "term": "Third-Party Cookie", "also": [], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "A cookie set by a domain other than the one the user is visiting, which lets an ad tech company recognize the same browser across sites. Third-party cookies underpinned retargeting, frequency capping, third-party data, and view-through attribution on the open web. Safari and Firefox block them by default; Chrome, after years of delays under its Privacy Sandbox program, abandoned plans to remove them in 2025 and instead kept them with user controls.", "related": [ "Privacy Sandbox", "Unified ID 2.0", "Mobile Advertising ID", "Retargeting" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/third-party-cookie/" }, { "term": "Privacy Sandbox", "also": [], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Google's set of proposed browser and Android technologies to support advertising without cross-site tracking: the Topics API for interest signals, Protected Audience (formerly FLEDGE) for on-device remarketing auctions, and Attribution Reporting for aggregated measurement. The Chrome program was scaled back in 2025 when Google dropped the third-party cookie deprecation; several APIs remain available with limited adoption.", "related": [ "Third-Party Cookie", "Topics API" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/privacy-sandbox/" }, { "term": "Topics API", "also": [], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "A Privacy Sandbox API in Chrome that infers a small set of interest topics from a user's recent browsing, kept on the device, and shares a few of them with sites and ad tech callers as a coarse targeting signal in place of third-party-cookie profiling. Adoption has been limited; it remains a reference point for what browser-mediated interest targeting looks like.", "related": [ "Privacy Sandbox", "Behavioral Targeting", "Third-Party Cookie" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/topics-api/" }, { "term": "Retail Media", "also": [ "Retail media network", "Commerce media" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Advertising sold by retailers on their own sites and apps and, increasingly, off-site using their shopper data: sponsored products, display, video, and in-store screens. Amazon Ads created the category; Walmart Connect, Target Roundel, Instacart, Kroger Precision Marketing, and dozens of others followed. Retail media is the fastest-growing segment of digital advertising and is measured with closed-loop sales data that other channels cannot offer.", "related": [ "Second-Party Data", "Shopping Ads", "Data Clean Room", "Sponsored Products" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/retail-media/" }, { "term": "Sponsored Products", "also": [], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "The core retail media unit: a product listing promoted within search results and product pages on a retailer's site, bought on cost per click and keyed to the retailer's catalog. Amazon Sponsored Products is the largest single retail media format. Sponsored Brands (banner with logo and several products) and Sponsored Display (on- and off-site display) are the companion formats.", "related": [ "Retail Media", "Shopping Ads", "CPC" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/sponsored-products/" }, { "term": "Search Advertising", "also": [ "Paid search", "SEM", "PPC" ], "category": "Search", "definition": "Text ads shown in response to a search query, bought by keyword and priced per click in an auction. Google Ads holds the large majority of the market; Microsoft Advertising serves Bing and its partners, and Apple, Amazon, and the app stores run search ads on their own properties. Search advertising is the most directly measurable channel and the one most tied to existing demand, which makes it both the most efficient and the least incremental at the margin.", "related": [ "Keyword Targeting", "Quality Score", "Ad Rank", "Match Type", "Responsive Search Ad" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/search-advertising/" }, { "term": "Quality Score", "also": [], "category": "Search", "definition": "Google's 1 to 10 diagnostic rating of a keyword's expected click-through rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience. Quality Score is not used directly in the auction, but the components behind it are: a higher quality ad wins better positions at lower cost than a lower quality one with the same bid. Microsoft Advertising and Amazon use analogous scores.", "related": [ "Ad Rank", "CPC", "CTR", "Search Advertising" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/quality-score/" }, { "term": "Ad Rank", "also": [], "category": "Search", "definition": "The value Google computes for each ad in a search auction to determine whether it shows and in what position: bid, ad quality, Ad Assets, context, and thresholds. The price paid is the minimum needed to beat the Ad Rank of the next competitor below, a modified Second-Price Auction.", "related": [ "Quality Score", "Second-Price Auction", "Search Advertising", "Impression Share" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ad-rank/" }, { "term": "Match Type", "also": [ "Broad match", "Phrase match", "Exact match" ], "category": "Search", "definition": "The setting that controls how closely a search query must correspond to a keyword for the ad to be eligible. Exact match now includes close variants and same-meaning queries; phrase match includes queries that contain the keyword's meaning; broad match includes anything Google judges related. Broad match modifier was retired in 2021. Broad match paired with Smart Bidding is Google's recommended and most expansive configuration.", "related": [ "Keyword Targeting", "Negative Keyword", "Search Terms Report", "Smart Bidding" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/match-type/" }, { "term": "Negative Keyword", "also": [], "category": "Search", "definition": "A keyword that prevents an ad from showing on queries containing it. Negative keywords are the primary tool for excluding irrelevant traffic, especially under broad match, and are managed from the Search Terms Report. They match exactly as written and do not include close variants, so plurals and misspellings must be added separately.", "related": [ "Match Type", "Search Terms Report", "Exclusion" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/negative-keyword/" }, { "term": "Search Terms Report", "also": [ "Search query report" ], "category": "Search", "definition": "The report showing the actual queries that triggered ads, as opposed to the keywords bid on. Google restricted the report in 2020 to queries above a privacy threshold, hiding a meaningful share of spend. The report remains the main source of Negative Keyword candidates and new keyword ideas.", "related": [ "Negative Keyword", "Match Type", "Keyword Targeting" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/search-terms-report/" }, { "term": "Brand Search", "also": [ "Branded search", "Brand terms" ], "category": "Search", "definition": "Paid search on queries containing the advertiser's own name. Brand search is cheap, converts well, and is the most contested tactic in measurement: it defends against competitors bidding on the name and captures demand that was already headed to the site. Whether to buy brand terms, and how much of it is incremental, is answered with a Geo Experiment or a paused-campaign test, not with ROAS.", "related": [ "Search Advertising", "Incrementality", "Impression Share" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/brand-search/" }, { "term": "Landing Page", "also": [], "category": "Search", "definition": "The page a user reaches after clicking an ad. Landing page quality is a component of Quality Score, a determinant of Conversion Rate, and the part of a campaign most often neglected because it is owned by a different team. Dedicated landing pages built for a campaign's promise almost always outperform sending traffic to a general site page.", "related": [ "Conversion Rate", "Quality Score", "UTM Parameters" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/landing-page/" }, { "term": "Media Plan", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "The document that specifies what will be bought: channels, platforms, placements, audiences, formats, dates, budgets by line, and expected delivery and performance. A media plan translates a strategy into an executable and auditable buy, and the flowchart view of it, weeks across the top and channels down the side, is the industry's standard summary.", "related": [ "Flighting", "Insertion Order", "Budget", "Media Mix" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/media-plan/" }, { "term": "Media Mix", "also": [ "Channel mix" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "The allocation of budget across channels. Mix is set by objective, audience, and evidence from Marketing Mix Modeling and Incrementality tests, and is the decision in a plan with the largest effect on results: getting the mix right matters more than optimization within any channel. Mix decisions made on platform-reported ROAS systematically overweight bottom-funnel channels.", "related": [ "Media Plan", "Marketing Mix Modeling", "Incrementality" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/media-mix/" }, { "term": "Agency Fee", "also": [ "Agency commission", "Management fee" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "What an agency charges to plan and buy media: historically a 15 percent commission on media, now more often a percentage of spend (commonly 8 to 15 percent for digital), a fixed retainer, a fee based on staffing, or a performance component. Fee structures determine incentives; a percentage-of-spend fee rewards spending, a retainer rewards efficiency, and neither guarantees transparency about rebates.", "related": [ "Media Transparency", "Budget", "Principal-Based Buying" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/agency-fee/" }, { "term": "Media Transparency", "also": [ "ANA transparency report" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "Whether the advertiser can see what its money bought, at what price, and what its agency and vendors earned along the way. The ANA's 2016 K2 Intelligence report documented widespread undisclosed rebates and markups in US agency media buying and reshaped contracts; its 2023 programmatic study documented that only about a third of open-web programmatic spend reached the publisher. Audit rights, log-level data access, and disclosed fees are the practical remedies.", "related": [ "Agency Fee", "Principal-Based Buying", "Supply Path Optimization", "Made-for-Advertising Site" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/media-transparency/" }, { "term": "Principal-Based Buying", "also": [ "Inventory media", "Proprietary media" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "An arrangement in which the agency buys media on its own account and resells it to the client at a price of its choosing, acting as principal rather than agent, so the margin is not disclosed. Principal-based buying is legal with client consent and is now a major profit source for holding companies; the ANA has repeatedly urged advertisers to require disclosure and opt-in.", "related": [ "Agency Fee", "Media Transparency" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/principal-based-buying/" }, { "term": "In-Housing", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "Moving media planning and buying from an agency to the advertiser's own staff, in whole or in part. In-housing grew through the late 2010s as platforms became self-service and transparency concerns mounted, and often settles into a hybrid: strategy and search in-house, programmatic and specialized channels with partners. The ANA reports a majority of large advertisers now have some in-house capability.", "related": [ "Agency Fee", "Media Transparency" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/in-housing/" }, { "term": "Funnel", "also": [ "Marketing funnel", "Full-funnel" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "The model of a customer's path from unaware to purchased, usually drawn as awareness, consideration, and conversion, with channels and metrics assigned to each stage. The funnel is a planning convenience rather than a description of behavior. Full-funnel advertising means investing across stages rather than only in the conversion stage, and is the argument for Brand Lift and reach objectives alongside performance.", "related": [ "Media Mix", "Brand Lift", "Reach", "Retargeting" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/funnel/" }, { "term": "A/B Test", "also": [ "Split test", "Creative test" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "A controlled comparison of two or more variants (creative, landing page, audience, bid strategy) shown to randomly assigned groups, with the difference in outcome measured. Platforms offer built-in experiments (Google Ads experiments, Meta A/B tests) that avoid audience overlap. A test needs a pre-set sample size and a single primary metric to mean anything.", "related": [ "Incrementality", "Holdout", "Conversion Rate" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/a-b-test/" }, { "term": "Learning Phase", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "The period after a campaign or ad set is created or significantly edited during which a platform's automated bidding gathers data and performance is unstable. Meta defines it as roughly 50 optimization events in 7 days; Google describes a similar period for Smart Bidding. Frequent edits reset it, which is why platform guidance favors fewer, larger campaigns and patience.", "related": [ "Smart Bidding", "Target CPA", "Advantage+" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/learning-phase/" }, { "term": "Creative Fatigue", "also": [ "Ad fatigue" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "The decline in an ad's performance as the same audience sees it repeatedly, visible as falling CTR and rising CPA at rising frequency. Fatigue arrives faster on social than on search and fastest on small audiences. The remedies are frequency caps, audience expansion, and, above all, a steady supply of new creative.", "related": [ "Frequency", "Frequency Cap", "UGC" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/creative-fatigue/" }, { "term": "Programmatic Advertising", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "Buying and selling ad inventory through automated systems and auctions rather than manual negotiation. Programmatic covers the Open Auction, Private Marketplace, Preferred Deal, and Programmatic Guaranteed and runs on the DSP, SSP, exchange, and ad server infrastructure described elsewhere in this glossary. Most display, video, CTV, audio, and DOOH is now transacted this way; the social platforms are programmatic in mechanism but closed in access.", "related": [ "Real-Time Bidding", "Demand-Side Platform", "Supply-Side Platform", "Open Auction" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/programmatic-advertising/" }, { "term": "Walled Garden", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "A platform that sells advertising on its own inventory with its own tools, data, and measurement, and does not let advertisers take user-level data out or bring independent measurement fully in: Google, Meta, Amazon, TikTok, and the other large platforms. Walled gardens hold the majority of digital spend; the open web is everything transacted outside them.", "related": [ "Programmatic Advertising", "Data Clean Room", "Retail Media" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/walled-garden/" }, { "term": "GDPR", "also": [ "General Data Protection Regulation" ], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "The European Union's data protection regulation, in force since May 2018, which governs any processing of personal data about people in the EU. For advertising it requires a lawful basis, in practice consent, for cookies and identifiers used in targeting, and it is enforced by national authorities with fines up to 4 percent of global turnover. The Transparency and Consent Framework is the industry's implementation. Agency Echelon maintains a full register of data protection laws at digitalprivacyregs.com.", "related": [ "Transparency and Consent Framework", "Consent Management Platform", "ePrivacy Directive", "State Privacy Laws" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/gdpr/" }, { "term": "ePrivacy Directive", "also": [ "Cookie law" ], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "The 2002 EU directive, amended in 2009, that requires consent before storing or accessing information on a user's device, which is the legal source of European cookie banners. It sits alongside the GDPR and is implemented differently in each member state. A replacement ePrivacy Regulation was proposed in 2017 and withdrawn by the European Commission in 2025.", "related": [ "GDPR", "Consent Management Platform" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/eprivacy-directive/" }, { "term": "State Privacy Laws", "also": [ "CCPA", "CPRA", "US state privacy laws" ], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "The patchwork of comprehensive consumer privacy statutes enacted by US states beginning with California's CCPA (2018, amended by the CPRA in 2020), now numbering around twenty. For advertisers they create rights to opt out of the sale or sharing of personal data and of targeted advertising, require honoring the Global Privacy Control, and restrict use of sensitive data including precise location. The Global Privacy Platform carries the signals. Agency Echelon's register at digitalprivacyregs.com tracks each statute.", "related": [ "Global Privacy Control", "Global Privacy Platform", "GDPR" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/state-privacy-laws/" }, { "term": "COPPA", "also": [ "Children's Online Privacy Protection Act" ], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "The US federal law, enforced by the FTC, restricting collection of personal data from children under 13 without verifiable parental consent. For advertising it prohibits behavioral targeting on child-directed content and services; the 2025 amended rule expanded the definition of personal information and tightened consent for third-party disclosure. Platforms treat child-directed inventory as contextual only.", "related": [ "State Privacy Laws", "Contextual Targeting" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/coppa/" }, { "term": "FTC Endorsement Guides", "also": [ "Disclosure rules", "#ad" ], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "The Federal Trade Commission's guidance on endorsements and testimonials, updated in 2023, which requires clear and conspicuous disclosure of any material connection between an advertiser and an endorser, including paid creators, gifted products, and employees. The FTC's separate 2024 rule bans fake reviews and testimonials. Disclosures must be visible in the content itself, not only in a bio or a hashtag buried in a list.", "related": [ "Creator Advertising", "UGC", "Sponsored Content" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ftc-endorsement-guides/" }, { "term": "Political Advertising Rules", "also": [], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "The disclosure and targeting rules that apply to ads about candidates, elections, and, on most platforms, social issues. US federal rules (FEC) require disclaimers on candidate and PAC ads; every major platform requires advertiser verification and maintains a public ad library; Google restricts political targeting to age, gender, and postal-code geography; Meta allows broader targeting with restrictions in the final election week. The EU's Regulation on the Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising applies from October 2025.", "related": [ "Ad Library", "Geotargeting" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/political-advertising-rules/" }, { "term": "Ad Library", "also": [ "Ad transparency center" ], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "A public, searchable archive of the ads running on a platform. Meta's Ad Library (2019) covers all ads and retains political ads for seven years; Google's Ads Transparency Center, TikTok's Commercial Content Library, and LinkedIn's Ad Library followed. The EU Digital Services Act made a repository mandatory for very large platforms. Ad libraries are the primary tool for competitive creative research.", "related": [ "Political Advertising Rules", "Digital Services Act" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ad-library/" }, { "term": "Digital Services Act", "also": [ "DSA" ], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "The EU regulation, fully applicable since February 2024, that sets obligations for online intermediaries. For advertising it requires that every ad be labeled with its sponsor and the main targeting parameters, bans targeting based on sensitive data and any profiling-based targeting of minors, and requires very large platforms to keep a public ad repository. It applies to platforms rather than advertisers, but it shapes what targeting they offer in Europe.", "related": [ "Ad Library", "GDPR", "Political Advertising Rules" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/digital-services-act/" }, { "term": "Cost Per Engagement", "also": [ "CPE" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "Price paid per engagement, where an engagement is a like, comment, share, save, follow, or expand, as defined by the platform. CPE is the pricing unit for social engagement objectives and is easily inflated by cheap engagements that carry no business value, so it is a diagnostic rather than a goal for most advertisers.", "related": [ "CPC", "CPM", "Engagement Rate" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/cost-per-engagement/" }, { "term": "Engagement Rate", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Engagements divided by impressions or reach, expressed as a percentage. Platforms define engagements differently, and some count any tap, including one that expands an image, so rates are comparable only within one platform and one format.", "related": [ "Cost Per Engagement", "CTR" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/engagement-rate/" }, { "term": "Cost Per Thousand Reached", "also": [ "CPP", "Cost per point", "Reach CPM" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "Media cost divided by unique people reached, per thousand, rather than per thousand impressions. Cost per point (CPP) is the television equivalent, the cost of one gross rating point. Reach-based pricing is used when the objective is coverage of an audience rather than volume of impressions.", "related": [ "CPM", "Reach", "GRP" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/cost-per-thousand-reached/" }, { "term": "Effective CPM", "also": [ "eCPM" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Total cost divided by impressions, times one thousand, regardless of how the media was bought. eCPM converts CPC, CPA, flat fee, and CPV buys into a common unit so channels can be compared, and is the number publishers use to compare demand sources.", "related": [ "CPM", "Flat Fee", "CPC" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/effective-cpm/" }, { "term": "ACoS", "also": [ "Advertising cost of sales" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Ad spend divided by attributed sales, the standard efficiency metric in Amazon Ads and other retail media. ACoS is the inverse of ROAS: a 25 percent ACoS equals a 4x ROAS. Total ACoS (TACoS) divides ad spend by total sales including organic, which shows whether advertising is lifting the whole business or only itself.", "related": [ "ROAS", "Retail Media", "Sponsored Products" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/acos/" }, { "term": "Contribution Margin", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Revenue minus variable costs, including cost of goods, shipping, payment processing, and the media that drove the sale. Contribution margin after marketing is the figure that tells an advertiser whether a campaign made money, which ROAS cannot, since ROAS ignores margin entirely.", "related": [ "ROAS", "MER", "Breakeven ROAS" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/contribution-margin/" }, { "term": "Breakeven ROAS", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The return on ad spend at which a sale produces zero contribution margin: one divided by the contribution margin rate before marketing. A product with a 40 percent margin breaks even at 2.5x ROAS; anything below that loses money on the first purchase and depends on repeat purchases to pay back.", "related": [ "ROAS", "Contribution Margin", "LTV" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/breakeven-roas/" }, { "term": "Payback Period", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The time it takes for a customer's cumulative contribution margin to repay the cost of acquiring them. Payback period matters more than LTV for a cash-constrained business, since a customer who is profitable over three years still has to be financed for the first year.", "related": [ "CAC", "LTV", "Contribution Margin" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/payback-period/" }, { "term": "Bounce Rate", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The share of sessions that end without a second interaction. Google Analytics 4 replaced it with engagement rate (sessions longer than ten seconds, with a conversion, or with two or more page views) and now reports bounce rate as the inverse. A high bounce rate on paid traffic usually indicates a mismatch between the ad and the landing page.", "related": [ "Landing Page", "Google Analytics 4", "Conversion Rate" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/bounce-rate/" }, { "term": "Cost Per Session", "also": [ "Cost per visit" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Media cost divided by analytics sessions rather than platform clicks. The two differ because of accidental clicks, blocked tags, slow pages, and bots, and the gap between them is a useful measure of traffic quality by placement.", "related": [ "CPC", "Discrepancy", "Bounce Rate" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/cost-per-session/" }, { "term": "Win Rate", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The share of bid requests a DSP bids on that it wins. Win rate falls as bids drop and rises as they climb; a very high win rate suggests overbidding and a very low one suggests the campaign will not deliver. It is the primary lever for diagnosing programmatic pacing.", "related": [ "Bid Shading", "Pacing", "First-Price Auction" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/win-rate/" }, { "term": "Fill Rate", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The share of ad requests a publisher or app sends that return a paid ad. Unfilled impressions show house ads or nothing. Fill rate is a sell-side metric; buyers see its mirror image in available inventory and price.", "related": [ "Waterfall", "Supply-Side Platform", "Ad Network" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/fill-rate/" }, { "term": "Ad Load", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The amount of advertising relative to content: ads per page, ad minutes per hour of video, ad slots per feed session. Ad load is a publisher decision that trades short-term revenue against audience retention and is a signal buyers use to judge inventory quality.", "related": [ "Made-for-Advertising Site", "Frequency", "Viewability" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ad-load/" }, { "term": "Cost Per Incremental Conversion", "also": [ "iCPA", "Incremental CPA" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Media cost divided by the conversions a campaign caused, as measured by a lift test, rather than the conversions it was credited with. iCPA is always higher than attributed CPA and is the number that should decide budgets. Incremental ROAS (iROAS) is its revenue counterpart.", "related": [ "Incrementality", "CPA", "Conversion Lift" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/cost-per-incremental-conversion/" }, { "term": "Statistical Significance", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The probability that an observed difference between test groups would not have arisen by chance, conventionally requiring a p-value below 0.05. Advertising tests are routinely underpowered: small lifts on small budgets produce results that look good and mean nothing. Sample size should be calculated before the test starts.", "related": [ "A/B Test", "Incrementality", "Holdout" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/statistical-significance/" }, { "term": "Confidence Interval", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The range within which a measured value, such as incremental lift, probably lies, at a stated confidence level. A lift of 12 percent with a 95 percent confidence interval of 2 to 22 percent is a positive result with wide uncertainty; a result whose interval includes zero has not shown an effect.", "related": [ "Statistical Significance", "Incrementality" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/confidence-interval/" }, { "term": "Ad Recall", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The share of people exposed to a campaign who remember seeing it when asked, typically within two days. Ad recall lift is the most common brand lift metric and the cheapest to measure; Meta estimates it from a model rather than a survey for most campaigns.", "related": [ "Brand Lift", "Brand Awareness", "Reach" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ad-recall/" }, { "term": "Brand Awareness", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The share of a target audience that knows a brand exists. Unaided awareness is measured by asking people to name brands in a category; aided awareness by asking whether they recognize a named brand. Awareness is the top of the funnel and the objective of most reach campaigns.", "related": [ "Brand Lift", "Ad Recall", "Funnel" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/brand-awareness/" }, { "term": "Consideration", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The share of a target audience that would consider buying a brand, measured by survey. Consideration sits between awareness and intent in brand tracking and is the metric most likely to move from mid-funnel video and content.", "related": [ "Brand Awareness", "Purchase Intent", "Funnel" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/consideration/" }, { "term": "Purchase Intent", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The stated likelihood that a survey respondent will buy a brand in a defined period. Intent lift is the brand metric closest to sales and the hardest to move with a single campaign.", "related": [ "Consideration", "Brand Lift", "Conversion Rate" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/purchase-intent/" }, { "term": "Net Promoter Score", "also": [ "NPS" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "A loyalty measure derived from one question: how likely are you to recommend this to a friend, on a scale of 0 to 10. Promoters (9 to 10) minus detractors (0 to 6) gives the score. NPS is a customer metric rather than an advertising one, but appears in advertising dashboards as a proxy for brand health.", "related": [ "Brand Awareness", "LTV" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/net-promoter-score/" }, { "term": "Cohort Analysis", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Grouping customers by the period they were acquired and tracking each group's behavior over time: retention, repeat purchase, revenue. Cohort views reveal whether recent acquisition is producing customers as good as earlier acquisition, which blended metrics hide.", "related": [ "LTV", "Payback Period", "CAC" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/cohort-analysis/" }, { "term": "New-to-Brand", "also": [ "NTB" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "A conversion from a customer who had not bought from the brand in a defined lookback period, usually twelve months. New-to-brand metrics, native to Amazon Ads and increasingly offered by other retail media networks, separate acquisition from harvesting existing customers.", "related": [ "Retail Media", "Incrementality", "Amazon Marketing Cloud" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/new-to-brand/" }, { "term": "Halo Effect", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Sales lift on products or channels that were not advertised, caused by advertising for related ones: a search campaign for one product lifting sales of the range, or retail media on Amazon lifting sales in stores. Halo is measured with geo tests or MMM and is systematically missed by attribution.", "related": [ "Incrementality", "Marketing Mix Modeling", "Geo Experiment" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/halo-effect/" }, { "term": "Cannibalization", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Conversions credited to advertising that would have happened through another channel anyway, most often paid search taking credit for organic search or brand search taking credit for direct visits. Cannibalization is the reason brand search incrementality tests often show low lift.", "related": [ "Brand Search", "Incrementality", "Last-Click Attribution" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/cannibalization/" }, { "term": "Ad Server Log", "also": [ "Log-level data", "Raw logs" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Impression-, click-, and conversion-level records exported from an ad server or DSP, one row per event, with timestamps, placements, prices, and identifiers where permitted. Log-level data is the basis of independent analysis and audit; access to it is a contract term worth negotiating.", "related": [ "Ad Server", "Media Transparency", "Data Clean Room" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ad-server-log/" }, { "term": "Aspect Ratio", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "The proportion of width to height of an image or video. The working set in digital advertising is 16:9 (landscape video), 9:16 (vertical, Stories and Reels), 1:1 (square feed), 4:5 (portrait feed), and 1.91:1 (link ads). Producing every asset in 9:16, 1:1, and 16:9 covers nearly all placements.", "related": [ "Vertical Video", "Safe Zone", "Creative Specs" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/aspect-ratio/" }, { "term": "Vertical Video", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Video in 9:16 portrait orientation, filling a phone screen. Vertical is the native format of Stories, Reels, Shorts, TikTok, and Snapchat and the highest-performing format on mobile. Cropping a landscape edit to vertical rarely works; the shot has to be framed for it.", "related": [ "Aspect Ratio", "Safe Zone", "UGC" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/vertical-video/" }, { "term": "Safe Zone", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "The area of a vertical video that is guaranteed to be visible and unobstructed by a platform's interface elements: captions, buttons, profile names, and progress bars. Each platform publishes its own safe zone template; text and logos outside it are hidden on some devices.", "related": [ "Vertical Video", "Aspect Ratio", "Creative Specs" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/safe-zone/" }, { "term": "Creative Specs", "also": [ "Ad specs" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "A platform's technical requirements for an ad: dimensions, aspect ratio, file type, file size, duration, frame rate, bit rate, text limits, and safe zones. Specs change several times a year and are the single most common reason a campaign fails to launch on schedule.", "related": [ "Aspect Ratio", "Safe Zone", "Display Advertising" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/creative-specs/" }, { "term": "HTML5 Ad", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "A display ad built as a small web page (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) rather than a static image or the retired Flash format. HTML5 allows animation and interaction within the IAB file weight limits (typically 150 to 200 KB initial load) and is built in tools such as Google Web Designer, Adobe Animate, or a creative management platform.", "related": [ "Rich Media", "Display Advertising", "Creative Management Platform" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/html5-ad/" }, { "term": "Creative Management Platform", "also": [ "CMP (creative)" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Software for producing, versioning, and trafficking large volumes of display and social creative from templates, with built-in resizing, localization, and feed connections. Not to be confused with the consent management platform that shares the abbreviation.", "related": [ "HTML5 Ad", "Dynamic Creative Optimization", "Ad Server" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/creative-management-platform/" }, { "term": "Hook", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "The opening one to three seconds of a video ad, which determine whether a viewer keeps watching on skippable and feed placements. Hook rate (3-second views divided by impressions) is the first creative diagnostic on Meta and TikTok, and hook testing is the most productive creative test most advertisers can run.", "related": [ "Video Completion Rate", "Creative Fatigue", "UGC" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/hook/" }, { "term": "Call to Action", "also": [ "CTA" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "The instruction that tells the audience what to do next: shop now, learn more, sign up, download. On most platforms the CTA is a selectable button label with a fixed set of options, and the choice measurably affects click and conversion rates.", "related": [ "Landing Page", "CTR", "Conversion Rate" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/call-to-action/" }, { "term": "Creative Testing", "also": [ "Creative iteration" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Structured comparison of ad variants to learn what works: hooks, formats, messages, offers, talent, length. Sound creative testing changes one variable at a time, uses platform experiment tools to avoid audience overlap, and feeds winners into the next round rather than declaring a permanent champion.", "related": [ "A/B Test", "Hook", "Creative Fatigue" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/creative-testing/" }, { "term": "Modular Creative", "also": [ "Creative system" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Producing ads as interchangeable components (hooks, bodies, offers, end cards) that can be recombined into many variants from one shoot. Modular production is the practical answer to platforms' appetite for creative volume and the basis of most DCO setups.", "related": [ "Dynamic Creative Optimization", "Creative Testing", "Hook" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/modular-creative/" }, { "term": "Companion Banner", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "A display ad shown alongside a video or audio ad, on the same page or in the player, carrying the click-through the audio or video cannot. Companions are specified in VAST and remain common in streaming audio and pre-roll.", "related": [ "VAST", "Audio Advertising", "Pre-Roll" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/companion-banner/" }, { "term": "End Card", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "The final frame of a video ad, holding the logo, offer, and call to action. On rewarded and interstitial video the end card is a separate clickable unit shown after the video; on social it is the last few seconds of the edit.", "related": [ "Rewarded Video", "Call to Action", "Modular Creative" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/end-card/" }, { "term": "Caption", "also": [ "Subtitles", "Burned-in captions" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "On-screen text of a video's spoken words. Most feed video plays without sound, so captions carry the message; burned-in captions are rendered into the video, while platform captions are a separate text track. Captions also satisfy accessibility requirements.", "related": [ "Vertical Video", "Safe Zone", "Hook" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/caption/" }, { "term": "Ad Copy", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "The written text of an ad: headlines, descriptions, primary text, and calls to action. Copy is constrained by character limits that differ by platform and placement, and on Google and Meta is increasingly assembled or rewritten by the platform from supplied components.", "related": [ "Responsive Search Ad", "Call to Action", "Ad Assets" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ad-copy/" }, { "term": "Storyboard", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "A shot-by-shot sketch of a video ad prepared before production, used to align client, agency, and crew and to estimate cost. For social video, storyboards have largely given way to scripts and shot lists, since the volume of variants makes drawing each one impractical.", "related": [ "Creative Testing", "Modular Creative" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/storyboard/" }, { "term": "Usage Rights", "also": [ "Licensing", "Talent rights" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "The permission to use talent, music, stock, and creator content in advertising, defined by territory, medium, and duration. Paid social exceeds the rights bought for a shoot more often than any other channel, because ads run longer and in more places than planned. Creator content licensing is now a standard line in every influencer contract.", "related": [ "Creator Advertising", "UGC", "Sponsored Content" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/usage-rights/" }, { "term": "Stories Ads", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Full-screen vertical ads inserted between users' Stories on Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and similar. Stories are ephemeral, sound-on by default, and tapped through quickly, so creative has to land in the first second and keep text inside the safe zone.", "related": [ "Vertical Video", "Safe Zone", "In-Feed Ad" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/stories-ads/" }, { "term": "Reels Ads", "also": [ "Shorts ads", "Short-form video ads" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Vertical video ads in the short-form video feeds of Instagram and Facebook (Reels), YouTube (Shorts), and their equivalents. Reels and Shorts are the fastest-growing placements on their platforms and the direct competitors to TikTok's For You feed; creative made for one generally works on the others.", "related": [ "Vertical Video", "In-Feed Ad", "Spark Ads" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/reels-ads/" }, { "term": "Outstream Video", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Video ads that play outside a video player, inside article text or between paragraphs, usually muted and autoplaying when scrolled into view. Outstream extends video reach beyond publishers that have video content and is priced below in-stream.", "related": [ "Online Video", "Pre-Roll", "Viewability" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/outstream-video/" }, { "term": "Masthead", "also": [ "Homepage takeover" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "The premium placement at the top of a platform's home surface for a day, sold on reservation at a fixed price: the YouTube masthead, the Spotify homepage takeover, a publisher's homepage roadblock. Mastheads deliver reach and frequency in one day and are bought for launches and tentpole events.", "related": [ "Flat Fee", "Reach", "Programmatic Guaranteed" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/masthead/" }, { "term": "Roadblock", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Buying every ad slot on a page or every ad break in a program at once so the advertiser is the only one present. Roadblocks are a reservation format used for launches, and the term also describes simultaneous placement across many properties at one moment.", "related": [ "Masthead", "Flat Fee", "Share of Voice" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/roadblock/" }, { "term": "Addressable TV", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Television advertising delivered to specific households rather than to everyone watching a program, through set-top boxes, smart TVs, and streaming. Addressable covers linear TV with household-level ad replacement as well as connected TV; the term is broader than CTV and narrower than digital video.", "related": [ "Connected TV", "Linear TV", "Household Targeting" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/addressable-tv/" }, { "term": "Linear TV", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Broadcast and cable television watched on a schedule, as opposed to streaming on demand. Linear is bought in upfronts and scatter, priced by CPM against Nielsen-measured demographics, and measured in GRPs. It still reaches older audiences at a scale streaming has not matched.", "related": [ "Connected TV", "GRP", "Upfront" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/linear-tv/" }, { "term": "Upfront", "also": [ "Upfronts", "NewFronts" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "The annual market in which television networks and, since the NewFronts began in 2012, digital video publishers sell the coming season's inventory in advance at negotiated rates. Upfront commitments come with guarantees and cancellation options; inventory bought later, in the scatter market, is priced higher.", "related": [ "Linear TV", "Connected TV", "Programmatic Guaranteed" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/upfront/" }, { "term": "Household Targeting", "also": [], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "Targeting and frequency capping at the level of the home rather than the individual, based on the IP address and device graph of a residence. Household is the working unit of connected TV advertising, where one screen serves several people and the individual is unknown.", "related": [ "Addressable TV", "Connected TV", "Frequency Cap" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/household-targeting/" }, { "term": "Automatic Content Recognition", "also": [ "ACR" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Technology in smart TVs that identifies what is on screen by matching audio or video fingerprints, producing viewing data across broadcast, streaming, and connected devices. ACR data from Samsung, LG, Vizio, and Roku is the basis of smart TV advertising, cross-screen measurement, and competitive ad exposure data.", "related": [ "Connected TV", "Addressable TV", "Identity Resolution" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/automatic-content-recognition/" }, { "term": "Programmatic Audio", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Streaming audio and podcast inventory bought through DSPs in real time rather than through direct deals. Programmatic audio uses the same OpenRTB and VAST-derived (DAAST, now folded into VAST) standards as video and is available through The Trade Desk, DV360, and specialist audio DSPs.", "related": [ "Audio Advertising", "Programmatic Advertising", "VAST" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/programmatic-audio/" }, { "term": "Host-Read Ad", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "A podcast ad read by the show's host in their own voice, usually from talking points rather than a script, and either baked into the episode permanently or inserted dynamically. Host-reads carry the host's endorsement and outperform produced spots on recall and response.", "related": [ "Audio Advertising", "Sponsored Content", "Creator Advertising" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/host-read-ad/" }, { "term": "Dynamic Ad Insertion", "also": [ "DAI" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Inserting ads into audio or video at the moment of download or stream rather than at production, so different listeners hear different ads and old episodes carry current campaigns. DAI made podcasts measurable and programmatic and is now standard on the major hosting platforms.", "related": [ "Server-Side Ad Insertion", "Audio Advertising", "Host-Read Ad" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/dynamic-ad-insertion/" }, { "term": "In-Game Advertising", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Ads inside video games: rewarded and interstitial units in mobile games, and intrinsic placements (billboards, jerseys) rendered inside console and PC games through vendors such as Anzu and Frameplay. Mobile in-game is one of the largest sources of in-app inventory.", "related": [ "Rewarded Video", "Interstitial", "Mobile Advertising" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/in-game-advertising/" }, { "term": "Email Advertising", "also": [ "Newsletter sponsorship", "Dedicated send" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Advertising inside email newsletters, as a sponsored placement within an issue or a dedicated send to a publisher's list. Newsletter ads are sold on flat fees or CPM, measured on opens and clicks, and have grown with the independent newsletter economy. They are distinct from an advertiser's own email marketing.", "related": [ "Flat Fee", "Sponsored Content", "Native Advertising" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/email-advertising/" }, { "term": "Affiliate Marketing", "also": [ "Performance partnerships" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "Paying publishers, creators, and comparison sites a commission on the sales or leads they refer, tracked through links and cookies and managed through networks such as Impact, CJ, Rakuten, and Awin. Affiliate is the original cost-per-action channel and the one most exposed to coupon and cashback sites intercepting credit at checkout.", "related": [ "CPA", "Last-Click Attribution", "Creator Advertising" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/affiliate-marketing/" }, { "term": "Local Services Ads", "also": [], "category": "Search", "definition": "Google's pay-per-lead ads for local service businesses (plumbers, lawyers, cleaners), shown above search results with a Google Guaranteed or Google Screened badge after background checks. LSAs are billed per lead rather than per click and disputed leads can be credited.", "related": [ "Search Advertising", "CPL", "Geotargeting" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/local-services-ads/" }, { "term": "Dynamic Search Ads", "also": [ "DSA" ], "category": "Search", "definition": "Google and Microsoft search ads whose headline and landing page are generated from the advertiser's website content in response to queries the advertiser has not bid on. DSAs cover gaps in keyword coverage and generate new keyword candidates; they need tight negative keywords and page feed control.", "related": [ "Search Advertising", "Keyword Targeting", "Negative Keyword" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/dynamic-search-ads/" }, { "term": "Demand Gen", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Google's campaign type for visual ads across YouTube (in-feed, Shorts, in-stream), Discover, and Gmail, using audience targeting and lookalike segments. Demand Gen replaced Discovery campaigns in 2023 and is Google's answer to social feed advertising.", "related": [ "Performance Max", "In-Feed Ad", "Lookalike Audience" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/demand-gen/" }, { "term": "App Campaigns", "also": [ "Universal App Campaigns", "UAC" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Google's automated campaign type for app installs and in-app actions across Search, Play, YouTube, Display, and Discover, built from supplied text, images, and video with no keyword or placement control. Meta's App Promotion and Apple Search Ads are the counterparts.", "related": [ "CPI", "SKAdNetwork", "Mobile Measurement Partner" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/app-campaigns/" }, { "term": "Audience Segment", "also": [ "Segment" ], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "A defined group of users available for targeting, described by demographics, interests, behaviors, or purchase signals, and supplied by a platform, a data provider, or the advertiser. Segments are the unit of the third-party data marketplace and are priced per CPM when bought. Agency Echelon's audience finder indexes segments from major providers.", "related": [ "Third-Party Data", "Data Management Platform", "Lookalike Audience" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/audience-segment/" }, { "term": "In-Market Audience", "also": [], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "A platform segment of users whose recent behavior indicates they are actively researching or comparing a category of product: car shoppers, people looking at apartments. Google's in-market segments are built from search and browsing; other platforms and data providers offer equivalents built from their own signals.", "related": [ "Behavioral Targeting", "Audience Segment", "Affinity Audience" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/in-market-audience/" }, { "term": "Affinity Audience", "also": [], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "A platform segment based on durable interests and lifestyle rather than active shopping: cooking enthusiasts, sports fans, luxury shoppers. Affinity segments suit reach and awareness objectives; in-market segments suit conversion.", "related": [ "In-Market Audience", "Behavioral Targeting", "Audience Segment" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/affinity-audience/" }, { "term": "Life Event Targeting", "also": [], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "Segments of people who recently or imminently married, moved, graduated, retired, or had a child, inferred from platform signals. Life events are moments of unusually high category purchasing and unusually loose brand loyalty, which is why they command premium prices.", "related": [ "Audience Segment", "Behavioral Targeting" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/life-event-targeting/" }, { "term": "Predictive Audience", "also": [ "Propensity model" ], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "A segment built by a model that scores users on their predicted likelihood of an outcome: purchasing, churning, converting to a higher tier. Predictive audiences are built inside CDPs, clean rooms, and platform tools (GA4 predictive audiences, LinkedIn predictive audiences) from first-party data.", "related": [ "Lookalike Audience", "Customer Data Platform", "Value-Based Bidding" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/predictive-audience/" }, { "term": "Sequential Messaging", "also": [ "Sequential retargeting" ], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "Showing a person a series of ads in a planned order, with each step conditioned on exposure to or engagement with the previous one. Sequencing is built with audience rules in a DSP or with Meta's and YouTube's ad sequencing tools and is used for storytelling and for moving people down the funnel.", "related": [ "Retargeting", "Frequency", "Funnel" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/sequential-messaging/" }, { "term": "Account-Based Marketing", "also": [ "ABM" ], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "B2B advertising aimed at a named list of target companies rather than a demographic or interest, with success measured by engagement and pipeline from those accounts. ABM advertising runs through LinkedIn company targeting, IP-based targeting from vendors such as Demandbase and 6sense, and uploaded contact lists.", "related": [ "IP Targeting", "Customer Match", "CPL" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/account-based-marketing/" }, { "term": "IP Targeting", "also": [], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "Targeting by the IP address of a network, used to reach a company's offices, a conference venue, or a household, and to determine geography. IP targeting underlies much B2B display, connected TV household matching, and geotargeting. Its accuracy declines as networks, VPNs, and Apple's Private Relay obscure addresses.", "related": [ "Account-Based Marketing", "Household Targeting", "Geotargeting" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ip-targeting/" }, { "term": "Weather Targeting", "also": [], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "Adjusting bids, budgets, or creative based on current or forecast weather in the user's location, through DSP integrations with weather data providers. Useful for categories with weather-driven demand: beverages, outdoor gear, home services, pharmacy.", "related": [ "Dynamic Creative Optimization", "Geotargeting", "Dayparting" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/weather-targeting/" }, { "term": "Keyword Contextual", "also": [ "Semantic targeting" ], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "Contextual targeting that selects pages by the words and topics they contain, from simple keyword lists to language-model classification of meaning. The modern form places ads next to relevant articles without any user data and is the growth area of contextual vendors.", "related": [ "Contextual Targeting", "Brand Suitability", "Keyword Targeting" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/keyword-contextual/" }, { "term": "Publisher First-Party Data", "also": [ "Seller-defined audiences" ], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "Audience segments a publisher builds from its own registered users and on-site behavior and offers to buyers directly or through the IAB Tech Lab's Seller Defined Audiences specification. Publisher data is one of the main proposed replacements for third-party cookie segments on the open web.", "related": [ "First-Party Data", "Contextual Targeting", "Third-Party Cookie" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/publisher-first-party-data/" }, { "term": "Data Onboarding", "also": [], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Matching offline customer records (names, addresses, emails) to online identifiers so they can be used for digital targeting and measurement. LiveRamp built the category; the platforms' own customer-match features now handle most of the volume for advertisers who only need to reach one platform.", "related": [ "Identity Resolution", "Customer Match", "First-Party Data" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/data-onboarding/" }, { "term": "Match Rate", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The share of uploaded records a platform or identity partner can connect to a user it recognizes. Match rates run from under 30 percent for old email lists to over 70 percent for recent, multi-key uploads, and determine how much of a customer list is actually reachable.", "related": [ "Customer Match", "Data Onboarding", "Hashed Email" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/match-rate/" }, { "term": "Suppression List", "also": [], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "A list of people to exclude from a campaign: existing customers, recent purchasers, employees, people who opted out. Suppression is the cheapest efficiency gain in most accounts and a legal requirement where opt-outs are involved.", "related": [ "Exclusion", "Customer Match", "State Privacy Laws" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/suppression-list/" }, { "term": "Audience Overlap", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The share of one audience that also belongs to another. Overlapping audiences in the same account bid against each other, inflate frequency, and corrupt A/B tests. Meta and most DSPs report overlap so it can be designed out.", "related": [ "A/B Test", "Frequency", "Audience Segment" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/audience-overlap/" }, { "term": "Bid Request", "also": [], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "The message a seller sends to buyers describing an available impression: site or app, placement, format, size, user signals where permitted, price floor, and deal IDs. Bid requests follow the OpenRTB specification and number in the tens of billions per day across the ecosystem.", "related": [ "OpenRTB", "Real-Time Bidding", "Bid Response" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/bid-request/" }, { "term": "Bid Response", "also": [], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "A buyer's reply to a bid request: the price offered, the creative to serve, and tracking URLs. Responses must arrive within the seller's timeout, usually 100 to 300 milliseconds, or the bid is discarded.", "related": [ "Bid Request", "Real-Time Bidding", "Win Rate" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/bid-response/" }, { "term": "Ad Request", "also": [], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "A call from a page or app to an ad server asking for an ad to fill a slot. Ad requests precede bid requests in the chain and outnumber impressions, since not every request is filled or rendered.", "related": [ "Ad Server", "Fill Rate", "Impression" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ad-request/" }, { "term": "Cookie Sync", "also": [ "Cookie matching", "User sync" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "The process by which two ad tech companies exchange their respective cookie IDs for the same browser so they can recognize the user in each other's bid requests. Syncing is why a single page load fires dozens of pixels and why programmatic depends on third-party cookies where they still exist.", "related": [ "Third-Party Cookie", "Identity Resolution", "Demand-Side Platform" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/cookie-sync/" }, { "term": "Ad Tag", "also": [], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "A snippet of HTML or JavaScript that calls an ad server to fill a slot, or a URL (a VAST tag, a tracking tag) that represents a creative or a measurement call. Tags are how creative is trafficked to publishers and how third-party measurement rides along with an ad.", "related": [ "Ad Server", "VAST", "Pixel" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ad-tag/" }, { "term": "Trafficking", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "Setting up a campaign in the ad server and platforms: uploading creative, assigning it to placements, attaching tracking, entering dates and budgets, and confirming delivery. Trafficking is the operational core of ad operations and the step where most launch errors originate.", "related": [ "Ad Server", "Ad Tag", "Insertion Order" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/trafficking/" }, { "term": "Ad Operations", "also": [ "Ad ops" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "The function that traffics campaigns, monitors delivery, troubleshoots discrepancies, manages tags and pixels, and reconciles billing. Ad ops exists on both the agency and publisher sides and is where technical knowledge of the stack lives.", "related": [ "Trafficking", "Discrepancy", "Ad Server" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ad-operations/" }, { "term": "Mediation", "also": [ "Ad mediation" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "An in-app layer that manages multiple ad networks and exchanges competing for an app's inventory, through waterfall ordering or in-app bidding. AppLovin MAX, Google AdMob, Unity LevelPlay, and ironSource are the major mediation platforms.", "related": [ "Waterfall", "Header Bidding", "Ad Network" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/mediation/" }, { "term": "In-App Bidding", "also": [ "Unified auction" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "The mobile equivalent of header bidding: all demand sources bid on an in-app impression simultaneously instead of in waterfall order. In-app bidding raised app publisher revenue and simplified operations, and is now the default in major mediation platforms.", "related": [ "Mediation", "Header Bidding", "Waterfall" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/in-app-bidding/" }, { "term": "SDK", "also": [ "Software development kit" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Code a developer embeds in an app to add a vendor's functionality: showing ads, measuring installs, collecting analytics, managing consent. Every SDK adds app size, crash risk, and data flows, so publishers limit them and privacy regulators scrutinize them.", "related": [ "Mobile Measurement Partner", "Mediation", "Mobile Advertising" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/sdk/" }, { "term": "Curation", "also": [ "Curated marketplace" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "A sell-side service in which a curator (an SSP, a data company, or an agency) packages inventory from many publishers, applies data and quality filters, and offers it to buyers as a single deal ID. Curation moves targeting from the DSP to the supply side and has grown as buyers seek cookieless data and cleaner supply.", "related": [ "Private Marketplace", "Deal ID", "Supply Path Optimization" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/curation/" }, { "term": "Ad Refresh", "also": [ "Auto-refresh" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Reloading an ad slot with a new ad after a set interval or on user action while the page stays open. Refresh multiplies impressions from one page view; done with viewability triggers it is legitimate, done on a timer with no engagement it is a hallmark of made-for-advertising sites.", "related": [ "Made-for-Advertising Site", "Ad Load", "Viewability" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ad-refresh/" }, { "term": "Domain Spoofing", "also": [], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Fraud in which a low-quality site declares itself to be a premium publisher in the bid request so buyers pay premium prices for junk inventory. ads.txt was created specifically to defeat it, and largely has on the web; CTV app spoofing is the current version.", "related": [ "ads.txt", "Invalid Traffic", "Ad Verification" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/domain-spoofing/" }, { "term": "Bot Traffic", "also": [], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Non-human visits and interactions generated by automated software, from benign crawlers to fraud bots that fake impressions, clicks, and installs. Bot detection relies on behavioral signals, device fingerprints, and known bad-actor lists, and is the core of invalid traffic filtering.", "related": [ "Invalid Traffic", "Ad Verification", "MRC" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/bot-traffic/" }, { "term": "Click Fraud", "also": [ "Click spam", "Click injection" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Generating fake clicks to drain a competitor's budget or to claim attribution for installs and conversions the clicker did not cause. Click injection on Android, where a malicious app fires a click moments before an install completes, was a major MMP fraud pattern. Platforms filter and refund detected click fraud.", "related": [ "Invalid Traffic", "Mobile Measurement Partner", "Bot Traffic" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/click-fraud/" }, { "term": "Ad Blocking", "also": [], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Browser extensions, network filters, and built-in browser features that prevent ads and tracking calls from loading. Ad blocking rates run roughly a quarter to a third of desktop users in many markets and lower on mobile, and blockers also block measurement pixels, which is part of the reason server-side tracking exists.", "related": [ "Server-Side Tagging", "Conversions API", "Discrepancy" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ad-blocking/" }, { "term": "Intelligent Tracking Prevention", "also": [ "ITP", "Enhanced Tracking Protection" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Safari's tracking countermeasures, introduced in 2017 and tightened repeatedly: blocking third-party cookies outright, capping first-party cookies set by script at seven days (one day when arriving from a tracking link), and stripping link decoration. Firefox's Enhanced Tracking Protection is comparable. ITP is why Safari attribution windows are short and why Conversions API exists.", "related": [ "Third-Party Cookie", "Conversions API", "Attribution Window" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/intelligent-tracking-prevention/" }, { "term": "First-Party Cookie", "also": [], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "A cookie set by the domain the user is visiting, used for logins, preferences, analytics, and, since third-party cookies declined, for advertising measurement through first-party-domain tagging. Browsers restrict script-set first-party cookies less than third-party ones but still limit their lifespan.", "related": [ "Third-Party Cookie", "Server-Side Tagging", "Intelligent Tracking Prevention" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/first-party-cookie/" }, { "term": "Enhanced Conversions", "also": [], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Google's method of improving conversion measurement by sending hashed first-party data (email, phone, address) with the conversion tag and matching it to signed-in Google users. Enhanced Conversions for web recovers conversions lost to cookie limits; Enhanced Conversions for Leads matches offline conversions without a click ID.", "related": [ "Conversions API", "Hashed Email", "Offline Conversion" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/enhanced-conversions/" }, { "term": "Modeled Conversions", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Conversions a platform estimates statistically to fill gaps where it cannot observe them: consent denied, browser restrictions, iOS. Google, Meta, and others report modeled and observed conversions together, and the modeled share is now material in most accounts. Modeling is reasonable in aggregate and unverifiable in detail.", "related": [ "Consent Mode", "Attribution", "Conversions API" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/modeled-conversions/" }, { "term": "Aggregated Measurement", "also": [ "Aggregated event measurement" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Reporting conversions in totals rather than per user, with delays and noise added, so that individuals cannot be identified. Apple's SKAdNetwork, Meta's Aggregated Event Measurement for iOS, and Chrome's Attribution Reporting API are all forms of it, and each trades detail and timeliness for privacy.", "related": [ "SKAdNetwork", "Privacy Sandbox", "Modeled Conversions" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/aggregated-measurement/" }, { "term": "Fingerprinting", "also": [ "Probabilistic attribution" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Identifying a device from its combination of characteristics (IP address, screen size, OS version, fonts, language) rather than a stored identifier. Fingerprinting is prohibited by Apple's App Store rules, restricted by Google's policies, and treated as tracking under most privacy laws, though it persists in various forms.", "related": [ "Mobile Advertising ID", "App Tracking Transparency", "Identity Resolution" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/fingerprinting/" }, { "term": "Publisher Advertiser Identity Reconciliation", "also": [ "PAIR" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "A Google-initiated, now IAB Tech Lab, protocol that lets an advertiser and a publisher match their respective first-party customer lists through encryption without either side seeing the other's data, then target the overlap in DV360 and other DSPs. PAIR is a cookieless alternative to third-party matching.", "related": [ "Data Clean Room", "First-Party Data", "Hashed Email" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/publisher-advertiser-identity-reconciliation/" }, { "term": "Amazon Marketing Cloud", "also": [ "AMC" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Amazon's clean room, which lets advertisers run SQL queries over event-level Amazon Ads signals (sponsored ads, DSP, streaming TV) and their own uploaded data, returning aggregated results. AMC supports custom attribution, path analysis, new-to-brand analysis, and audience creation for Amazon DSP.", "related": [ "Data Clean Room", "Retail Media", "New-to-Brand" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/amazon-marketing-cloud/" }, { "term": "Search Query", "also": [ "Query" ], "category": "Search", "definition": "The words a person actually types or speaks into a search engine, as distinct from the keyword an advertiser bids on. Under broad match one keyword matches many queries, and the search terms report shows which ones spent the money.", "related": [ "Keyword Targeting", "Search Terms Report", "Match Type" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/search-query/" }, { "term": "Keyword Research", "also": [], "category": "Search", "definition": "Identifying the queries an advertiser should bid on, their volume, competition, and cost, using Google Keyword Planner, third-party tools, the search terms report, and site search data. Research also supplies negative keywords and informs landing page structure.", "related": [ "Keyword Targeting", "Search Query", "Negative Keyword" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/keyword-research/" }, { "term": "Long-Tail Keywords", "also": [], "category": "Search", "definition": "Specific, low-volume queries, often several words long, that individually attract little traffic and collectively make up most of search. Long-tail queries convert well because intent is specific, cost less because competition is thin, and are increasingly captured through broad match and automation rather than explicit bidding.", "related": [ "Keyword Research", "Match Type", "Search Query" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/long-tail-keywords/" }, { "term": "Ad Position", "also": [ "Top of page rate", "Absolute top" ], "category": "Search", "definition": "Where an ad appears on a results page. Google retired average position in 2019 in favor of top-of-page rate (share of impressions above organic results) and absolute-top rate (share in the first slot), because position numbers had become misleading as page layouts changed.", "related": [ "Ad Rank", "Impression Share", "Quality Score" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ad-position/" }, { "term": "Auction Insights", "also": [], "category": "Search", "definition": "A Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising report showing which competitors appeared in the same auctions, with their impression share, overlap rate, outranking share, and top-of-page rate. It is the main window into competitive activity in paid search.", "related": [ "Impression Share", "Share of Voice", "Ad Position" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/auction-insights/" }, { "term": "Ad Group", "also": [], "category": "Search", "definition": "The unit inside a campaign that holds a set of keywords (or audiences) and the ads that serve against them. Ad group structure determines ad relevance; the traditional practice of single-keyword ad groups has given way to themed groups now that responsive search ads and automated bidding handle relevance.", "related": [ "Search Advertising", "Responsive Search Ad", "Keyword Targeting" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ad-group/" }, { "term": "Campaign Structure", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "How an account is divided into campaigns, ad groups or ad sets, and ads. Structure controls budget allocation, targeting boundaries, and reporting granularity. Platform guidance since automation arrived favors consolidation: fewer campaigns with more data each, so bidding algorithms learn faster.", "related": [ "Ad Group", "Learning Phase", "Smart Bidding" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/campaign-structure/" }, { "term": "Bid Adjustment", "also": [ "Bid modifier" ], "category": "Search", "definition": "A percentage increase or decrease applied to bids for a device, location, time, audience, or demographic. Bid adjustments were the main manual optimization lever in search; under Smart Bidding most are ignored or reduced to on-off controls.", "related": [ "Smart Bidding", "Dayparting", "Geotargeting" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/bid-adjustment/" }, { "term": "Shopping Feed Optimization", "also": [ "Feed optimization" ], "category": "Search", "definition": "Improving the titles, descriptions, attributes, images, and categorization in a product feed so products are eligible for more queries and perform better in Shopping and Performance Max. Feed quality is the main lever in Shopping campaigns, where there are no keywords to bid on.", "related": [ "Product Feed", "Shopping Ads", "Performance Max" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/shopping-feed-optimization/" }, { "term": "Merchant Center", "also": [], "category": "Search", "definition": "Google's system for uploading and managing product data that feeds Shopping ads, free listings, and Performance Max. Merchant Center enforces data quality and policy through disapprovals and account suspensions, which are among the more disruptive problems an ecommerce advertiser faces.", "related": [ "Product Feed", "Shopping Ads", "Performance Max" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/merchant-center/" }, { "term": "Search Partners", "also": [ "Syndicated search" ], "category": "Search", "definition": "Sites and apps outside the search engine's own results that show its ads: for Google, sites using Google search and some Google properties; for Microsoft, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and AOL. Partner traffic is opted in by default and generally performs worse than core search, so it is often excluded or bid down.", "related": [ "Search Advertising", "Bid Adjustment" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/search-partners/" }, { "term": "AI Overviews", "also": [ "AI Mode", "Generative search" ], "category": "Search", "definition": "AI-generated answers shown at the top of Google search results and in Google's AI Mode, and the equivalents in Bing Copilot and Perplexity. Ads began appearing within and beside these answers in 2024 and 2025. They reduce clicks on both organic and paid results for informational queries and are reshaping where search impressions occur.", "related": [ "Search Advertising", "Generative Engine Optimization", "Impression Share" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ai-overviews/" }, { "term": "Generative Engine Optimization", "also": [ "GEO", "AEO", "Answer engine optimization" ], "category": "Search", "definition": "The practice of making content likely to be retrieved, cited, and recommended by AI answer engines and assistants, as distinct from ranking in traditional search. GEO overlaps with SEO in structure and authority signals and diverges in emphasis on clear, citable, machine-readable statements. It is an organic discipline that shapes paid strategy as AI answers absorb search demand.", "related": [ "AI Overviews", "Search Advertising" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/generative-engine-optimization/" }, { "term": "Request for Proposal", "also": [ "RFP" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "A document an advertiser issues to agencies or media vendors describing its needs and asking for a proposal and price. Media RFPs to publishers specify budget, audience, dates, and objectives and return proposals with placements and rates; agency RFPs are the standard way agencies are selected.", "related": [ "Media Plan", "Insertion Order", "Agency Fee" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/request-for-proposal/" }, { "term": "Media Brief", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "The document that gives a planner what they need to build a plan: objective, audience, budget, timing, geography, mandatories, and how success will be measured. A bad brief produces a bad plan regardless of the planner, and most planning problems trace back to it.", "related": [ "Media Plan", "Media Mix", "Request for Proposal" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/media-brief/" }, { "term": "Post-Campaign Report", "also": [ "Wrap report", "Post-buy" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "The report delivered after a campaign ends: delivery against plan, performance against objectives, learnings, and recommendations. A post-buy in television compares delivered ratings to guaranteed ones and triggers makegoods for shortfalls.", "related": [ "Makegood", "Media Plan", "Insertion Order" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/post-campaign-report/" }, { "term": "Makegood", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "Free additional impressions or placements a publisher provides to compensate for under-delivery, a missed guarantee, or a serving error. Makegoods are specified in the IAB standard terms and are the normal remedy before any refund.", "related": [ "Insertion Order", "Discrepancy", "Post-Campaign Report" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/makegood/" }, { "term": "Added Value", "also": [ "Bonus impressions", "Value-add" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "Additional impressions, placements, or services a publisher includes in a buy at no charge to win or retain the business. Added value is negotiated before the insertion order and should be reported separately so it does not distort the paid CPM.", "related": [ "Insertion Order", "Request for Proposal", "Flat Fee" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/added-value/" }, { "term": "Rate Card", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "A publisher's published list prices for its placements. Rate cards are the starting point for negotiation and are rarely paid in full; the discount from rate card is a standard negotiating metric in direct buys.", "related": [ "Flat Fee", "CPM", "Request for Proposal" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/rate-card/" }, { "term": "Sequential Liability", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "A contract term under which an agency is liable to a publisher for media payments only to the extent it has been paid by the client. Sequential liability is standard in US agency contracts and is why publishers check a client's credit as well as the agency's.", "related": [ "Insertion Order", "Agency Fee" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/sequential-liability/" }, { "term": "Media Audit", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "An independent review of an advertiser's media buying: prices paid against benchmarks, compliance with contract terms, fee and rebate transparency, and process quality. Audits are performed by firms such as Ebiquity and MediaSense and are often a contractual right.", "related": [ "Media Transparency", "Agency Fee", "Principal-Based Buying" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/media-audit/" }, { "term": "Pitch", "also": [ "Agency review" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "The competitive process in which agencies compete for an advertiser's business, usually run by a consultant, involving chemistry meetings, a strategic response, and a commercial proposal. Media pitches increasingly hinge on data, technology, and fee models as much as on planning.", "related": [ "Request for Proposal", "Agency Fee", "In-Housing" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/pitch/" }, { "term": "Agency of Record", "also": [ "AOR" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "The agency designated to handle all of an advertiser's business in a discipline, such as media, creative, or digital, as opposed to project-based assignments. AOR relationships carry retainers and exclusivity and are the assignments pitches are usually for.", "related": [ "Pitch", "Agency Fee", "In-Housing" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/agency-of-record/" }, { "term": "Holding Company", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "A group owning many agencies: WPP, Omnicom (which absorbed IPG in 2025), Publicis, Dentsu, and Havas. Holding companies control the majority of global media buying, negotiate with platforms and publishers at group level, and have built principal-based media businesses that are now a significant share of profit.", "related": [ "Principal-Based Buying", "Media Transparency", "Agency of Record" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/holding-company/" }, { "term": "Trading Desk", "also": [ "Agency trading desk", "ATD" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "A centralized programmatic buying unit inside an agency or holding company, operating DSP seats on behalf of client teams. Trading desks were the original agency programmatic model and drew the transparency criticism of the mid-2010s; most have since been folded back into media agencies.", "related": [ "Demand-Side Platform", "Media Transparency", "Principal-Based Buying" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/trading-desk/" }, { "term": "Scope of Work", "also": [ "SOW" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "The contract document specifying what an agency will deliver, for which fee, over what period: channels, deliverables, staffing, reporting, and exclusions. Scope creep, work outside the SOW done without additional fee, is the perennial agency margin problem.", "related": [ "Agency Fee", "Agency of Record", "Master Services Agreement" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/scope-of-work/" }, { "term": "Master Services Agreement", "also": [ "MSA" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "The overarching contract between an advertiser and an agency setting the terms that govern every subsequent scope of work: payment terms, liability, intellectual property, data handling, audit rights, and termination. Media-specific terms such as rebate disclosure belong in the MSA.", "related": [ "Scope of Work", "Sequential Liability", "Media Audit" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/master-services-agreement/" }, { "term": "Test-and-Learn", "also": [ "Test budget" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "Reserving a share of budget, commonly 10 to 20 percent, for structured experiments in new channels, formats, and audiences, with the results feeding the next plan. Test-and-learn is the discipline that keeps a media mix from ossifying around whatever attribution currently favors.", "related": [ "A/B Test", "Incrementality", "Media Mix" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/test-and-learn/" }, { "term": "Always-On", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "Continuous advertising at a base level rather than in flights, typically for search, retargeting, and brand defense, where demand exists every day. Most plans combine always-on performance layers with flighted brand and launch activity.", "related": [ "Flighting", "Search Advertising", "Retargeting" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/always-on/" }, { "term": "Seasonality", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "Predictable variation in demand and media cost across the year. CPMs rise sharply in the fourth quarter as retail competition peaks, and category demand follows its own calendar. Automated bidding tools accept seasonality adjustments for short, known events.", "related": [ "Flighting", "CPM", "Smart Bidding" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/seasonality/" }, { "term": "Dark Posting", "also": [ "Dark ads", "Unpublished posts" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "Running social ads that do not appear on the advertiser's organic page or profile, so that many variants can be tested without cluttering the feed. Nearly all social advertising is dark in this sense; ad libraries now make dark posts publicly visible.", "related": [ "In-Feed Ad", "Ad Library", "Creative Testing" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/dark-posting/" }, { "term": "Boosted Post", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "Paying to extend the reach of an existing organic post through the simplified promotion button rather than the full ads manager. Boosting offers fewer objectives, targeting options, and controls than a proper campaign and is best reserved for small, low-stakes promotion.", "related": [ "In-Feed Ad", "Spark Ads", "Dark Posting" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/boosted-post/" }, { "term": "Organic Social", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "Unpaid content published on a brand's own social accounts. Organic reach on major platforms has fallen to a small fraction of followers, which is why paid amplification of organic posts, whether boosted, Spark, or partnership ads, is now standard practice.", "related": [ "Boosted Post", "Spark Ads", "In-Feed Ad" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/organic-social/" }, { "term": "Brand Guidelines", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "The rules governing how a brand appears in advertising: logo use, color, typography, tone, and mandatory elements. Guidelines constrain creative and are the reference against which platform-generated creative variations must be checked.", "related": [ "Ad Copy", "Creative Specs", "Dynamic Creative Optimization" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/brand-guidelines/" }, { "term": "Landing Page Optimization", "also": [ "Conversion rate optimization", "CRO" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "Systematic testing and improvement of the pages ads send traffic to: headlines, forms, offers, layout, speed. Conversion rate optimization frequently returns more than optimization of the media itself, since a 20 percent lift in conversion rate is worth a 20 percent cut in CPA across every channel.", "related": [ "Landing Page", "Conversion Rate", "A/B Test" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/landing-page-optimization/" }, { "term": "Page Speed", "also": [ "Core Web Vitals" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "How quickly a landing page loads and becomes usable. Google's Core Web Vitals (loading, interactivity, visual stability) are a ranking and Quality Score input, and slow pages lose a measurable share of paid clicks before the page renders, a loss that never appears in platform reporting.", "related": [ "Landing Page", "Quality Score", "Cost Per Session" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/page-speed/" }, { "term": "Personal Data", "also": [ "Personally identifiable information", "PII" ], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "Information relating to an identified or identifiable person. Under the GDPR the definition includes cookie IDs, device IDs, IP addresses, and hashed emails; US law historically used the narrower personally identifiable information, but state privacy laws have converged on the broad definition. Most advertising identifiers are personal data.", "related": [ "GDPR", "State Privacy Laws", "Hashed Email" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/personal-data/" }, { "term": "Sensitive Data", "also": [ "Special category data" ], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "Categories of personal data that laws protect more strictly: health, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, precise geolocation, biometrics, and, in some jurisdictions, financial data and data about children. Using sensitive data for advertising requires explicit consent under the GDPR and most US state laws, and platforms prohibit targeting on most of it.", "related": [ "Personal Data", "GDPR", "State Privacy Laws" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/sensitive-data/" }, { "term": "Lawful Basis", "also": [ "Legal basis", "Legitimate interest" ], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "The justification the GDPR requires for any processing of personal data. For advertising the practical choices are consent and legitimate interest; regulators and courts have largely rejected legitimate interest for behavioral advertising, which is why European advertising runs on consent.", "related": [ "GDPR", "Transparency and Consent Framework", "Consent Management Platform" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/lawful-basis/" }, { "term": "Opt-Out", "also": [ "Do not sell", "Do not share" ], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "The right under US state privacy laws to stop a business from selling personal data or using it for targeted advertising, exercised through a site link or a browser signal. The opt-out model contrasts with Europe's opt-in consent model and is the reason US sites show a footer link rather than a consent banner.", "related": [ "State Privacy Laws", "Global Privacy Control", "Global Privacy Platform" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/opt-out/" }, { "term": "Data Processing Agreement", "also": [ "DPA" ], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "The contract the GDPR requires between a data controller and each processor handling personal data on its behalf, specifying purposes, security, sub-processors, and audit rights. Advertisers sign DPAs with every ad tech vendor and platform; most platforms publish standard terms.", "related": [ "GDPR", "Personal Data", "Master Services Agreement" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/data-processing-agreement/" }, { "term": "Privacy Policy", "also": [], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "The public notice describing what personal data an organization collects, why, with whom it shares it, and what rights people have. Ad platforms require advertisers to maintain one that discloses pixel and data use, and it is the first document a regulator reads.", "related": [ "Personal Data", "Consent Management Platform", "Pixel" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/privacy-policy/" }, { "term": "Dark Patterns", "also": [ "Deceptive design" ], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "Interface designs that manipulate people into choices they would not otherwise make: a prominent accept button and a hidden decline, pre-ticked boxes, confusing double negatives. The FTC, the CPPA, and European regulators have all acted against dark patterns in consent flows, and consent obtained through them is invalid.", "related": [ "Consent Management Platform", "FTC Endorsement Guides", "State Privacy Laws" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/dark-patterns/" }, { "term": "Age-Appropriate Design", "also": [ "Children's code" ], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "Regulatory codes, beginning with the UK Age Appropriate Design Code in 2021, that require services likely to be used by children to default to high privacy, limit profiling, and avoid nudging. Several US states enacted versions; California's was partly enjoined. For advertising the effect is a ban on behavioral targeting of minors on affected services.", "related": [ "COPPA", "Digital Services Act", "Sensitive Data" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/age-appropriate-design/" }, { "term": "Substantiation", "also": [ "Claims substantiation" ], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "The FTC requirement that an advertiser hold a reasonable basis for any objective claim before making it, with health, safety, and performance claims requiring competent and reliable scientific evidence. Substantiation applies to every ad in every channel and is enforced by the FTC, state attorneys general, and competitors through the NAD and Lanham Act.", "related": [ "FTC Endorsement Guides", "Ad Copy" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/substantiation/" }, { "term": "NAD", "also": [ "National Advertising Division" ], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "The US advertising industry's self-regulatory body, part of BBB National Programs, which adjudicates challenges to advertising claims, usually brought by competitors. NAD decisions are voluntary but nearly always followed, since the alternative is referral to the FTC.", "related": [ "Substantiation", "FTC Endorsement Guides" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/nad/" }, { "term": "Comparative Advertising", "also": [], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "Advertising that names or clearly identifies a competitor. Permitted in the United States when claims are truthful and substantiated, and encouraged by the FTC; restricted or effectively prohibited in several other countries. Trademark use in comparative ads and in competitor keyword bidding is governed by separate case law.", "related": [ "Substantiation", "NAD", "Brand Search" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/comparative-advertising/" }, { "term": "Sweepstakes and Contests", "also": [ "Promotions law" ], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "Prize promotions, which are regulated by state law in the United States and by national law elsewhere. A sweepstakes (chance) must offer a free method of entry to avoid being an illegal lottery; a contest (skill) may charge. Official rules, bonding in some states, and platform promotion policies apply to social media giveaways.", "related": [ "FTC Endorsement Guides", "Creator Advertising" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/sweepstakes-and-contests/" }, { "term": "Accessibility", "also": [ "WCAG", "ADA compliance" ], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "Making ads and landing pages usable by people with disabilities: captions on video, alt text on images, sufficient contrast, keyboard-navigable forms. Landing pages fall under the ADA in the United States and the European Accessibility Act, and platforms increasingly require captions and alt text on ad creative.", "related": [ "Caption", "Landing Page", "Creative Specs" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/accessibility/" }, { "term": "Ad Fraud Regulation", "also": [ "Fraud liability" ], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "The legal exposure around invalid traffic. Ad fraud is prosecuted in the United States under wire fraud statutes (the 3ve and Methbot cases) and can support civil claims against sellers. Contracts increasingly specify who bears the cost of impressions later found invalid, and the IAB standard terms address it.", "related": [ "Invalid Traffic", "Insertion Order", "Ad Verification" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ad-fraud-regulation/" }, { "term": "Scatter Market", "also": [], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "Television inventory bought after the upfront, quarter by quarter, at prevailing prices. Scatter pricing runs above upfront pricing in strong markets and below it in weak ones, and it is where advertisers without upfront commitments and those with unplanned needs buy.", "related": [ "Upfront", "Linear TV", "CPP" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/scatter-market/" }, { "term": "CPP", "also": [ "Cost per point", "Cost per rating point" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "The cost of one gross rating point against a defined audience, the pricing unit of television. CPP times GRPs equals the cost of a schedule. It is compared across markets and dayparts, and it converts to CPM by dividing by the population of the target in thousands divided by 100.", "related": [ "GRP", "Linear TV", "Cost Per Thousand Reached" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/cpp/" }, { "term": "Daypart", "also": [], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "A block of the broadcast day priced and planned as a unit: early morning, daytime, early fringe, prime access, prime time, late night, overnight. Each has a characteristic audience and CPP. In digital, dayparting borrows the term for time-of-day scheduling.", "related": [ "Dayparting", "Linear TV", "CPP" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/daypart/" }, { "term": "Prime Time", "also": [], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "The evening block, 8 to 11 pm Eastern (7 to 10 Central), when television audiences peak and pricing is highest. Prime is the reference point for network pricing and the daypart most affected by the migration to streaming.", "related": [ "Daypart", "Linear TV", "Upfront" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/prime-time/" }, { "term": "C3 and C7", "also": [ "Commercial ratings" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Nielsen ratings of the commercial minutes in a program, averaged across live viewing plus three (C3) or seven (C7) days of playback. C3 has been the currency of US national television since 2007; C7 is used by networks that argue for more delayed-viewing credit.", "related": [ "GRP", "Linear TV", "Nielsen Rating" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/c3-and-c7/" }, { "term": "Nielsen Rating", "also": [ "Rating point", "HUT", "PUT" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The percentage of a population watching a program, measured by Nielsen's panel and, increasingly, big data from set-top boxes and smart TVs. Households using television (HUT) and persons using television (PUT) are the totals; share is a program's rating divided by HUT. Nielsen ONE, launched in 2022, merges linear and streaming into one measure.", "related": [ "GRP", "C3 and C7", "Linear TV" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/nielsen-rating/" }, { "term": "Currency", "also": [ "Measurement currency", "Alternative currency" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The audience measurement both buyer and seller accept as the basis for a transaction. Nielsen has been the US television currency for decades; VideoAmp, iSpot, and Comscore have been adopted as alternative currencies by some networks and agencies since 2022. A currency is a negotiated agreement, not a technical fact.", "related": [ "Nielsen Rating", "GRP", "Linear TV" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/currency/" }, { "term": "Program Guarantee", "also": [ "Audience guarantee" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "A seller's commitment that a schedule will deliver a stated number of impressions or rating points against a demographic, with makegoods owed for any shortfall. Guarantees are standard in upfront deals and in programmatic guaranteed, and the audience measurement underlying them is the currency.", "related": [ "Upfront", "Makegood", "Currency" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/program-guarantee/" }, { "term": "Advanced TV", "also": [ "Advanced advertising" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "An umbrella term for any television advertising beyond the traditional age-and-gender demographic buy: addressable, connected TV, data-driven linear, and programmatic TV. The term is used by sellers to package these together and by buyers to describe the audience-based TV planning that replaced demo buying.", "related": [ "Addressable TV", "Connected TV", "Data-Driven Linear" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/advanced-tv/" }, { "term": "Data-Driven Linear", "also": [ "DDL", "Audience-based linear" ], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "Buying linear television against a defined audience segment rather than an age-and-gender demographic, using data to identify the programs and dayparts where the segment over-indexes. The ad still airs to everyone watching; the data changes which spots are bought.", "related": [ "Advanced TV", "Linear TV", "Addressable TV" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/data-driven-linear/" }, { "term": "AVOD", "also": [ "Ad-supported video on demand" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Streaming video that is free or discounted because it carries advertising: the ad tiers of Netflix, Disney+, Max, Peacock, and Paramount+, and free services such as Tubi and Pluto. AVOD and FAST together make up most of connected TV inventory. SVOD is the subscription counterpart without ads.", "related": [ "FAST", "Connected TV", "SVOD" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/avod/" }, { "term": "SVOD", "also": [ "Subscription video on demand" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Streaming video paid for by subscription without advertising. Every major SVOD service added an ad-supported tier between 2022 and 2024, and the term now mainly describes the ad-free tier of a service that also sells ads.", "related": [ "AVOD", "Connected TV" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/svod/" }, { "term": "vMVPD", "also": [ "Virtual MVPD", "Skinny bundle" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "A streaming service that carries live linear channels over the internet: YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, Sling, Fubo, DirecTV Stream. vMVPDs sell some of the ad inventory in the channels they carry, and their impressions blur the line between linear and connected TV.", "related": [ "Connected TV", "Linear TV", "Addressable TV" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/vmvpd/" }, { "term": "Pod", "also": [ "Ad pod", "Commercial break" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "A group of ads shown together in a break. Pod position matters: the first and last ads in a pod are recalled best and priced higher. Streaming services control pod length and composition and sell position as a premium; competitive separation within a pod is a standard request.", "related": [ "Connected TV", "Pre-Roll", "Competitive Separation" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/pod/" }, { "term": "Competitive Separation", "also": [], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "A guarantee that a competitor's ad will not run in the same break or on the same page. Standard in television and requested in streaming and premium digital, harder to deliver in programmatic auctions where the seller does not know who else will win.", "related": [ "Pod", "Roadblock", "Brand Suitability" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/competitive-separation/" }, { "term": "Sponsorship", "also": [ "Program sponsorship", "Presented by" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "Attaching a brand to a program, event, segment, or piece of content beyond a standard spot: billboards, integrations, presenting credits, branded segments. Sponsorships are sold at a flat fee, carry exclusivity, and are measured on exposure and brand outcomes rather than clicks.", "related": [ "Flat Fee", "Sponsored Content", "Product Placement" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/sponsorship/" }, { "term": "Product Placement", "also": [ "Brand integration" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Placing a product inside content rather than in an ad break: a car in a film, a beverage on a talk show desk, a brand in a creator's video. Placements are negotiated case by case, sometimes paid and sometimes traded for product, and are subject to disclosure rules that vary by market.", "related": [ "Sponsorship", "Creator Advertising", "FTC Endorsement Guides" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/product-placement/" }, { "term": "Streaming Impression", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "One ad served in a streaming environment, counted by the ad server or SSAI system. Streaming impressions differ from linear ratings in being counted rather than estimated, and from web impressions in being nearly always fully viewable and complete, which is why CTV viewability reporting is less informative than frequency reporting.", "related": [ "Connected TV", "Impression", "Server-Side Ad Insertion" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/streaming-impression/" }, { "term": "Radio Advertising", "also": [ "Broadcast radio", "AM/FM" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Advertising on terrestrial radio, bought by station, daypart, and market against Nielsen Audio ratings, and increasingly sold alongside the stations' streams and podcasts. Radio remains one of the largest reach media in the US and is bought largely outside programmatic systems.", "related": [ "Audio Advertising", "Daypart", "GRP" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/radio-advertising/" }, { "term": "Out-of-Home", "also": [ "OOH", "Outdoor" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Advertising in public spaces: billboards, transit, street furniture, place-based screens, airports. Traditional OOH is printed and sold on four-week periods; digital OOH is screen-based and increasingly programmatic. Geopath provides US audience measurement.", "related": [ "Digital Out-of-Home", "Impression", "Reach" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/out-of-home/" }, { "term": "Print Advertising", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Advertising in newspapers and magazines, priced by page fraction and circulation and measured by readership surveys. Print has declined for two decades but retains value in specific categories (luxury, local, trade) and remains part of many integrated plans.", "related": [ "Rate Card", "Reach", "Media Mix" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/print-advertising/" }, { "term": "Average Order Value", "also": [ "AOV" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Revenue divided by orders. AOV is the bridge between CPA and ROAS, and a lever in its own right: raising it through bundles, thresholds, and upsells improves every advertising metric without touching the media.", "related": [ "ROAS", "CPA", "Contribution Margin" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/average-order-value/" }, { "term": "Conversion Funnel", "also": [ "Checkout funnel" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The sequence of steps from landing to purchase, with the drop-off at each: product view, add to cart, checkout start, payment, confirmation. Funnel reports identify where paid traffic leaks and are the starting point for landing page optimization.", "related": [ "Funnel", "Landing Page Optimization", "Conversion Rate" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/conversion-funnel/" }, { "term": "Add to Cart Rate", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Add-to-cart events divided by sessions or product views. It measures product appeal and price acceptance before checkout friction enters, and platforms use it as an early optimization signal when purchase volume is too low to learn from.", "related": [ "Conversion Funnel", "Conversion Rate", "Pixel" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/add-to-cart-rate/" }, { "term": "Cart Abandonment", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The share of started checkouts that do not complete, roughly 70 percent across ecommerce. Abandonment is the target of dynamic retargeting and recovery email, and the tactic with the most reliable measured return in ecommerce advertising.", "related": [ "Retargeting", "Conversion Funnel", "Dynamic Creative Optimization" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/cart-abandonment/" }, { "term": "Repeat Purchase Rate", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The share of customers who buy again within a period. It determines whether an advertiser can afford to lose money on first purchase and is the input LTV models depend on most.", "related": [ "LTV", "Cohort Analysis", "Payback Period" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/repeat-purchase-rate/" }, { "term": "Subscription Metrics", "also": [ "Churn", "MRR", "ARPU" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The measures subscription businesses plan advertising against: monthly recurring revenue, average revenue per user, churn rate, and trial-to-paid conversion. Subscription advertisers optimize to predicted LTV rather than first payment and treat churn as the denominator of every acquisition decision.", "related": [ "LTV", "CAC", "Value-Based Bidding" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/subscription-metrics/" }, { "term": "Marketplace Advertising", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Sponsored placements on third-party marketplaces beyond Amazon: eBay, Etsy, Walmart, Target, Wayfair, and vertical marketplaces. Each runs its own sponsored listing auction with catalog-driven creative and closed-loop sales measurement.", "related": [ "Retail Media", "Sponsored Products", "Amazon Ads" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/marketplace-advertising/" }, { "term": "Digital Shelf", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "How a product appears on retail sites: search rank, content quality, images, reviews, price, and availability. Retail media performance depends on the digital shelf, since ads send shoppers to a product page that has to convert. Shelf analytics vendors measure it across retailers.", "related": [ "Retail Media", "Sponsored Products", "Shopping Feed Optimization" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/digital-shelf/" }, { "term": "Share of Search", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "A brand's share of search volume within its category, proposed as a leading indicator of market share. Share of search is measured from Google Trends or search tool data and used as a cheap brand-health proxy between surveys.", "related": [ "Share of Voice", "Brand Awareness", "Brand Search" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/share-of-search/" }, { "term": "In-Store Attribution", "also": [ "Offline sales lift", "Footfall attribution" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Connecting advertising exposure to physical store visits and purchases, through location data, loyalty cards, credit card panels, or retailer data. Vendors include Foursquare (Placed), Cuebiq, and the retail media networks' own closed-loop measurement.", "related": [ "Offline Conversion", "Retail Media", "Geofencing" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/in-store-attribution/" }, { "term": "Closed-Loop Measurement", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Attribution in which the same party sees the ad exposure and the sale, so the two can be matched deterministically: retail media networks, Amazon, and any platform with its own checkout. Closed-loop reporting is more accurate than pixel-based attribution and just as self-interested.", "related": [ "Retail Media", "Attribution", "Incrementality" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/closed-loop-measurement/" }, { "term": "Omnichannel", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "Planning and measuring advertising across online and offline channels as one system, with the customer rather than the channel as the unit. In practice the term signals that store sales, ecommerce, and marketplaces are measured together and that media is allocated against total sales.", "related": [ "Media Mix", "Closed-Loop Measurement", "Marketing Mix Modeling" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/omnichannel/" }, { "term": "Keyword Planner", "also": [], "category": "Search", "definition": "Google Ads' research tool showing search volume ranges, competition, and bid estimates for keywords. Volume figures are bucketed and blended across match types, so the tool is a guide to relative size rather than a count.", "related": [ "Keyword Research", "Keyword Targeting", "Search Query" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/keyword-planner/" }, { "term": "Ad Strength", "also": [], "category": "Search", "definition": "Google's rating (poor to excellent) of a responsive search ad's asset diversity and relevance. Ad strength is a guide to whether the ad has enough distinct headlines and descriptions for Google to test, and it does not directly affect the auction.", "related": [ "Responsive Search Ad", "Quality Score", "Ad Copy" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ad-strength/" }, { "term": "Landing Page Experience", "also": [], "category": "Search", "definition": "The Quality Score component that rates whether the page is relevant, transparent, easy to use, and fast. A below-average landing page experience raises the cost of every click on the keyword.", "related": [ "Quality Score", "Landing Page", "Page Speed" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/landing-page-experience/" }, { "term": "Expected CTR", "also": [], "category": "Search", "definition": "The Quality Score component predicting how likely an ad is to be clicked when shown for a keyword, based on the keyword's history and independent of position and assets. It is Google's estimate of the ad's relevance to the query.", "related": [ "Quality Score", "CTR", "Ad Rank" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/expected-ctr/" }, { "term": "Conversion Action", "also": [], "category": "Search", "definition": "A defined conversion in Google Ads or Microsoft Advertising: source, category, value, counting method (one or every), attribution model, and whether it is primary (used for bidding) or secondary (observed only). Misconfigured conversion actions are the most common cause of bad automated bidding.", "related": [ "Smart Bidding", "Target CPA", "Google Analytics 4" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/conversion-action/" }, { "term": "Portfolio Bid Strategy", "also": [], "category": "Search", "definition": "A bid strategy shared across several campaigns so the algorithm optimizes the group rather than each campaign alone, with optional bid caps and floors. Portfolios let an advertiser hold a target across a set of campaigns without starving smaller ones.", "related": [ "Smart Bidding", "Target CPA", "Campaign Structure" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/portfolio-bid-strategy/" }, { "term": "Broad Match", "also": [], "category": "Search", "definition": "The match type that lets a keyword trigger ads on any query Google judges related, including synonyms, implied intent, and different word orders. Broad match with Smart Bidding is Google's recommended setup and the one that most needs negative keywords and search term monitoring.", "related": [ "Match Type", "Negative Keyword", "Search Terms Report" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/broad-match/" }, { "term": "Close Variants", "also": [], "category": "Search", "definition": "Queries Google treats as matching an exact or phrase keyword despite differences: misspellings, plurals, abbreviations, reordered words, and, since 2018, same-meaning queries. Close variants removed the precision of exact match and are the reason exact match no longer means exact.", "related": [ "Match Type", "Broad Match", "Search Query" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/close-variants/" }, { "term": "Trademark Bidding", "also": [ "Competitor bidding" ], "category": "Search", "definition": "Bidding on a competitor's brand name as a keyword. Lawful in the United States and most markets provided the ad copy does not use the trademark misleadingly; platforms restrict trademark use in ad text but not in keywords. Competitor conquesting is common and rarely efficient.", "related": [ "Brand Search", "Comparative Advertising", "Keyword Targeting" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/trademark-bidding/" }, { "term": "Sitelinks", "also": [], "category": "Search", "definition": "Additional links beneath a search ad to specific pages: pricing, locations, categories. Sitelinks are the most valuable ad asset, raising click-through rate and page coverage, and are required for an ad to reach the highest positions in practice.", "related": [ "Ad Assets", "CTR", "Responsive Search Ad" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/sitelinks/" }, { "term": "Call Tracking", "also": [], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Assigning dynamic phone numbers to visitors so calls can be attributed to the campaign, keyword, or channel that brought them. Vendors include CallRail, Invoca, and Marchex; Google Ads offers forwarding numbers for call assets. Calls are a large share of conversions for local and services advertisers.", "related": [ "Offline Conversion", "CPL", "Local Services Ads" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/call-tracking/" }, { "term": "SEO", "also": [ "Search engine optimization", "Organic search" ], "category": "Search", "definition": "Earning unpaid search visibility through content, technical quality, and authority. SEO and paid search are planned together: paid covers what organic cannot rank for, organic reduces dependence on paid, and both are affected by AI answers absorbing informational queries.", "related": [ "Search Advertising", "Generative Engine Optimization", "Brand Search" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/seo/" }, { "term": "App Store Optimization", "also": [ "ASO" ], "category": "Search", "definition": "Improving an app's organic visibility and conversion in the App Store and Google Play: title, keywords, screenshots, ratings, and metadata. ASO is to Apple Search Ads what SEO is to paid search, and the two share keyword research.", "related": [ "Apple Search Ads", "SEO", "CPI" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/app-store-optimization/" }, { "term": "Voice Search", "also": [], "category": "Search", "definition": "Queries spoken to assistants and smart speakers. Voice search advertising has never materialized at scale; its main effect on paid search is longer, question-shaped queries that broad match captures.", "related": [ "Search Query", "Long-Tail Keywords" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/voice-search/" }, { "term": "Shopping Campaign Priority", "also": [], "category": "Search", "definition": "A setting in Standard Shopping campaigns that determines which campaign bids when several contain the same product, used to route branded versus non-branded queries or to protect margin on specific products. Priority structures largely disappeared with Performance Max.", "related": [ "Shopping Ads", "Performance Max", "Campaign Structure" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/shopping-campaign-priority/" }, { "term": "Ad Set", "also": [ "Ad group (social)" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "Meta's unit for audience, placement, budget, schedule, and optimization, sitting between campaign and ad. Ad sets are where the learning phase runs and where audience overlap occurs; TikTok's ad group and LinkedIn's campaign play the same role.", "related": [ "Campaign Structure", "Learning Phase", "Audience Overlap" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ad-set/" }, { "term": "Campaign Budget Optimization", "also": [ "CBO", "Advantage+ campaign budget" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "Setting the budget at the campaign level and letting the platform distribute it across ad sets by performance, rather than fixing a budget per ad set. CBO favors ad sets that convert cheaply, which can starve prospecting in favor of retargeting unless minimums are set.", "related": [ "Ad Set", "Budget", "Advantage+" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/campaign-budget-optimization/" }, { "term": "Placement", "also": [], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "Where within a platform an ad can appear: feeds, Stories, Reels, in-stream, search, Audience Network. Automatic placements let the platform choose; manual placements exclude the ones that perform poorly or do not suit the creative. Placement-level reporting shows where the money went.", "related": [ "In-Feed Ad", "Stories Ads", "Advantage+" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/placement/" }, { "term": "Optimization Event", "also": [ "Optimization goal" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "The action a platform's algorithm is told to chase: purchases, leads, link clicks, landing page views, ThruPlays, reach. The event chosen shapes who sees the ad far more than the targeting does, and an event with too few occurrences to learn from produces unstable delivery.", "related": [ "Learning Phase", "Conversion Action", "Smart Bidding" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/optimization-event/" }, { "term": "Cost Cap", "also": [ "Cost per result goal" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "A bid strategy that asks the platform to keep the average cost per result at or below a figure while spending as much as it can. Cost caps trade volume for efficiency and, set too low, stop delivery entirely.", "related": [ "Target CPA", "Bid Cap", "Optimization Event" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/cost-cap/" }, { "term": "Bid Cap", "also": [], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "A hard maximum on the bid in any single auction. Bid caps give the most control and the least delivery, and are used by advertisers with a firm marginal value per result rather than a target average.", "related": [ "Cost Cap", "Target CPA", "First-Price Auction" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/bid-cap/" }, { "term": "Estimated Action Rate", "also": [], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "Meta's prediction that a given user will take the optimization event if shown the ad, one of the three inputs to its auction alongside bid and ad quality. The rate is why two advertisers with the same bid see different costs and why relevance and creative affect price.", "related": [ "Optimization Event", "Quality Score", "Relevance Diagnostics" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/estimated-action-rate/" }, { "term": "Relevance Diagnostics", "also": [ "Quality ranking", "Engagement rate ranking" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Meta's three rankings of an ad against competitors for the same audience: quality, engagement rate, and conversion rate, each reported as above average, average, or below. Low rankings indicate creative or audience problems and raise costs through the auction.", "related": [ "Estimated Action Rate", "Creative Fatigue", "CTR" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/relevance-diagnostics/" }, { "term": "ThruPlay", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Meta's video metric and optimization goal counting views to completion or to 15 seconds, whichever comes first. ThruPlay replaced the 10-second view and is the buying unit for Meta video view campaigns.", "related": [ "CPV", "Video Completion Rate", "Optimization Event" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/thruplay/" }, { "term": "Partnership Ads", "also": [ "Branded content ads", "Allowlisting" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Meta's format for running ads from a creator's handle with the creator's permission, so the ad carries the creator's identity and the engagement stays on their post. The equivalent of TikTok's Spark Ads and the standard way to amplify creator content on Instagram.", "related": [ "Spark Ads", "Creator Advertising", "UGC" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/partnership-ads/" }, { "term": "Social Listening", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "Monitoring public social conversation about a brand, category, or topic for volume, sentiment, and themes, using tools such as Brandwatch, Sprinklr, and Talkwalker. Listening informs creative and crisis response and is occasionally used to measure the earned effect of paid campaigns.", "related": [ "Brand Awareness", "Organic Social", "Share of Search" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/social-listening/" }, { "term": "Community Management", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "Responding to comments, messages, and mentions on a brand's social accounts and ads. Comments on paid posts are public and shape how the ad is received; unmanaged ad comments are a common brand safety failure that no verification vendor catches.", "related": [ "Organic Social", "Brand Safety", "Dark Posting" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/community-management/" }, { "term": "Messaging Ads", "also": [ "Click-to-message", "Click-to-WhatsApp", "Conversation ads" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Ads whose click opens a conversation in Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram DM, or LinkedIn messaging rather than a website. Messaging ads suit markets and categories where commerce happens in chat and are measured on conversations started and, with integration, on sales closed in the thread.", "related": [ "Lead Form Ad", "In-Feed Ad", "Meta Ads" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/messaging-ads/" }, { "term": "Social Commerce", "also": [ "Shoppable posts" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Buying inside a social platform without leaving it: TikTok Shop, Instagram Shopping (checkout since scaled back), Pinterest product Pins, YouTube Shopping. Shop ads use the platform's catalog and checkout and report closed-loop sales.", "related": [ "TikTok Ads", "Collection Ad", "Closed-Loop Measurement" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/social-commerce/" }, { "term": "Live Shopping", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Selling during a live video stream with products pinned and purchasable in real time. Enormous in China (Taobao Live, Douyin), growing on TikTok Shop and YouTube in the West, and usually creator-led.", "related": [ "Social Commerce", "Creator Advertising", "TikTok Ads" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/live-shopping/" }, { "term": "Seat", "also": [ "DSP seat", "Buyer seat" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "An account on a DSP or exchange through which a buyer transacts. Agencies hold master seats with client sub-accounts; advertisers can hold their own. Seat IDs identify the buyer in bid responses and in deal setup.", "related": [ "Demand-Side Platform", "Deal ID", "In-Housing" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/seat/" }, { "term": "Line Item", "also": [], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "The unit of a programmatic or ad server campaign that holds targeting, budget, bid, creative, and flight: an insertion order contains line items, a line item contains creatives. Reporting and troubleshooting happen at the line item level.", "related": [ "Insertion Order", "Trafficking", "Pacing" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/line-item/" }, { "term": "Bid Landscape", "also": [ "Bid density" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "The distribution of winning prices for a type of inventory, which tells a buyer how much to bid to win a given share of auctions. DSPs surface bid landscapes as reports or as the model behind bid shading.", "related": [ "Bid Shading", "Win Rate", "First-Price Auction" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/bid-landscape/" }, { "term": "Timeout", "also": [ "Auction timeout", "Latency" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "The time an exchange or header bidding wrapper waits for bids before closing the auction, typically 100 to 300 milliseconds for web and longer for CTV. Bids that arrive late lose regardless of price, which is why DSPs locate servers near exchanges.", "related": [ "Real-Time Bidding", "Bid Response", "Header Bidding" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/timeout/" }, { "term": "QPS", "also": [ "Queries per second" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "The rate of bid requests an exchange sends a DSP, a capacity cost the DSP manages by filtering traffic before bidding. QPS limits are why a DSP does not see every impression and why supply path optimization also serves the DSP's own economics.", "related": [ "Bid Request", "Supply Path Optimization", "Real-Time Bidding" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/qps/" }, { "term": "Bid Filtering", "also": [ "Traffic shaping", "Pre-bid filtering" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Sellers and DSPs discarding bid requests before the auction to save cost: requests unlikely to be bid on, from blocked sites, or failing quality checks. Shaping means a buyer's targeting is applied to a pre-filtered stream, not to all inventory.", "related": [ "QPS", "Bid Request", "Supply Path Optimization" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/bid-filtering/" }, { "term": "Publisher", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "Any owner of an audience that sells advertising against it: news sites, apps, streaming services, podcast networks, social platforms, retailers. The sell side of every transaction in this glossary.", "related": [ "Supply-Side Platform", "Ad Server", "Walled Garden" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/publisher/" }, { "term": "Premium Inventory", "also": [], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "Placements on well-known publishers, above the fold, in editorial context, sold directly or through private deals at higher prices. Premium is a sales term without a fixed definition; buyers should ask what makes a given package premium and check the viewability and attention data.", "related": [ "Private Marketplace", "Programmatic Guaranteed", "Inclusion List" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/premium-inventory/" }, { "term": "Remnant Inventory", "also": [ "Unsold inventory" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "Impressions a publisher could not sell directly, released to networks and open auction at whatever price they fetch. The original programmatic supply, and still the bulk of open auction volume.", "related": [ "Open Auction", "Ad Network", "Waterfall" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/remnant-inventory/" }, { "term": "Take Rate", "also": [ "Ad tech tax" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "The share of advertiser spend retained by intermediaries between advertiser and publisher: DSP, SSP, data, verification, and agency fees. The ANA's 2023 study found publishers received about 36 cents of each open-web programmatic dollar; direct and PG deals have far lower take rates.", "related": [ "Media Transparency", "Supply Path Optimization", "Agency Fee" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/take-rate/" }, { "term": "Log-Level Data", "also": [ "LLD" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Event-level records from a DSP or SSP, one row per bid, impression, click, or conversion, with prices and identifiers. Log-level data is the raw material for independent measurement, supply path analysis, and fee audits, and access to it is worth writing into DSP contracts.", "related": [ "Ad Server Log", "Media Audit", "Supply Path Optimization" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/log-level-data/" }, { "term": "Post-Bid", "also": [ "Post-bid blocking" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Verification applied after an impression is won, either by blocking the creative from rendering (showing a blank or fallback) or by measuring and reporting only. Post-bid blocking wastes the paid impression; pre-bid avoidance is preferred where the DSP supports it.", "related": [ "Ad Verification", "Brand Safety", "Pre-Bid" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/post-bid/" }, { "term": "Pre-Bid", "also": [ "Pre-bid targeting", "Pre-bid segments" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Applying verification, contextual, or audience data inside the DSP before a bid is placed, so unsuitable impressions are never bought. Pre-bid segments from IAS, DoubleVerify, Peer39, and others are available in every major DSP and carry a CPM fee.", "related": [ "Ad Verification", "Post-Bid", "Contextual Targeting" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/pre-bid/" }, { "term": "Contextual Category", "also": [ "IAB category" ], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "A content classification from the IAB Content Taxonomy (or a vendor's own) attached to a page or video: automotive, personal finance, news and politics. Categories are used both to target and to exclude, and appear in bid requests as the cat field.", "related": [ "Contextual Targeting", "Brand Suitability", "OpenRTB" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/contextual-category/" }, { "term": "Keyword Blocklist", "also": [ "Blocklist", "Negative keyword list (display)" ], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "A list of words that prevent an ad from serving on a page containing them. Blocklists are blunt: the word shooting blocks basketball coverage, and news publishers have documented large revenue losses from advertiser blocklists. Sentiment- and category-based suitability is the better tool.", "related": [ "Brand Safety", "Brand Suitability", "Contextual Targeting" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/keyword-blocklist/" }, { "term": "News Avoidance", "also": [ "Defunding news" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "The advertiser practice of excluding news content by category or keyword to avoid controversy, which removes a large, attentive, and generally brand-safe audience from plans. Research from the Stagwell and others has found no brand harm from adjacency to hard news; the practice persists because it is easy.", "related": [ "Keyword Blocklist", "Brand Suitability", "Inclusion List" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/news-avoidance/" }, { "term": "Sustainability", "also": [ "Carbon emissions", "Green media" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "Measuring and reducing the carbon emissions of ad delivery, which are dominated by the volume of bid requests and the weight of creative. Scope3 is the main measurement provider; reducing supply paths and excluding MFA inventory lowers emissions and improves quality at the same time.", "related": [ "Supply Path Optimization", "Made-for-Advertising Site", "Bid Filtering" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/sustainability/" }, { "term": "Ad Quality", "also": [ "Creative quality control", "Malvertising" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Publisher-side screening of creatives for malware, deceptive content, heavy files, auto-play audio, and policy violations. Malvertising, ads that deliver malware, is the reason SSPs and publishers run creative scanning from vendors such as Confiant, GeoEdge, and The Media Trust.", "related": [ "Supply-Side Platform", "Brand Safety", "HTML5 Ad" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ad-quality/" }, { "term": "Ad Tech", "also": [ "Advertising technology" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "The software and companies that automate the buying, selling, serving, targeting, and measuring of advertising: DSPs, SSPs, exchanges, ad servers, DMPs, CDPs, verification, identity, and the rest of the directory. Distinguished from martech, which manages owned channels such as email and CRM.", "related": [ "Demand-Side Platform", "Supply-Side Platform", "Martech" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ad-tech/" }, { "term": "Martech", "also": [ "Marketing technology" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Software for owned and earned marketing: CRM, email, marketing automation, CDPs, analytics, content management, personalization. Martech and ad tech overlap at the CDP and the clean room, where first-party data flows into paid media.", "related": [ "Ad Tech", "Customer Data Platform", "First-Party Data" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/martech/" }, { "term": "Deep Link", "also": [ "Deferred deep link", "Universal link" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "A link that opens a specific screen inside an app rather than the app's home or a web page. Deferred deep links carry the destination through an install so a new user lands where the ad promised. Branch and the MMPs provide the routing.", "related": [ "Mobile Measurement Partner", "App Campaigns", "Landing Page" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/deep-link/" }, { "term": "Install Attribution", "also": [ "Last-click install attribution" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Assigning an app install to the ad click or view that preceded it, within a lookback window, done by an MMP matching device identifiers or, on iOS, through SKAdNetwork postbacks. View-through install attribution is the most inflated metric in mobile marketing.", "related": [ "Mobile Measurement Partner", "SKAdNetwork", "CPI" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/install-attribution/" }, { "term": "Re-Engagement", "also": [ "Retargeting (app)", "Re-attribution" ], "category": "Targeting and data", "definition": "Advertising to existing app users to bring them back or move them to an event, tracked by the MMP as a re-attribution or re-engagement. Depends on device identifiers, so it has shrunk on iOS since App Tracking Transparency.", "related": [ "Retargeting", "App Tracking Transparency", "Mobile Measurement Partner" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/re-engagement/" }, { "term": "Post-Install Event", "also": [ "In-app event" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Actions after install that indicate value: registration, tutorial completion, first purchase, day-7 retention. App advertisers optimize to post-install events rather than installs, since installs are cheap and often worthless, and SKAdNetwork's conversion value encodes them coarsely.", "related": [ "CPI", "SKAdNetwork", "Value-Based Bidding" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/post-install-event/" }, { "term": "Retention Rate", "also": [ "Day-1, Day-7, Day-30 retention" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The share of new app users still active after a number of days. Retention curves by acquisition source are the standard measure of user quality in app marketing and the input to LTV predictions.", "related": [ "Post-Install Event", "Cohort Analysis", "LTV" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/retention-rate/" }, { "term": "Mobile Web", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Websites viewed in a phone browser, as distinct from apps. Mobile web ads run in standard IAB units sized for small screens and are identified by cookies with all their limits; in-app ads use SDKs and advertising IDs. Most mobile time is in apps, most mobile web traffic comes from search and social links.", "related": [ "Mobile Advertising", "Display Advertising", "Mobile Advertising ID" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/mobile-web/" }, { "term": "Playable Ad", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "An interactive ad that lets a user try a game or app for a few seconds before installing. Playables are the highest-converting format in game user acquisition and are built in HTML5 to the network's specifications.", "related": [ "Rewarded Video", "In-Game Advertising", "CPI" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/playable-ad/" }, { "term": "Ad Monetization", "also": [ "App monetization" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "A publisher's or developer's revenue from selling advertising, managed through ad servers, SSPs, mediation, and direct sales. The other side of every buy in this glossary; the metrics are eCPM, fill rate, and ARPDAU (average revenue per daily active user).", "related": [ "Mediation", "Effective CPM", "Fill Rate" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ad-monetization/" }, { "term": "KPI", "also": [ "Key performance indicator" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The metric a campaign is judged on, chosen before launch and tied to the objective: CPA for direct response, reach and lift for awareness, pipeline for B2B. A campaign with several KPIs has none; the discipline is picking one primary metric and a few diagnostics.", "related": [ "Media Brief", "CPA", "Brand Lift" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/kpi/" }, { "term": "Vanity Metric", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "A number that looks good and changes no decision: impressions without reach, clicks without conversions, followers, likes. Vanity metrics are what platform dashboards lead with and what reporting should demote.", "related": [ "KPI", "Engagement Rate", "CTR" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/vanity-metric/" }, { "term": "Reporting Cadence", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "How often performance is reported and to whom: daily pacing checks, weekly optimization reviews, monthly client reports, quarterly business reviews. Cadence should match the speed at which decisions can be made; daily reporting of a metric that takes two weeks to stabilize produces noise.", "related": [ "Post-Campaign Report", "Conversion Lag", "Dashboard" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/reporting-cadence/" }, { "term": "Dashboard", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "A live report combining data from several platforms, built in Looker Studio, Tableau, Power BI, or a reporting tool such as Funnel or Supermetrics. Dashboards are only as good as their data pipeline and naming conventions, and most fail on those rather than on design.", "related": [ "Reporting Cadence", "UTM Parameters", "Google Analytics 4" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/dashboard/" }, { "term": "Naming Convention", "also": [ "Taxonomy" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "A fixed structure for campaign, ad set, ad, and UTM names that encodes channel, objective, audience, creative, and date so reporting can be automated. The unglamorous foundation of every working dashboard, and the first thing an audit finds missing.", "related": [ "UTM Parameters", "Dashboard", "Campaign Structure" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/naming-convention/" }, { "term": "Deduplication", "also": [ "Deduplicated reach", "Event deduplication" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Removing double counting: the same person reached on two platforms counted once for reach, or the same conversion sent by pixel and Conversions API counted once. Cross-platform reach deduplication needs an identity graph or panel; event deduplication needs a shared event ID.", "related": [ "Reach", "Conversions API", "Identity Resolution" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/deduplication/" }, { "term": "Panel", "also": [ "Measurement panel" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "A recruited sample of people whose media consumption is recorded and projected to the population: Nielsen's TV panel, Comscore's digital panel, YouGov's brand tracking panel. Panels are the only way to measure across walled gardens without their cooperation, and they are small relative to digital audiences.", "related": [ "Nielsen Rating", "Brand Lift", "Reach" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/panel/" }, { "term": "Sales Lift", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The increase in sales attributable to a campaign, measured by comparing exposed and unexposed groups or test and control markets against purchase data from retailers, credit card panels, or the advertiser's own records. Sales lift studies are the outcome measure for CPG and retail advertising.", "related": [ "Incrementality", "Geo Experiment", "In-Store Attribution" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/sales-lift/" }, { "term": "Synthetic Control", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "A statistical method that builds a weighted combination of untreated markets to mimic what a treated market would have done without the campaign, used in geo experiments where a single matched control market is not available. The basis of Google's and Meta's geo lift tools.", "related": [ "Geo Experiment", "Incrementality", "Marketing Mix Modeling" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/synthetic-control/" }, { "term": "Bayesian MMM", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Marketing mix modeling that uses Bayesian inference to incorporate prior knowledge (from lift tests, past models, or reasonable ranges) and to express uncertainty in its results. Meta's Robyn is not Bayesian; Google's Meridian, PyMC-Marketing, and Recast are.", "related": [ "Marketing Mix Modeling", "Incrementality", "Confidence Interval" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/bayesian-mmm/" }, { "term": "Adstock", "also": [ "Carryover", "Decay" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The lagged effect of advertising, where exposure this week still influences sales in later weeks with diminishing force. Adstock is a core parameter of marketing mix models, and its estimated length differs by channel: long for television and brand, short for search.", "related": [ "Marketing Mix Modeling", "Conversion Lag", "Frequency" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/adstock/" }, { "term": "Saturation", "also": [ "Diminishing returns", "Response curve" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The point at which additional spend in a channel returns less than it costs. Response curves from marketing mix models or spend tests show where saturation begins, and budget allocation means moving money from saturated channels to unsaturated ones.", "related": [ "Marketing Mix Modeling", "Media Mix", "Budget" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/saturation/" }, { "term": "Marginal CPA", "also": [ "Marginal ROAS" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The cost of the next conversion, as opposed to the average cost of all conversions to date. Marginal CPA rises as spend increases within a channel, and the right budget is where marginal CPA reaches the value of a conversion, not where average CPA does.", "related": [ "CPA", "Saturation", "Breakeven ROAS" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/marginal-cpa/" }, { "term": "Unique Reach", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Reach deduplicated across placements, devices, and ideally platforms, so a person seen on YouTube and Display counts once. Google and Meta report unique reach within their own systems; cross-platform unique reach requires a panel or identity partner.", "related": [ "Reach", "Deduplication", "Frequency" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/unique-reach/" }, { "term": "On-Target Percentage", "also": [ "In-target rate", "Demo accuracy" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The share of impressions delivered to the intended demographic, measured by a panel or identity provider. Nielsen DAR and Comscore vCE report it for digital; on-target guarantees are common in video and CTV buys.", "related": [ "Reach", "Panel", "Program Guarantee" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/on-target-percentage/" }, { "term": "Ad Concept", "also": [ "Big idea", "Creative platform" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "The central idea a campaign's executions express, which can be adapted across formats, lengths, and channels. Strong concepts survive the cut from 60 seconds to 6; weak ones are a single execution that cannot be adapted.", "related": [ "Modular Creative", "Brand Guidelines", "Creative Testing" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ad-concept/" }, { "term": "Key Visual", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "The single image or composition that anchors a campaign and is adapted across every format. In digital the key visual has to work at 1:1, 4:5, 9:16, and 1.91:1, which is why it is designed as a system of elements rather than one locked layout.", "related": [ "Ad Concept", "Aspect Ratio", "Modular Creative" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/key-visual/" }, { "term": "Static Ad", "also": [ "Static image ad" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "A single non-moving image with or without text overlay. Statics are cheap, fast to test, and still competitive with video on many feed placements for direct response; a static and a video of the same concept should both be in rotation.", "related": [ "Display Advertising", "In-Feed Ad", "Creative Testing" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/static-ad/" }, { "term": "Motion Graphics", "also": [], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Animated text, shapes, and images, as opposed to filmed video. Motion graphics turn statics into video placements at low cost and are the standard way to produce Stories and Reels variants of a campaign without a shoot.", "related": [ "Static Ad", "Vertical Video", "HTML5 Ad" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/motion-graphics/" }, { "term": "Voiceover", "also": [ "VO", "Announcer" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Narration over video or audio creative. Sound-off feed environments make voiceover optional; sound-on placements (YouTube, CTV, audio) make it central. AI voice tools now produce acceptable voiceover for tests and low-budget variants; broadcast still uses talent.", "related": [ "Caption", "Audio Advertising", "Usage Rights" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/voiceover/" }, { "term": "Localization", "also": [ "Transcreation" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Adapting creative for another language and market, beyond translation: idiom, imagery, offers, legal disclaimers, talent. Transcreation is the term for adaptation that rewrites rather than translates. Platform tools now auto-translate ad text, which is fine for tests and wrong for launches.", "related": [ "Ad Copy", "Brand Guidelines", "Geotargeting" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/localization/" }, { "term": "Disclaimer", "also": [ "Legal copy", "Super" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Required text in an ad: offer terms, pricing conditions, financial or pharmaceutical warnings, political paid-for-by lines. Disclaimers must be legible for the time they are shown (broadcast has clear-and-conspicuous standards) and are the most common reason regulated-category ads are rejected.", "related": [ "Substantiation", "Political Advertising Rules", "Ad Copy" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/disclaimer/" }, { "term": "Creative Brief", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "The document that tells a creative team what to make: objective, audience, single-minded proposition, support, tone, mandatories, formats, and deadline. The media brief's counterpart, and in performance advertising the two are increasingly one document.", "related": [ "Media Brief", "Ad Concept", "Brand Guidelines" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/creative-brief/" }, { "term": "Generative AI Creative", "also": [ "AI-generated ads", "Synthetic creative" ], "category": "Creative and formats", "definition": "Ad images, video, copy, and voice produced by generative models, from platform tools (Meta's generative features, Google's asset generation) and standalone tools. Platforms increasingly require or apply labels on synthetic media, the EU AI Act's Article 50 requires disclosure of deepfakes, and talent contracts now address AI likeness use.", "related": [ "Dynamic Creative Optimization", "Usage Rights", "Political Advertising Rules" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/generative-ai-creative/" }, { "term": "Creative Volume", "also": [ "Creative velocity" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "The number of distinct ad variants an account produces per period. Automated social campaigns reward volume because they need fresh creative to escape fatigue and to find pockets of audience; performance teams now measure creative output as a KPI alongside media efficiency.", "related": [ "Creative Fatigue", "Modular Creative", "Advantage+" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/creative-volume/" }, { "term": "Media Agency", "also": [ "Media buying agency" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "An agency that plans and buys media on behalf of advertisers, as distinct from a creative agency that makes the ads. The holding companies separated the two in the 1990s; independents and consultancies now offer both, and most digital-first agencies never separated them.", "related": [ "Agency of Record", "Holding Company", "Agency Fee" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/media-agency/" }, { "term": "Independent Agency", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "An agency not owned by a holding company. Independents compete on senior attention, flexibility, and transparency, and have grown share as advertisers reacted to holding company consolidation and principal-based buying.", "related": [ "Holding Company", "Media Agency", "Principal-Based Buying" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/independent-agency/" }, { "term": "Consultancy", "also": [ "Media consultancy" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "A firm that advises on media strategy, measurement, agency selection, and in-housing without buying media itself, or a boutique that does both at small scale. Media auditors, pitch consultants, and the consulting arms of the big four occupy the first category.", "related": [ "Media Audit", "In-Housing", "Pitch" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/consultancy/" }, { "term": "Client Services", "also": [ "Account management" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "The agency function that owns the client relationship: briefs, approvals, reporting, budgets, and escalation. In media agencies client services sits between the client and the planning, buying, and analytics teams.", "related": [ "Media Agency", "Scope of Work", "Reporting Cadence" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/client-services/" }, { "term": "Media Planner", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "The person who turns a brief into a plan: audience research, channel selection, budget allocation, flighting, and forecasting. Planners work upstream of buyers; in digital the roles have merged into planner-buyers and channel specialists.", "related": [ "Media Plan", "Media Buyer", "Media Brief" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/media-planner/" }, { "term": "Media Buyer", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "The person who executes a plan: negotiating with sellers, setting up campaigns in platforms, managing bids and budgets, and optimizing delivery. Programmatic traders and paid search and social specialists are buyers by another name.", "related": [ "Media Planner", "Trafficking", "Ad Operations" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/media-buyer/" }, { "term": "Optimization", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "Adjusting a running campaign to improve results: shifting budget, changing bids, pausing placements, refreshing creative, tightening targeting. Optimization is judged on the metric that matters and is limited by learning phases and by the noise in short periods of data.", "related": [ "KPI", "Learning Phase", "Statistical Significance" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/optimization/" }, { "term": "Forecast", "also": [ "Media forecast", "Delivery estimate" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "The expected impressions, reach, clicks, conversions, and cost for a plan before it runs, built from platform estimates, benchmarks, and past results. Forecasts set expectations the campaign is then judged against, so their assumptions should be written down.", "related": [ "Media Plan", "Benchmarks", "Reach" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/forecast/" }, { "term": "Benchmarks", "also": [ "Industry benchmarks" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Typical values for a metric by channel, industry, and objective, drawn from platform data, agency reports, and published studies. Benchmarks tell you whether a number is unusual; they cannot tell you whether it is good, which depends on the economics of the advertiser. This library maintains a benchmarks page with sources.", "related": [ "KPI", "Forecast", "CPM" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/benchmarks/" }, { "term": "Billing", "also": [ "Media billing", "Reconciliation" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "Invoicing for media, based on delivered impressions reconciled between the publisher's and advertiser's counts, plus fees. Agencies bill clients and pay vendors, carrying the float and the credit risk; sequential liability and payment terms determine who bears what.", "related": [ "Discrepancy", "Sequential Liability", "Agency Fee" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/billing/" }, { "term": "Rebate", "also": [ "Volume bonus", "AVB" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "A payment from a media vendor to an agency based on the volume of spend the agency places, sometimes passed to clients and sometimes not. Undisclosed rebates were the center of the 2016 ANA transparency report and are addressed in most modern agency contracts by disclosure and pass-through clauses.", "related": [ "Media Transparency", "Agency Fee", "Principal-Based Buying" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/rebate/" }, { "term": "IAB", "also": [ "Interactive Advertising Bureau" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "The US trade association for digital advertising, with affiliates in many countries. The IAB publishes standard terms, ad formats, and research; its Tech Lab develops the technical standards (OpenRTB, VAST, ads.txt, GPP). It represents publishers and ad tech more than advertisers.", "related": [ "OpenRTB", "Insertion Order", "ANA" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/iab/" }, { "term": "ANA", "also": [ "Association of National Advertisers" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "The US trade association for advertisers. The ANA commissioned the 2016 K2 transparency report and the 2023 programmatic supply chain study, and it publishes guidance on agency contracts, in-housing, and media measurement from the buyer's side.", "related": [ "Media Transparency", "IAB", "4A's" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ana/" }, { "term": "4A's", "also": [ "American Association of Advertising Agencies" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "The US trade association for advertising agencies, co-author with the IAB of the standard terms and conditions for digital media buys and a party to industry positions on measurement, transparency, and talent.", "related": [ "Insertion Order", "ANA", "IAB" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/4a-s/" }, { "term": "WFA", "also": [ "World Federation of Advertisers" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "The global association of national advertiser bodies and multinational advertisers. It ran the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) until 2024 and publishes cross-media measurement principles and media transparency guidance.", "related": [ "Brand Safety", "ANA", "Cross-Media Measurement" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/wfa/" }, { "term": "Cross-Media Measurement", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Measuring reach and frequency across television, streaming, and digital platforms in one deduplicated view, the industry goal pursued through the WFA's Halo framework, the ANA's Aquila initiative in the US, and Origin in the UK, with the cooperation of the walled gardens as the sticking point.", "related": [ "Unique Reach", "Deduplication", "Panel" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/cross-media-measurement/" }, { "term": "Trade Press", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "The publications that cover the advertising business: Ad Age, Adweek, Digiday, AdExchanger, Campaign, The Drum, Marketing Brew, and specialist newsletters. Where platform changes, agency moves, and measurement disputes are reported first.", "related": [ "IAB", "ANA" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/trade-press/" }, { "term": "Cannes Lions", "also": [ "Awards" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "The largest advertising awards festival, held each June, and the shorthand for creative awards generally. Media Lions recognize media strategy; effectiveness awards (Effies, IPA Effectiveness) reward proven business results and are the ones media practitioners cite.", "related": [ "Trade Press", "Ad Concept" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/cannes-lions/" }, { "term": "Consent Rate", "also": [ "Opt-in rate" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "The share of visitors who accept cookies or tracking when asked. European consent rates range from under 50 to over 90 percent depending on banner design, and the rate determines how much of an audience is measurable and targetable. Regulators have ruled against designs that inflate it.", "related": [ "Consent Management Platform", "Dark Patterns", "Modeled Conversions" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/consent-rate/" }, { "term": "Cookie Banner", "also": [ "Consent banner" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "The notice presented on first visit asking for consent to cookies and tracking, required in practice under the ePrivacy Directive and GDPR and, in a lighter form, under some US state laws. The banner is the visible face of the consent management platform.", "related": [ "Consent Management Platform", "ePrivacy Directive", "Consent Rate" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/cookie-banner/" }, { "term": "Data Broker", "also": [], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "A company that collects and sells personal data about people with whom it has no direct relationship. Data brokers supply much of the third-party audience market and are subject to registration laws in California, Vermont, Texas, and Oregon, and to the California Delete Act's one-stop deletion mechanism from 2026.", "related": [ "Third-Party Data", "State Privacy Laws", "Sensitive Data" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/data-broker/" }, { "term": "Data Minimization", "also": [], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "The principle, written into the GDPR and most US state laws, that only the personal data necessary for a stated purpose should be collected and kept. For advertising it argues against collecting everything a pixel can see and for defining events deliberately.", "related": [ "Personal Data", "GDPR", "Pixel" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/data-minimization/" }, { "term": "Purpose Limitation", "also": [], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "The principle that personal data collected for one purpose may not be used for an incompatible one without a new legal basis. It is why customer data collected for order fulfilment needs consent or a compatible-purpose analysis before it becomes a targeting list.", "related": [ "Lawful Basis", "Data Minimization", "Customer Match" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/purpose-limitation/" }, { "term": "Data Subject Rights", "also": [ "Access request", "Right to delete" ], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "The rights individuals have over their personal data: access, correction, deletion, portability, objection, and, in the US, opt-out of sale and targeted advertising. Advertisers must honor them across ad platforms and data partners, which requires knowing where the data went.", "related": [ "Opt-Out", "GDPR", "State Privacy Laws" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/data-subject-rights/" }, { "term": "Cross-Border Transfer", "also": [ "International data transfer", "Data Privacy Framework" ], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "Moving personal data from the EU or UK to a country without an adequacy decision, which requires a mechanism such as the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, standard contractual clauses, or binding corporate rules. Relevant to any European advertiser using US ad platforms and analytics.", "related": [ "GDPR", "Data Processing Agreement", "Personal Data" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/cross-border-transfer/" }, { "term": "Cookie Consent Enforcement", "also": [ "CNIL fines", "DPA enforcement" ], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "Regulatory action over consent practices, led by France's CNIL, which has fined Google, Meta, Amazon, TikTok, and others tens or hundreds of millions of euros for banners that made refusal harder than acceptance. The enforcement record is why banner design is a compliance matter.", "related": [ "Cookie Banner", "Dark Patterns", "GDPR" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/cookie-consent-enforcement/" }, { "term": "Children's Advertising", "also": [ "CARU", "Kids advertising rules" ], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "The rules for advertising to and around children: COPPA for data, CARU's self-regulatory guidelines for content in the US, the UK's HFSS restrictions on food advertising, and platform bans on targeting minors by interest. Most platforms allow only age and location targeting for under-18s and none at all in some jurisdictions.", "related": [ "COPPA", "Age-Appropriate Design", "Digital Services Act" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/children-s-advertising/" }, { "term": "Alcohol Advertising Rules", "also": [], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "Self-regulatory codes (DISCUS, Beer Institute, Wine Institute in the US) and platform policies requiring that alcohol ads reach audiences at least 71.6 percent of legal drinking age, use age gating, and avoid appeal to minors. Several countries prohibit alcohol advertising outright or by medium.", "related": [ "Sensitive Data", "Children's Advertising", "Geotargeting" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/alcohol-advertising-rules/" }, { "term": "Pharmaceutical Advertising Rules", "also": [ "DTC drug advertising" ], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "Direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising is legal only in the United States and New Zealand and is regulated by the FDA, which requires fair balance and major statement of risks. Health targeting is restricted by HIPAA, state laws on health data (Washington's My Health My Data Act), and platform policies.", "related": [ "Sensitive Data", "Disclaimer", "State Privacy Laws" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/pharmaceutical-advertising-rules/" }, { "term": "Financial Advertising Rules", "also": [], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "Rules for advertising financial products: FTC and CFPB oversight, SEC and FINRA rules for investment advertising, fair lending laws for credit that restrict targeting, and platform verification requirements for financial and crypto advertisers. Crypto-specific rules are tracked at cryptoregulations.net.", "related": [ "Political Advertising Rules", "Substantiation", "Sensitive Data" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/financial-advertising-rules/" }, { "term": "Gambling Advertising Rules", "also": [], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "Advertising for sports betting and gaming is regulated state by state in the US since 2018, by the ASA and Gambling Commission in the UK, and by outright bans in some countries. Platforms require licensing verification and restrict targeting; several US states have imposed limits on promotions such as risk-free bets.", "related": [ "Sensitive Data", "Geotargeting", "Disclaimer" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/gambling-advertising-rules/" }, { "term": "Housing, Employment, and Credit Ads", "also": [ "Special ad categories" ], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "Ads in categories covered by US civil rights law, where targeting by age, gender, ZIP code, and interests correlated with protected classes is prohibited. Meta's special ad categories, adopted after the 2019 HUD settlement, remove those targeting options; Google applies similar restrictions.", "related": [ "Political Advertising Rules", "Sensitive Data", "Exclusion" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/housing-employment-and-credit-ads/" }, { "term": "Ad Transparency", "also": [ "Why am I seeing this ad" ], "category": "Privacy and regulation", "definition": "Disclosure to users of who paid for an ad and why they were shown it, required by the EU's Digital Services Act for all ads on platforms and implemented as a control on most platforms. Paired with ad libraries, it makes targeting practices publicly inspectable.", "related": [ "Ad Library", "Digital Services Act", "Political Advertising Rules" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ad-transparency/" }, { "term": "CPCL", "also": [ "Cost per completed lead", "Cost per qualified lead", "CPQL" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "Cost per lead that passed a qualification step: a sales-accepted lead, a booked meeting, a verified phone number. Optimizing to qualified leads rather than raw form fills is the single largest improvement most B2B accounts can make, and it requires offline conversion import.", "related": [ "CPL", "Offline Conversion", "Account-Based Marketing" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/cpcl/" }, { "term": "CPSV", "also": [ "Cost per store visit" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "Media cost divided by measured store visits, reported by Google (store visits conversions), Meta, and location data vendors from device location signals. Store visit counts are modeled from a sample of opted-in devices and should be read as estimates with wide intervals.", "related": [ "In-Store Attribution", "Geofencing", "CPA" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/cpsv/" }, { "term": "CPS", "also": [ "Cost per sale", "Cost per order" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "Cost per completed purchase, the ecommerce form of CPA, and the pricing unit of affiliate marketing where it is usually a percentage of order value rather than a fixed fee.", "related": [ "CPA", "Affiliate Marketing", "ROAS" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/cps/" }, { "term": "CPD", "also": [ "Cost per day" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "A flat daily rate for a placement, used for takeovers, mastheads, and sponsorships where delivery is tied to time rather than impressions. Convert to effective CPM after the fact using delivered impressions.", "related": [ "Flat Fee", "Masthead", "Effective CPM" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/cpd/" }, { "term": "dCPM", "also": [ "Dynamic CPM" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "A CPM that varies impression by impression with the auction rather than being fixed for a placement. Every open auction and PMP buy is dCPM; the term is used in reporting to distinguish auction-priced lines from fixed-rate ones.", "related": [ "CPM", "Open Auction", "Programmatic Guaranteed" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/dcpm/" }, { "term": "Share of Wallet", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "A brand's share of a customer's spending in its category. Retail media networks can measure it from basket data, which makes it a differentiating metric for retail media over other channels.", "related": [ "Retail Media", "New-to-Brand", "LTV" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/share-of-wallet/" }, { "term": "Attention Time", "also": [ "Time in view", "Dwell time" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "How long an ad was on screen, measured by verification vendors as an extension of viewability. Time in view predicts recall better than the viewability threshold does and is a component of most attention metrics.", "related": [ "Attention Metrics", "Viewability", "Ad Recall" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/attention-time/" }, { "term": "Scroll Depth", "also": [], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "How far down a page a visitor scrolled, tracked by analytics as an engagement signal for content and landing pages. Scroll depth is a diagnostic for landing page structure: if most visitors never reach the form, the page is too long above it.", "related": [ "Landing Page Optimization", "Bounce Rate", "Google Analytics 4" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/scroll-depth/" }, { "term": "Event Tracking", "also": [ "Custom events" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Recording user actions beyond page views as named events with parameters: clicks, video plays, form starts, purchases. GA4 is built entirely on events, and ad platform pixels fire standard and custom events that become conversion actions and optimization goals.", "related": [ "Google Analytics 4", "Pixel", "Data Layer" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/event-tracking/" }, { "term": "Standard Events", "also": [ "Pixel events" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "The predefined event names a platform's pixel recognizes and can optimize toward: ViewContent, AddToCart, InitiateCheckout, Purchase, Lead, CompleteRegistration on Meta, and similar sets on TikTok, Pinterest, and Snap. Custom events can be tracked but need custom conversions to be used for optimization.", "related": [ "Pixel", "Event Tracking", "Conversions API" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/standard-events/" }, { "term": "Event Match Quality", "also": [ "EMQ" ], "category": "Measurement", "definition": "Meta's score (1 to 10) of how well the customer information sent with Conversions API events matches to Meta accounts. Higher scores mean more attributed conversions and better optimization; the score rises with the number and quality of identifiers sent.", "related": [ "Conversions API", "Match Rate", "Hashed Email" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/event-match-quality/" }, { "term": "Tag Audit", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "A review of every tag and pixel on a site: what fires, when, with what data, under what consent state, and whether it is still needed. Tag audits find duplicate conversions, dead tags, consent leaks, and the abandoned vendor pixel still collecting data three years later.", "related": [ "Google Tag Manager", "Consent Mode", "Pixel" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/tag-audit/" }, { "term": "Ad Blocker Recovery", "also": [ "Acceptable Ads" ], "category": "Infrastructure and standards", "definition": "Publisher techniques for showing ads to visitors running ad blockers: serving through first-party domains, asking users to allow the site, or participating in the Acceptable Ads program that whitelists non-intrusive formats in exchange for a fee. Recovery is a sell-side concern; buyers see it as slightly higher reach.", "related": [ "Ad Blocking", "Ad Monetization", "Publisher" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ad-blocker-recovery/" }, { "term": "Ad Exchange Fee", "also": [ "Exchange take rate" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "The percentage of the clearing price an exchange or SSP retains, historically 10 to 20 percent and now lower under buyer pressure and SPO. Disclosed in sellers.json-era transparency reports and visible in log-level data as the gap between the buyer's price and the publisher's payout.", "related": [ "Take Rate", "Supply-Side Platform", "Log-Level Data" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ad-exchange-fee/" }, { "term": "Buyer's Agent", "also": [ "Agent model" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "The traditional agency arrangement in which the agency buys media in the client's name and passes through the cost at the price paid, earning a disclosed fee. The opposite of principal-based buying, and the default assumption in most client contracts unless principal terms are added.", "related": [ "Principal-Based Buying", "Agency Fee", "Media Transparency" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/buyer-s-agent/" }, { "term": "Retainer", "also": [], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "A fixed monthly fee for an agreed scope of agency work, independent of media spend. Retainers align agency incentives with efficiency rather than spend and are the common fee model for independent and boutique agencies.", "related": [ "Agency Fee", "Scope of Work", "Master Services Agreement" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/retainer/" }, { "term": "Performance Fee", "also": [ "Performance-based compensation", "PBR" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "Agency compensation tied to results: a bonus for hitting targets, a share of incremental revenue, or a reduced base with upside. Performance fees require agreed measurement in advance and fail when the measurement is the platform's own attribution.", "related": [ "Agency Fee", "Retainer", "Incrementality" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/performance-fee/" }, { "term": "Media Credit", "also": [ "Platform credits", "Ad credits" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "Free advertising a platform grants: promotional credits for new accounts, agency partner incentives, or compensation for outages. Credits should be tracked separately from paid media in reporting so they do not distort efficiency figures.", "related": [ "Added Value", "Budget", "Agency Fee" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/media-credit/" }, { "term": "Agency Partner Program", "also": [ "Google Partners", "Meta Business Partners" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "Platform programs that certify agencies meeting spend and training thresholds, offering support, early features, and credits. Partner status signals platform competence; it also creates an incentive to recommend that platform's products.", "related": [ "Media Agency", "Media Credit", "Certification" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/agency-partner-program/" }, { "term": "Certification", "also": [ "Platform certification" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "Platform exams (Google Ads certifications, Meta Blueprint, Amazon Ads certification, The Trade Desk Edge) that verify product knowledge. Useful for hiring and partner status; they test the platform's view of best practice, which favors the platform's automation.", "related": [ "Agency Partner Program", "Media Buyer" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/certification/" }, { "term": "Creative Rotation", "also": [ "Ad rotation" ], "category": "Buying and pricing", "definition": "How an ad server or platform divides impressions among several creatives in a placement: evenly, weighted, sequentially, or optimized to a metric. Even rotation is needed for a fair creative test; optimized rotation is right once a winner is chosen.", "related": [ "Creative Testing", "A/B Test", "Ad Server" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/creative-rotation/" }, { "term": "Creative Approval", "also": [ "Ad review", "Disapproval" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "A platform's review of an ad against its policies before it can run, usually automated with human escalation. Disapprovals for restricted categories, misleading claims, and text-in-image rules delay launches, and appeals take days. Regulated advertisers build approval time into every schedule.", "related": [ "Disclaimer", "Trafficking", "Housing, Employment, and Credit Ads" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/creative-approval/" }, { "term": "Ad Specs Compliance", "also": [ "Spec check" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "Verifying creative against platform specifications before trafficking: dimensions, file weight, duration, text limits, safe zones. The step between creative delivery and launch that catches most late failures. This library's specs page collects current requirements.", "related": [ "Creative Specs", "Trafficking", "Creative Approval" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/ad-specs-compliance/" }, { "term": "Quality Assurance", "also": [ "QA", "Launch check" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "Checking a campaign before and just after launch: targeting, budgets, dates, creative, landing pages, tracking, and naming. A written QA checklist prevents most of the errors that make the trade press, and a live check within the first hour catches the rest.", "related": [ "Trafficking", "Tag Audit", "Naming Convention" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/quality-assurance/" }, { "term": "Screenshot", "also": [ "Proof of placement", "Tearsheet" ], "category": "Practice and industry", "definition": "Evidence that an ad ran where it was supposed to, captured by the buyer or supplied by the seller. Tearsheets were the print original; screenshots and ad server logs serve the purpose in digital, and clients still ask for them.", "related": [ "Post-Campaign Report", "Ad Server Log", "Makegood" ], "url": "https://agencyechelon.com/reference/glossary/screenshot/" } ] }