Digital marketing glossary

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Term Definition
account based marketing

Account-based marketing (ABM) is an alternative B2B strategy that concentrates sales and marketing resources on a clearly defined set of target accounts within a market and employs personalized campaigns designed to resonate with each account.

When a user signs up makes a purchase or performs some other desired action in response to an ad displayed on the Internet. Also called a conversion or action. See also CPA.
ad agency
A company that provides services such as planning creating buying and tracking advertisements and ad campaigns on behalf of a client. Often people confuse media agencies which are allocators of marketers' spending across channels – with creative agencies which are responsible for the creation of actual ads and campaign content.
ad blocker

An ad blocker is a piece of software which stops adverts being shown on websites in a users browser.

ad call
When an open slot of ad space is available on the Internet a user's browser sends requests to ad exchanges or ad servers to send an ad. This request is known as an ad call. Ad calls include information from browser cookies and ad tag information such as publisher ID size location referring URL and other specifications and data needed for the ad to serve. See also ad tag.
ad exchange
An ad trafficking system through which advertisers publishers and networks meet and do business via a unified platform. An ad exchange allows advertisers and publishers to use the same technological platform services and methods and ''speak the same language'' in order to exchange data set prices and ultimately serve an ad.
ad fraud

Ad Fraud is when a company knowingly serves ads that no one will actually see as a way to drive “views” and revenue. For example a website can use bots to automatically refresh its pages in order to register a high number of page views and appear more attractive as an inventory source on ad exchanges.

ad network
A company that serves as a broker between a group of publishers and a group of advertisers. Networks traditionally aggregate unsold inventory from publishers in order to offer advertisers a consolidated and generally less expensive pool of impressions but they can have a wide variety of business models and clients. In the context of ad trafficking and ad tech the term ''network'' is generally taken to mean an ad network.
Ad Operations

Ad Operations (or Ad Ops) is a job role devoted to some combination of uploading troubleshooting managing optimising and reporting on Advertising Campaigns. It is also referred to as Ad Trafficking.

Ad Rank

Ad Rank is a metric used by Google AdWords to decide the positioning of an ad for different keywords on its search results pages. Using a combination of the relevance of the ad to the keyword the amount being paid and the quality of the landing page the Ad Rank of an ad will pretty much determine that ads level of success.

ad server

The computer or group of computers responsible for actually serving creatives to websites or for making decisions about what ads will serve. An ad server may also track clicks on ads and other data. Major publishers networks and advertisers sometimes have one or more of their own ad servers.

ad tag
A piece of HTML on a webpage that will contact an ad server and ask for an ad. The tag informs the browser to open a small window (say 468×60 pixels) and place whatever content is returned from some location (like×60&s) in that window. Note that ad tags are related but not identical to placements which are actually part of the information embedded into ad tags. Here is an example JavaScript ad tag:
ad targeting
Ad targeting is the practice of targeting ad content to user and contextual data. Ad targeting can involve demographic targeting such as gender age or geographical region (when available) as well as behavioral data such as recent pages visited or searches completed. Often known just as ''targeting'' in online advertising.
ad trafficking

Ad Trafficking is the process of uploading troubleshooting managing optimising and reporting on Advertising Campaigns.

ad unit
A single unit of ad space. Sometimes used instead of placement or ad tag.