FT Advertising

Glossary

AD CALL
A request from the webpage to the ad server to display an online advert

AD UNIT
Any defined vehicle that’s used for promotional messaging and paid for with the intent of promoting a product or service

CPM
Cost per thousand impressions

CREATIVE
Used in the advertising industry to refer to the actual displayed advert

DATA MANAGEMENT PLATFORM
Self-service “dashboard” tools that perform a range of services from collecting, managing, segmenting, sharing, and analysing marketers’ advertising data including assuring publishers that their data is their data.

IMPRESSION
A single instance of an online creative being called to appear on a page

INVENTORY
The amount of space available for advertising on a website. Measured in ad impressions

LINE ITEM
Used by DFP to denote a particular creative. It includes various details about said creative, such as its name, status (in/active), type, start/end times, impressions, etc.

PROGRAMMATIC
Software used to automate buying and selling of media inventory through a bidding system. The FT uses a platform called Rubicon to enable this.

SPOOR
The FT data processing pipeline, which analyses in-app events and feeds real-time newsroom dashboards. API documentation here

TARGETING
Criteria to make ad rendering more tailored and precise.

  • DEMOGRAPHIC References gender, age, income, etc, of a user.
  • GEOGRAPHIC
    Shows adverts based on a users physical location (usually determined by the IP address)
  • BEHAVIOURAL
    Analyses a users previous decision making behaviour and delivers relevant adverts (e.g. visiting certain areas of a site frequently)
  • CONTEXTUAL
    Analyses the content of the page being viewed, and renders ads which are contextually relevant

VIEWABILITY
Viewability is an online advertising metric that aims to track only impressions that can actually be seen by users. The FT uses a platform called Moat to enable this.

VIEWABLE IMPRESSION
A digital creative that has the opportunity to be seen, sometimes referred to through the traditional print media term of being “above the fold”. The current industry criteria for a standard ad unit to be considered viewable is that 50% of the canvas was within the consumer’s rendered window for a minimum of 1 second – the time required for a consumer to understand that the unit is a piece of advertising.

References:
FT Glossary
IAB Jargon
PubMatic Glossary