Definitions and short examples for core programmatic, video and CTV, ad serving, header bidding, privacy, measurement, and mobile concepts—useful for interviews, onboarding, and day-to-day troubleshooting.
Category
Software buyers use to purchase digital ad inventory, set targeting and budgets, and optimize toward outcomes across many publishers and exchanges.
An agency runs a retail client display campaign in a DSP with geo and audience segments, pacing spend across the day.
Publisher-side technology that packages impressions, sends bid requests to demand sources, and helps maximize yield.
A news site connects its inventory to an SSP so multiple DSPs can bid on each ad slot in real time.
A marketplace that connects many SSPs and DSPs so impressions can be auctioned with standardized rules and signals.
A mobile app publisher sells inventory through an exchange so hundreds of buyer seats can compete on each request.
Historically an aggregator that bundles publisher inventory and sells it, often with more manual deals than a pure RTB exchange.
A niche blog joins a vertical network that bundles similar sites and sells a run-of-network package to advertisers.
The owner of a site, app, or CTV property that has ad slots to monetize.
A streaming app shows pre-roll before episodes; the app owner is the publisher.
The brand or business paying to show ads, either directly or through an agency.
A bank promotes a new credit card via display and video across publishers.
An agency team or unit focused on programmatic buying, often centralized across clients.
A holding company ATD runs programmatic for multiple FMCG brands from shared buying expertise.
Category
Buying impressions one auction at a time, usually in milliseconds, based on bid requests from supply.
A user loads a page; before the ad appears, SSPs ask DSPs for bids and the highest eligible bid wins.
A common protocol (IAB) describing how bid requests and responses are structured in programmatic auctions.
Engineers inspect a JSON bid request to see device, geo, consent flags, and placement IDs.
The payload sent from supply to demand describing an impression opportunity (context, user signals, regulations, floor, etc.).
A bid request lists a 320x50 mobile banner, US geo, and regs.gdpr to signal EU privacy handling.
The DSP reply with a bid price, creative markup, and metadata needed to serve and track the ad.
The response includes a $2.10 CPM bid plus VAST XML for a video creative.
Minimum CPM or price a publisher will accept for an impression before a bid can win.
A publisher sets a $1.50 floor on premium sports inventory to avoid ultra-low bids.
The final price paid after the auction rules are applied (first-price vs second-price, fees, etc.).
In second-price, the winner might pay one cent above the second-highest bid, not their full bid.
An identifier linking a negotiated package (audience, site list, pricing) to bid traffic in programmatic.
A buyer targets deal ID 98765 to access a private sports bundle at a fixed CPM.
An invite-only auction layer where selected buyers bid on publisher inventory, often with preferred terms.
A publisher offers a PMP to three agency groups before opening remnant to the open exchange.
Automated buying with reserved volume or impressions, closer to a direct deal with programmatic pipes.
A buyer guarantees 10M impressions on a publisher homepage over a month at a fixed rate.
The winning bidder pays exactly what they bid.
If you bid $3 CPM and win, you pay $3 even if the next bid was $1.
The winner pays slightly above the second-highest bid (classic Vickrey-style), not necessarily their full bid.
You bid $5, second bid is $2; you might clear near $2.01 depending on exchange rules.
OpenRTB object listing intermediaries between publisher and buyer so DSPs can judge path length and trust.
A DSP lowers bids when schain shows many reseller hops versus a short direct path.
A public text file on a publisher domain listing authorized sellers of that inventory.
Buyers crawl ads.txt to confirm an SSP is allowed to represent example.com.
A file hosted by SSPs/exchanges mapping seller IDs to upstream publishers or intermediaries.
Used with ads.txt and schain to validate who is allowed to sell which supply.
Buyers or publishers trimming redundant intermediaries to improve transparency, fees, and performance.
A DSP turns off duplicate SSP paths to the same inventory to reduce take rate stacking.
Category
System that decides which ad to deliver, serves the creative, counts delivery, and applies rules (priority, caps, targeting).
Google Ad Manager chooses between a direct-sold sponsorship line and backfill programmatic.
A defined placement where ads can appear (size, page, app section, or video break).
A site defines /news/leaderboard as a 728x90 ad unit on article pages.
A row in the ad server representing delivery rules for a campaign flight: inventory, targeting, priority, and goals.
A line item targets US desktop users with a 300x250 creative until 2M impressions deliver.
Container in the ad server for related line items, often one advertiser deal or IO.
An automotive brand order holds separate line items for display and video.
The actual ad asset: image, HTML5, video file, or tag the player executes.
A 15-second MP4 plus click-through URL is uploaded as the video creative.
Custom pairs (e.g. article=finance) passed into the ad server to target or report on inventory.
A site sets kv_section=sports so sports advertisers bid more on those impressions.
When one demand source does not fill; control passes to another tag or partner in sequence.
If the programmatic tag returns no ad, the server falls back to a house promo.
Unsold or lower-value impressions sold at lower priority or through open auctions.
After direct deals take premium slots, leftover impressions monetize via RTB.
Contract or booking document describing what an advertiser buys: dates, volume, rates, and terms.
An IO specifies $50k for January homepage takeovers plus reporting requirements.
Collects and segments audience data for activation in media (overlap with CDPs in modern stacks).
A retailer builds a segment of cart abandoners and pushes it to a DSP for retargeting.
Category
XML spec describing how a video player should fetch and play an ad and which trackers to fire.
A VAST response points to a media file URL and includes impression and quartile tracking URLs.
A VAST XML that does not contain the final creative; it redirects the player to another VAST (chain).
Troubleshooting often means unwrapping several wrappers to find the actual media file.
XML that schedules multiple ad breaks (pre, mid, post) relative to content.
A long-form episode uses VMAP to insert two mid-roll pods at defined offsets.
Older pattern for interactive video creatives inside the player; largely deprecated in favor of safer models.
Support teams still see VPAID-related errors on older inventory or players.
IAB approach to interactive video where the creative runs in a sandbox separate from core playback.
Replaces risky deep player access with a standardized, more secure API.
A group of ads played back-to-back in one commercial break in video or CTV.
A mid-roll break runs three 15-second ads before content resumes.
Stitching ads into the video stream on the server so the client receives one continuous stream.
Live CTV often uses SSAI so ad blocks match broadcast-like delivery and can ease some client issues.
The player requests and plays ads separately from the content stream on the device.
A web player loads a VAST, plays the ad, then resumes the main MP4 or HLS.
Television or big-screen viewing through internet-connected devices (smart TVs, sticks, consoles).
A user watches a free app on a Roku; pre-roll there is CTV inventory.
Video delivered over the internet without traditional broadcast distribution; overlaps heavily with CTV and mobile.
Subscription and AVOD apps are often called OTT services.
AVOD is ad-supported video on demand; SVOD is subscription video on demand (often fewer or no ads).
A free movie app with breaks is AVOD; a paid no-ad tier is SVOD.
Standard progress points (start, 25%, 50%, 75%, complete) used for video engagement tracking.
A VAST tag fires tracking pixels at first quartile and midpoint to prove partial views.
Display creative shown alongside a video ad (e.g. banner next to the player).
In-stream video plays while a 300x250 shows product art beside it.
Replacing or choosing ads per user or context inside linear or on-demand streams, often via SSAI.
Two households see different car ads in the same live sports stream.
Free streaming channels or apps funded by ads—often live-linear style or VOD libraries without a subscription fee.
A user watches a free movie channel on a smart TV app that runs ad breaks like broadcast.
Internet-delivered pay-TV bundle (live channels + DVR) competing with cable, often on CTV.
Live sports on a streaming TV package sold as a skinny bundle is vMVPD inventory.
Scheduled programming streamed over IP—ads can behave like TV breaks even though delivery is digital.
A 24/7 news stream inserts mid-rolls at fixed break markers similar to linear TV.
Multiple people watching the same screen; measurement models may estimate household or audience size beyond one device.
A sports final on the living-room TV may be sold with co-viewing adjustments in some CTV deals.
Share of ad slots inside a pod that actually receive a paid creative versus blank or promo fill.
Ops notices a 3-ad pod only serves two ads; fill rate drops and revenue per break falls.
Product pattern where long sessions show fewer or different ad patterns to reward continuous viewing.
A streamer offers every third episode ad-free after a viewer watches several in a row.
European smart-TV spec combining broadcast and broadband for interactive overlays and addressable layers.
A broadcaster adds clickable overlays on live TV using both antenna and IP backhaul.
Tech that identifies what is on screen or speakers—used for targeting, measurement, or incremental reach in TV.
A panel or smart-TV signal knows a household is watching a specific show segment for analytics.
Category
Running a client- or server-side auction among multiple SSPs before calling the ad server, increasing competition.
Prebid.js asks five SSPs in parallel; the winning price competes in GAM unified auction.
Open-source library widely used to implement header bidding in web and some app contexts.
Publishers configure bidders, timeouts, and price granularity sent to the ad server.
The configured header-bidding container (often Prebid or a managed wrapper) coordinating bidder adapters.
Engineers update the wrapper version to fix a bidder timeout bug.
Maximum wait for bidders to respond before the auction closes and moves on.
A 800ms timeout reduces page latency but may drop slow bidders from the auction.
Sequential pass-down of demand: try partner A, then B, then C until someone fills.
Older mobile SDKs chained networks; header bidding largely replaces pure waterfalls.
Ad server competition where direct, programmatic guaranteed, and open exchange demand compete in one stack.
GAM can let Open Bidding and Prebid compete with line items dynamically.
Category
A counted instance of an ad being served or rendered, per the counted definition in contract or MRC guidance.
A discrepancy investigation compares ad server impressions to DSP billed impressions.
User action on an ad that navigates or triggers a click tracker.
CTR is clicks divided by impressions for a reporting period.
Clicks divided by impressions, expressed as a percentage.
0.5% CTR on a retargeting line may still be strong if conversion rate is high.
Whether a meaningful portion of an ad was in view for a minimum time (often IAB/MRC standards).
A display ad counts viewable if 50% of pixels are in view for one continuous second.
Cost per thousand impressions, cost per click, and cost per acquisition (or action), common pricing models.
A brand pays $8 CPM for awareness; a performance buyer optimizes to $40 CPA leads.
Return on ad spend and return on investment; tie media cost to revenue or profit.
4:1 ROAS means $4 revenue per $1 ad spend in the attributed model.
Limit on how often the same user sees an ad in a window.
Cap at 3 impressions per user per day to reduce fatigue.
Rules or models assigning credit for conversions across touchpoints.
Last-click gives all credit to the final ad; multi-touch spreads credit across the path.
Server-to-server conversion signal from an MMP or network to a partner.
An app install fires a postback when the user completes registration.
Browser storage used historically for targeting, frequency, and sync; increasingly limited by browsers and law.
Third-party cookies enabled cross-site retargeting; Chrome deprecation shifted strategies.
Mobile identifiers advertisers used for targeting and measurement; IDFA on Apple, GAID on Android (policies evolving).
ATT prompts on iOS reduced available IDFA for opt-out users.
Probabilistic or modeled grouping of devices or people for targeting or measurement without persistent 1:1 IDs.
CTV buys sometimes use household-level models to limit over-frequency across screens.
Experiments or models estimating true added impact of ads versus what would have happened without them.
A geo holdout test shows whether CTV spend actually lifted site visits or sales.
Signals beyond viewability—time in view, scroll, audio on, eye-tracking proxies—used to value quality of exposure.
A publisher package prices higher slots using attention scores, not just MRC viewability.
Category
EU regulation governing personal data processing, lawful basis, and user rights.
EU bid traffic may carry consent strings and limited ads flags for DSP logic.
US law protecting children online; child-directed inventory often restricts behavioral ads.
regs.coppa in OpenRTB signals inventory where child-directed rules apply.
California privacy laws giving consumers rights over personal information and regulating sale/share.
Publishers expose opt-out links and honor limited data use signals in California.
UI and logic to collect and store consent preferences and surface required notices.
A banner records TCF consent before ad tags load on a European site.
IAB Europe framework encoding consent and legitimate interest signals for vendors.
The TC string travels in the bid request so DSPs know if they may use data for certain purposes.
IAB structure for carrying multi-region privacy signals in one payload.
A single string can represent US state plus EU signals as regulations proliferate.
Delivery modes that restrict data use when consent or signals do not allow personalization.
When consent is denied, some stacks fall back to contextual-only demand with lower CPMs.
Category
Standard API so rich creatives behave across in-app WebViews.
Expandable mobile creatives call MRAID methods instead of hard-coding each SDK.
Common SDK for viewability and verification measurement in app and some CTV contexts.
Verification vendors read OM signals to report valid in-view rates.
Apple framework for privacy-preserving iOS install attribution without granular user-level paths.
UA teams analyze SKAN postbacks with conversion value mapping for campaign optimization.
Tag container to deploy and trigger marketing/analytics tags from a web UI.
Marketers fire conversion pixels on thank-you pages via GTM triggers and variables.
JavaScript object GTM and sites use to pass structured events and attributes to tags.
dataLayer.push({ event: "purchase", value: 49.99 }) lets the purchase tag fire with revenue.
Category
Controlled environment where first-party datasets are joined or analyzed with strict limits—minimal raw export, often privacy-preserving joins.
A retailer and a CPG match hashed emails in a clean room to measure overlap without sharing raw lists.
Google Chrome initiative replacing legacy third-party cookies with browser-level APIs for interest, remarketing, and measurement.
Buyers test Protected Audience and Attribution Reporting as cookie deprecation proceeds.
Privacy Sandbox proposal exposing coarse interest categories derived on-device rather than cross-site tracking IDs.
A browser might signal high-level topics to support contextual-like buying without individual history export.
Privacy Sandbox mechanism for on-device auction/remarketing-style use cases with restricted cross-site data flow.
Engineers compare workflow differences versus classic cookie-based remarketing in Chrome tests.
Privacy Sandbox API for conversion measurement with noise, delays, and budgets instead of per-user click chains.
Marketers receive aggregated campaign reports rather than row-level user paths.
Adding statistical noise or reporting only cohort-level outputs so individual users cannot be singled out.
A platform reports conversion counts in buckets rather than exact user-level joins.
Closed ecosystem (search, social, retail, CTV platform) where data, inventory, and measurement stay largely inside the stack.
A brand runs most lower-funnel social spend inside one platform using its native attribution.
Collecting and activating consented data from owned touchpoints (site, app, CRM) as third-party signals shrink.
A publisher builds newsletter and account logins to target and measure without legacy syncs.
Category
Vendor that aggregates installs, events, and network claims to produce unified mobile attribution and analytics.
UA teams reconcile Facebook, Google, and SDK networks in one MMP dashboard.
Large ad network that attributes installs using its own logic; MMPs reconcile via agreed rules or APIs.
Discrepancy reviews compare SAN-reported installs with SDK-observed first opens.
Matching conversions to clicks or views using stable identifiers or device-level signals where policy allows.
Pre-ATT iOS, IDFA often enabled clear last-touch install paths from ad click to store.
Statistical matching using softer signals when IDs are unavailable—higher uncertainty and policy scrutiny.
Some stacks infer install likelihood from IP and timestamp windows when SKAN is coarse.
Time limit in which a click or view can receive credit for an install or in-app event.
A 7-day click window means an install on day 8 does not credit that network.
Opening a specific in-app screen from an ad; deferred means handling install-first then routing post-install.
A retail ad opens the product page inside the app after install completes.
Ads aimed at existing users to drive return sessions, purchases, or feature use.
A lapsed user sees an ad that deep-links to a cart recovery screen.
Apple-delivered aggregate signal after an install campaign; includes conversion value tiers and privacy delays.
Marketers map custom conversion values to funnel steps to read performance from SKAN.
Android mechanism passing store listing parameters to the app for install attribution without GAID in some flows.
Campaign IDs in the Play URL flow into the MMP for organic vs paid breakdown.
Building a device or user profile from configuration signals; increasingly restricted by platforms and policy.
Stores reject SDKs that rely on unstable device fingerprints for tracking.
Category
Versioned spec for JSON fields in bid requests/responses: imp, site/app, device, user, regs, source, ext.
Engineers read imp.banner or imp.video to see eligible formats and sizes.
IAB companion model describing creative, placement, and context objects referenced by OpenRTB and related specs.
Native and advanced formats map to structured AdCOM objects for consistent parsing.
Structured native ad representation (title, image, body) inside the bid protocol instead of opaque HTML.
A feed ad request asks for native assets with required aspect ratios and character limits.
Evolving IAB video template versions improving verification, ad buffet, and separating interactive layers from core playback.
Players declare support for certain VAST versions when requesting inventory.
Versioned interactive creative interface paired with VAST; creative runs in iframe-like isolation from the player core.
Creative QA checks SIMID messaging when the player fires video events.
IAB API-enabled iframe boundary so rich display ads run with controlled expansion and measurement.
Publishers enable SafeFrame to reduce page break risk from expanding creatives.
App-store listing of authorized sellers parallel to web ads.txt for mobile app inventory.
Buyers verify an SSP may sell a given bundle ID using the publisher app-ads.txt record.
Cryptographic signing initiatives to reduce spoofing by authenticating bid stream participants (adoption varies).
Supply quality teams evaluate signed bid requests as stronger than unsigned traffic.
Standard categories describing page or app content for contextual targeting, brand safety, and reporting.
A bid request includes IAB category IDs so alcohol ads avoid kids content.
API layer used with OM SDK so third-party verification can read measurement signals consistently.
Verification scripts use OMID callbacks instead of player-specific hacks.
RSS delivery of episodes with evolving guidelines for downloads, listens, and ad stitching metrics.
Host-read ads are measured with IAB-style guidelines distinct from pixel-based web video.
Bid request fields adapted for digital out-of-home: screen location, venue type, resolution, and loop context.
A DSP targets airport screens using venue and geo extensions in the request.
Category
On-site and off-site ad inventory owned by a retailer using shopper and purchase signals.
A grocery site sells sponsored search and display placements to CPG brands.
Broader commerce-adjacent placements spanning retailer sites, marketplaces, and shoppable formats.
An electronics marketplace runs CPC product ads next to checkout.
Buying based on page, episode, or semantic signals instead of individual profiles—often ML-classified.
A finance brand targets articles classified as mortgages without using cross-site IDs.
Assembling or tuning many creative variants from templates or AI to match audience, weather, or catalog feeds.
A travel brand swaps destination images per user segment automatically in the ad server.
Non-human or fraudulent impressions and clicks—bots, hidden ads, incentive fraud—that should not be paid for.
A spike in zero-second visits triggers an IVT investigation on a placement.
Sophisticated vs general invalid traffic in MRC-related discussion—crawlers, data centers, fraud rings.
Filters flag data-center IPs as GIVT and patterned bots as SIVT.
Declaring fake sellers or domains to misrepresent authorized supply; fought with ads.txt, sellers.json, and signing.
Buyers compare declared seller IDs to actual publisher files before paying premium CPMs.
Low-editorial-value sites optimized for ad arbitrage; buyers avoid them for quality and brand risk.
A domain list exclusion blocks MFA placements from programmatic deals.
Controls and vendors that keep ads away from harmful or off-brand content categories.
A CPG blocks news violence keywords and uses allow-lists on premium publishers.
Efforts to measure and reduce energy from auctions, creatives, and long supply paths.
Publishers trim redundant SSP hops partly to cut latency and infrastructure waste.
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