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June 16-30, 2001 ESSENTIALS |
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WEB ADVERTISING The Banner and the Biz What's the difference between a click, an impression, a hit and a page-view? What is rich media? Learn all about the jargons related to advertisements on the Internet. By Alay Pankaj Jhaveri
Internet Ad Jargons Ad Rotation: Ads are often rotated into ad spaces from a list. This is usually done automatically by software on the Web site or at a central site administered by an ad broker or server facility for a network of Web sites. For example, Latitude90, a leading ad sales firm, provides an ad serving and tracking service, called adMonitor, for the network of independent sites that it sells impressions and sponsorships for. Ad Space: An ad space is a space on a Web page that is reserved for ads. An ad space group is a group of spaces within a Web site that share the same characteristics so that an ad purchase can be made for the group of spaces. Ad View: An ad view is a single ad that appears (usually in full view without scrolling) on a Web page when the page arrives at the viewer's display. Ad views are what most Web sites sell or prefer to sell. A Web page may offer space for a number of ad views. In general, the term impression is more commonly used. Affiliate Marketing: Affiliate marketing is used by a site that sells products of other Web sites to help market the products. Banner: A banner is an advertisement in the form of a graphic image that typically runs across a Web page or is positioned in a margin or other space reserved for ads. Banner ads are usually Graphics Interchange Format images. Beyond the Banner: In addition to banner ads, there are other ways to use the Internet to communicate a marketing message. These include sponsoring a Web site; advertising in E-mail newsletters; co-branding with another company and its Web site; contest promotion; and, in general, finding ways to interact with the audience. Booked Space: This is the number of ad views for an ad space that are currently sold out. Brand, Brand name, and Branding: A brand is a product, service or concept that is publicly distinguished from other products, services or concepts so that it can be easily communicated and usually marketed. A brand name is the name of the distinctive product, service or concept. Branding is the process of creating and disseminating the brand name. Branding can be applied to the entire corporate identity as well as to individual product and service names. In Web and other media advertising, it is recognised that there is usually some kind of branding value whether or not an immediate, direct response can be measured from an ad or campaign. Companies like Proctor and Gamble have made a science out of creating and evaluating the success of their brand name products. Caching: In Internet advertising, the cache of pages in a cache server or the user's computer means that some ad views won't be known by the ad counting programs and is a source of concern. There are several techniques for telling the browser not to cache particular pages. On the other hand, specifying no caching for all pages may mean that users will find your site to be slower than you would like. Click: According to ad industry recommended guidelines from FAST, a click is "when a visitor interacts with an advertisement". This does not apparently mean interacting with a rich media ad, but actually clicking on it so that the visitor is headed towards the advertiser's destination. Click Rate: The click rate is the percentage of ad views that resulted in clickthroughs. Although there is visibility and branding value in ad views that don't result in a clickthrough, this value is difficult to measure. A clickthrough is an indication of the ad's effectiveness and it results in the viewer getting to the advertiser's Web site where other messages can be provided. Click Stream: A click stream is a recorded path of the pages a user requested in going through one or more Web sites. Click stream information can help Web site owners understand how visitors are using their site and which pages are getting the most use. Clickthrough: A clickthrough is what is counted by the sponsoring site as a result of an ad click. In practice, click and clickthrough tend to be used interchangeably. A clickthrough imply that the user actually received the page. Co-branding: Co-branding on the Web means two Web sites or Web site sections displaying their logos together so that the viewer considers the site or feature to be a joint enterprise. Cookie: A cookie is a file on a Web user's hard drive (it's kept in one of the subdirectories under the browser file directory) that is used by Web sites to record data about the user. Some ad rotation software uses cookies to see which ad the user has just seen so that a different ad will be rotated into the next page view. Cost-per-action (CPA): Cost-per-action is what an advertiser pays for each visitor that takes some specifically defined action in response to an ad beyond simply clicking on it. Cost-per-lead (CPL): This is a more specific form of cost-per-action in which a visitor provides enough information at the advertiser's site to be used as a sales lead. Cost-per-sale (CPS): Sites that sell products directly from their Web site or can otherwise determine sales generated as the result of an advertising sales lead can calculate the cost-per-sale of Web advertising. CPM: CPM is "cost per thousand" ad impressions, an industry standard measure for selling ads on Web sites. This measure is taken from print advertising. The "M" has nothing to do with "mega" or million. It's taken from the Roman numeral for "thousand". CPTM: CPTM is "cost per thousand targeted" ad impressions, implying that the viewers you're selling is targeted to particular demographics. The creative: Ad agencies and buyers often refer to ad banners and other forms of created advertising as "the creative". Since the creative requires creative inspiration that may come from a third party, it often doesn't arrive until late in the preparation for a new campaign launch. Demographics: Demographics is data about the size and characteristics of a population or audience (for example, gender, age group, income group, purchasing history, personal preferences, and so forth). FAST: FAST is a coalition of the Internet Advertising Bureau, the ANA, and the ARF that has recommended or is working on guidelines for consumer privacy, ad models and creative formats, audience and ad impression measurement, and a standard reporting template together with a standard insertion order. Filtering: Filtering is the immediate analysis by a program of a user request to determine which ad(s) to return in the requested page. A Web page request can tell a Web site or its ad server whether it fits a certain characteristic such as coming from a particular firm's address or that the user is using a particular level of browser. The Web ad server can respond accordingly. Fold: 'Above the fold' refers to an ad that is viewable as soon as the Web page arrives. You don't have to scroll down (or sideways) to see it. Since screen resolution can affect what is immediately viewable, it's good to know whether the Web site's audience tends to set their resolution at 640 by 480 pixels or at 800 by 600. Hit: A hit is the sending of a single file whether an HTML file, an audio file, or other file type. Impression: According to the 'Basic Advertising Measures', from FAST, an ad industry group, an impression is "the count of a delivered basic advertising unit from an ad distribution point". Insertion Order: An insertion order is a formal, printed order to run an ad campaign. Typically, the insertion order identifies the campaign name, the Web site receiving the order and the planner or buyer giving the order, the individual ads to be run, the ad sizes, the total cost, and reporting requirements or stipulations relative to the failure to deliver the impressions. Inventory: Inventory is the total number of ad views or impressions that a Web site has to sell over a given period of time (usually, inventory is figured by the month). Media Broker: Since it's often not efficient for an advertiser to select every Web site it wants to put ads on, media brokers aggregate sites for advertisers and their media planners and buyers, based on demographics and other factors. Media Buyer: A media buyer, usually at an advertising agency, works with a media planner to allocate the money provided for an advertising campaign among specific print or online media, and then calls and places the advertising orders. On the Web, placing the order often includes requesting proposals and negotiating the cost. Opt-in E-mail: Opt-in E-mail is an E-mail containing information or advertising that users explicitly request (opt) to receive. Typically, a Web site invites its visitors to fill out forms identifying subject or product categories that interest them and about which they are willing to receive E-mail from anyone who might send it. The Web site sells the names to a firm that specialises in collecting mailing lists that represent different interests. Whenever the mailing list firm sells its lists to advertisers, the Web site is paid an amount for each name that it generated for the list. Pay-per-click: In pay-per-click advertising, the advertiser pays a certain amount for each clickthrough to the advertiser's Web site. The amount paid per clickthrough is arranged at the time of the insertion order and varies considerably. Higher pay-per-click rates recognise that there may be some "no-click" branding value as well as clickthrough value provided. Pay-per-lead: Here the advertiser pays for each sales lead generated. For example, an advertiser might pay for every visitor who clicks on a site and then fills out a form. Pay-per-sale: Pay-per-sale is not customarily used for ad buys. It is, however, the customary way to pay Web sites that participate in affiliate programs, such as those of Amazon.com. Pay-per-view: Since this is the prevalent type of ad buying arrangement at larger Web sites, this particular term tends to be used only when comparing this most prevalent method with pay-per-click and other methods. Proof of performance: Some advertisers may want proof that the ads they've bought have actually run and that clickthrough figures are accurate. On the Web, there is no industry-wide practice for proof of performance. Some buyers rely on the integrity of the broker and the Web site. The ad buyer usually checks the Web site to determine the ads are actually running. Most buyers require weekly figures during a campaign. A few want to look directly at the figures, viewing the ad server or Web site reporting tool. Psychographic Characteristics: This is a term for personal interest information that is gathered by Web sites by requesting it from its users. For example, a Web site could ask users to list the Web sites that they visit most often. Advertisers could use this data to help create a demographic profile for that Web site. Reporting Template: Although the media have to report data to ad agencies and media planners and buyers during and at the end of each campaign, no standard report is yet available. FAST, the ad industry coalition, is working on proposed standard reporting template that would enable reporting to be consistent. Rich Media: Rich media is advertising that contains perceptual or interactive elements more elaborate than the usual banner ad. Today, the term is often used for banner ads with popup menus that let the visitor select a particular page to link to on the advertiser's site. ROI: Return on investment is "the bottom line" on how successful an ad or campaign was in terms of what the returns (generally sales revenue) were for the money expended (invested). Run-of-network (RON): A run-of-network ad is one that is placed to run on all sites within a given network of sites. Ad sales firms like Latitude90 handle run-of-network insertion orders in such a way as to optimise results for the buyer consistent with higher priority ad commitments. Run-of-site (ROS): A run-of-site ad is one that is placed to rotate on all non-featured ad spaces on a site. CPM rates for run-of-site ads are usually less compared to rates for specially placed ads or sponsorships. Splash Page: A splash page, also known as an interstitial, is a preliminary page that precedes the regular home page of a Web site and usually promotes a particular site feature or provides advertising. A splash page is timed to move on to the home page after a short period of time. Sponsor: Depending on the context, a sponsor simply means an advertiser who has sponsored an ad and, by doing so, has also helped sponsor or sustain the Web site itself. It can also mean an advertiser that has a special relationship with the Web site and supports a special feature or section of a Web site. Sponsorship: Sponsorship is an association with a Web site in some way that gives an advertiser some particular visibility and advantage above that of run-of-site advertising. When associated with specific content, sponsorship can provide a more targeted audience than run-of-site ad buys. Sponsorship also implies a "synergy and resonance" between the Web site and the advertiser. Some sponsorships are available as value-added opportunities for advertisers who buy a certain minimum amount of advertising. Targeting: The term targeting is purchasing ad space on Web sites that match audience and campaign objective requirements. Unique Visitor: A unique visitor is someone with a unique address who is entering a Web site for the first time that day. Thus, a visitor that returns within the same day is not counted twice. A unique visitors count tells you how many different people there are in your audience during the time period, but not how much they used the site during the period. User Session: A user session is someone with a unique address that enters or re-enters a Web site each day. A user session is sometimes determined by counting only those users that haven't re-entered the site within the past 20 minutes or a similar period. User sessions are a better indicator of total site activity than "unique visitors", since they indicate frequency of use. View: A view is, depending on what's meant, either an ad view or a page view. The term is usually applied for an ad view. There can be multiple ad views per page views. Visit: A visit is a Web user with a unique address entering a Web site at some page for the first time that day (or for the first time in a lesser time period). The number of visits is roughly equivalent to the number of different people that visit a particular Web site. Alay Pankaj Jhaveri, Web Developer and IT Consultant. E-mail: jhaverialay@yahoo.com |
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What
are Internet ads? For Web advertising, an ad is almost always a banner, a
graphic image of a designated pixel size and byte size limit. It is
usually an animated Gif (Graphics Interchange Format) file. An ad or a set
of ads for a campaign is referred to as "the creative". Banners
and other special advertising that include an interactive or visual
element beyond the usual are known as rich media.
