Reference

The native advertising & ad-tech glossary

126 plain-English definitions, from CPM, RTB and SSPs to prelanders, advertorials and content-recommendation widgets. Built by the team behind OpenAdLibrary.

A

Ad Arbitrage: Ad arbitrage is buying traffic through paid ads and monetizing it with higher-paying ads, profiting on the gap between acquisition cost and ad revenue.
Ad Cloaking: Ad cloaking is a deceptive technique that shows ad reviewers a compliant page while serving real users a different, often non-compliant destination.
Ad Copy: Ad copy is the written text of an advertisement, headline, description, and call to action, written to persuade a reader to click or buy.
Ad Creative: An ad creative is the visible content of an ad, image or video, headline, and copy, that the user sees, and the primary driver of native ad performance.
Ad Exchange: An Ad Exchange is a digital marketplace that matches publisher inventory with advertiser demand through real-time auctions.
Ad Hook: An ad hook is the opening element of an ad, a headline, image, or idea, engineered to seize attention in the first second and compel the click.
Ad Impression: An ad impression is a single instance of an ad being served and rendered on a page or app where a user could see it.
Ad Intelligence: Ad intelligence is the collection and analysis of competitors' live ads, creatives, and landing pages to inform creative and media-buying decisions.
Ad Library: An ad library is a searchable, public database of ads that have run on a platform or network, showing the creative, advertiser, and run details.
Ad Longevity (Run Duration): Ad longevity, or run duration, is how long an ad stays continuously live in market, a strong proxy for whether it's profitable.
Ad Network: An ad network is an intermediary that aggregates unsold ad inventory from many publishers and packages it for sale to advertisers.
Ad Placement: An ad placement is the specific location or slot on a publisher's page or app where an ad is displayed to a user.
Ad Server: An ad server is technology that stores, selects, delivers, and measures ads, deciding which creative to show each impression and tracking the outcome.
Ad Spend: Ad spend is the total amount of money an advertiser pays to run its ads across channels over a given period.
Ad Spy Tool: An ad spy tool captures and archives competitors' live ads across networks so you can study their creatives, offers, and landing pages in one searchable database.
Ad Supply Chain: The ad supply chain is the chain of intermediaries an ad passes through between the advertiser who pays and the publisher page where it appears.
Ad Tag: An ad tag is a snippet of HTML or JavaScript code on a web page that requests an ad from an ad server and renders it in a specific slot.
Ad Transparency: Ad transparency is the practice of making the ads an advertiser runs, and who is behind them, publicly visible through searchable libraries and disclosures.
ads.txt: ads.txt is a public file publishers host to declare exactly which companies are authorized to sell their ad inventory.
Advertiser: An advertiser is the brand, business, or marketer that pays to place ads in front of an audience to drive awareness, clicks, leads, or sales.
Advertiser ID: An advertiser ID is the unique identifier an ad network assigns to each advertiser account, tying every campaign and creative back to one entity.
Advertorial: An advertorial is a paid page written in editorial style that pre-sells a product or offer before sending the reader to the sales page.
Affiliate Marketing: Affiliate marketing is a performance model where partners earn a commission for each sale or lead they drive to an advertiser's offer.
Affiliate Network: An affiliate network is a marketplace that connects advertisers and affiliates, hosting offers, tracking conversions, and handling payouts.
Affiliate Offer: An affiliate offer is a product or service an advertiser pays affiliates to promote, with a set payout per defined action, geo, and terms.
AOV (Average Order Value): AOV (average order value) is the average amount spent per order, calculated as total revenue divided by the number of orders.
Attribution Window: An attribution window is the set time period after an ad click or view during which a conversion is credited back to that ad.

B

Brand Protection in Advertising: Brand protection in advertising is the practice of defending a brand against impersonation, trademark misuse, cloaked ads, and copycat campaigns.
Brand Safety: Brand safety is the set of measures advertisers use to keep their ads from appearing next to harmful, offensive, or off-brand content.
Branded Content: Branded content is brand-produced, story-driven media that entertains or informs rather than pitching a product directly, building affinity over time.
Bridge Page: A bridge page is an intermediate page that connects a traffic source to an offer, pre-selling the visitor before handing them to the final landing page.

C

Carousel Ad: A carousel ad is a single ad unit containing multiple swipeable cards, each with its own image, headline, and destination link.
Click Fraud: Click fraud is the deliberate generation of fake or invalid ad clicks, by bots or humans, to drain budgets or earn illegitimate payouts.
Click ID: A click ID is a unique identifier assigned to each ad click so a later conversion can be matched back to the exact click that caused it.
Click Tracking: Click tracking records every click on an ad by routing it through a tracking server before the user reaches the landing page.
Click Tracking Domain: A click tracking domain is the dedicated domain a tracker uses to log and redirect ad clicks before the user reaches the landing page.
Click-Trace: Click-trace follows an ad's click through every redirect to its final landing page, revealing the real advertiser and offer behind it.
Clickbait: Clickbait is sensational or misleading content engineered to maximize clicks while underdelivering on the promise it makes.
Cloaking (Affiliate Marketing): Cloaking in affiliate marketing is serving one page to ad networks and a different page to real traffic, often to run offers networks would reject.
Competitive Intelligence in Advertising: Competitive intelligence in advertising is gathering and analyzing rivals' ads, channels, and spend signals to sharpen your own creative and media strategy.
Content Discovery Ad: A content discovery ad is a native placement that surfaces sponsored content as a suggested read, helping users discover articles, videos, or offers.
Content Recommendation Widget: A content recommendation widget is the box of suggested article and ad links placed below or beside publisher content, mixing organic and paid links.
Contextual Targeting: Contextual targeting places ads based on the content of the page being viewed, matching ads to page topics and keywords rather than to user identity.
Conversion: A conversion is any valuable action a user completes after seeing or clicking an ad, such as a purchase, signup, lead, or app install.
Conversion Pixel: A conversion pixel is a tracking snippet placed on a goal page that fires when a user completes a valued action, attributing it back to the ad that drove it.
Conversion Rate (CVR): Conversion rate (CVR) is the percentage of clicks or visitors that complete a desired action, such as a purchase, signup, or lead.
Conversion Tracking: Conversion tracking records when an ad click leads to a sale, lead, or signup, and ties that result back to the ad that drove it.
Copycat Landing Page: A copycat landing page mimics a legitimate brand's website to capture conversions, payments, or data by impersonating a trusted company.
CPA (Cost Per Acquisition): CPA (cost per acquisition) is the average advertising cost to win one conversion, calculated as total spend divided by conversions.
CPC (Cost Per Click): CPC (cost per click) is the amount an advertiser pays each time a user clicks their ad, calculated as total spend divided by total clicks.
CPL (Cost Per Lead): CPL (cost per lead) is the average advertising cost to capture one lead, such as a form fill, email signup, or quote request.
CPM (Cost Per Mille): CPM (cost per mille) is the price an advertiser pays per one thousand ad impressions, regardless of whether anyone clicks.
Creative Angle: A creative angle is the specific argument, perspective, or emotional appeal an ad uses to position an offer for a particular audience.
Creative Fatigue: Creative fatigue is the decline in an ad's performance over time as the audience sees it too often and stops responding.
CTR (Click-Through Rate): CTR (click-through rate) is the percentage of ad impressions that result in a click, calculated as clicks divided by impressions times 100.
Curiosity Gap: A curiosity gap is a copywriting technique that withholds a key piece of information, creating an itch the reader resolves by clicking.

D

Data Management Platform (DMP): A data management platform (DMP) collects and organizes audience data into segments, then activates them for ad targeting across platforms.
Demand-Side Platform (DSP): A Demand-Side Platform (DSP) is software advertisers use to buy ad inventory programmatically across many exchanges from one interface.
Direct Buy vs Programmatic: Direct buy vs programmatic contrasts manually negotiated, fixed-price ad deals with automated, auction-driven inventory buying.
Discovery Ad: A discovery ad is a native ad shown inside content-discovery feeds and recommendation widgets, styled to match editorial content as a headline plus thumbnail.
Display Advertising: Display advertising is visual banner, image, and rich-media ads placed on websites and apps, typically sold by standard sizes and bought programmatically.
Dynamic Product Ads (DPA): Dynamic Product Ads (DPA) auto-generate ad creatives from a product catalog feed, matching each user to the specific items most relevant to them.

E

eCPC (Effective Cost Per Click): eCPC (effective cost per click) is the blended average cost of a click across a campaign, even when the campaign was not priced per click.
EPC (Earnings Per Click): EPC (earnings per click) is the average revenue an affiliate or media buyer earns for each click sent to an offer, calculated as earnings divided by clicks.

F

First-Party Data: First-party data is information a business collects directly from its own customers and audience, such as purchases, site behavior, sign-ups, and email lists.

G

GEO (Affiliate Targeting): In affiliate marketing, a GEO is the target country or region a campaign or offer is run in, the core variable for matching offers, payouts, and traffic.
Geo Targeting: Geo targeting restricts ad delivery to users in specific geographic locations, from whole countries down to cities, postal codes, or radius zones.
Google Ads Transparency Center: The Google Ads Transparency Center is Google's free public tool for viewing ads any verified advertiser has run across Search, Display, YouTube, and Gmail.

H

Header Bidding: Header Bidding lets publishers offer inventory to multiple exchanges at once before the ad server call, increasing competition and yield.

I

Impression Share: Impression share is the percentage of eligible ad impressions your ads actually won out of the total available for your targeting and budget.
In-Feed Ad: An in-feed ad is a native ad placed inside a content stream, a feed, article list, or timeline, and styled to match the organic items around it.

L

Landing Page: A landing page is the standalone destination a visitor lands on after clicking an ad, built around one conversion goal such as a purchase or sign-up.

M

Media Buyer: A media buyer is the person who plans, launches, and optimizes paid ad campaigns to hit performance targets at the lowest possible cost.
Media Buying: Media buying is the process of purchasing ad placements across networks and platforms to reach a target audience at the lowest effective cost.
MediaGo: MediaGo is Baidu's native advertising platform that connects advertisers to MSN and other premium open-web supply outside China.
Meta Ad Library: The Meta Ad Library is Facebook and Instagram's free public database of currently running ads, searchable by advertiser, keyword, and country.
MGID: MGID is a global native advertising network that distributes content-recommendation ads across thousands of mid-tier publisher sites worldwide.
Motion Ad: A motion ad is a native ad creative that uses short looping video or animation instead of a static image to stand out in feeds and recommendation widgets.
MSN Native Ads: MSN native ads are sponsored image-and-headline units shown in Microsoft's MSN content feed, much of it sold as resold demand through partner platforms.

N

Native Ad Auction: A native ad auction is the real-time process a native ad network runs to pick which ad fills a recommendation slot and what the advertiser pays.
Native Ad Network: A native ad network connects advertisers to native, content-style ad placements across a large pool of publisher sites, usually as recommendation widgets.
Native Ad Spec: A native ad spec is the set of format rules a native network requires for creatives, covering image size, headline length, file size, and asset types.
Native Ad Widget: A native ad widget is the on-page unit, often a JavaScript-injected block, that renders native ads styled to match the host publisher's layout.
Native Advertising: Native advertising is paid media designed to match the look, feel, and function of the platform it appears on, so it blends with surrounding content.
Nutra (Nutraceuticals): Nutra is the affiliate vertical covering nutraceuticals: supplements, weight-loss, beauty, and health products sold via direct-response ads.

O

OpenRTB: OpenRTB is the open IAB protocol that standardizes the structure of bid requests and responses in real-time bidding auctions.
Outbrain: Outbrain is a major native advertising network that serves content-recommendation ads across premium publisher sites, often as "recommended" link widgets.
Outstream Video: Outstream video is a video ad that plays within article text or feeds rather than inside a video player, appearing as the user scrolls it into view.

P

Postback URL: A postback URL is a server-to-server callback that reports a conversion back to the ad network or tracker without using a browser pixel.
Pre-Lander (Pre-Landing Page): A pre-lander is an intermediate page between the ad click and the offer that warms up and qualifies the visitor before the final landing page.
Private Marketplace (PMP): A private marketplace (PMP) is an invite-only programmatic auction where publishers offer premium inventory to selected buyers via deal IDs.
Programmatic Advertising: Programmatic advertising is the automated buying and selling of digital ad inventory through software, usually settled in real-time auctions.
Programmatic Direct: Programmatic direct buys reserved ad inventory at a fixed, pre-negotiated price through automated workflows rather than an open auction.
Programmatic Native Advertising: Programmatic native advertising is the automated, auction-based buying of native ad placements that match the look and feel of their host content.
Publisher: In advertising, a publisher is the owner of a website, app, or media property that sells ad space to advertisers to monetize its audience.
Publisher / Site ID: A publisher or site ID is the unique code an ad network assigns to each website or property in its supply, used to track and target inventory by source.

R

Real-Time Bidding (RTB): Real-Time Bidding (RTB) is the per-impression auction in which advertisers bid on a single ad impression in milliseconds as a page loads.
Redirect Chain: A redirect chain is the series of intermediate URLs a click passes through before reaching the final landing page.
Resold Inventory / Demand Partner: Resold inventory is ad space one company buys from a publisher and sells to advertisers, often sourced from a separate demand partner.
Revcontent: Revcontent is a native advertising network that serves content-recommendation widgets on publisher sites, known for its selective, higher-quality supply.
ROAS (Return on Ad Spend): ROAS (return on ad spend) is the revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising, calculated as revenue divided by ad spend.
RPM (Revenue Per Mille): RPM (revenue per mille) is the revenue a publisher earns per one thousand ad impressions or page views, the monetization mirror of CPM.

S

Scaling (Media Buying): Scaling in media buying means increasing spend on a proven-profitable campaign while keeping its cost-per-result and margins intact.
sellers.json: sellers.json is a public file that exchanges and SSPs publish to reveal the sellers and intermediaries authorized to sell inventory through them.
Share of Voice (SOV): Share of voice (SOV) is a brand's portion of total advertising presence in a market relative to all competitors.
Smart Bidding (Automated Bidding): Smart bidding is automated bidding where the platform's machine learning sets each bid in real time to hit a target cost, conversion, or ROAS goal.
Sponsored Content: Sponsored content is editorial-style material a publisher creates or hosts in exchange for payment from a brand, clearly disclosed as paid.
Spy Tool (Ad Spy): In advertising, a spy tool, or ad spy, is software that captures competitors' live ads and landing pages so marketers can research winning creatives and offers.
Supply Path Optimization (SPO): Supply Path Optimization (SPO) is the practice of choosing the shortest, cheapest, and most transparent route to buy a given ad impression.
Supply-Side Platform (SSP): A Supply-Side Platform (SSP) is software publishers use to sell ad inventory programmatically and maximize yield across exchanges and buyers.
SupplyChain Object (schain): The SupplyChain Object (schain) is an OpenRTB field that lists, in order, every intermediary an impression passed through before reaching the buyer.
Sweepstakes Offer: A sweepstakes offer pays an affiliate when a user enters a prize giveaway, usually by submitting contact details or completing a short form.

T

Taboola: Taboola is a leading native advertising network that serves content-recommendation widgets across thousands of publisher sites worldwide.
Teads: Teads is a global media platform best known for pioneering outstream video ads that play inside the editorial content of premium publishers.
Teaser Ad: A teaser ad is a native ad that deliberately withholds key information, using a curiosity-driven headline and image to compel the click-through.
Tier 1 / Tier 2 / Tier 3 Geos: Geo tiers group countries by purchasing power and ad cost: Tier 1 is wealthy and expensive, Tier 2 mid-range, Tier 3 cheap with low payouts.
Tracker (Ad Tracking Software): A tracker is software that records every ad click, ties conversions back to the exact ad and placement, and routes traffic to the right offer.
Tracking Pixel: A tracking pixel is a tiny, often invisible image or code snippet that fires when a page loads, recording user activity for measurement and attribution.
Traffic Arbitrage: Traffic arbitrage is buying web traffic cheaply and monetizing it for more than you paid, profiting on the spread between acquisition cost and revenue.
Traffic Source: A traffic source is the ad platform a media buyer buys clicks or impressions from to send visitors to an offer or landing page.

U

UGC Ads: UGC ads are advertisements styled to look like authentic user-generated content, casual reviews, testimonials, and selfie-style clips, to feel native and credible.

V

Vertical (Affiliate Marketing): A vertical is a category of affiliate offers grouped by product type and audience, such as nutra, sweepstakes, finance, or dating.
View-Through Attribution (VTA): View-through attribution credits a conversion to an ad a user saw but never clicked, as long as it happens within a set window.
Viewability: Viewability measures whether a served ad was actually in view, based on how much of it entered the screen and for how long.

W

Whitelist / Blacklist (Site Targeting): A whitelist allows ads to run only on chosen publisher sites; a blacklist blocks specific sites, both are core site-targeting controls in native campaigns.

Y

Yahoo Gemini / Yahoo Native: Yahoo Gemini was Yahoo's native and search ad marketplace, now folded into Yahoo Native and the Yahoo DSP for buying native inventory at scale.