Rank - A web site or advertisement's standing in comparison to other web sites or advertisements. Rank provides advertisers with information on performance comparisons.
Rate Card - The published rates and ad space availability for a particular media such as a web site. Usually subject to change and often negotiable. May also include technical details regarding the banner specifications.
Reach - The number of unique visitors that visited a site over the course of the reporting period, expressed as a percent of the universe for the demographic category. Also called unduplicated audience.
Real Audio - A computer software program from Real that enables web sites to serve audio files to visitors by streaming the file so that visitors do not have to wait for the entire file to download before it begins.
Real Time - A term used to describe immediate results. For example, an advertiser may need real time statistics on how their campaign is performing rather than statistics that are updated hourly or daily or weekly.
Referring Page - The web page that a visitor was previously at before arriving to the current page as a result of clicking a hyperlink on the previous web page.
Regional - Often used to describe web page requests that originated from a similar geographical area. This is measured by analyzing a server's log files for requests from ISPs and then aggregating those requests by region according to the ISPs geographical location.
Registration - A process by which visitors to a web site are either requested or required to register certain details about themselves in order for complete access to the site. Depending on the level of the data requested, it may enable web sites to target advertisements to their registered users more effectively and track unique visitors.
Remnant Space - Advertising space that remains unsold right before it is about to be used and thus often sold at a discount at the last minute.
Request - The attempt by ones browser to retrieve a page, including page elements such as a banner advertisement, from a server on the Internet.
Return Visits - The number of times the same visitor returns to a site over a set period of time.
RFP - A request for proposal (RFP) is a term that may be used by an advertiser that is requesting some type of advertising arrangement with a web site.
RFQ - A request for quotation (RFQ) is a term that may be used by an advertiser that is requesting a price for placing advertisements on a publishers web site.
Rich Media - A type of advertisement technology that often includes richer graphics, audio or video within the advertisement. Unlike static or animated GIF banner advertisements, rich media advertisements often enable users to interact with the banner without leaving the page on which it appears. Some popular types of rich media banners are created with HTML, Shockwave & Flash.
ROC - Run of category (ROC) means a banner will appear anywhere within a category on a web site or ad network. More targeted than a run of site (ROS) campaign where the banner would appear randomly on any page of the site.
ROI - Return on investment (ROI) is the process used to determine whether the monetary benefits from an expenditure, such as a advertising campaign, are above or below the amount of money spent on the campaign. Depending on the objective of an advertising campaign, the ROI may be hard to determine with certainty.
RON - Run of network (RON) means a banner will appear on any page of any site that is part of an ad network. Since this type of buy is not targeted, it tends to be the least expensive type of advertisement that can be purchased.
ROS - Run of site (ROS) means a banner will appear anywhere on a web site as opposed to run of category (ROC) which would appear only on pages within a specific category.
Rotation - A banner that is in rotation on a page or group of pages, will not be the only banner shown when any of the pages are reloaded. Sometimes an advertiser will request a banner not be shown in rotation in which case it would appear every time the page is loaded also know as exclusivity.
RSS - RSS is a simple XML-based system that allows users to subscribe to their favorite websites. Using RSS, webmasters can put their content into a standardized format, which can be viewed and organized through RSS-aware software or automatically conveyed as new content on another website.
Ruby on Rails - often called RoR, or just Rails, is an open source web application framework written in Ruby that closely follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture. It strives for simplicity and allowing real-world applications to be developed in less code than other frameworks and with a minimum of configuration.
Search Engine - A search engine or search service is a document retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system, such as on the World Wide Web. When a user comes to the search engine and makes a query, typically by giving key words, the engine looks up the index and provides a listing of best-matching web pages according to its criteria, usually with a short summary containing the document's title and sometimes parts of the text. Most search engines support the use of the boolean terms AND, OR and NOT to further specify the search query.
Session - A series of page requests by a visitor without 30 consecutive minutes of inactivity. The number 30 is arbitrary but most commonly used among web advertisers and publishers. Also called a visit.
Shockwave - A software plug-in that enables browsers to play multimedia animations. Some rich media advertisements require users to have this plug-in.
Skyscraper - A type of ad unit that is much taller than it is wide. Often used in columns of web pages where there is allot of unused vertical space but limited horizontal space.
Slogan - A short, memorable advertising phrase that often appears in advertisements. For example the athletic shoe maker Nike's, "Just Do It".
Snail Mail - A term for traditional land and air mail services> Snail mail can take days for delivery Vs seconds for delivery of email.
Social Network - The personal or professional set of relationships between individuals. Social networks represent both a collection of ties between people and the strength of those ties. Often used as a measure of social “connectedness”, recognizing social networks assists in determining how information moves throughout groups, and how trust can be established and fostered.
Soft Sell - Technique of using low pressure appeals in advertisements to generate a sale or response.
Spam - The sending of unsolicited emails or newsgroup posts in bulk often containing commercial advertising messages. Considered bad netiquette, bad business and illegal in some US states. The opposite of spam would be permission based email whereby customized information is emailed to individual users who have previously requested such information. See opt in.
Spider - A software program that automatically follows links on the world wide web. The most common types of spiders are those used by search engines for the purpose of indexing web pages. Many spiders follow banner links thus over counting click throughs.
Splash Page - Also known as a "jump page", a splash page is special entrance page to a site. Advertisers often use it to direct people who click on a particular banner to more information about what the banner was regarding rather then sending them directly to the sites homepage. This can be useful for banners advertising free registrations, contests, coupons or other special offers the advertiser does not want to put on the sites main page. Can also help track click throughs.
Split-Run - The testing process of sending the same advertisement to two or more groups with different headlines or copy to determine effectiveness of each.
Sponsorships - A form of advertising in which an advertiser pays to sponsor a section of a web site. It may take the form of the typical banner and/or text that mentions "this section sponsored by:". Works best when the content of the sponsored web page is directly related to but not competitive with the advertisers products or services.
SSI - A server side include is a line of code in an HTML document that gets processed by the server each time the page is loaded. Used to output dynamic content on a web page such as from a rotating banner script.
Standards - A set of voluntary standards created by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) for online advertisement sizes, dimensions and names.
Start Date - The date on which a advertising campaign starts.
Statistics - The records that an ad serving software keeps each time it serves an ad and the ad is clicked on. The statistics recorded may be as simple as total impressions and click throughs or more detailed info such as browser types, geographical location, operating system & more.
Sticky - A term used to describe a web site on which visitors stay at for longer than normal. This is often due to the variety of content and features offered to the visitor which prevents them from needing to go elsewhere for more information. For example, online game sites are sticky as users tend to stay and play for awhile where as link directories are not as visitors tend to leave as soon as they find what they were looking for.
Subliminal - Subliminal persuasion is the use of an advertising message presented below the threshold of consciousness. A visual or auditory message that is allegedly perceived psychologically, but not consciously. Also called subception.
Superstitials - Rich media advertisements that download in the background while a visitor is reading a web page and launch a browser window only when it has complete downloaded. They are attractive to advertisers as they permit larger and more interactive ads than a traditional banner and since they preload in the background are not as annoying as pop ups and interstitials.
Tag – A keyword or term associated with or assigned to a piece of information (like picture, article, or video clip), thus describing the item and enabling keyword-based classification of information it is applied to.
Tag Line - A slogan or phrase that conveys the most important product attribute or benefit that the advertiser wishes to convey. Generally, a theme to a campaign and appears in a banner. May also appear as clickable text beneath a banner and when clicked on redirects the browser to the same page as the visitor would have gone to if they had clicked on the banner.
Targeted - Refers to advertisements that are aimed, on the basis of demographic analysis, at one specific subsection of the market.
TCP/IP - A communications protocol that connects a number of different networks designed by different vendors into a network of networks otherwise known as the Internet. It works in layers with TCP being responsible for verifying the correct delivery of data from client to server and IP being responsible for moving packets of data from node to node.
Testimonial - A statement, often given by a celebrity or satisfied customer, affirming the value of a product, event or service. For example Tiger Woods, considered one of the best golfers, might be quoted about how a certain brand of golf balls is the best.
Text Links - Text that is hyperlinked to another web page. Can be found on web sites or in newsletters and email. Often identified by appearing in blue with a line under it. When clicked on, the visitor will be taken to the page the text was hyperlinked to.
TLD - Top level domain (TLD) is the domain name extension that follows a domain name. For example in the US .com is used for businesses, .edu for education institution, .net for networking companies, .gov for government agencies, .mil for the military and .org for non profit organizations. In addition, most countries have been assigned a two letter TLD such as .ca for Canada and .uk for United Kingdom.
Trap Door - A trap door is a type of banner advertisement that leads to a page that does not easily allow the visitor to return to the previous page the banner was on. This is accomplished by using a meta refresh tag set to 0 on the destination page immediately sending them to another page or launching a browser windows that has hidden the browsers back button.
Unique Visitors - A term used to describe the total number of visitors to a site over a certain time period. The only way to accurately track this is to require each visitor to login with a unique user name to gain access to a site. Relying exclusively on IP addresses in a log file is not recommended as it would not take into consideration multiple users accessing ones site through the same IP address such as would happen at companies and schools. Cookies are also used sometimes, but since they can be disabled or cached, they cannot be relied upon exclusively.
URL - Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is the Internet "address" of a web site or web page on the World Wide Web. For example our URL is http://www.2020systems.com/ A browser requires this information in its location box in order to load a web page. Can be pronounced "you-are-ell" or "earl."
Valid Hits - A term used to differentiate between successful click throughs by individuals and those that may have resulted in a server error or were generated by some kind of automated software program such as a search engine spider.
Viral Marketing - Advertising that propagates itself by web visitors’ use of a web sites feature or service. For example, most administrators of free web based email accounts attach an advertisement at the end of each message each time a user sends an email.
Visit - A series of page requests by a visitor without 30 consecutive minutes of inactivity. The number 30 is arbitrary but most commonly used among web advertisers and publishers. Also called a session.
Web 2.0 - A term often applied to a perceived ongoing transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of websites to a full-fledged computing platform serving web applications to end users. It refers to a supposed second-generation of Internet-based services—such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies—that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users.
Web Host - The business of providing the storage, connectivity, and services necessary to serve files for a website. Also known as Web hosting company.
Web Page - A document that can contain text, graphics, sound or video and displayed in a browser window accessible on the World Wide Web. Multiple web pages make up a "web site".
Web Server - A computer connected to the Internet for the purpose of serving a web sites web pages to visitors on the world wide web.
Web Site - A collection of hyperlinked web pages organized at the same domain name.
Webcasting - A process where by sound and/or video is broadcast online. The process can deliver live or prerecorded information. Often advertisements are inserted at the beginning of the broadcast.
Webmaster - A term used loosely to describe an individual assigned to administering a web site. Typical duties might include updating pages, correcting errors, fixing links or responding to technical inquiries.
Webmercials - Full screen animated ads accompanied by professional voice over and sound effects. Usually appear between web pages for 5-30 seconds and used for branding purposes.
Wiki - is a type of Web site that allows the visitors themselves to easily add, remove, and otherwise edit and change some available content, sometimes without the need for registration. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative authoring.
World Wide Web - A part of the Internet containing web pages that can be viewed using a browser.
Zine - Magazines that are published online instead of in print. Often cover very specific subjects and thus have very targeted readers.