Jargon Buster

Media Smart is the advertising industry’s media literacy programme providing free information and resources to help teach children and young people about advertising. The IAB is a supporting member.

A somewhat loose term which is generally used to refer to the generation born from c. 1980 until the mid-2000's (and sometimes onwards), who grew up in a world of digital technology and mass media. 

A message sent via a Multimedia Messaging Service that contains multimedia objects.

Any form of advertising that is communicated to the consumer / target via a mobile device. 

Multiple mobile messages, usually delivered as part of a coordinated campaign.

MRAID or ‘Mobile Rich Media Ad Interface Definitions’ is the common API (Application Programming Interface) for mobile rich media ads that run in mobile apps. MRAID compliant apps all talk the same 'creative language' where things like ad expansion, ad resizing, and getting access to device functionally such as the accelerometer are concerned. This makes it much easier for developers to create rich media ads that will work across multiple apps. For more info about MRAID see here. 

A rectangular online advert. MPU stands for  mid-page unit as it appears mid way down the page.

Digital advertising that works as part of the main content flow of a media owner’s site and, typically, provides audiences with a ‘content experience’. Native ad formats include content curation units, discovery and recommendation units. Content marketing methods, such as sponsorship or advertorial features, are also sometimes described as native advertising.

Natural (sometimes referred to as organic) search results are those which appear in a separate section (usually the main body of the page) to paid listings. The results listed here have not been paid for and are ranked by the search engine (using spiders or algorithms) according to relevancy to the search terms.