Jargon Buster

The ability to assess the performance of an ad campaign.

A 1x1 pixel-sized transparent image that provides information about an ad's placement. In many cases, a tracking pixel is used to notify an ad tracking system that either an ad has been served (or not served, in some cases) or that a specific webpage has been accessed. Also known as: beacon, web beacon, action tag, redirect, etc.

An agency branch trading entity known as the expert operators in their use of new technology.  These entities can be independent or operate within an agency holding company.  This group of people (known as traders) play the day-to-day campaign management role. Used by agency holding companies, operating agencies and advertisers.

Number of visitors who come to a website.

Unique visitors refers to the number of distinct individuals requesting pages from a website during a given period, regardless of how often they visit. Visits refer to the number of times a site is visited, no matter how many visitors make up those visits.

An anonymous person who uses a web browser to access web content.

Online content created by website users rather than media owners or publishers - either through reviews, blogging, podcasting or posting comments, pictures or video clips. 

VAST or ‘Video Ad-Serving Template’ provides a common ad response format for video players that enables video ads to be served on all compliant video players. This means that advertisers don’t need to integrate lots of different ad tags to be able to serve their video across multiple publishers. For more information about VAST see here.

Allows users to watch what they want, when they want. This can be either ‘pay per view’ or a free service usually funded by advertising. All major broadcasters offer VOD such on platforms such as 40D or BBC iplayer.