Digital advertising glossary

CPM, short for Cost Per Mille, is the price an advertiser pays for 1,000 ad impressions delivered by an ad network or publisher.

CPC, short for Cost Per Click, is the price an advertiser pays each time a user clicks their ad.

CPA, short for Cost Per Acquisition (also Cost Per Action), is the advertising cost an advertiser pays to acquire one paying customer, completed sale, or other defined conversion event.

CTR, short for Click-Through Rate, is the percentage of ad impressions that result in user clicks.

eCPM, short for Effective Cost Per Mille (also Effective Cost Per Thousand), is the actual revenue a publisher earns per 1,000 ad impressions, regardless of how the underlying ads were priced.

TargetCPA bidding is an automated bidding strategy in which advertisers specify a target cost per acquisition (CPA), and the ad platform's algorithm dynamically adjusts impression-level bids in real time to hit that target CPA on average across the campaign.

RTB, short for Real-Time Bidding, is an auction-based digital advertising buying method in which ad impressions are sold individually in real-time auctions that typically complete in under 100 milliseconds — between the moment a user requests a webpage and the moment the page is rendered.

Programmatic advertising is the automated buying and selling of digital ad inventory using algorithms and software platforms, replacing the traditional method of manual negotiation, insertion-order paperwork, and human-mediated transactions.

Attribution in advertising is the process of determining which marketing touchpoints (ads, channels, campaigns) contributed to a conversion, and assigning credit to those touchpoints in proportion to their contribution.

S2S postback, short for Server-to-Server postback, is a server-side method for transmitting conversion data between an advertiser's tracking platform and the ad network that delivered the click.

An MMP, short for Mobile Measurement Partner, is a third-party measurement and attribution platform that tracks mobile app installs and in-app events across multiple advertising networks, providing advertisers with unified attribution data independent of any single ad network's reporting..

GIVT, short for General Invalid Traffic, refers to easily identifiable invalid ad traffic that can be detected through routine, list-based, or signature-based filtering methods.

SIVT, short for Sophisticated Invalid Traffic, refers to invalid ad traffic that cannot be identified through routine list-based or signature-based filtering and requires advanced behavioral, cryptographic, or machine-learning-based detection methods.

Ad fraud is the deliberate generation of fake, invalid, or non-human ad impressions, clicks, or conversions for the purpose of extracting payment from advertisers without delivering legitimate audience reach.

Viewability is a measurement standard that determines whether an ad had the opportunity to be seen by a user, as opposed to merely being served by an ad server.

Frequency capping is the practice of limiting how many times an individual user sees a specific ad or campaign within a defined time window.

VAST, short for Video Ad Serving Template, is an XML-based protocol maintained by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) that defines a standard format for delivering video ads from ad servers to video players.

Affiliate marketing is a performance-based advertising model in which independent marketers (affiliates) earn commissions by driving conversions — sales, leads, sign-ups, app installs — for advertisers (also called offer owners or merchants).

Performance marketing is a digital marketing approach in which advertisers pay only for measurable results — clicks, leads, sales, app installs, or other defined conversion events — rather than for impressions, fixed-fee placements, or unmeasured brand exposure.