Resources / Glossary

DoubleVerify Product/Industry Intelligence Glossary

Ad Agency – A company that strategizes, builds, purchases, and monitors brand messages and campaigns for a client.

AdAssure – DoubleVerify’s reporting solution that analyzes the entire scope of a campaign, enabling clients to verify the details of insertion orders and make sure advertising campaigns are compliant. AdAssure provides insights around a variety of campaign elements, including: geo-targeting, page placement, competitive collision, double-serving, roadblocks, section targeting, frequency of ad delivery, sponsorship and share of voice.

Ad Call – Occurs when a browser request an ad from an ad exchange or server.  Ad calls incorporate ad tag information including publisher ID, size, location and referring URL as well as browser cookies.

Ad Decisioning – The method by which ad servers, platforms, and exchanges determine where an ad is served.

Ad Exchange – A platform through which advertisers, publishers, and networks buy and sell online advertising inventory.

Ad Network – A broker between publishers and advertisers that facilitates the purchasing of online advertising inventory and management of online advertising campaigns.

Ad Platforms – Online advertising delivery companies including demand side platforms (DSPs), advertising exchanges and agency trading desks.

Ad Tag – An HTML area located on a webpage that communications with an ad server and requests an ad.  Tags trigger the browser to open a window to place content in.

Advertiser – A product or business that presents its brand messages on publisher websites in an effort to promote audience engagement and purchasing activity.

Attribution – A measurement that assigns credit for a consumer conversion to a particular step in the advertising process (i.e. “Last seen” attribution model recognizes the most recently viewed ad as the user conversion vehicle)

Audience Segment – Audience demographics recognized by web behavioral trends including pages visited, purchasing actions, gender, region, and socioeconomic status.

Behavioral Data – Personalized information that details the types of sites that users typically visit as well as search keywords they frequently enter and products they seek out on the web.

Below The Fold – An ad is considered below the fold when the majority of the creative cannot be seen upon an initial visit to a website – users must scroll down to view below the fold ads. Based on 1024×768 screen resolution, half of the ad’s size is below 610 pixels.

Blacklist – A catalogue of website URLs that brands wish to avoid placing ads on due to inappropriate content concerns.

BrandAssure – A reporting solution from DoubleVerify that provides brand safety reporting and allows clients to improve the performance of current campaigns and make better-informed campaign planning decisions overall. BrandAssure monitors publisher and ad network partners for non-compliance such as: out of white list and out of inclusion, delivery to black listed sites and inappropriate content.

BrandShield – DoubleVerify’s ad blocking solution for advertisers, networks, publishers, exchanges, and DSPs.  BrandShield blocks and prevents ads from running on inappropriate content – in real-time.

BrandShield Connect – DoubleVerify’s server-to-server ad blocking solution that enables networks to block and redirect ads in real-time – ensuring no latency issues or loss of inventory for both the networks and publishers.

Browser Request – A browser’s attempt to load a web page and all of its ad components.

Click-through Rate – A conversion measurement benchmark that is found by dividing the number of clicks registered to an ad by the total impressions served.

Campaign Compliance – When ads adhere to the details in a campaign’s insertion order and are targeted appropriately to the right websites, content, audiences, page placement, and section targeting details.

Contextual Data – Information used to categorize websites either at the page or domain level. Contextual data is useful when targeting ads at a specific set of online users.

Conversion – A positive user response to a marketing message.  Examples of conversions include making a purchase or signing up for a company newsletter.

Conversion Rate – The ratio of consumers that complete a defined conversion to the number of visitors that view a branded message.

Cookie – A portion of text that a server sends to a browser’s cookie file that is then returned to the server each subsequent time a user accesses the particular site.  Advertisers utilize cookies to monitor the rate at which brand messages appear before consumers.

Cost Per Action/Acquisition (CPA) – An online advertising pricing model in which the advertiser pays for each specific action linked to a brand message.  (i.e. purchase, form submission)

Cost Per Click (CPC) – An online advertising pricing model where advertisers pay for every instance that their ad is clicked.

Default Ad – A backup advertisement that runs in place of any non-compliant ad discovered on a verified brand campaign.  Default ads often are public service announcements.

Demand Side Platform (DSP) – A server through which advertisers purchase digital media on a variety of platforms and exchanges.

Direct Response – Marketing practices intended to draw a well-defined and measurable consumer action (i.e. ad clicks, purchases, form submissions)

Display Advertising – Image based advertising that appears on web pages and typically involves the uses of banners, text, logos, photographs, and rich media.

Designated Market Area (DMA) – A specific region where the population receives the same targeted marketing messages.

Frequency Capping – Exercising control over the rate at which a certain ad is served to a user.

iFrames – An HTML element that enables an entire page of HTML to be nested and displayed within the confines of another page.  iFrames are the sections of a website that display ads served from a third-party ad server outside of a publisher’s control.

Impression – A measure of the number of times an ad is displayed.

Insertion Order – Directions given by an advertiser to a company (publisher, network, agency) that lay out parameters for a brand campaign and ad serving specifications.

Inventory – The areas on the web where ads are placed.

Landing Page – The web page to which a visitor is sent after clicking on an ad.

Lift – The percentage gain in brand performance that can be created to a brand campaign.

Media Plan – An overview of all active brand campaigns including current strategies as well as real-time media buys.

Navigator – DoubleVerify’s holistic solution set that simplifies and scales the complex process of managing the quality, growth, and profitability of networks and platforms.  Navigator includes the Prospector, Illuminator, Mapper and Compass product offerings.

Online Advertising Verification – A system that ensures every ad impression is a quality impression, every impression is compliant and every ad was served and displayed exactly as intended.

Online Behavioral Advertising Compliance (OBA) – The online ad industry’s commitment to protecting consumer privacy by informing web users about data practices through clear, meaningful and prominent notices.  DoubleVerify’s OBA compliance solution adheres to the Digital Advertising Alliance’s (DAA) OBA Self-Regulatory Program.

Optimization – The process of seeking out the best possible inventory to drive ROI for campaigns.

Premium Inventory – Also known as guaranteed inventory, this is publisher inventory made available through direct channels.  In many cases, premium inventory lives on a website’s home page and offers increased value over general ad space.

Publisher (online) – Any website that produces content and sells advertising inventory.

Real-Time Bidding – The process by which inventory requests are managed in a real-time environment.  Real-time bids are typically influenced by factors such as previous ad performance and inventory status.

Remnant Inventory – Non-premium inventory that publishers often sell through channels other than their direct sales force such as networks, exchanges, DSPs, etc.

Return on Investment (ROI) – A metric used to evaluate the efficiency of a marketing action.

See-through Rate (STR) – The percentage of ad impressions that can be accurately located and verified. Most standard verification solutions have STRs between 30 percent – 60 percent.

Semantic Targeting – Determines the true nature of a web page’s content and subsequently serving ads based on that analysis.

Standard Deviation – A measurement of the variation there is from the “average”. A low standard deviation indicates that brand campaigns tend to perform very close to the average non-compliance rate, whereas high standard deviation indicates that the campaigns are spread out over a large range of non-compliance.

Verification Tracking Pixel – A method for tracking actions in which the advertiser places an image tag representing a 1×1 pixel on the page that is displayed immediately after the action being tracked.  The DoubleVerify Tracking Pixel, which is a combination of a JavaScript call and a 1×1 image pixel, is embedded within the client’s ad at the ad server level and is served along with the ad’s creative. Once the ad is served, the Tracking Pixel searches through nested iFrames to identify and extract the URL for the page where the ad is served and identify the user’s location.

Trading Desk – Most often a trading desk is a buy-side platform that operates on behalf of an ad agency.

User Generated Content (UGC) – Web based content that is created by users rather than publishers.  Popular examples include blogs, Facebook profiles and YouTube videos.

Video Verification – A measure taken to analyze the content surrounding the pre-roll or in-banner video.  DoubleVerify’s video verification technology provides marketers and publishers with the tools to ensure that brand messages are appearing only in safe, high-quality video environments while also allowing them to monetize under-utilized, brand-friendly inventory.

Virtual Visitors – Advanced visual web crawlers that analyze the HTML structure of a web page, render and visually capture the entire page along with the advertising placement. The technology is designed to take a screenshot of the page and copy the page’s source code. Virtual Visitors are unique to DoubleVerify.