| Ad Clicks |
|
Number of times users click on an ad banner. |
| Ad Click Rate |
|
Sometimes referred to as "click-through,"
this is the percentage of ad views that resulted in an ad click. |
| Ad Views (Impressions) |
|
Number of times an ad banner is downloaded and presumably
seen by visitors. If the same ad appears on multiple pages simultaneously,
this statistic may understate the number of ad impressions, due to browser
caching. Corresponds to net impressions in traditional media. There is
currently no way of knowing if an ad was actually loaded. Most servers
record an ad as served even if it was not. |
| B2B |
|
B2B stands for "business-to-business," as in businesses
doing business with other businesses. The term is most commonly used in
connection with e-commerce and advertising, when you are targeting businesses
as opposed to consumers. |
| Backbone |
|
A high-speed line or series of connections that forms
a large pathway within a network. The term is relative to the size of
networkit is serving. A backbonein a small network would probably be much
smaller than many non-backbone lines in a large network. |
| Bandwidth |
|
How much information (text, images, video, sound) can
be sent through aconnection. Usually measured in bits-per-second. A full
page of text is about 16,000 bits. A fast modem can move approximately
15,000 bitsin one second. Full-motion full-screen videorequires about
10,000,000 bits-per- second, depending on compression. (See also: 56K,
bit, modem, T-1) |
| Banner |
|
An ad on a Web page that is usually "hot-linked"
to the advertiser's site. |
| Browser Caching |
|
To speed surfing, browsers store recently used pages
on a user's disk. If a site is revisited, browsers display pages from
the disk instead of requesting them from the server. As a result, servers
under-count the number of times a page is viewed. |
| Button |
|
Button is the term used to reflect an Internet
advertisement smaller than the traditional banner.
Buttons are square in shape and usually located down the left or
right side of the site.
The IAB and CASIE have recognized
these sizes as the most popular and most accepted on the Internet:
| Standard
Internet Ad Sizes |
Unit |
Weight/Limits |
Animation |
Border |
|
GIF/JPEG
|
FLASH |
|
|
728
x 90 |
20K |
30K |
15
Second Limit
|
0
|
300
x 250 |
160
x 600 |
180
x 150 |
15K |
20K |
|
|
| CASIE |
|
CASIE stands for the Coalition for Advertising Supported
Information and Entertainment. It was founded in May of 1994 by the Association
of National Advertisers (ANA) and the American Association ofAdvertising
Agencies (AAAA) to guide the development of interactive advertising and
marketing. |
| CGI |
|
Common Gateway Interface. An interface-creation scripting
program that allows Web pages to made on the fly based on information
from buttons, checkboxes, text input, etc. |
| Click through |
|
The percentage of ad views that resulted in an ad click.
|
| CPC |
|
Cost-per-click is an Internet marketing formula used
to price ad banners. Advertisers will pay Internet publishers based on
the number of clicks a specific ad banner gets. Cost usually runs in the
range of $.10 -.$20 per click. |
| CPM |
|
CPM is the cost per thousand for a particular site.
A Web site that charges $15,000 per banner and guarantees 600,000 impressions
has a CPM of $25 ($15,000 divided by 600). |
| Cyberspace |
|
Coined by author William Gibson in his 1984 novel "Neuromancer,"
cyberspace is now used to describe all of the information available through
computer networks. |
| Domain Name |
|
The unique name of an Internet site; for example www.cyberatlas.com.
There are six top-level domains widely used in the US: .com (commercial)
.edu (educational),.net (network operations), .gov (US government), .mil
(US military) and .org (organization). Other, two letter domains represent
countries; thus; .uk for the United Kingdom and so on. |
| DTC |
|
DTC stands for "direct-to-consumer." The term is commonly
used to denote advertising that is targeted to consumers, as opposed to
businesses. Television ads, print ads in consumer publications, and radio
ads are all forms of DTC advertising. |
| Hit |
|
Each time a Web server sends a file to a browser, it
is recorded in the server log file as a "hit". Hits are generated for
every element of a requested page (including graphics, text and interactive
items). If a page containing two graphics is viewed by a user, three hits
will be recorded - one for the page itself and one for each graphic. Webmasters
use hits to measure their server's work load. Because page designs vary
greatly, hits are a poor guide for traffic measurement. |
| Host |
|
An Internet host used to be a single machine connected
to the Internet (which meant it had a unique IP address). As a host it
made available to other machines on the network certain services. However
virtual hosting has now meant that one physical host can now be actually
many virtual hosts. |
| HTML |
|
HyperText Markup Language is a coding language used
to make hypertext documents for use on the Web. HTML resembles old-fashioned
typesetting code, where a block of text is surrounded by codes that indicate
how it should appear. HTML allows text to be "linked" to another
file on the Internet. |
| Hypertext |
|
Any text that that can be chosen by a reader and which
causes another document to be retrieved and displayed. |
| IAB |
|
IAB stands for the Interactive Advertising Bureau. The
IAB is a global nonprofit association devoted exclusively to maximizing
the use and effectiveness of advertising on the Internet. The IAB sponsors
research and events related to the Internet advertising industry. |
| Internet |
|
A collection of approximately 60,000 independent, inter-connected
networks that use the TCP/IP protocols and that evolved from ARPANet of
the late '60s and early '70s. |
| Interstitial |
|
Meaning in between, an advertisement that appears in
a separate browser window while you wait for a Web page to load. Interstitials
are more likely to contain large graphics, streaming presentations, and
applets than conventional banner ads, and some studies have found that
more users click on interstitials than on banner ads. Some users, however,
have complained that interstitials slow access to destination pages. |
| IP address |
|
Internet Protocal address. Every system connected to
the Internet has a unique IP address, which consists of a number in the
format A.B.C.D where each of the four sections is a decimalnumber from
0 to 255. Most people use Domain Names instead and theresolution betweenDomain
Names and IP addresses is handled by the network and the Domain Name Servers.
With virtual hosting, a single machine can act like multiple machines
(with multiple domain names and IP addresses). |
| IRC |
|
Internet Relay Chat is a worldwide network of people
talking to each other in real time. |
| ISDN |
|
Integrated Services Digital Network is a digital network
that moves up to 128,000 bits-per-second over a regular phone line at
nearly the same cost as a normal phone call. |
| Java |
|
Java is a general purpose programming language with
a number of features that make the language well suited for use on the
World Wide Web. Small Java applications are called Java applets and can
be downloaded from a Web server and run on your computer by a Java-compatible
Web browser, such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer.
|
| Javascript |
|
Javascript is a scripting language developed by Netscape
that can interact with HTML source code, enabling Web authors to spice
up their sites with dynamic content. |
| Jump
Page |
|
A jump page, also known as a "splash page," is a special page set up for
visitors who clicked on a link in an advertisement. For example, by clicking
on an ad for Site X, visitors go to a page in Site X that continues the
message used in the advertising creative. The jump page can be used to promote
special offers or to measure the response to an advertisement. |
| Link |
|
An electronic connectionbetween two Web sites (also
called "hot link"). |
| Listserv |
|
The most widespread of maillists. Listervs started on
BITNET and are now common on the Internet. |
| Log file |
|
A file that lists actions that have occurred. For example,
Web servers maintain log files listing every request made to the server.
With log fileanalysis tools, it's possible to get a good idea of where
visitors are coming from, how often they return, and how they navigate
through a site. Using cookies enables Webmasters to log even more detailed
information about how individual users are accessing a site. |
| Newsgroup |
|
A discussion group on Usenet devoted to talking about
a specific topic. Currently, there are over 15,000 newsgroups. |
| Opt-in e-mail |
|
Opt-in email lists are lists where Internet users have
voluntarily signed up to receive commercial e-mail about topics of interest.
|
| Page |
|
All Web sites are a collection of electronic "pages."
Each Web page is a document formatted in HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)
that contains text, images or media objects such as RealAudio player files,
QuickTime videos or Java applets. The "home page" is typically
a visitor's first point of entry and features a site index. Pages can
be static or dynamically generated. All frames and frame parent documentsare
counted as pages. |
| Page Views |
|
Number of times a user requests a page that may contain
a particular ad. Indicative of the number of times an ad was potentially
seen, or "gross impressions." Page views may overstate ad impressions
if users choose to turn off graphics (done to speed browsing). |
| RealAudio |
|
A commercial software program that plays audio on demand,
without waiting for long file transfers. For instance, you can listen
to National Public Radios entire broadcast of All Things Considered and
the Morning Edition on the Internet. |
| Rich Media |
|
Rich media is a term for advanced technology used in
Internet ads, such as streaming video, applets that allow user interaction,
and special effects. |
| ROI |
|
ROI stands for "return on investment," one of the great
mysteries of online advertising, and indeed, advertising in general. ROI
is trying to find out what the end of result of the expenditure (in this
case, an ad campaign) is. A lot depends on the goal of the campaign, building
brand awareness, increasing sales, etc. Early attemps at determining ROI
in Internet advertising relied heavily on the click-rate of an ad. |
| Server |
|
A machine that makes services available on a network
to client programs. A file server makes files available. A WAIS server
makes full-text information available through the WAIS protocol (although
WAIS uses the term source interchangeably with server). |
| Splash page |
|
See jump page. |
| Sponsorship |
|
Sponsorships are increasing in popularity on the Internet.
A sponsorship is when an advertisers pays to sponsor content, usually
a section of Web site oran e-mail newsletter. In the case of a site, the
sponship may include banners or buttons on the site, and possibly a tag
line. |
| Sticky |
|
"Sticky" sites are those where the visitors stay for
an extended period of time. For instance, a banking site that offers a
financial calculator is stickier than on that doesn't because visitors
do not have to leave to find a resource they need. |
| T-1 |
|
A high-speed (1.54 megabits/second) network connection.
|
| T-3 |
|
An even higher speed (45 megabits/second) Internet connection.
|
| TCP |
|
Transmission Control Protocol works with IP to ensure
that packets travel safely on the Internet. |
| Unique Users |
|
The number of different individuals who visit a site
within a specific time period. To identify unique users, Web sites rely
on some form of user registration or identification system. |
| UNIX |
|
A computer operating system (the basic software running
on a computer, underneath things like data bases and word processors).
UNIX is designed to be used by many people at once ("multi-user")
and has TCP/IP built-in. Unix is the most prevalent operating system for
Internet servers. |
| Valid Hits |
|
A further refinement of hits, valid hits are hits that
deliver all information to a user. Excludes hits such as redirects, error
messages and computer-generated hits. |
| Visits |
|
A sequence of requests made by one user at one site.
If a visitor does not request any new information for a period of time,
known as the "time-out" period, then the next request by the
visitor is considered a new visit. To enable comparisons among sites,
I/PRO uses a 30-minute time-out. |
Information