devtodev is a comprehensive provider of ad monetization analytics that allows you to collect all the necessary information, make sense of it and boost your ad revenue! To help our clients and other experts, we have composed this glossary of terms that will guide you through ad monetization terminology. Build your knowledge and launch successful ad campaigns!
Glossary of Ad Monetization Terminology
Ad ID - a unique identifier of the ad.
Ad mediation - a process of serving ads from multiple sources.
Ad network - a group of advertisers that publishers can join to generate revenue by serving ads on their platform.
Ad reach - the number of people who saw your ads at least once.
Adoption rate - the percentage of ad views to all views.
Allowlisting - making a list of advertisers that a publisher explicitly approves.
ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) - the amount of income that is on average produced by one active user over a specific period of time.
Attribution - the process of crediting a conversion or sale back to a specific ad.
Auction - a process of buying and selling ad placements. Advertisers bid against each other to have their ads shown to the audience they're targeting.
Audience - a term that defines a certain group of people (people who open your app or targeted by your ads, etc.)
Banner ad - an advertisement appearing on a web page in the form of a bar, column, or box.
Billing - a process of charging for ads.
Blacklisting (blocklisting) - making a list of advertisers that a publisher bans from appearing on their platform.
Churn rate (in ads) - the number of people who convert via paid ads but don't hang around.
Conversion - a certain action (ad click, ad view, etc) that may be followed by another predefined action (payment) to complete the conversion process.
Cookies - certain tags by which advertisers can track a user or their device across different websites.
CPA - the average cost of bringing a new user.
CPC - the average cost of each click.
CPI - the average cost of one product install.
CPM - the amount of money spent on a thousand impressions (advertiser metric).
Creative - an ad unit.
Cross-promotion - a form of marketing promotion in which some (two or more) companies with similar audiences promote one another (often in form of a collaboration).
CTR - the percentage of times that people saw your ad and clicked it.
Direct deal - a deal where a publisher directly invites an advertiser to purchase their ad inventory.
eCPM - revenue generated from a thousand ad impressions (publisher metric).
Fill rate - a ratio of the number of times an ad was requested to the number of actually delivered ads.
Impressions - the number of times that your ads appeared on users’ screens.
Incentivized ads - ads that reward users upon the completion of actions.
Interstitial ad - an ad that appears between two processes (e.g. between game levels).
Lifetime - the average time a user stays active in the project.
Lookalike audience - a group of users who share characteristics with another group of users.
LTV (Lifetime value) - the average amount of money from one user during all his “life” in a project.
Mediator - a service that allows you to serve ads from multiple sources.
Monetization - a process of earning money from your app or game (online ads, subscription fees, in-app purchases)
Native ads - ads that match the design of the product.
Offerwall - a form of ads that looks like a list of offers.
Organic traffic - visits generated by organic search (Google etc.)
Paid traffic - visits generated by paid ads.
Placement - the very place with ads.
Playable ads - an ad that users can interact with.
Potential reach - the number of people that are in your target audience.
PPC (Pay-Per-Click) - a form of advertising in which publishers earn money on every click on the ads they run on their platforms.
Programmatic - a way of buying advertising that allows you to pay only for ads delivered to your target audience.
Publisher - an owner of a website, platform, game, or any other media on which ads can be placed.
Real time bidding - a technology used in real-time ad auctions.
Rewarded ads - a form of ad that offers a useful reward for viewing.
ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) - the revenue generated per every *currency unit* spent in your ad campaign
ROI - return on investment.
RPM (Revenue Per Mille) - the revenue generated per 1,000 ad impressions.
Subscription - a type of revenue model where users are charged a recurring fee (can be an ad target).
Target audience - the number of people that you can reach using certain ad campaign settings.
Targeting - the process of breaking down your entire audience and serving different ads to different groups of people.
Tracker - a service for monitoring ad performance.
Video ad - an advertisement appearing on a web page in the form of a short video.
View - the number of views of an ad.
Viewability rate - a metric that indicates if a display ad is actually viewable when it’s served.
Waterfall (daisy chain) - a chain of ad networks arranged top to bottom to yield the highest CPMs for advertisers and increase revenue for publishers.
