Venatus Ad-Tech Jargon Buster

Online advertising technologies are formed of many complex systems spanning numerous business services and technology platforms, which in turn spawns a lot of technical jargon. Without an education in the intricacies of these systems, figuring out campaign goals and interpreting performance reports can be quite tricky - which is why we’ve created a handy jargon-busting guide, to help you on your path towards site monetisation or launching online marketing campaigns.

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Inventory & Ad-Formats

Publisher:

The owner of a website, app, platform or a collection of these, which is then monetised by Venatus by installing various ad placements. Sites and apps are generalised as ‘Inventory’.

Ad Format:

The overall appearance and aesthetic of a particular type of advertisement, determined by its size, shape, functionality and placement across our inventory. 

Banners (Display Ad)

A form of graphical advertisement which includes static/animated images and text, and is typically embedded into web-pages. Banners run alongside site content and are viewable across mobile and desktop devices. Banner types are defined by their height and width, measured in pixels. 

Standard Banners

Our smallest banner ad sizes, but also our most affordable ad placement. Includes the Leaderboard (728x90), Skyscraper (160x600) and MPU (300x250) banner sizes. 

Premium Banners

Our larger and more prominent banner ad sizes, including the Masthead (970x250) and Double MPU (300x600).

In-Game Banners

Banner ads which run within specific games, offering a seamless and organically integrated banner ad placement. Venatus currently offer in-game banners within Roblox, through our exclusive partner Bloxbiz.

Takeovers

A high-impact graphical ad format, which surrounds the primary content of a supported web-page, and utilises rich-media technology to expand and fill the entire browser window, unlike banners. Takeover types differ based on customisability and functionality, and are primarily a desktop ad format, however Venatus now offers mobile takeovers across specific sites. 

Standard Takeover

‍Our most basic Takeover, consisting of static images and text, used to surround the content of supported websites. 

Premium Takeover

A Takeover consisting of static images, text and video content, used to surround the content of supporting websites.

Premium Expandable Takeover (PET)

Similar to a Premium Takeover, PETs support static images, text and video graphics, but allow users to expand video content to fill their entire screen (on top of site content) by hovering over the ad for a specified amount of time.

Microstitial Takeover

Our most customisable Takeover format, as they allow for rich-media assets, such as minigames and quizzes, as well as text and video to be embedded within the Takeover. 

Spotify Takeover

Our brand new Spotify Takeover is similar to our Premium Takeover, however allows advertisers to embed a specified Spotify playlist, with click-to-play access for users. 

Twitch Takeover

Our Twitch Takeover allows advertisers to embed a chosen Twitch stream into the Takeover, inviting users to tune in without leaving their chosen content. 

Video

An ad-format which utilises motion picture and audio content to generate awareness. Video ads vary in size, placement and position amongst other content.

Instream (Pre-Roll)

Instream or pre-roll video, is served within video environments on a webpage and usually precedes the primary video content a user has selected. Instream video benefits from increased engagement, as users have personally opted into viewing video content prior to the ad being served. 

Outstream (Slider)

Outstream video is served across non-video content, such as text-based editorial, in a separate box (slider) separate to the site’s content. Outstream video helps drive awareness, by placing video advertisements across a wider list of potential sites. 

Skinned Video

Features the original video content, with a graphic image/text border surrounding it. This graphic usually contains a clickable call-to-action and pertinent information related to the video’s content. Skinned video can be both In or Outstream.

CTV

‘Connected Television’ video ads are served across internet-connected TVs, such as smart-TVs or games consoles. Venatus offers in-game CTV ad-placements, through our exclusive partner PlayerWon. 

In-App

In-app ad placements run across mobile applications and vary by aesthetics, placement and functionality. 

Interstitial

These can either be static or video based ads and are served during natural pauses in gameplay, such as in-between different levels. 

MRAID

An MRAID is a custom mini-game, served during natural pauses in gameplay. These are custom-built by Venatus, and include popular game formats such as quizzes, puzzle and action games. 

Reward Video

Video content served after a user opts into viewing an advertisement, in return for in-game gifts or currency. Reward video benefits from higher view-through rates (VTR), as users must complete the video before receiving their reward. 

In-Game Ads

Ad placements which are seamlessly integrated into game content itself, offering higher awareness and engagement rates, by embedding directly into content a user has opted into engaging with. 

Native Advertising

Sponsored content featured on a given piece of inventory and integrated seamlessly into existing content; for example sponsored game reviews on a gaming news website.

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Campaigns

The way in which an advertising campaign is planned and executed, Venatus currently offers three types of campaign types:

Direct Deal

Advertisers buy a set amount of guaranteed impressions and agree upon specific inventory to run the campaign across. Our dedicated AdOps team assist in the ad-serving and performance optimisation of the campaign.

Programmatic Guaranteed (PG)

Programmatic’ refers to the process of buying and selling ad inventory through automated, rather than human actions. PG deals guarantee the amount of impressions served, but don’t feature performance optimisation.

Programmatic Marketplace (PMP)

PMP deals utilise the programmatic marketplace to serve impressions across inventory, however do not guarantee impressions.

Demographic

Specific characteristics related to a given human population and used to identify potential markets for an ad-campaign. Examples of demographic characteristics include, age, gender, income, etc.

Targeting

Various criteria selected to optimise the delivery of a campaign towards users of a specified target demographic.

Geo Targeting

Targeting users based on their geographical location. 

Buy Type 

The pricing method for the purchase of different ad-formats and placements:

CPM

Cost-per-Thousand or the price of serving 1,000 impressions, the default pricing strategy used for the majority of ad-formats.

CPCV

Cost-per-Completed-View, pricing based on completed views of a video creative - this is mainly utilised for reward video ad placements. 

Call-To-Action

A prompt encouraging a user to make a specific, desired response, usually relating to the campaign’s goals, for example encouraging a user to click an ad-placement and book tickets for a movie.

A/B Testing

The process of testing two concurrent marketing campaigns, with slightly different attributes, in order to determine which garners better performance; examples of things to test could be the campaign’s design, wording, etc. 

Microsite

A small, additional website used in conjunction with a brand’s primary site - these are often used alongside online advertising campaigns. 

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Campaign Performance

Impression:

The amount of times an ad is served and displayed to its audience. 

CTR:

Click-Through-Rate - The % of users who clicked an ad vs those who chose not to.

VTR:

View-Through-Rate - The % of users who watched a video ad to the end vs those who did not. 

CPM:

Cost-per-Thousand - The price of serving 1,000 ad impressions.

CPC:

Cost-per-Click - The amount of clicks received by a campaign, compared to its CPM; effectively giving the cost of each click received. 

CPA:

Cost-per-Acquisition - A comparison of the CPM to the conversion rate, expressed in its given currency, effectively offering the cost of acquiring a new user.

Conversions: 

A user who completes an intended action related to an advertisement, defined during the design process of a campaign; for example, users who (as a direct result of seeing an ad) purchase an advertised product / service or sign-up for a mailing list.

Conversion Rate: 

The amount of users who successfully converted, compared to those who did not, expressed as a percentage. 

Engagement Rate:

The amount of users who interacted with a specific ad-campaign, expressed as a percentage against those who did not. Engagement doesn’t necessarily constitute clicks, for example, users who expanded a PET or users who played an MRAID minigame count towards engagement, but wouldn’t increase CTR.

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Monetisation Performance

Ad-Exchange: 

Refers to highly-automated technology platforms, which facilitate the buying and selling of media inventory from multiple sources, such as advertisers, publishers and ad networks. 

Ad Serving:The service facilitating the delivery of online advertisements to a user's device, enabling the tracking of performance metrics such as impressions and clicks. This system allows for different ads to be shown to different audiences simultaneously. 

Fill-Rate: 

A comparison of the total ad requests for a campaign vs the amount of ad impressions actually served and displayed as a percentage. A low fill-rate means ads are being requested from devices but ad impressions aren’t following despite this, indicating an issue with the ad-serving setup. 

Viewability: 

The percentage of ads which fall within the user’s observable screen, compared to those which appear outside the viewable area.

Ad-Block:

A browser plugin which allows users to block ads from loading on web-pages; Venatus uses ad-block recovery technology to mitigate this issue for our partners. 

Ad Optimisation:

The continuous process of refining an ad-campaign, until it reaches more desirable performance statistics; for example, increasing CTR, VTR or conversions. All of Venatus’ direct deal campaigns feature ad-optimisation. 

Header-Bidding:

Technology which allows publishers to accept bids from numerous ad-sources whilst higher CPM direct-deal campaigns aren’t serving, thereby increasing ad-yield and profitability.