Glossary

UpRival's glossary list of terms and words that you should be familiar with as an UpRival user.

A

Advanced Publisher Methods:
A specific type of creative tag that allows you to use UpRival to interact with your website visitors to keep them interested in your site, offer promotions, collect information, etc with a pop-up or ad that will show on top of the web page.

Ad Server:
The technology and service that places advertisements on web sites. Ad serving technology companies provide software to web sites and advertisers to serve ads, count them, choose the ads that will make the web site or advertiser the most money, and monitor progress of different advertising campaigns.

(Ad) Campaign:  
An advertising campaign is a specific course of action designed to advertise a company, cause, or product that employs an intentional and carefully coordinated series of marketing tools (banners, DSPs, etc.) to reach the target audience.

Ad Category:
A way to segment ads within a banner that is serving more than one ad.

Ad Group:  
A group of ads organized by geography, vertical, advertiser, ad template, etc. In UpRival, targeting can be set on the ad group level just like the ad level.

Ad Status:
How UpRival shows whether an ad group or ad will serve when the creative tag is called. The ad status’s within UpRival are Active (On) and Inactive (Off).

Ad Tag:
A piece of code that communicates with an ad server to serve ads on a website or through a DSP. UpRival provides ad tags as JavaScript, iFrame, or anchor “A” tags. JavaScript and iFrame are recommended for direct placement on websites or DSPs. A tags are used for serving ads in email placements.

Ad Templates:
An ad formatted previously in UpRival that can be used many different times.

Ad Types (Tracking Types):
The ad type is chosen at a placement level and will define what type of placement you are trying to create. UpRival has 3 different ad types:

Ad Server – Used to serve your standard banner ads.
Link Tracker – Used to track click data.
VAST Tag – Used for video ad serving.

Ad Weight:
A way within UpRival to change the frequency of how often an ad group or ad is shown.

API:
API is the acronym for Application Programming Interface, which is a set of clearly defined methods of communication between various components or programs.

API Domain:
This is the domain used to save and generate your campaign and click URL's in UpRival.

Automated Rules:
Automated rules let you make changes in your account automatically, based on settings and conditions you choose.

B

Banner Ads: Standard ad placements (like a 300x250 or 728x90) that do not necessarily fit in the flow of the news feed. These ads are designed to grab the attention of the user, and can be flashy or stand out. 

Pros: Easily identifiable, many ad exchanges to buy traffic.
Cons: Banner blindness, higher CPMs for quality placement, low click-through rates.

Bulk Destination URL Update:
This is a tab within the "Setting" menu in UpRival that allows you to bulk change your destination URLs.

C

CDN:
A 'Content Delivery Network' or 'Content Distribution Network' (CDN) is a geographically distributed network of proxy servers and their data centers. The goal is to distribute service spatially relative to end-users to provide high availability and high performance.

CDN Domain:
This is the domain used to save and generate your images that you upload to UpRival.

Click Macro:
The click macro expands to a special URL so that third party trackers can track clicks from the UpRival ad tag.

Click-through Rate (CTR):
The number of clicks divided by the number of impressions.

Click-through:
Initiation of a User presence on a web page that originated from a User’s clicking on an advertisement.

Click Tracking:
The way in which you want the system to track the clicks that come from your ads. There are 2 tracking types:

Raw – All clicks that come from your ad, even if they come from the same user.
Unique – When a user clicks on your ad for the very first time.

Cloaking:
The practice of hiding an ad creative that is against advertising policies behind a more generic creative. Usually done by using cloaking software specifically designed to do so, or by using targeting to hide ads during the review process. This practice is strictly against UpRival's terms and conditions.

Clone:
An exact copy. You can clone anything within UpRival. If you clone a Publisher, it will clone all Placements, Ad Groups, and Ads within that Publisher.

CNAME:
The canonical name record (CNAME) in a DNS database which is part of the zone file and is used to point Internet traffic to a host name.
Example: a CNAME record such as ‘abc.yourdomain.com’ can be used to designate traffic to a site at ‘hostname.yourdomain2.com’).
Clients can CNAME their own domain to replace the api.uprivaladserver.net domain.

Container Ads:
Multiple ads that can fit in one standard ad placement. These ads target specific users and provide a way for advertisers to get more traffic to their ads on a single impression.

Pros: All of the benefits of both banner ads and native ads, lower cost per click, highly customizable.
Cons: Not supported in many ad servers, requires knowledge of HTML and CSS coding, not available in some ad exchanges.

Conversion Pixels:
Code placed on an offer and “fires” when a sale is made. This makes it possible for a third party to record the conversion.

Cost Metric:
The metric used to track your spend within UpRival. In Uprival you can track spend by CPM, CPC, CPA, or by a Flat rate.

Cost Per Click (CPC):
Spend divided by number of clicks.

Cost Rate:
The rate at which your placement spend will be calculated. This works hand-in-hand with what you choose in the Cost Metric field.

Creative or HTML Tag:
An Ad Tag is a piece of HTML or JavaScript code that is inserted into the source code of a web page via an Ad Server. Simply put, the Ad Tag is a digital placeholder within which content will ultimately display.

D

Dayparting:
Dayparting is the practice of running ads at specific times of the day or on specific days of the week to more effectively target an audience.

Demand-side platform (DSP):
A demand-side platform (DSP) is a system that allows buyers of digital advertising inventory to manage multiple ad exchange and data exchange accounts through one interface. Real-time bidding for displaying online advertising takes place within the ad exchanges, and by utilizing a DSP, marketers can manage their bids for the banners and the pricing for the data that they are layering on to target their audiences. Much like Paid Search, using DSPs allows users to optimize based on set Key Performance Indicators such as effective Cost per Click (eCPC), and effective Cost per Action (eCPA).

Destination URL:
A Destination URL is simply the address of your web page people reach when they click one of your ads.

Domain Settings:
This is a tab within the "Setting" menu in UpRival that allows you change your site domain, API domain, and CDN domain.

E

Earnings Per Click (EPC):
Revenue divided by number of clicks.

Embed Method:
The type of code that UpRival will create for you based on how you want to serve your ad tag placement.

Estimated Cost per Action (eCPA):
Spend divided number of conversions.

Estimated Cost per Mille (eCPM):
Total spend per thousand impressions (Spend divided by Impressions/1000).

G

GDPR:
GDPR is an acronym for ‘General Data Protection Regulation” and is the legal framework that requires businesses to protect the personal data and privacy of European Union citizens.

H

HTML Ad:
An advertising placement that uses code to create a placement. HTML ads can be uploaded as a zip file in UpRival. ( NOTE: The HTML page in your zip file needs to be named 'index.html' for the UpRival system to recognize and create your ad copy properly.)

I

iFrame Tag:
An iFrame (Inline Frame) is an HTML document embedded inside another HTML document on a website. The iFrame HTML element is often used to insert content from another source, such as an advertisement, into a Web page.

Impression:
A call to the ad server for an ad to be delivered to a web page or through a DSP.

Impression Recycling:
A way to refresh an ad within placement to show a new ad after a set period of time. This allows you to server multiple banners to the same user while only paying for a single impression. You can recycle the ad as many times as you want, and go back and forth between text ads, display ads (banners) and HTML ads.

In-Banner Video Ad:
Ad templates or banners with videos embedded in them.

J

JavaScript (Script) Tag:
The script tag is used to define a client-side script (JavaScript). TheJavaScript (Script) Tag:

The script tag is used to define a client-side script (JavaScript). The <script> element either contains scripting statements, or it points to an external script file through the src attribute.

Landing Page HTML:
Coding for a full web page that can be upload in a zip file and served in the UpRival system. With our infrastructure of cloud based servers your landing pages will server at lightning fast speeds. 

Landing Page URL:
Your domain or website address that you put into the ‘Destination URL’ Field within UpRival.

Macro:
Macros are special strings in the ad tag that a DSP later replaces with another value based on a campaign's settings in the DSP.

Media Library:
A place where you can easily manage all of your images, videos, and any other documents (CSS, Javascript, HTML, etc) for your advertising. 

Mille:
From Latin per mīlle, "in each thousand", also spelled per mil, means parts per thousand. Not to be confused with parts per million.

Native Ads:
Native ads (also called content ads) are integrated into the editorial feed. They appear as a recommended or related news story that fits in with the overall style and tone of the page. 

Pros: Higher click through rates, high visibility, avoid banner blindness. 

Cons: Higher click through doesn’t translate to higher conversions, taglines and images tend to be misleading, more viewers are being conditioned to avoid “related/recommended” stories.

Optimizations:
The process, or methodology of getting your campaigns to be as cost efficient, or effective as possible.

Optimization Templates:
A set of defined rules that will automatically make changes to your ad placements based on the requirements that you set.

Pixels:
A pixel is a small snippet of code or a 1×1 transparent image that collects some sort of information about the visitor to a website. In UpRival, pixels are used to track "events" such as conversions, sales, and up-sells, or even where your site visitors fall off within your funnel.

Placement:
A space reserved on a website for ads to be served, usually defined by the width and height of the reserved space. Common desktop placement sizes include: 300x250, 300x600, 160x600, 120x60, 728x90, 970x250. Common mobile placement sizes include: 300x50, 320x50.

Placement Sizes:
A defined width and height for your ad or banner placement.

Profile Templates:
A profile template in UpRival is used to save predefined targeting parameters in your account that can then be easily accessed and used on any of your ad groups.

Publisher: 
Website owner, blogger, etc. Anyone who publishes content through a web page. In UpRival, a publisher can also be an advertiser’s own sales or landing pages or the traffic source they purchase ad space from, like a DSP or Ad Exchange.

Query String:
The query string commonly includes fields added to a base URL by a Web browser or other client application, for example as part of an HTML form. UpRival sub ID variables are added to the ad tag as a query string. 
Example: http://example.com/path/to/page?name=ferret&color=purple. The first question mark is used as a separator to separate the URL from the query string. Multiple query parameter pairs are separated by the ampersand “&”.

Real-time bidding (RTB): 
Real-time bidding (RTB) is a means by which advertising inventory is bought and sold on a per-impression basis, via programmatic instantaneous auction, like financial markets. With real-time bidding, advertising buyers bid on an impression and, if the bid is won, the buyer’s ad is instantly displayed on the publisher’s site.

Revenue:
Total income tracked within UpRival. You can track all of your sales through the UpRival pixel so that it will show in your reporting data.

Site Domain:
Within UpRival, this is the domain that will be used to login to your white-labeled ad server.

Spend:
A column within UpRival that will show you your estimated advertising spend based on what you entered when creating a placement. You can track spend by CPM, CPA, CPC or flat rate.

SubID:
A SubID is a string of alphanumeric characters generated at the end of a redirect URL, which records user-defined variables.

Targeting:
Conditions set up on the ad or ad group level. The ad/ad group is only displayed when the conditions are met. UpRival targeting conditions can be set by SubID, Geography (Country, Region, City), Device Type, Operating System, Browser, IP Address, IP Type, Proxy IP, Language, and User Agent.

Targeting Profiles:
A profile template in UpRival is used to save predefined targeting parameters in your account that can then be easily accessed and used on all of your ad groups.

Tracking Types (Ad Types):
The ad type is chosen at a placement level and will define what type of placement you are trying to create. UpRival has 3 different ad types:

Ad Server – Used to serve your standard banner ads.

Link Tracker – Used to track click data. 

VAST Tag – Used for video ad serving.

Users:
In UpRival, a user is our method to authenticate and allow someone access to certain info and data within your account.

VAST Placement:
VAST, or “Video Ad Serving Template,” is a script that gives video players information about which ad to play, how the ad should show up, how long it should last, and whether users are able to skip it.

VAST Tag:
A standard XML-based ad response for in-stream video ads.

White Label Settings:
A way for our customers to white-label our product to make it appear as though they have created and own this product.

XML Tag:
XML is an ‘Extensible Markup Language’ file. They are plain text files that describe the transportation, structure, and storage of data.

Y

YouTube Video Ad:
An ad that gets its video from a YouTube URL.