Glossary

Traffic shaping is a bandwidth management technique used by SSPs and DSPs to control the volume of bid requests and bid responses flowing through their systems. By regulating this traffic, platforms can optimize or…

AdTech platforms use a unique user identifier (UUID) — stored in a cookie — to identify and track users across sessions and properties without relying on personally identifiable information (PII) such as a name or email…

A universal ID is a unique user identifier that allows AdTech companies to recognize users across different websites and devices. Universal IDs are constructed from IDs stored in cookies — typically first-party cookies…

Also known as: website visitor, visitor A user is the person who browses the web and, in doing so, is served advertising. In an AdTech context, the term is effectively synonymous with "website visitor" — the individual…

Any information connected to a user. In advertising and marketing contexts, user data encompasses a broad range of signal types, including behavioural data (actions a user takes, such as pages visited or ads clicked)…

A user profile is a collection of data describing an individual online user, paired with one or more identifiers — such as a device ID or a cookie — that tie the data to a specific person or device. In AdTech, user…

An XML schema developed by the IAB that standardizes how in-stream video ads — the kind that play inside a video player, like ads served on YouTube videos — are delivered from video ad servers and rendered across video…

Viewability is a measure of whether an actual human had the opportunity to see an ad. Rather than simply counting that an ad was served, viewability assessment checks whether the ad appeared within the visible area of a…

A viewable impression is an ad impression in which at least 50% of the ad's area is visible on screen and remains visible for more than one second. This standard was established by the International Advertising Bureau…

VMAP allows content owners to describe the structure for ad-inventory insertion when they do not control the video player themselves — as is the case on platforms like YouTube, where creators upload content but have no…

A piece of code that enables video ad units and video players to interact with one another. Compared to VAST (video ad serving template), which handles the delivery of standard video ads, VPAID goes further by allowing…

Waterfalling is a process used by publishers to sell all remnant inventory — that is, the ad inventory that remains unsold after direct sales have concluded. The process is triggered when a publisher's internal sales…

Yield refers to the amount of revenue a publisher is able to generate from its ad inventory. More broadly, it describes the ability to maximize both revenue and the efficient use of available impressions. A publisher…