The RTB or Real Time Bidding is a system to bid for an ad-impression on a real time. RTB is similar to a financial market. It enables  advertising inventory to be bought and sold on a per-impression basis via programmatic instantaneous auction. A buyer or advertiser can use the RTB technologies to bid higher or lower value for a specific ad impression depending upon how attractive the impression or the audience is for its business. The RTB ecosystems put significant emphasis on user information (geographic, demographic, behavioural data, for example), and the publisher data (the publisher domain, context etc.).

A form of online advertising where an advertiser’s message is shown on a destination web page, generally set off in a box at the top or bottom or to one side of the content of the page. This uses various forms and dimensions of creative according to the publisher page.  The main purpose of display advertising is to deliver general advertisements and brand messages to site visitors

In a real time programmatic ad ecosystem the advertisers decide the amount they wish to pay for a specific ad impression. This depends upon the value of the specific audience, geo, time of day, context and various other parameters. Hence in an RTB system the advertisers bid for an ad impression. The highest bid wins the impression.

Cost-per-thousand impressions. This is a typical unit of price in digital advertising. For example, a Web site that charges $1,500 for 100,000 impressions has a CPM rate of $15 ($1,500 divided by 100,000 multiplied by 1000)

CPC or cost-per-click is the cost of advertising based on the number of clicks received.

(Cost-per-Action) Cost of advertising based on a visitor taking some specifically defined action in response to an ad. Examples of “Actions” include completing a sales transaction, or filling out a form.

A demand side platform (DSP) or buy side platform is a technology platform that helps an advertiser to buy media from multiple sources including ad exchanges, ad networks and sell side platforms. This is often done through real time bidding for the impressions. A DSP typically helps an advertiser to set up the campaigns including budget, bid, targeting and creative. The campaign is allowed to bid for the impressions that are available to the DSP through the supply sources.

A supply side platform (SSP) is an inventory aggregator. It is a technology platform that helps the publishers to outsource media selling and ad network management. A sell side platform aggregates ad impression inventory from various publishers. However, a sell side platform serves publishers exclusively, and does not provide services for advertisers. The inventory managed by the SSP is usually purchased by aggregate buyers, either demand side platforms (DSPs) or ad networks.

An ad exchange is a marketplace between the demand side and the supply side of ad inventory. They provide a technology platform that facilitates automated auction based pricing and transaction in real-time.

Waterfalling lets publishers pass on their inventory from one demand partner (marketplace) to the next one to maximize for revenue

This term is typically used in the context of managing publisher revenue from remnant impressions using the demand partners such as an ad network or an exchange. This process involves complex analysis of revenue and impression data from various partners and making sure that the best performer gets maximum share.

Header bidding is an advanced advertising technique that broadcasts the programmatic demand to the multiple demand sources in parallel before the DFP call. The programmatic demand is then pushed in DFP to allow multiple exchanges/demand partners to compete against the DFP line items, Google AdX and direct campaigns. Since, in this technique, multiple ad exchanges get to ‘see’ the impression in real time, they typically respond with a bid and the highest bidder among all the exchanges win the impression.

Mediation is technology that sends Ad requests to multiple SSP partners to ensure publishers find the best available bid and fill their ad slots.

In-image advertising displays an advertisement creative on a publisher image, leaving enough room for the image to be seen. Hence an in-image ad attracts high degree of user attention.

Advertisements with which users can interact in a web page format. These advertisements can be used either singularly or in combination with various technologies, including but not limited to sound, video, or Flash, and with programming languages such as Java, Javascript, and DHTML. These Guidelines cover standard Web applications including e-mail, static (e.g. html) and dynamic (e.g. asp) Web pages, and may appear in ad formats such as banners and buttons as well as transitionals and various over-the-page units such as floating ads, page take-overs, and tear-backs.

Return on Investment – Net profit divided by ad investment

Return on Ad Spend – Revenue generated by a campaign divided by ad spend