Advertising: main definitions and vocabulary

A/B testing: Also known as split testing, A/B testing involves testing two small changes to your creative, website or game on a live service and measuring which performs better by equally splitting traffic.

Advertising Network: Sells ads across multiple publishers in order to optimise ad delivery based on the user rather than context.

Ad Server: A web tool that intelligently delivers multiple advertising campaigns spread over time.

Affiliate marketing: A marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts.

Affiliate Network: Acts as an intermediary between publishers (affiliates) and merchant affiliate programs. It allows website publishers to more easily find and participate in affiliate programs which are suitable for their website (and thus generate income from those programs), and allows websites offering affiliate programs (typically online merchants) to reach a larger audience by promoting their affiliate programs to all of the publishers participating in the affiliate network.

Context ads: Adverts placed directly inside or next to relevant content or features.

CPM (Cost-Per-Thousand Impressions): Common term in paid user acquisition contracts in which acquirer pays a certain amount for each 1000 views of an ad.

CPC (Cost Per Click): Common paid user acquisition term in which acquirer pays per click.

CPA (Cost Per Action/Acquisition): Paid user acquisition term in which acquirer is paying per user action, such as an email submit or app download.

eCPA: The effect of viral growth on the CPA. The eCPA is the real cost to acquire a new player. For a game to be a success the eCPA must be less than the LTV. In other words, the cost to get a new player into the game must be less than the player spends during their lifetime.

CPI (Cost Per Install): Paid user acquisition term in which acquirer is paying per completed install; this is usually the most costly of paid user acquisition methods due to the full conversion of use.

eCPI: Effective cost per instal. This cost takes into consideration all variables that are a direct consequence of a CPI campaign (discrepancies, organic lift etc...

Engagement: The different actions realized by a user represent its engagement with a game, an app, a website, a brand... For example, liking a facebook page represent an act of engagement to this specific page, or coming back to a game to retrieve a daily reward is also a form of engagement.

Funnel: The steps a new customer or user takes from entry towards a predefined goal, such as installation, account activation, registration or purchase.

Geo-targeting: Showing content, usually advertisements, only to people in a specific country or region.

Impression: The basic unit of online advertising. An impression is counted when a single user sees a single ad.

Interstitial: Interstitial means transition. For example at the end of an article or between 2 levels of a specific game, or when a user just open an application, interstitials will be displayed.

Multivariate Testing: Involves identifying a few key areas/sections of creative, of a website or of a game and then creating variations for those sections specifically. (As opposed to creating variations of a whole creative series, website or game in an A/B or split testing).

Retention Rate: Measurement that tells you the amount of users who sign up today and come back tomorrow and each day after that.