Banner Ad Glossary

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Here’s a guide to help you better understand the terminology that applies to Internet banner advertising.

Ad: An ad can refer to a banner, button, pop-up screen, and so on.  Ads are counted with impressions and clicks.

Ad clicks: The number of clicks on an online ad within a specific period of time.

Ad views: The number of times a banner ad is actually loaded.

Banner ad: An image file that displays an online advertisement, typically sized for placement at the top or bottom of a Web page and linked to another page.

Brand equity: A positive image established through name recognition (for example, Amazon.com).

Click-through: A click-through is registered whenever a viewer clicks on a banner ad. This measurement is important to determine whether an ad is successfully getting traffic.

Conversion rate: The rate at which people are converted from viewing an ad to committing a desirable action on an advertiser's site, such as a sale or registration.

Cost per sale: The average advertising cost per online sale.

CPA (cost per action): When referring to banner ads, CPA is the cost the advertiser pays to the site publisher each time a specific, visitor-initiated action occurs, e.g., the completion of a sale.

CPC (cost per click): When referring to banner ads, CPC is the cost the advertiser pays to the site publisher each time a visitor clicks on the advertiser's ad.

CPM (cost per thousand): When referring to banner ads, the CPM is the cost per thousand impressions. This equals how much an advertiser pays for 1,000 page views or impressions of its banner. See also impression.

CTR (click-through rate): The percentage of times an ad is clicked on, based on the number of times it's viewed. If a banner ad is seen by 200 hundred site visitors and 10 of them actually click on the ad, the banner ad has a click-though rate of 5 percent.

Exposures: The number of times a viewer sees a sponsor's banner image.

File size: Number of bytes of computer memory comprising a file.

Filter: A program that processes individual, personal preferences in an attempt to deliver relevant information to a particular end user.

Flat-fee advertising: Banner ad fees based on a stable rate each month, unrelated to the number of impressions or click-throughs the banner receives.

General rotation: Random display of a banner ad on a Web site. Equivalent to run of site advertising.

GIF (graphic interchange format): File format that is commonly used for banner ad images.

Hit: A hit occurs when a surfer downloads a file for viewing in his or her Web browser. Every time a site's Web server passes information (text, graphics, calls to CGI scripts, MIDI recordings, QuickTime movies) to an end user, it records a hit in the log file with that file's path name. For example, if you download a Web page containing text and three images, you will have registered five hits -- one hit for the HTML page, one hit for the text file, and one hit for each graphic file. The Web server hosting these files keeps track of the number of accesses made by each viewer and stores this information in a log file. Hits are not the best measure of how many people are viewing your site; however, they do tell you exactly what your viewers are downloading.

Hyperlink: Text or graphic links that you can click on to take you to another site.

Impression (page view): This term is often used to tell advertisers how many times their banner ad was seen by visitors viewing the page. Impressions (page views) describe the information received by a Web site visitor after he or she has downloaded all the elements (text and graphics) that make up a single Web page. A reasonable rule of thumb is that approximately 10 "hits" equals one page impression. See also hit.

Impression totals: The total number of times a banner ad is displayed on a Web page.

JPEG: Common file format used for banner ad images.

Media objects: Files, other than HTML documents, that can be displayed or executed within HTML documents, or in a stand-alone fashion. Examples include GIFs, JPEGs, video, audio, PDF files, and Java applets.

Page: An HTML document that may contain text, images, and other online elements. It may be static or dynamically generated. If a page is available on the Internet, it is a Web page.

Page impression: See impression.

Page view: See impression.

Qualified hits: Hits to a Web server that deliver information to a user. Qualified hits exclude error messages (e.g., "URL not found" or "Permission denied"), redirects, and requests by computer programs.

Rate card: A page with detailed pricing information.

Run-of-site advertising: Random display of a banner ad on a Web site. Equivalent to general rotation.

Traffic: The volume of visits, impressions, and hits a site receives.

Unique users: The number of individuals who visit a site within a specific period of time.

Visit: A request made for a page by a user. On any given visit, a user may request several pages as he or she navigates through the site. If a user makes no requests during a predetermined period of time, his/her next request would begin a new visit.

Visitor-to-sales ratio: The number of people who have visited a site divided by the number of people who made a purchase on that site.