Online advertising is often divided into 'display' and 'search.' Display ads are images and search is text based. Display ads sometimes referred to as banners come in standardized ad sizes and can include text logos pictures or rich media.

A term applied to marketing or advertising that is designed to solicit a direct response which is specific and quantifiable. In online display advertising examples of this can include clicking on an ad making a purchase signing up for a newsletter and so on.

A pre-brokered agreement between an advertiser and publisher to deliver a certain amount of specific inventory for a preset cost.

An independent nonprofit organization of 'data-driven marketers' whose stated mission is to 'advance and protect responsible data-driven marketing'. For more information see the DMA website.

Using electronic signs to advertise products or information. Digital signage includes LCD LED plasma and front-projection displays to target audiences in shopping malls airports and other venues. Digital signage is sometimes called the 'fifth screen ' with movies TV personal computers and mobile devices being the first four. 

Video display with dynamic changeable content that can be updated and managed remotely over either a wireless or hard-wired network.

A company that allows advertising clients to buy digital media on several different selling systems or exchanges through one interface. For more information about this process see bidder.

Advertising demand or the desire to buy ad space and display creatives.

If no impression can be found for an ad opportunity a default tag may be served. The tag is passed to a third-party ad server to see if demand can be found there (this happens in the case of daisy chaining) or to simply pull a creative from that server. Sometimes called a passback.

A default creative is a creative that runs as a backup in an open Internet ad space in the case that no other creatives are available. A default creative can be a literal creative say an in-house ad or it can be a redirect in the form of a third-party ad tag to a third-party ad server. A default creative may also be called a ''reserve creative. '

Sometimes known as ''deduping'' – means removing duplicate entries or events in a data set. Effective programmatic buying is dependent on getting accurate and useful data sets and deduplication is often a step in that process. For example if a user clicks twice on the same creative but these two actions are only linked to a single conversion it's possible to dedupe the associated data set to prevent it from counting second clicks.

The automated process by which an ad server ad platform or exchange literally decides where how and to whom to serve an ad. This can be based on an auction prioritizing certain kinds of online ad space prioritizing advertisers based on relationships and prior agreements or other methods.

A unique piece of code assigned to an automated ad buy used to match buyers and sellers individually based on a variety of criteria negotiated beforehand.

A business that provides data about users. Advertisers can use the information to better target users. This data may include enriched user data or contextual data that exchanges ad servers or ad networks may not gather or manage in-house but use in ad targeting. Data privacy laws ban the collection of information that is deemed to be '' personally identifiable

In ad tech a data management platform (DMP) is a centralized system for gathering first-party data integrating with third-party data and applying this data to one's advertising strategy. A DMP may offer the following features: estimating the likely reach for a user segment measuring the lift from using data acting as a financial clearing house between data buyers and sellers and assisting publishers in monetizing data on their users. DMPs most commonly work with user data but may also work with contextual data or other types of data.