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This page defines the terms you're most likely to hear in a media meeting, in plain English, with no assumed knowledge. It's written for a marketer who has to follow the conversation, not run a trading desk. Every term gets the same three things: what it means, why it matters to you, and where people commonly confuse it with something else. The terms sit in five groups: how a media buy actually happens, what you're actually buying, who you're reaching, how you know if it worked, and where the money goes. Start anywhere. Most people should start with the last one.
Group 1. How a media buy actually happens
Programmatic advertising · DSP · SSP · Ad exchange · Real-time bidding · Header bidding · Private marketplace and deal ID · Programmatic guaranteed
Group 2. What you're actually buying
DOOH · Programmatic DOOH · CTV · BVOD · Digital audio · Rich media · DOOH creative formats · Publisher-direct inventory
Group 3. Who you're reaching
First-party data · Third-party data · Data clean room · Audience segment · Identity resolution · Contextual targeting · Consent management platform
Group 4. How you know if it worked
Impression · Viewability · Attention metrics · Attribution · Incrementality testing · Brand lift study · Footfall attribution
Group 5. Where the money actually goes
CPM · CPM vs CPC vs CPA vs CPCV · Working vs non-working media · Ad tech tax and take rate · Supply path optimisation · Log-level data · Managed service vs self-serve · Lock-in contracts and the media MSA
Which of these should a small team actually care about? · FAQ
This group explains the plumbing between "we want to advertise" and "an ad appeared." There are more parties in that chain than most people expect, and nearly every one of them takes a cut. Knowing the chain is how you start asking what each link is actually for.
The chain, in its simplest form: advertiser → DSP → exchange → SSP → publisher → the screen. Every term below is one link in that line, or something that happens between two links.
Definition: Programmatic advertising is buying ad space through software and automated auctions instead of a phone call and a booking form. Software decides which specific ad slot to bid on, how much to pay and who should see it, in the fraction of a second while a page or app is loading.
Why this matters to you: Programmatic is a way of buying, not a place to advertise. When someone says "we'll run it programmatically," they haven't told you a single thing about where your ads will appear. Ask that separately.
Not to be confused with: display advertising. Display is a format. Programmatic is a purchasing method, and it now covers TV, audio, digital billboards and more.
Definition: A DSP is the software an advertiser uses to buy ad space across many websites, apps and screens from one account. You load in your budget, your targeting and your creative, and the DSP bids on individual ad slots for you, thousands of times a second, against everyone else who wants them.
Why this matters to you: The DSP is where your money sits and where most of your control lives. If you can't log in and see what it's buying, then someone else is making your buying decisions and you're just funding them.
Not to be confused with: an SSP, which is the equivalent tool on the selling side.
Definition: An SSP is the software a publisher uses to sell its ad space. A news site, an app or a billboard network plugs its available slots into an SSP, which puts them up for auction, sets the rules for who can bid and passes the winning ad back to the page.
Why this matters to you: The SSP works for the seller, not for you. If a company is pitching you an SSP, you are not really the customer in that relationship, and it's fair to ask who is.
Also called: a sell-side platform. The two names mean the same thing.
Definition: An ad exchange is the marketplace where buying software and selling software meet. Publishers offer their available ad slots into it, advertisers bid on those slots, and the exchange runs the auction and settles who won. Index Exchange is one example of an exchange operating at scale.
Why this matters to you: Every exchange your money passes through is another party taking a percentage. Fewer, better-chosen exchanges usually means more of your budget reaching an actual screen.
Not to be confused with: an SSP. In practice the two overlap heavily, and many companies run both, but an exchange is the auction venue while an SSP is the publisher's tool for getting inventory into it.
Definition: Real-time bidding is the live auction that decides which ad you see. While a page or app loads, details about the slot and the audience are sent to bidders, each bidder returns a price, the highest bid wins and its ad is delivered. The whole thing takes well under a second.
Why this matters to you: Because every impression is priced individually, your average cost is an average of millions of separate decisions. That's why two campaigns with identical budgets can deliver wildly different results.
Definition: Header bidding is a technique publishers use to let several exchanges bid on the same ad slot at the same time, rather than offering it to one, then the next, then the next. More simultaneous bidders usually means a higher winning price for the publisher.
Why this matters to you: Header bidding was built to raise publisher revenue, which means it raises what you pay. It isn't a scam, it's just competition, but it explains why premium inventory rarely gets cheap.
Definition: A private marketplace is an invite-only auction where a publisher offers specific inventory to specific buyers, often at an agreed floor price. The deal ID is the short code that connects your buying account to that arrangement, so your bids are allowed into the auction.
Why this matters to you: A PMP is the simplest way for a small brand to buy quality inventory without wading through the open market. If someone recommends one, ask exactly which sites or screens are in it before you agree.
Definition: Programmatic guaranteed is a fixed deal between one advertiser and one publisher, at an agreed price and volume, that runs through automated buying software instead of manual booking. You're committing to buy a set amount, and the publisher is committing to deliver it. There's no auction.
Why this matters to you: This is the closest programmatic gets to a traditional media booking. Useful when you need certainty about placement or timing, and worse value when you don't, because you've given up the ability to walk away on price.
Programmatic isn't a channel, it's a way of buying. These are the channels you can buy that way. They're also the ones a lean team looks at first when Meta and Google stop scaling and someone in a leadership meeting asks why the brand isn't on TV.
Definition: DOOH is advertising on digital screens in public places. Shopping centre panels, roadside billboards, screens in lifts and petrol stations, transit and airport displays. The ads are usually short looping video or still images, and the screen cycles through a handful of advertisers.
Why this matters to you: DOOH is the channel most likely to make a small brand look bigger than it is. It's also the one where you should ask hardest about how many people actually walked past.
Also called: digital billboards, digital outdoor. Classic out-of-home means the printed, non-digital version.
Definition: Programmatic DOOH is buying digital screen advertising through automated auctions rather than booking it months ahead on a rate card. You choose screens by location, time of day or trigger conditions like weather, and you can start, stop or change the campaign the same day. Vistar Media is one platform that supplies this inventory.
Why this matters to you: This is what makes outdoor viable for a brand that can't commit six figures to a two-week roadside booking. You can buy a suburb, a week and a budget you can actually afford.
Definition: CTV means a television connected to the internet, whether through the set itself, a streaming stick, a games console or a set-top box. As an advertising term, it describes ads served to that device, usually as unskippable video inside streaming content.
Why this matters to you: CTV describes the device, not the programming. Two CTV buys can put you next to a premium drama or next to something you'd never want your brand near, so ask what's actually playing.
Also called: OTT, which stands for over-the-top and refers to video delivered over the internet rather than through a broadcast signal. In practice most Australian media plans use CTV and OTT interchangeably, but OTT includes phones and laptops while CTV means the TV set.
Definition: BVOD is the on-demand catalogue run by a traditional broadcaster, watched through the broadcaster's own app or website. In Australia that means services like the catch-up and streaming platforms operated by the free-to-air networks. The content is professionally produced and the ads are sold by the broadcaster.
Why this matters to you: BVOD is usually the safest first video buy for a brand that has never advertised on television, because you know exactly what programming your ad sits inside.
Not to be confused with: CTV. BVOD is a type of content library. CTV is a type of device. You can watch BVOD on a connected TV, on a laptop or on a phone. These two get swapped around constantly in Australian media plans and they shouldn't be.
Definition: Digital audio advertising is audio ads delivered through streaming music services, podcasts and online radio, bought the same way as digital display. The ad plays between tracks or inside an episode, and can be targeted by listener, location and time rather than by station.
Why this matters to you: Audio reaches people while they're driving, walking or working, which is time no screen-based channel can touch. The trade-off is that nobody can click, so plan to measure it by effect rather than by response.
Definition: Rich media means ad units that do more than sit still. They expand, animate, play video, respond to a swipe or pull in live information like a price or a countdown. They're built as small pieces of interactive software rather than as a flat image. CREATE is one example of a rich media product built for this.
Why this matters to you: Rich media usually costs more to build and more to serve, so it earns its place when you have something to demonstrate. For a simple offer, a well-made static ad often performs just as well.
Definition: DOOH creative formats are the specifications a digital screen requires: the pixel dimensions, the file type, the length of the loop and how long your ad holds the screen. They vary by screen network and they're stricter than online formats, because the screen is a fixed piece of hardware. CREATE produces formats built for this.
Why this matters to you: A resized social asset is the most common reason an outdoor campaign underperforms. Someone glancing up for two seconds from ten metres away needs about six words, not your full value proposition.
Definition: Publisher-direct inventory is ad space bought straight from the site, app or screen network that owns it, rather than through a chain of resellers who each add a margin. The arrangement is agreed with the publisher directly, and there are fewer parties between your budget and the screen. Pub.Shop is one example of this approach.
Why this matters to you: Fewer middlemen means more of your money buys actual advertising. It also means you can find out precisely where your ads ran, which is harder than it should be in the open market.
Targeting used to mean buying a list of strangers from a data company. It now mostly means doing something careful and well-governed with data you already own. This group explains the vocabulary of that shift. It describes what each thing is, and leaves what your obligations are to your own legal advice.
Definition: First-party data is information you collected yourself, directly from your own customers, through your own website, app, purchases, subscriptions or service conversations. You know where it came from, you know what people agreed to, and you don't pay anyone else for access to it.
Why this matters to you: This is the only audience data you truly control, and the only kind that keeps working when a platform changes its rules. If you're asked to hand it over as a condition of working with someone, that's a question worth pausing on.
Also called: owned data, customer data. Products like ATOM are built to activate it in advertising without exposing the underlying records.
Definition: Third-party data is audience information collected by a company that has no direct relationship with the people in it, then packaged and sold to advertisers. It was historically assembled using third-party cookies, small files that tracked a person across unrelated websites. Browsers have spent years restricting or removing them.
Why this matters to you: Audience segments built this way have become less accurate and less available. If a proposal leans heavily on off-the-shelf third-party segments, ask how they were built and how recently.
Definition: A data clean room is a secure, neutral environment where two organisations can compare their customer data and learn things from the overlap without either side seeing or taking the other's records. You both put data in, only aggregated answers come out, and the raw lists never change hands. ATOM is an example of clean-room technology.
Why this matters to you: A clean room is how you can work with a retailer's or publisher's audience data without handing over your customer list, and without receiving theirs. If you can explain that to a compliance officer, you can usually get the project approved.
Not to be confused with: a data warehouse, which is simply where one organisation stores its own data. The point of a clean room is that two parties can use it without trusting each other with the underlying records.
Definition: An audience segment is a defined group of people you want to reach, described by shared characteristics such as location, behaviour, purchase history or interest. It's the unit you actually buy against. "People who visited your pricing page in the last thirty days" is a segment.
Why this matters to you: Segments sound precise and often aren't. When someone offers you a segment, ask how a person gets into it and how they get out, because a stale segment quietly wastes money for months.
Definition: Identity resolution is the process of working out that several different signals belong to the same person. An email address, a phone number, a logged-in app session and a browser might all be one customer, and identity resolution stitches them together so you don't count or target them four separate times.
Why this matters to you: Done well, it stops you paying to reach the same person repeatedly and makes your reporting honest. Done carelessly, it's the part of the stack most likely to raise a privacy question, so it's worth understanding whose data is being matched against whose.
Definition: Contextual targeting places your ad based on what the content is about rather than who the reader is. An ad for running shoes next to an article about marathon training is contextual. It requires no personal data about the individual seeing it, because the decision is made about the page.
Why this matters to you: Contextual has come back into favour because it works without personal data, which makes it simple to explain to a board or a compliance team. It also tends to be cheaper than audience targeting.
Definition: A consent management platform is the software behind the notice asking whether you accept cookies or tracking. It records what each visitor agreed to, passes that decision on to the tools running on your site, and keeps a log of it so you can show what was agreed and when.
Why this matters to you: A CMP is a record-keeping system, not a legal opinion. It can prove what someone consented to, but it can't tell you what your obligations are, so get that answer from a lawyer who knows your market.
Most arguments about measurement are really arguments about which metric someone chose. The single most useful idea in this glossary is the difference between the two kinds. Delivery metrics tell you the ad ran. Effect metrics tell you it did something. Any report made entirely of the first kind isn't a performance report.
Delivery metrics (did the ad run?)Effect metrics (did it do anything?)ImpressionsIncrementalityViewabilityBrand liftReach and frequencyFootfallCompletion rateSales and sign-ups
Definition: An impression is one instance of your ad being served to one screen. It counts the delivery, not the attention. An impression is recorded whether the person looked at it, scrolled straight past it or left the room, which is why it's the floor of measurement rather than the point of it.
Why this matters to you: Impressions are the unit almost all pricing is based on, so you need to understand them. Just never let anyone present impressions as a result.
Definition: Viewability measures whether an ad actually appeared on screen long enough to have been seen, rather than loading below the fold or in a background tab. Industry standards define it by how much of the ad was visible and for how long, which varies by format.
Why this matters to you: A viewable ad is one that had the opportunity to be seen. That's a much weaker claim than people make for it, and a campaign can hit high viewability while nobody looks at anything.
Not to be confused with: attention, which tries to measure whether someone actually looked.
Definition: Attention metrics try to estimate how much of a person's actual notice an ad received, using signals like eye tracking panels, time in view, screen coverage, scroll speed and sound settings. They're modelled estimates, not counts, and different vendors will give you different numbers for the same campaign.
Why this matters to you: Attention is a genuine improvement on viewability, and it's still an estimate. Use it to compare placements within one campaign rather than as an absolute score you report upwards.
Definition: Attribution is the practice of assigning credit for a sale to the marketing a customer saw beforehand. Last-click gives all the credit to the final ad or link before purchase. Multi-touch spreads credit across several steps in the journey using a set of rules someone chose.
Why this matters to you: Both models describe correlation, not cause. Last-click systematically over-credits search and retargeting, because those come last, and under-credits anything that created demand in the first place.
Not to be confused with: incrementality, which asks a different and better question.
Definition: Incrementality testing measures what your advertising actually caused. You deliberately withhold ads from a comparable group of people or a comparable region, run the campaign everywhere else, and compare results. The difference between the two is your incremental effect. Everything else would have happened anyway.
Why this matters to you: This is the only common method that answers "did the advertising cause this." It's harder to set up than attribution reporting, and it's the number worth having when someone asks you to justify the budget.
Also called: a holdout test, a geo test or a lift test, depending on how the withheld group is defined.
Definition: A brand lift study surveys two groups of people, one that saw your advertising and one that didn't, and compares their answers on things like awareness, recall, consideration and preference. The gap between the groups is the reported lift.
Why this matters to you: It's the practical way to measure a channel that produces no clicks, such as television or outdoor. Check the sample size before you present the result, because small samples produce impressive numbers that don't hold up.
Definition: Footfall attribution estimates how many people visited a physical location after being exposed to your advertising, usually by comparing anonymised location data from exposed and unexposed groups. It's most often used with outdoor, digital screens and local campaigns.
Why this matters to you: It's the closest thing to a conversion metric for a channel with no click. Treat it as directional, and always ask what the comparison group was, because without one the number means nothing.
This group is about the gap between what you pay and what reaches a screen. It's the part of the conversation that gets the vaguest answers, and it's the part worth pushing on. The Association of National Advertisers puts the unrealised media value in programmatic at $21.6 billion, which is a way of saying this gap is measured and material, not something a challenger brand made up to win a pitch.
Definition: CPM is the cost of one thousand ad impressions. If your CPM is $12, you're paying $12 every time your ad is served a thousand times. It's the standard unit of pricing across display, video, audio and digital outdoor, which is why it's the number quoted in almost every media proposal.
Why this matters to you: A CPM on its own tells you nothing about value. A $6 CPM against people who'll never buy is more expensive than a $30 CPM against people who will, so never compare two CPMs without asking what each one is buying.
Definition: They're four ways of pricing the same advertising. CPM charges per thousand impressions. CPC charges per click. CPA charges per action, such as a sale or a sign-up. CPCV charges per completed video view. Each one moves risk between you and the seller.
Why this matters to you: The pricing model tells you who carries the risk if the campaign disappoints. On CPM that's you. On CPA that's mostly them, which is why CPA deals come with a higher price and tighter conditions.
Definition: Working media is the portion of your budget that actually buys advertising space. Non-working media is everything else: agency fees, technology costs, production, ad serving, data charges and margin. Both come out of the same budget line, and only one of them puts an ad in front of a person.
Why this matters to you: This is the single most useful question you can ask a media partner. Ask for the split in writing, as a percentage, before you sign anything. A partner who can't answer it quickly is telling you something.
Definition: The take rate is the percentage each company in the buying chain keeps as it passes your money along. The buying platform takes a cut, the exchange takes a cut, the selling platform takes a cut, and various data and verification services take theirs. The combined total is sometimes called the ad tech tax.
Why this matters to you: Each cut is individually defensible and the total is often surprising. You're entitled to ask for every fee in the chain as a percentage, not just the one charged by the company you signed with.
Definition: Supply path optimisation means deliberately reducing the number of routes your money takes to reach the same ad slot. The same impression is often available through several chains of intermediaries at different total costs, and SPO is the work of choosing the shortest and cheapest one. Pub.Shop is one example of a publisher-direct approach to this.
Why this matters to you: The same ad, on the same screen, at the same moment, can cost you noticeably more depending on the path it took. That difference is pure overhead and you're allowed to ask what's being done about it.
Definition: Log-level data is the raw, line-by-line record of your campaign: every individual impression, where it ran, what it cost, what time it was served and what happened next. It's the underlying detail that summary reports are built from, before anyone rounds it or groups it.
Why this matters to you: Summary reports are written by whoever wants you to renew. Log-level access is how you check their work yourself. Platforms like sweetshop AI expose this level of detail. Ask whether yours does, and whether you can take it with you.
Definition: Managed service means someone else operates the buying platform on your behalf and reports back to you. Self-serve means you or your team log in and run it yourselves, paying for the technology rather than the labour. Some arrangements sit between the two, with a partner working alongside your team.
Why this matters to you: Managed service is convenient and it's also where visibility usually disappears, because you only see what's reported. The middle option, where you keep access to the platform while someone else does the day-to-day, is the one most small teams should be asking about.
Worth knowing: cake.shop offers three engagement models across this spectrum: self-serve, managed partnership, and consulting for teams building the capability in-house. Platforms like sweetshop AI are the workbench underneath either approach.
Definition: A master services agreement, or MSA, is the umbrella contract governing your relationship with a media partner. A lock-in contract is one with a minimum term or minimum spend that makes leaving expensive. The MSA also decides who owns the campaign data, the audience lists and the platform accounts when the relationship ends.
Why this matters to you: The clause that matters most isn't the notice period, it's who keeps the data and the accounts. If leaving means rebuilding your audience data from scratch, you're locked in whatever the term says.
Worth knowing: cake.shop's products are modular and carry no lock-in contracts.
If you only have the attention for eight of them, make it these. They're the ones that change what you pay or what you learn, and every one of them gives you a question to ask out loud in a meeting.
A DSP is the buying tool an advertiser uses. An SSP is the selling tool a publisher uses. They meet at an exchange. If someone is pitching you a DSP, they're selling you a way to buy. If they're pitching you an SSP, you're probably not the customer in that conversation.
No. BVOD is a broadcaster's own on-demand catalogue, which is a type of content. CTV describes the device, a television connected to the internet. You can watch BVOD on a connected TV, and you can also watch it on a laptop. The two terms get used interchangeably in Australian media plans and they shouldn't be.
Programmatic is how you buy. DOOH is what you buy. Programmatic DOOH means purchasing digital screen advertising through an automated auction rather than booking it months ahead on a rate card, which is what makes outdoor affordable for a brand that can't commit to a long roadside booking.
It's a locked room where two companies can compare their customer lists without either one being allowed to read or copy the other's. You both put data in, only counts and overlaps come out, and the actual records never change hands. It's how you can use a retail partner's audience insight without handing over your customers.
It's the portion of your budget that actually buys advertising space, as opposed to fees, technology costs, production and margin. People keep saying it because the gap between the two is where most of the money quietly goes. Ask for the split in writing before you sign.
Four that get straight to it:
You're not being difficult. Any partner comfortable with their own numbers will answer all four in a single email.
No. You need Group 5, where the money goes, and you need to be able to ask the four fee questions above. Everything else you can look up when it comes up, which is what this page is for.
No, though it was for a long time, because the platforms had minimum spends and needed a full-time person to operate them. Both of those have changed. The real barrier for a small team now is knowing what to ask for, which is a vocabulary problem rather than a budget problem.
Not here. This page is deliberately free of pricing benchmarks, because publishing a number we can't source would make everything else on it less trustworthy. Our media benchmark piece is where those figures live.
Written by Luke, cake.shop. [Title and LinkedIn to be added before publishing.]
This glossary is reviewed twice a year, in February and August, and the update stamp at the top changes every time. Definitions in the data and audience group are reviewed sooner if privacy rules or platform policies shift. If you think one of these definitions is wrong, we would genuinely like to know.
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