Ad banner

A banner is a small file containing static or animated images and text, 'hot-linked' to advertiser's web-site. The image and text in the banner is called 'creative'. Like print or TV ads - banners convey a promotional message to visitors surfing a site, helping advertiser build his/her brand in the cyberspace. Unlike TV and print advertising - Internet advertising is usually highly targetted at defined user-groups.

Ad Clicks

Clicking your mouse on a banner ad that takes you to advertiser's web site. It is referred to as an ad click or click through.

Ad Impressions

How many people have viewed a banner ad or received an "impression" by seeing the ad - its a measurement of responses from an ad delivery system. Web pages may have multiple ads. Once a visitor has viewed an ad on a web page an impression is recorded. Ad Views are different from Page Views in the sense that there may be multiple ad views within one page view.

Ad Click Through Ratio

When someone gets interested in the promotional message of your banner, he/she clicks on it to learn more and is automatically transported to your website. Every time someone clicks on your banner, it is called a "click- through," and the "click-through rate" is expressed in terms of percentage of users who click on an advertisement (i.e. ratio of ad clicks to ad impressions). In other words, click through ratio is an indication of an ad banner's effectiveness.

Browser

A software that resides in your computer and acts as an interface between you and a web-site. The browser translates web-pages, written in HTML, into formatted, nice looking text. Common example of browsers are Internet Explorer, Netscape, Opera etc.

Button

Button is the term used to refer to Internet advertisement smaller than the traditional banner. Buttons are square in shape and usually located down the left or right side of the site. Typical sizes of a button are 120 x 90 pixels or 120 x 60 pixels.

Cache

An area in your computer's hard disk that is used to temporarily store most frequently requested content of websites. Caching is a technique used by browsers to speed up surfing. If a user requests a particular web page, the browser first checks the 'PC's cache' to see if a copy exists. If the user has visited the page recently - its content will remain in the browser's cache. In that case, the browser delivers the page from cache area of local hard disk rather than download it from Internet. This speeds up the loading of the page, and reduces network congestion. However, there is a flip side as servers under-count the number of times a page is viewed. Sometimes, it fools users by showing old content. The user may get around caching by either Reloading/Refreshing the web-page or clearing browser's cache at regular intervals.

Cookies

It is a piece of information that a web-server you are visiting stores in your local disk for future reference. Cookies send back variety of information, usually harmless, back to web-server whenever you are visiting that web-server. Cookies contain information on login/ registration, items you purchase in a shopping cart, user preferences, etc. Cookies are usually set to expire after a predetermined amount of time and are usually saved in memory until the Browser software is closed down. When the visitor accesses the same web site again, the server looks for the cookie and configures it based on the information provided. All browsers provide facility to regulate cookies.

Domain Name

Domain name is your identity / official address in World Wide Web. It is a unique name that a computer can identify from million others Like a brand name - you register your unique domain name with relevant registration authority in Internet. Once registered, no one can have a website with your domain name.

Registering a domain name is the first task for building your own website. For example - if your company name is 'Excel Garments', you may register your domain as excelgarments.com or excel-garments.com or even excelgarmentsindia.com In addition to .com - you now have option of .biz (i.e. business).

Remember - your registration of a domain name is subject to its availability. Like brand name, if the domain name is already registered you have hardly any choice but to look for alternative domain name.

GIF

Graphics Interchange Format or GIF is an image file format commonly used in HTML documents. It is a compressed image format (like ZIP) that is commonly used by web-sites to display images.

HIT

Each time a Web server sends a file to a browser, it is recorded in the server log file as a "hit". Hits are generated for every element of a requested page (including graphics, text and interactive items). If a page containing two graphics is viewed by a user, three hits will be recorded - one for the page itself and one for each graphic. Webmasters use hits to measure their server's work load. Because page designs vary greatly, hits are a poor guide for traffic measurement.

HTML

Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) is the universal language for creating web-pages. It is an international standard that lays down rules for encloding web-pages in plain ascii text. It has broadly two functions - hyper-text and mark-up. The former allows seamless linking of any two pages in the world wide web, no matter how far apart they are physically located. The mark-up part allows formatting a web-page using simple ascii text tags that can be decoded by any web browser. In addition to text, an HTML page may include graphics, video, audio, and other files

HTTP

Hyper Text Transfer Protocol is a standard method of transferring data between a Web server and a Web browser. Remember how a web-site address is written ? http://www.infobanc.com - got it !

Interstitial

Meaning in between, an advertisement that appears in a separate browser window while you wait for a Web page to load. Interstitials are more likely to contain large graphics, streaming presentations, and applets than conventional banner ads, and some studies have found that more users click on interstitials than on banner ads. Some users, however, have complained that interstitials slow access to destination pages.

IP Address

The Internet uses a technology to interlink millions of computers in its fold - TCP/IP. The core of this technology is callled IP addressing or Internet Protocol addressing. Every computer connected to Internet is given a unique number for identification - called IP number. IP number is used to verify location and activities of any computer. Example of IP number is 66.246.89.148 (thegreatindianbazaar.com)

IP Database

The database used by an adserver to match the IP address of the request with the Country / city etc. to serve ads to them.

Jump Page

A jump page, also known as a "splash page," is a special page set up for visitors who clicked on a link in an advertisement. For example, by clicking on an ad for Site X, visitors go to a page in Site X that continues the message used in the advertising creative. The jump page can be used to promote special offers or to measure the response to an advertisement.

Log File

A file created by a web server or proxy server which contains all the information when the server is accessed and all activities that are carried out on that server.

Page Views

A page is a distinct unit of the world wide web (www). As bricks are basic unit of a building - so are pages for WWW. In fact, the WWW is made-up of billions of pages. Each page is a file, stored in a web-server that gets downloaded into user's browser against specific request. Page view or page impression is the measure of number of files or pages viewed. Unlike Hits, page views are recorded when the page is actually seen by the user and is considered more reliable unit of measurement.

Platform

The operating system of a computer. It is the heart of any computer, that dictates how a computer would behave and what all application software it can use. Examples of operating system are Windows, Linux, Unix etc.

Protocol

A uniform set of rules or method of exchanging data between two devices over the Internet.

Referrer URL

The referrer url is a place from which the user clicked to get to the current page.

Rich Media

Rich media is a term for advanced technology used in Internet ads, such as streaming video, applets that allow user interaction, and special effects.

ROI

ROI stands for "return on investment," one of the great mysteries of online advertising, and indeed, advertising in general. ROI is trying to find out what the end of result of the expenditure (in this case, an ad campaign) is. A lot depends on the goal of the campaign, building brand awareness, increasing sales, etc. Early attempts at determining ROI in Internet advertising relied heavily on the click-rate of an ad.

Server

Worldwide Web is made up of millions of networked computers. While some of these remain permanently connected and form the backbone of the network (e.g. your ISP) others connect to the network as and when required (e.g. your computer). The computers forming the backbone of the network is called 'servers' while your computer is called a 'client'

Server Logs

Log files created on the server are server logs. This is mainly used to monitor the server performance, record authorized / unauthorized requests and all other activities carried out on the machine.

Sponsorship

Sponsorships are increasing in popularity on the Internet. A sponsorship is when an advertisers pays to sponsor content, usually a section of Web site or an e-mail newsletter. In the case of a site, the sponsorship may include banners or buttons on the site, and possibly a tag line.

Unique Users

The number of different individuals who visit a site within a specific time period. To identify unique users, Web sites rely on some form of user registration or identification system.

URL

Uniform Resource Locator is a means of identifying an exact location on the Internet e.g. http://www.infobanc.com/index.htm is the URL which defines the use of HTTP to access a web page (/index.htm). A URL is comprised of four parts: Protocol Type (HTTP), Web site name (infobanc.com), Directory path (/default /index.htm), and File Name (index.htm).

Visit

Commonly reffered to as a User Session. Its all the activity performed by one user on a web site. By default, this session is terminated when a user is inactive for more than 30 minutes.