Terminology is the first difficulty faced by anyone who takes a plunge into the world of media traffic buying. The specific slang is enough to drive newcomers mad. Unfortunately, most resources give either generalized or completely incorrect definitions.
We’ve prepared a simple media buying glossary for you. Here you will find clear and accessible definitions of all the terms and abbreviations needed in the work process. After reading this, you will understand and be able to operate freely with complex concepts. Very soon, you’ll have terms like “cloak” or “configure a post-back” added to your daily use vocabulary 😉
Basic Media Buying Terms
Media buying, aka Traffic media buying, is a way of earning online. Revenue is formed from the difference between the resale price of the media traffic and the cost of buying it (attracting it from different sources).
A media buyer (affiliate, webmaster, partner, publisher) is a person who directs traffic from paid or free sources to the landing page (website, landing page, etc.) and receives income for that.
Approval – confirmation of a lead by the partner network. In partner programs, you’ll also come across the CPA (cost per action) term “percentage of approvals” –the ratio of approved leads to their total number. Also, approval can refer to a media buyer’s advertising campaign or a person’s registration in a partner (affiliate) network.
Bid – bid per ad click, which the media buyer is prepared to offer when you place an advertisement on the site.
Dashboard – an interactive panel that displays statistical data for ease of perception and analysis.
Doorway – a site optimized for a specific query (or several queries). As a rule, these sites are made “in a hurry”, since search engines see them as a useless resource for users and fight actively against them.
Case or case study– refers to a “success story”. The case study describes a sequence of actions and tools used by media buyers or webmasters and connections when working with a specific offer. It is also used to demonstrate results.
Cloaking is a prohibited method of promotion by masking a redirect using a script or by splitting streams in a tracker. Search engine robots see just a single page (fully compliant), and users get to the desired landing page.
The landing page (landing, target page) is the page to which traffic is directed.
Lead is a user who completed the target action.
Channel traffic – direct traffic to the offer. Also here: channel to minus – to incur losses, that is, to sell traffic cheaper than the advertising campaign budget; channel to zero – earning nothing but not losing (costs equal income); channel to plus – making a profit.
A partner (affiliate) network (advertising network, CPA network, partner) is a platform where partner offers are collected. It is an intermediary between media buying agents and advertisers (people who need to promote their offer — a product, website, or service).
A partner (affiliate) program is a format of a partnership between the media buyer and the advertiser.
Partner offer – an offer from an advertiser which outlines partnership conditions with the webmaster. Usually, this is a traffic source, GEO, target action, promotional materials, etc.
Partner marketing (affiliate marketing) is an online tool for promoting businesses, goods, and services by attracting users through partners.
Pre-landing (pre-land, layering) – a page the user is directed to before going to the landing page. Its function is to warm up interest in the offer and filter out the non-target audience.
Profit – the webmaster’s profit, the difference between the advertising campaign’s income and its launch’s cost.
Advertiser – pays the media buyer for the targeted traffic.
The offer’s relevance is the extent to which the partner offer corresponds to the requests and characteristics of the audience.
Spam – sending messages with advertising content without the consent of users.
Traffic – Site visitors.
Fraud – fraudulent activity on the webmaster’s part. This can consist in deceiving indicators by bot clicking, invisible ads, and other ways.
Hit – clicking on a partner link.
Hold – the time interval from the moment of the target action by the user to its confirmation by the partner (affiliate) program.
Target traffic (high-quality, converting) – users who have performed a target action on the advertiser’s website.
Target action – registration, app download, product purchase, service order, survey completion, and other user actions on the landing page determined and paid for by the advertiser.
Shave – refusal by the partner network to pay for the lead without any objective reasons.
Verticals in Media Buying – Basic Concepts
Vertical (niche) – a sector that combines offers in given categories, depending on the audience’s specific needs. The following verticals can be found in the media buying glossary:
Adult – offers from the category 18+ (products for adults, webcam portals, dates for short meetings).
Betting is a vertical dedicated to online sports betting and esports.
Gambling – vertical for everything connected with online casinos, online poker, and other types of gambling games. Target action in this niche consists of registration or depositing by the user to the account.
Dating is a niche that, in turn, is divided into smaller categories: Mainstream Dating (searching for serious relationships and friendships); Adult Dating (dating without obligations, dating for one night stand, etc.); Gay Dating, etc.
Crypto – offers that involve operations with cryptocurrency (trading, training).
Nutra – category of products for beauty, weight loss, youth, health, and dietary supplements.
Essay – partnership programs aimed at the field of education. These sites offer proposals for writing student essays, resumes, etc.
Sweepstakes are online lotteries and online draws, where the prize is usually an expensive and very popular product among different audiences. Therefore, the target action here is usually aimed at user registration.
Finance – partner programs offered by financial institutions (issuing short-term loans, issuing bank cards).
eCommerce is a huge vertical offered by online shopping partners. These sites promote not only goods but also services.
Install – Vertical that offers installation of mobile applications.
Download – users click on the link and download files. The media buyer receives a reward for this.
Ways of Attracting Traffic
In this case, the media buyer will come across different types of advertising:
Contextual – an ad whose content is absolutely relevant to the user’s request. They provide the highest CTR and conversion, but they are strictly moderated.
Native – an ad that looks as natural as possible and is organically placed within the content.
Targeted – Advertising targeted to a specific target audience. They are often used when working with social traffic, where it is easier to filter users by gender, age, GEO, and other parameters.
Teaser – ads with “catchy” headlines and a maximum level of enticing content. Advertising of this sort can be bought in teaser networks. It’s cheap but very annoying for users.
Push notifications (pushes) – an advertising format in which pop-up notifications are visually similar to messages from instant messengers. They are effective in both mobile and desktop versions.
Popunder – ads that open in a new window under the working tab.
Clickunder – has the exact mechanism as popunders, but with an invisible banner. When you click anywhere on the page, the target page opens.
SEO optimization (Search Engine Optimization) – actions aimed at improving the site to attain a higher position in the organic search results.
Social traffic — traffic attracted from social networks, both paid and free (through mailshots, comments, content, spam, etc.).
Abbreviations from The Media Buying Dictionary
There are also many abbreviations and symbolic abbreviations in the glossary of the media buyer. In particular, some of these relate to the types of payment models, and others indicate metrics that enable you to assess the effectiveness of the work of the media buyer. For your convenience, we have divided these terms into several categories.
Payment Models in Media Buying – Terms and Abbreviations
Advertising networks use the CPA (cost per action) payment model. Depending on which target action by the user the advertiser is paying for, the following payment models are used in media buying:
CPC (cost per click) – provides a reward per click on an advertisement or partner (affiliate) link.
CPL (cost per lead) – payment for the lead, i.e., the user’s personal data (name, email, mobile number, etc.).
CPD (cost per download) – is charged to the webmaster for each file or application uploaded by the user.
CPR (cost per registration) – payment charged for each registration.
CPS (cost per sale) – a payment model that provides a cost to the user for purchasing service on the site (purchase of VIP status, additional functions).
CPI (cost per install) – the cost of installing software (utilities, antivirus, and other applications).
CPM (cost per mille) – payment per thousand shows, clicks, views.
CPO (cost per order) – a fixed amount of remuneration for each order on the advertiser’s website.
CPV (cost per view) – the cost of viewing an advertising banner or video.
RevShare (Revenue Share) – a commission depending on the revenue a user brings. Unlike the CPA models, traffic continues to generate revenue for a certain time (in some cases — indefinitely). For example, TacoLoco monetizes traffic from pushes for as long as there is a subscription.
The Leading Indicators of The Effectiveness of an Advertising Campaign
CR (conversion, convert) – the ratio of users who completed the target action on the advertiser’s site to the total traffic volume.
CTR (Return on Investment) – evaluates clickability, i.e., the ratio of the number of clicks to the number of ad views.
ROI (Return on Investment) is an indicator of profitability. In other words, the ratio of revenue from the sale of traffic to investments in its attraction.
Earnings Per Click (EPC) – the ratio of total revenue to the total number of clicks on advertising for a certain period, i.e., the income of the media buyer per click.
The media buyer glossary is much more extensive than this, but these media traffic terms will be more than enough for a novice webmaster.
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