Jargon Buster

A metric expressing each time an ad is served and displayed, whether it is seen or not, whether it is clicked on or not. 

A unit of measure that includes the total number of people with an opportunity to see (aka traffic), notice, and dwell time, calibrated to the media’s spot length. It can also be explained as the total number of times people passing a digital out-of-home display are likely to notice a message. This concept is sometimes referred to as “Visibility Adjusted Contact”, or “VAC”.

In DOOH terms it is a measurement of response from an ad server to a Media Unit request from the user browser, which is filtered from robotic activity and error codes and is recorded at a point as close as possible to opportunity to see the Media Unit by the user, also called a view

The multiplier is an OOH specific metric which informs the buyer exactly how many impressions are delivered in a single ad play. Each impression equates to one viewer. One bid request will now account for one ad play, therefore the multiplier will highlight how many impressions are included per bid request.

Metric for counting the number of times users have viewed a particular element (such as an ad) on a desktop website, mobile website or app or an image embedded within a text message such as a mass-market email.  

Out-stream impressions are video ad units unaccompanied by content. While a pre-roll or mid-roll ad requires a publisher’s video to wrap around, an out-stream ad is a video ad unit not tied to any piece of publisher video content.

An ad that was reported to have begun to render at the screen. Note that in the vast majority of DOOH experiences, all ads (when served) are fully viewable for the entirety of the play. In the digital media world, this term is commonly known as a “play”.

In online/digital media, a served ad impression can be only be classified as a “viewable impression” if the ad meets all of the following criteria: it was contained in the viewable space of the browser window, it is in an in-focus browser tab, and it meets pre-established minimum percent of ad pixels within the viewable space and the length of time the ad is in the viewable space of the browser. It is recognized that an “opportunity to see” the ad exists with a viewable ad impression, which may or may not be the case with a served ad impression. (Source: MRC Viewable Ad Impression Measurement Guidelines Ver. 2.0)

A digital ad that had the opportunity to be seen, sometimes referred to through the traditional print media term of being “above the fold”. The current industry criteria for a standard ad unit to be considered viewable is that 50% of the canvas was within the consumer’s rendered window for a minimum of 1 second – the time required for a consumer to understand that the unit is a piece of advertising. Viewability is not a measure of ad effectiveness.