Digital Advertising Glossary

A

A/B Test

Comparative test in which an audience is split (usually in half) and two alternative solutions or features are run on each subset. It is used to compare the performance of one solution or feature against the other.

Above the Fold

An ad is above the fold when the ad is placed within the viewframe of the content. In other words, it is visible on the consumer’s screen after page or app loads.

Acquisition

Acquisition advertising is a marketing goal designed to grow an organization’s customer base, drive traffic visits or grow sales.

Active Elements

Design components of an ad such as logos, call to action, descriptions, and ratings that are dynamically combined with images from a product catalog to create customized native ads.

Ad Exchange

An ad exchange is a neutral technology platform that facilitates the buying and selling of advertising inventory. Ad prices are determined through bidding in a real-time auction (also known as RTB (Real-Time Bidding)).

Ad Formats

A specification for advertising creative that often includes whether the ad will contain text, audio or graphical content, the size of the creative and the web-enabled device used to view the creative. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has defined standard ad formats, there are also native formats which are custom to a site.

Ad Layout

The way the components of a banner (e.g., product images, prices, descriptions, titles) are organized within a banner.

Ad Tech

Ad tech, short for "advertising technology", are technology services that provide marketers with the ability to engage people across digital properties to achieve marketer-specified outcomes (e.g., brand awareness, engagement, consideration, conversion) and provide media owners selling & yield tools to better monetize their inventory.

Adaptive Conversion Optimization (ACO)

A Criteo AI Engine feature and the evolution of conversion optimization. ACO maximizes the number of client sales with a Cost per Order (CPO) target by dynamically adjusting bids every hour.

Adaptive Design

Design that adapts digital content to the consumer’s device and browser.

Addressable Advertising

Advertising that relies on identifiers to improve the planning, engagement, measurement and optimization of digital advertising.

Agentic AI

An artificial intelligence system that can accomplish a specific goal with limited supervision. It consists of AI agents—typically Large Language Models that mimic human decision-making to solve problems in real time.

Agentic Commerce

Agentic commerce is a new type of online buying that uses advanced AI systems, known as agents, to act autonomously on behalf of user. These agents can autonomously identify and compare options, and with a user's permission, complete purchases and handle post-sale logistics like order tracking and return processing. These are advanced AI systems that can understand nuanced needs and perform multi-step tasks.

AI/ML

Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML). ML is a subset of AI which allows a machine to automatically learn from past data without programming explicitly. The goal of AI is to automate decisions to solve complex problems that previously required a human-in-the-loop. AI/ML effectiveness is improved when supplied with scaled, accurate and timely data.

Algorithm

A set of rules to transform a predefined set of inputs into an output. Criteo AI Engine uses algorithms to predict and recommend content to people and tactics to media owners and marketers to achieve better outcomes.

Allow List

A list of IPs/publishers/advertisers/products that should be included in a campaign.

App advertising

Ads that drive users to install an app, engage with an app, or re-install an app.

App-Events SDK

The App-Events Software Development Kit (SDK) is an easy-to-use developer toolkit that enables marketers to benefit from in-app events and transactions to improve their messaging and media buying strategies.

Arbitrage

Paying publishers on one metric (e.g., CPM) and selling to buyers on another metric (e.g., CPC) to improve one’s margin, while reducing risk to buyers – they only pay for what they wanted (clicks in this example).

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

A program that can sense, reason, act, and adapt. It is used to identify patterns within a training data set to make predictions. AI unfolds into techniques, or models, that can predict tasks of increasing tasks complexity: Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Generative AI and Agentic AI, all used and combined in Criteo solutions.

Attribute

A probabilistic (e.g., purchase intender) or deterministic (e.g., purchase event) piece of information linked to an identifier.

Attribution

Marketing attribution is how marketers assign credit for the success of their advertising campaigns. It evaluates the marketing touchpoints a consumer encounters on their path to a desired outcome (such as purchase). The goal of attribution is to determine which channels and messages had the greatest impact on the decision to take the desired action (such as click or conversion).

Attrition Rate

Percentage of consumers who abandon the purchase process at any stage, from exposure to an ad to the point of conversion.

Auction-based Display

A purpose-built technology for the unique dynamics of retail environment, helping retailers bolster their media offerings with biddable trading optionality, flexible pricing, streamlined and efficient workflows, and advanced controls for ad relevancy.

Audience

Also called Audience Segment, is a set of identifiers that share some attribute characteristics in common. Marketers use audiences as one engagement tactic to ensure they can focus their limited media budgets on the people most likely to generate a positive outcome for the marketers’ business.

Audience Creation

Defining and building a custom audience segment based on available user data in order to target an online ad campaign at a specific group, such as new customers, existing customers, or web or app visitors.

Audience Extension

Part of Criteo Retail Media; allows brands to use a retailer’s first-party data to target shoppers with branded ads displayed outside of the retailer’s ecommerce site and across Criteo’s premium publisher network.

Audience Targeting

The practice of engaging people based on shared characteristics (typically referred to as segments) to better focus limited media budgets and deliver more relevant advertising.

Average Cart

The average revenue generated by a campaign’s sales. This KPI is calculated by dividing the total revenue by the total orders over a given time period. Average cart can be tracked for any time period, but the most common is the moving monthly average.

Awareness

Awareness advertising is a marketing goal designed to increase consumer familiarity with a brand, either at the organization level or for particular products and services and their benefits.

B

Banner

An online advertisement placed on a publisher’s webpage and linked to an advertiser’s page. Often a preset size (e.g., 300×250) and may include images and text; native formats differ.

Banner Ad

An online creative placed on a media owner’s digital property (e.g., a publisher’s webpage). A traditional display banner usually has a preset size (e.g., 300X250 pixels) and often includes a combination of images and text.

Behavioral Targeting

Behavioral Targeting, also known as Online Behavioral Targeting (OBA) or Interest-based Advertising, generates an attribute from a consumer's prior activity, such as the number of pages visited about a particular topic or interactions with content (including ad clicks) associated with a particular brand.

Bid Price Optimization

Automatically adjusting the amount a marketer will bid on a particular impression due to a variety of inputs that define the value of that impression to the marketer.

Bidswitch

Real-time programmatic trading marketplace platform that connects supply partners (Supply Side Platforms) and demand partners (Demand Side Platforms), allowing sell-side inventory to be sold via bid requests and bought via bids in a dynamic, real-time exchange.

Block List

A list of IPs/publishers/advertisers/products that should be excluded from a campaign.

Blocklist

A list of IP addresses, publishers, advertisers, contexts & keywords, or products that should be excluded from a campaign.

Bounce Tracking

Bounce tracking (also called link tracking) relies on adding parameters to URLs to transfer information across organizations. It is used by multiple supply chain partners for millions of websites, such as authentication providers, credit card verification, and even Google and Facebook to track clicks on advertiser links within Search and ads in their digital properties. Both UID2 and Prebid SSO also rely on this technology to ensure user opt-in preferences can be communicated across the various sites people visit, despite the active interference by Internet Gatekeepers.

Brand / Agency DSP

A 3rd party DSP not owned by Criteo. Criteo does not make Criteo unique audiences available to our customers in rival DSPs.

Brand Affinity

The likelihood of positive sentiment among a brand and a number of other elements (pages, people, other brands).

Brand Lift

A measure of Incrementality, as it compares the difference in awareness between a group of people exposed to ads vs a comparable control group who were not exposed to ads.

Brand Safety

Brand Safety tools control automated optimizations to ensure a media owner or marketer’s definitions of acceptable content are applied to the media they sell or buy, respectively.

Brand Safety & Fraud Prevention

Brand Safety tools control automated optimizations to ensure a media owner or marketer’s definitions of acceptable content are applied to the media they sell or buy, respectively. Fraud Prevention refers to automated optimization to eliminate non-human traffic or false branding of media in which marketers are delivering advertising.

Buy

Purchasing ad space on relevant media channels at the optimal time and cost to achieve a pre-determined objective.

Buyer Index

Criteo’s AI-driven propensity models that unlock additional commerce media engagement opportunities. Buyer Index uses shopper intent data mapped to contextual signals to drive superior marketing outcomes.

C

California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)

California Consumer Privacy Act. A law that secures new privacy rights for California consumers.

Call to Action (CTA)

A specific button within the ad inviting the consumer to click through on text, like “Buy Now.”

Campaign

A set of creative, budget and engagement tactics a marketer configures in Criteo DSP to achieve an outcome, measured by a pre-determined set of metrics.

Capping

Frequency capping means restricting (capping) the number of times (frequency) a specific visitor is shown a particular ad. See also Frequency Cap.

Catalog Feed

Advertiser’s product inventory. A product in the feed will typically include a product’s ID, name, description, category, image URL, and the product’s URL on the brand’s website.

Channel

Specific medium where the advertiser's message is viewed by its intended audience, often combining ad format, platform, and device.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Shows how often people who see your ad end up clicking on it. CTR is calculated by dividing the number of clicks on an ad by the number of impressions served.

Click/Click Through

Each time a consumer clicks on an ad and is taken to the designated endpoint (i.e. could be an advertiser's website).

Cohort Audiences

Google’s Cohort audiences assigns each browser to a single audience segment, based on their browsing behaviors. Cohorts are mutually exclusive, meaning each browser belongs to one and only one Cohort. Each Cohort is meant to be a large group, that prevents marketers from using their audience segmentation for measurement or optimization.

Commerce Audience

A Criteo audience that enables advertisers to engage prospects who are interested in specific categories or brands, or with specific socio-demographic features. Learn more.

Commerce Audience Targeting

Practice of engaging people (or audiences) who are in-market based on shared characteristics (or segments) to better focus limited media budgets and deliver more relevant advertising. These shared characteristics can be based on criterion like behavior, location, demographics, affinity, events etc…

Commerce Data

Criteo’s set of purchase and intent data that provides insight into consumer behaviors and journeys. Our commerce data set includes: demographics, location, ad clicked, pages viewed, products viewed, products purchased, offline sales, and contextual data from publishers, such as URLs, categories, and keywords.

Commerce Data Collective

Customers can opt-into accessing the shared pool of catalog, transaction and interest data to enrich and improve the optimized engagement of people across the First Party Media Network. This proprietary data is available only when using Criteo’s DSP. This data is anonymized and each marketer contributes no more than 1% of this data, meaning that every advertiser gets far more than they give.

Commerce GO

Is Criteo’s highly automated and next generation of Commerce Growth tool set which allows advertisers to create and launch an outcome-based campaign in five clicks.

Commerce GRID

A Commerce Supply Side Platform (SSP) for media owner data and inventory monetization which powers Commerce Growth and provides commerce media access to the world’s leading agencies through the DSP of their choice.

Commerce GROWTH

A powerful, performance marketing tool used by Direct-to-Consumer brands and their agencies to drive discovery and acquire and retain high value customers. It includes full-funnel to traffic and customer acquisition in the mid-funnel, and retargeting and retention in the lower funnel.

Commerce Insights

Solution that combines media metrics with organic commerce data to influence retail media and even help optimize content and merchandising decisions.

Commerce Intent

People who are likely to purchase a given product or service. See In-market Audience.

Commerce MAX

A Commerce self-service Demand Side Platform ('DSP') used by brands, agencies and retailers, enabling media planning and buying on retailer and open internet inventories, all with closed-loop product-level conversion measurement.

Commerce Media

Digital advertising that combines commerce data and intelligence to help marketers and media owners drive commerce outcomes. Learn more

Commerce Media Platform

Encompasses Criteo’s DSP and SSP, and is powered by the world’s largest set of commerce data to help marketers and media owners reach and monetize audiences and drive commerce outcomes.

Commerce YIELD

A suite of monetization solutions giving retailers and marketplaces full control to achieve maximum monetization of their digital assets through inventory and data management, packaging, and in-depth insights.

Competition Win %

The share of targeted impressions that a marketers wins in a programmatic market.

Composer (formerly Duplo)

Core component of DCO+. Allows Creative Services to build a digital design framework per client based on brand guidelines.

Connected TV (CTV)

A device where ads are served within shows and movies that are streamed via over-the-top (OTT) services on any connected TV (televisions with a built-in internet connection) or streaming devices (like Apple TV, Amazon Firestick or Roku).

Consent Management Platform (CMP)

Consent Management Platform (CMP) is a platform that is used by publishers for requesting, receiving, storing and updating users’ consent. CMPs usually employ a user-friendly interface to let users allow/disallow vendors to track, target, share their online footprint.

Consideration

Consideration advertising is a marketing goal designed to entice people to connect with a brand and learn more about its benefits.

Consumer

A consumer is a user browsing the internet, who sees and interacts with ads and who is looking to buy a product.

Contexts

The environment surrounding the ad placement. Typical context signals are URL, category level, text and images.

Contextual Targeting

Contextual targeting matches an ad to a page, based on its content. It enables advertisers to display ads to groups of consumers based on their interests and digital content.

Conversion Rate (CR)

The percentage of completed outcomes compared to the clicks that occurred.

Conversion Rate Optimizer

Criteo AI Engine feature that maximizes the number of conversions from Criteo campaigns.

Cookie

A small text file stored on the user's computer that enables web servers to fund and improve the experiences of people as they navigate across the web.

Cookie Pool

Number of users Criteo identified during a given period (by setting a cookie in their browser).

COS Optimizer

Criteo AI Engine feature enabling advertisers to directly maximize the global order value of the campaign; built as an improvement upon CRO.

Cost of Sales (COS)

The ratio between the total cost of the campaign and the sales that the campaign generated. In other words, your ad cost as a percentage of revenue. COS = Ad spend / Revenue driven.

Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

The amount a marketer spends for a consumer's action, i.e. a purchase, a form submission, a completed booking. Calculated as total cost divided by total conversions.

Cost Per Click (CPC)

The price a marketer pays each time a consumer clicks on your ad. Calculated as total cost divided by total clicks.

Cost Per Install (CPI)

The price a marketer pays for each app install. Calculated as total cost divided by total installs.

Cost Per Lead (CPL)

The price a marketer pays for each lead generated, usually identified as a form fill where contact information is obtained. Calculated as total cost divided by total leads.

Cost Per Mille (CPM)

Cost per thousand impressions (Cost Per Mille). The amount a buyer pays publisher partners on a CPM basis: for every thousand impressions delivered on the partner’s website. (Revenue/Impressions) x 1000.

Cost Per Order (CPO)

The average price a marketer pays for each order. Calculated as total cost divided by total number of orders.

Cost Per View (CPV)

The price a marketer pays each time a video ad is viewed. Usually, a consumer must watch a minimum duration on the video ad for it to count as a completed view. Calculated as total cost divided by total completed views.

Coupons

A seasonal part of a banner that highlights a special offer (e.g., sale, back to school).

Creative Studio

Custom creative built by Criteo Creative Consultants using Studio.

Criteo AI

Consists of multiple machine AI models, in particular prediction and recommendation algorithms, and proprietary hard- and software infrastructure that enables Criteo’s solution to operate in real time and at a very large scale.

Criteo App Install

Criteo product that finds high-quality new users or existing web visitors and delivers personalized ads that drive mobile app downloads.

Criteo App Re-engagement

Criteo product delivering dynamic ads designed to drive traffic to a company’s app (e.g., reactivating lapsed users).

Criteo App Retargeting

Criteo product that delivers dynamic, personalized product ads to bring app users back to make a purchase.

Criteo Customer Acquisition

Targets prospective customers with the highest propensity to convert using aggregated and anonymized historic shopping and browsing events.

Criteo DSP

Criteo’s demand-side platform that that optimizes the buying of digital media. Customers can plan, buy, personalize, measure & analyze all of their campaigns against any KPI and outcome. Customers of Criteo DSP can leverage Criteo unique commerce audiences, which are not available in rival DSPs.

Criteo Dynamic Retargeting

Delivers personalized product ads to consumers when they are most likely to convert by assessing purchase intent across the shopping journey.

Criteo Exchange

The Criteo Exchange is a neutral marketplace for sellers and buyers to match demand to supply – by neutral it does not favor one side over the other, similar to stock exchanges. Criteo’s Ad Exchange differentiates from others by providing conditional access to the First Party Media Network and Commerce Data Collective, to those who choose to participate.

Criteo One Tag

Tracker used on advertiser websites to learn from user behaviors.

Criteo Shopper Graph

Foundation of the Commerce Marketing Ecosystem; organized into identity graph, interest map, and measurement data.

Criteo SSP

Criteo’s sell-side platform enables media owners to monetize data and media inventory. Customers can manage their yield and benefit from over a hundred DSPs, including the Criteo DSP. Criteo SSP customers get access to Criteo’s Buyer Index data to further improve their yield optimization.

Cross Border

Setup when a client is running on IPs different from its country (e.g., a UK client showing ads on non-UK IPs).

Cross-Device Marketing

Identify and reach users across multiple devices (desktop, laptop, tablet, smartphone).

Custom Audience

An audience that is built specifically for a customer or a single use case.

Customer Acquisition

Customer acquisition is the act of gaining new customers. It includes any method used, both offline and online, to find new customers and encourage them to make a purchase. Common customer acquisition tactics include cold calls and direct mail, and online tactics like email, social media, content marketing, SEO, paid display, and paid search ads.

Customer Catalog Files

Also referred to as Catalog Feed. Advertiser’s product inventory. A product in the feed will typically include a product’s ID, name, description, category, image URL, and the product’s URL on the brand’s website.

Customer Data Platform (CDP)

Customer Data Platform (CDP) is similar to Data Management Platform (DMP) but often contains PII (Personally Identifiable Information, i.e. directly-identifiable identity data), which can be used for email, etc.

Customer Targeting

Customer targeting is the act of reaching out to a portion of your customer list to re-engage them and drive sales.

Data Cleanse Room

A secure, intermediary, cloud service used among companies to mutually agree on sharing and collaborating on first-party data, which is the data that is collected directly from customers and consumers.

Data Management Platform (DMP)

Software-based solution that aggregates and processes data feeds that provide insights into audiences and targeting for buyers and sellers of ads.

Data Warehouse

A data warehouse is a large database often fed from multiple data stores.

Deal ID

A Deal Identifier is a unique number that usually consists of 19 characters and is generated by the publisher’s supply-side platform (or an ad server) for a programmatic direct deal (i.e. private auctions for private marketplaces, or preferred deals, or guaranteed deals). Deal ID enables media buyers to identify publishers in the auction and buy their premium inventories based on certain pre-negotiated terms.

Deduplicated Reach

Counting unique households or individuals reached by advertising.

Deep KNN

Is part of Criteo’s recommendation engine. It is an advanced vector database and deep learning engine powering major parts of Criteo’s product line.

Deep Learning

A subset of machine learning that uses multilayered neural networks, called deep neural networks, to simulate the complex decision-making power of the human brain. Deep learning models play a central role in the development of most AI applications.

Demand-Side Platform (DSP)

it’s a platform that enables advertisers to buy digital ads automatically, without needing to individually reach out to publishers. They act as a single source of truth where marketers can plan, buy, optimize, and measure their digital advertising.

Devices

The internet-enabled hardware (e.g., PC, tablets, mobiles, TV), that people use to view and interact with digital media, and purchase products and services.

Digital Out of Home (DOOH)

It refers to digital media used for marketing purposes outside of the home. DOOH media is found on billboards, LED screens, and digital signage placed in high-traffic public spaces.

Digital Shelf

The online equivalent of the brick-and-mortar shopping experience. The digital shelf is where a brand's product is displayed online, and can include search results and product detail pages on retailer websites and apps, marketplaces, and other ecommerce channels.

Directly Identifiable Information

An identifier that links or is intended to link to a person’s directly-identifiable offline identity. Examples include a full name, Social Security number, driver’s license number, bank account number, passport number, or email address. Also called Personally Identifiable Information (PII).

Display Ad

Ads on websites like banner ads on the left or on the right rail that are generally text, image or flash based.

Display Advertising

Visual ads placed on websites, social media networks, or apps. They are typically image, text, or video banner ads that when clicked on, take a consumer to a website or landing page.

Dynamic Ads

An ad automatically personalized for the consumer viewing it in order to create additional engagement and conversions.

Dynamic Budget Reallocation

Automated adjustments among various tactics within a campaign’s pre-defined budget.

Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO)

Responsive ad type that leverages the product catalog to dynamically optimize the content and messaging, delivering a personalized experience to each consumer.

Dynamic Travel Segmentation

Campaign segmentation used by travel clients where users are segmented based on proximity to a date, typically departure.

E

Effective Cost Per Mille (eCPM)

A relevant KPI selected by the advertiser (CTR/CR/COS) divided by impressions delivered, regardless of the pricing model used to purchase the impressions (CPM, CPC, CPA, CPL, CPCV, etc). Example for a typical CPC charging model: eCPM = (CPC x clicks / impressions) x 1000.

Enriched Catalog

A catalog of products from a partner with an improved quality of data per additional fields of rich media (called enrichments) such as product videos. It has a version composed of an import date and an enrichment date.

Experience Management

Tools to enable marketers to improve the matching of content to people interacting with their digital properties.

F

First Price Auction

A model used in programmatic advertising where advertisers place bids for ad impressions, and the highest bid secures the win. The buyer here pays exactly what he bids.

First-Party Cookie (1P Cookie)

A small text file stored on the user's computer that is created by the website the user is currently visiting. Accessing this cookie while the visitor is on another website is a ‘third-party” use case.

First-Party Data (1P Data)

First-party data is information that a company can collect from their own sources. Usually, information about customers from both online and offline sources, such as the company’s website, app, CRM, social media or surveys is first party data.

First-Party Media Network (1PMN)

Criteo 1st-Party Media Network is the pipe that connects buyers and sellers via a trusted network of direct first-party relationships, allowing for scaled, addressable advertising across the open web.

FLEDGE

Google's First Locally-Executed Decision over Groups Experiment (FLEDGE) is Google’s proposal to measure the effectiveness of Google's TURTLEDOVE auction mechanism as being a viable replacement for the interoperable identifiers that support the decentralized, open web. FLEDGE is based on concepts from the TURTLEDOVE proposal (i.e. it operates by making ad auction decisions in the browser itself, rather than at the ad server level), but includes feedback from other proposals, including Criteo’s SPARROW proposal.

FLoC

Google's Federated Learning of Cohorts” (FLoC) proposal relies on the Chrome browser to collect and process people’s behavior across various web sites and assign each browser to a single Cohort audience. According to GitHub, “The browser uses machine learning algorithms to develop a cohort based on the sites that an individual visits. The algorithms might be based on the URLs of the visited sites, on the content of those pages, or other factors."

Format (or banner size)

See “Banner Ad.”

Frequency Cap

The maximum amount of times a given ad will be shown to a unique user within a specified time period.

Full-Funnel Marketing

A strategy that addresses the full shopper journey and incorporates objectives for all stages of the purchase funnel: awareness, consideration, and conversion.

G

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

The EU GDPR harmonizes data privacy laws across Europe. It protects the privacy of EU citizens and applies to all companies collecting or processing personal data on individuals in the EU, even if not established in the EU.

Geotargeting

The controls to serve ads to consumers based on location.

Guaranteed Deals

A type of programmatic deal based on a guaranteed volume of impressions sold at a fixed price and for a guaranteed budget.

H

Hashed Email

Encrypted version of an email that enables cross-device experiences. Often organizations add a salt to the hashing mechanism to transform the email into more privacy-by-design pseudonymous identifier. Usually referred to as HEM. MD5 and SHA256 are the most used hashing methods.

Head to Head Test (H2H)

Period where an advertiser runs Criteo and a competitor simultaneously to assess which performs better; can be alongside or split cookie pools.

Header Bidding

Header bidding is an advanced programmatic technique wherein publishers offer inventory to multiple ad exchanges simultaneously before making calls to their publisher ad servers.

HTML

An acronym for Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), which is the coding language for rendering interactive content on open web.

I

Identity Data & Resolution

Process of collecting and matching identifiers across devices and touchpoints to build a cohesive, omnichannel view of individual customers, enabling marketers to deliver personalized, contextually relevant messaging throughout the customer journey.

Identity Graph

Identity Graph links identifiers across devices, browsers and apps. Prospects that are not yet customers or shoppers are linked to identifiers the same way as existing customers.

Impression (or Display)

Each time an ad is displayed on a publisher’s website.

In-market Audience

People who are likely in the market to purchase a given product or service. See Commerce Intent.

In-moment Context

Criteo uses scaled Commerce Intent data to match to a likely product / consumer / page ranking. Using this technique allows Criteo to serve relevant ads based on page context.

In-Store Media

It refers to all the displays within the physical retail environment.

Incrementality

Incrementality is an advanced method to measure marketing effectiveness that seeks to show that those that purchased did so because they were exposed to advertising content (i.e. “attribution”).

Insertion Order (IO)

The contract signed by an advertiser/agency to validate a new budget for an advertising campaign. It is signed by the advertiser.

Interactions

Touchpoints of when a consumer sees, clicks, visits a store, or other activity related to the marketing and monetization efforts of our customers.

Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)

A trade body organization that helps sets standards and guidelines for digital advertising.

Interest Map

Criteo Shopper Graph data collective that associates people’s activity and transaction patterns to standard product, category, and brand identifiers.

Inventory Management

A process used by media owners to package and monetize the ad space in their digital properties.

Iponweb

Ad-tech company acquired by Criteo in August 2022 that provides programmatic infrastructure including a demand-side platform (DSP), a supply-side platform (SSP) and media-trading marketplace capabilities that are core to Criteo Commerce Media strategy. Iponweb provides a highly flexible technology and robust customization capabilities to respond to Criteo’s clients needs.

K

Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

The target or result that you want to achieve. In other words, it’s how you measure the success of a campaign. Common KPIs are ROAS, COS, and CPL and CPV .

L

Last-Touch Attribution

See "Attribution". A widespread type of attribution model, that assigns 100% credit to the final touchpoints (i.e., clicks) that immediately precede sales or conversions.

Lifetime Value (CLV)

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is a metric to capture the net profit contributed by a customer. Companies aim to ensure a high CLV through marketing techniques.

Liquid Design

Liquid ad layouts are based on percentages of the current browser window’s size. They remain consistent in size and relative page weight regardless of who is viewing the page.

Look-alike

An AI-driven audience scoring process to identify similar audiences to an initial segment (called “seed data”), that is frequently a marketer’s existing first party data.

Lookalike Finder

A core feature of the Criteo DSP. It creates audiences called Similar Audiences by using AI and the Criteo Shopper Graph to find new consumers with similar characteristics to a company’s best customer.

M

Manage

Mobile app install solution acquired by Criteo in 2018; strengthened full-funnel app advertising solutions.

Management Center (formerly CPP)

Criteo’s performance-monitoring interface used both internally and externally to track the daily performance of advertisers and publishers and to monitor/change budgets and CPC of our advertisers.

Marketer

A marketer engages and grows customers for their organization’s products and services by matching content to desirable audiences. The function of marketing encompasses audience definition (who & where), content creation (what), budget and bid price allocation across media (how much), and content matching tactics (what & when) to drive improved outcomes (how well).

Measure

Media measurement quantifies the exposure and relative success of advertising campaigns against the goals and KPIs set out in the planning phase.

Measurement Data

Data derived from analyzing the performance of marketing campaigns across the marketing funnel. Some of the data points captured across the marketing funnel include; Impressions, page views, clicks, unique visits, leads, sales/purchases, repeat purchases.

Media Plan

Media planning is the process by which marketers determine who to engage, where to reach them, when to message, and how frequently to maximize engagements and ROI.

Media Rating Council

Is a U.S. based nonprofit organization that manages accreditation for media research and rating purposes. Its primary role is to ensure the quality and integrity of media measurement and rating systems withing the advertising and media industry.

Mindshare (marketing term)

Percent of an advertiser's pre-defined audience that is exposed to at least one ad. See Reach.

Mobile Ads

Standardized ad units designed for mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets.

Mobile Advertising Identifiers (MAIDs)

Unique and anonymous identifiers provided by a mobile device’s operating system. Apple plans to change the usage of its mobile identifiers (IDFA) on Apple devices to ask users to “opt-in” to any rival apps not controlled by Apple before allowing them to receive the IDFA. Note, Apple does not apply these same policies to its own apps.

Model Context Protocol

Open standard, open source framework introduced to standardize the way artificial intelligence systems like large language models integrate and share data with external tools, systems, and data sources.

Monetization

Monetization is the process of turning an asset into revenue, for Media Owners this can be ad space on their digital properties, their data or converting visitors into customers.

Multi-Touch Attribution

See "Attribution". Type of attribution models that assign credit to multiple touchpoints (i.e., clicks) that precede sales or conversions. Linear or time-decay are typical multi-touch attribution models (as opposed to last-click or first-click models that give credit to a single touchpoint).

N

Native Ads

Ads that look and feel like the surrounding content in an attempt to improve consumers' experience by letting ads blend into the content backdrop. Ads on Pinterest (such as Promoted Pins) are a good example of native ads.

Network

Criteo’s direct publisher and supply relationships ensure the most efficient paths to achieve marketer outcomes.

O

Offsite Ads

Is the ability for retailers, brands, and agencies to create personalized advertising offsite and across the open internet, allowing them to look effectively for more opportunities to reach and convert targeted consumers beyond their own content walls.

Omnichannel Retail

Refers to a retail environment selling products across online and offline channels and creating a consistent customer experience across those sales channels. Typical channels include online retailers, marketplaces, social channels and brick-and-mortar stores.

Online Video (OLV)

OLV is a video ad format commonly referred to in reference to video advertising on web and mobile app devices (as opposed to Connected TV devices).

Onsite Ads

Is the ability for retailers to create personalized advertising on their owned digital assets or digital in-store content, making them media owners.

Open Internet

Also called the Open Web, which refers to digital publishing and advertising outside walled gardens, such as search and social platforms.

Opt-Out

A user-signaled preference to no longer receive behaviorally targeted ads. Users can opt-out of receiving behaviorally targeted ads from Criteo on or our Privacy page after clicking on the blue 'i' icon on each Criteo banner.

Outcome

An “outcome” achieves one or more success metrics (aka “KPI”) that our Marketer and Media Owner customers specify .

Outcome Optimization

Criteo’s buying solutions are powered by AI to help continuously improve channel, budget, bid, audience and messaging to achieve superior outcomes.

Over-the-Top (OTT)

OTT is any video content "over the top of a cable box". It is an umbrella term that includes both CTV and OLV advertising. Includes services such as Netflix, Hulu, and Sling. This term is considered antiquated and isn't used in Criteo vocabulary.

P

Passback

A media owner's ability to repurpose an unfilled impression as a buying opportunity for the next buyer in their waterfall. This is an antiquated and largely inefficient way of running a media owner ad stack, but still exists today.

Performance Marketing

A data-driven digital marketing approach focused on a measurable outcomes such as clicks, conversions, sales, or revenue growth, where success is evaluated against clear performance metrics and ROI.

Personalize

Personalized marketing uses data to deliver more relevant messages to a desired audience.

Personally Identifiable Information (PII)

Post-Click Sales

Purchase made by a consumer on a website or mobile app within a certain period of time following the user clicking on an ad. This period of time varies by but is typically a maximum of 30 days.

Prebid SSO

The ecosystem’s leading open-source notice and choice framework to generate responsible addressable media identifiers and people’s default privacy signals associated with them. The Prebid solution enables people to signal their preferences with a logged out identifier and optionally supports logged in identifiers to synchronize preferences across devices.

Predicted Click-Through Rate

Expected click-through rate (CTR) for each possible impression that the Criteo AI Engine computes.

Predictive Bidding

AI-driven algorithm that adjusts the bid based on the current context and right time for each consumer.

Preferred Deals

A feature, via Deal ID, that allows media owners to carve out certain inventory for certain buyers, usually at a fixed minimum price.

Premium Ad Inventory

Ad inventory that is considered to be of high quality and is therefore valued at a higher price.

Privacy Mesh

A privacy-by-design method to ingest first party data. Criteo’s Privacy Mesh defines provenance, purpose, and governs usage, storage and auditing for any data contributed to the Criteo Commerce Data Platform. We never re-identify, sell or leak Customer data.

Private Marketplace (PMP)

Programmatic advertising platform offering exclusive, invite-only auctions for premium ad inventory through private deals between publishers and advertisers.

Product Recommendations

An AI-driven algorithm to improve the match of digital content for specific products based on the shopper’s specific on-site behavior such as navigation, recency, and the types of other products browsed.

Programmatic Advertising

Automated ad buying in real time through a software solution as opposed to the traditional method via phone, email or fax.

Programmatic Direct

See Programmatic Advertising. Programmatic advertising is called "Programmatic Direct" when the deal for buying and selling of this inventory has been made directly between the publisher and advertiser without the involvement of any middlemen. It encompasses programmatic guaranteed deals, preferred deals and private marketplaces (PMP).

Programmatic Mediation

See Programmatic Advertising. A platform that allows media owners (typically app developers) to plug in multiple demand sources (historically ad networks) to compete for their inventory, usually in a waterfall setup.

Pseudonymous Identifier

A form of identifier where an organization has appropriate technical or operational processes in place to keep this identifier distinct from people’s identity. See the antonym Personally Identifiable Information.

Publisher

A website that publishes content (news, etc.) and which often monetizes its traffic by selling ad placements.

Publisher Monetization

How media owners leverage their data and content to drive revenue through advertising.

R

Reach

Share of the marketer's audience exposed to at least one ad.

Reach & Performance Forecasts

Criteo’s AI-driven estimates the scale of people possible to reach and the outcomes to likely expect for a given campaign based on pre-defined metrics.

Real-Time Audience (RTA)

Protocol invented by Criteo that allows us to communicate with the media owner's ad server to determine whether to show ads to the consumer currently browsing the page.

Real-Time Bidding (RTB)

Buying and selling of ad inventory through a programmatic exchange or software solution. Each ad impression is sold to the highest bidder in real time, in the split second it takes a potential customer’s browser or app to load an ad unit.

Real-Time Creative Optimization (RTCO)

A sub-feature of DCO+, Criteo’s Real-Time Creative Optimization instantly calculates which set of predefined visual elements will be the most engaging to a specific consumer at any given time in any given context.

Recommendation Engine

Criteo’s AI-driven algorithm surfaces the most relevant items to a particular consumer.

Render

Criteo’s proprietary tech to render fully optimized ads on publisher pages in real time, enabling billions of variations.

Reseller Program

Allows retailers to resell Criteo Dynamic Retargeting to their brand partners and allows both parties to reach shoppers with co-branded, dynamic ads delivered across top media owners.

Responsive Design

Layouts that detect screen size and orientation and adapt accordingly.

Retail Ads

Retail advertising is the process by which retailers use store advertising (online and offline) to drive awareness and interest towards their products to generate sales from their target audience. Through advertising, a retailer attempts to influence their audience to drive a specific marketing objective.

Retail Media

Retail media is advertising that takes place on a retailer’s owned properties, such as websites, apps, or in-store digital displays, allowing brands to promote products directly to shoppers at the point of purchase through formats like sponsored product ads.

Retargeting

Retargeting is a digital ad strategy that shows personalized ads to users who’ve previously engaged with a brand but haven’t converted, reminding them of products they viewed to encourage a purchase.

Retention

Customer retention is a marketing goal designed to engage current or previous customers, often by encouraging continued use of an organization’s products or services.

Return on Ad Spend

Measures gross revenue generated for advertiser clients for every dollar spent on advertising. A useful metric for determining the effectiveness of an online campaign, ROAS helps advertisers gauge what’s working and how they can improve future efforts.

Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS)

Shows how much revenue you make for every dollar of ad spend. ROAS is expressed as a ratio, like 2:1.

Return on Investment (ROI)

Digital marketing ROI is usually calculated as Revenue/Cost. Cost usually means initial investment, but also cost of an ad campaign. ROI = 1/COS. In many cases, ROI is equivalent to Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).

S

Sales

When a consumer makes a purchase of the desired product or service.

Same-Device Match

Links different IDs from different applications or browsers on the same device, such as linking a web cookie to a mobile advertising ID.

Second-Price Auction

Mechanism allowing the highest bidder to win, while paying the second-highest bid plus a penny. Encourages buyers to bid their true value, as their paid price will always be equal to or lower than their bid. Second-price auctions are largely being phased out in favor of First-Price Auctions.

Self-Service Platform

Platform with a front end UI that allows marketers to configure and run campaigns and media owners to set parameters on their inventory and check yield.

Sequenced UX

A storytelling technique that allows a marketer customer to define the frequency and order in which different messages are shown.

Shoppable Ads

With this type of ads the buyers can make the purchase of the item directly from the ad they are viewing.

Shopper Graph

The Criteo Shopper Graph connects online and offline shopper IDs across devices, browsers, apps, and other environments for a more holistic view of each user, helping to boost sales, product visibility, and profits, by harnessing the collective power of tens of thousands of actively participating advertisers, brands, publishers, and retailers.

Showrooming

Shoppers visiting the store to find, try, and gather information on the products but eventually buying online.

Similar Audiences

Similar Audiences are audiences that look like the first-party seed data, used by marketers to extend reach. Criteo’s Similar Audiences are the output of Criteo’s Lookalike AI scoring.

Site Optimization

Criteo’s creative optimization technology that in real-time matches the ideal template, and elements within it (e.g., text, image, links), based on data about the viewer and their current environment (e.g., geographic location, connection speed, screen size).

SPARROW

SPARROW stands for “Secure Private Advertising Remotely Run On Webserver.” Criteo proposed SPARROW to enable audience targeting in Chrome as an alternative to Google’s TURTLEDOVE proposal, some of which have been incorporated into FLEDGE.

Static Ad

Unlike dynamic banners, the content of static banners is pre-prepared.

Storetail

Retail media technology platform enabling native placements; acquired by Criteo in 2018.

Supply-Path Optimization (SPO)

Process in which multiple variables are assessed to drive buyers towards the most efficient buying path. This process reduces the number of intermediaries in the supply-chain until each is adding value.

Supply-Side Platform

Yield optimization tool that publishers’ rely on to optimize the yield of their indirect sold inventory. SSPs act as an aggregator of inventory for media buying solutions. Service options (self, managed, hybrid) for all technology does not change the name of the software accessed by the hands-on-keyboard.

T

Click Tracker

Technology used to track clicks on a banner; often used by advertisers/agencies to independently track billable clicks.

Tagged User

A user who visited an advertiser’s website whom Criteo identified with a tag (i.e. usually a cookie, but the tag infrastructure can be extended to other forms of identifiers and data collection).

Third-Party Cookie (3P Cookie)

A cookie that is created by domains other than the one a user is visiting directly. 3P cookies store cross-organization addressable identifiers that help improve marketers engagement, measurement and optimization.

Third-Party Data (3P Data)

Data sold by a partner. 3P data is used to enhance and scale audiences.

Third-Party SSP

A SSP not owned by Criteo. We make our advertising demand available to media owners by integrating our buy-side solution into these other sell-side solutions.

Trade Marketing

A B2B marketing strategy focused on wholesalers, retailers and distributors rather than consumers. Its goal is to increase demand from supply chain partners and to push products in front of consumers. Trade Marketing budgets are shifting to online. Trade Marketing is wider than retail media as it can be both offline & online (e.g. retail media is the most typical channel of online trade marketing).

Triggered Messaging

A rule set that delivers media based on specific consumer activity, often within a specific time after an event (e.g., send thank you email 24-hours after purchase, or send reminder ad banner 24-hours after an abandoned cart).

TURTLEDOVE

TURTLEDOVE (“Two Uncorrelated Requests, Then Locally-Executed Decision On Victory”) proposal attempts to enable consumer retargeting without any marketers receiving any identifier. It operates by making ad auction decisions in the browser itself, rather than at the ad server level. Google has suggested measuring the effectiveness of TURTLEDOVE proposal under the FLEDGE project.

U

Unique Visitor

Counting website visitors on a unique level. When a person visits a site or app, the individual is counted once, no matter how many times or pages the person visits, thus creating a better idea of how many people are visiting.

Universal Catalog

The uniformed and enriched catalog of products that is cross partner and is composed of the last enriched catalog of each partner. It evolves continuously with time. It's important for Marketers to maintain a normalized catalog, as it is used to drive personalization and optimization.

Uplift

Uplift is the incremental impact of a treatment (i.e. showing an ad). It is measurable via A/B testing.

User

An individual with access to the Internet. A user can access the Internet through multiple browsers or devices, and thus have multiple cookies/user IDs.

User ID

A token attributed to a technical identifier, such as a cookie or device ID, and specific to a given browser or device.

V

Video Completion Rate (VCR)

VCR is a widespread KPI for video campaigns, expressed as a percentage. It is the ratio between the number of completed views and the number of exposed consumers. Usually, a consumer must watch a minimum duration on the video ad for it to count as a completed view.

Viewability

Viewable advertising is a measure of whether a given advert could actually be seen by a human being, as opposed to being out of view or served as the result of automated activity. It also covers how long a certain ad was visible and viewed by a consumer. The industry-standard usually requires at least 50% pixels of the ad in the browser space for at least 1 second of time (2 seconds usually for video).

Viewable Advertising

Visits

When a consumer who has seen an advert goes to the desired pages or store to get more information.

W

Walled Gardens

A closed / black-box online environment where advertisers have less access to customer data and have less control over how to measure success. Facebook, Google, Amazon are the best examples of Walled Gardens.

Webrooming

Shoppers gathering product information online to decide which products to buy but then going to the store to make the purchase.

Y

Yield

Ad yield is the amount of revenue you earn from your ads. In other words, it is an indicator of how successful your advertising efforts were.

#

360° Experience

A digital ad that immerses the consumer in a 360-degree experience that they can control, such as using a mouse or by moving their mobile device. An interactive format that invites consumers to have fun with your ads.

Digital Advertising, A-to-Z

A