The glossary

233 terms, each answered in one sentence, then explained properly with an analogy and a worked example.

A

Account ban: An account ban is an ad platform's decision to disable an advertiser's account, stopping all its ads, usually for breaking or appearing to break advertising policies.
Ad account: An ad account is the container on an advertising platform that holds a buyer's campaigns, payment method, spending limit and policy record.
Ad angle: An ad angle is the particular idea or motivation an ad uses to make a topic interesting, such as saving money, curiosity, convenience or news.
Ad fatigue: Ad fatigue is the decline in an ad's performance as the same audience sees it repeatedly and stops noticing or clicking it.
Ad review (ad approval): Ad review is the check an advertising platform runs on each ad and its landing page before, and sometimes after, allowing it to be shown.
Agency ad account: An agency ad account is an advertising account opened and billed through an agency or reseller that has a direct commercial relationship with the ad platform.
Allowlist: An allowlist is a list of approved websites, apps or placements, with ads permitted to run only on those and nowhere else.

Bid strategy: A bid strategy is the rule an advertiser gives an ad platform for how much to pay in each auction, from a fixed manual bid to fully automated goals.
Blocklist: A blocklist is a list of websites, apps or placements where a buyer tells an ad network never to show their ads.
Broad targeting: Broad targeting means giving an ad platform few or no audience restrictions beyond country, age and language, and letting its algorithm decide who sees the ad.
Business Manager (Meta): Business Manager, now called a business portfolio, is Meta's top-level account that holds a company's ad accounts, Pages, pixels, payment methods and staff permissions.

Clickbait: Clickbait is a headline or image engineered to provoke a click through exaggeration, withheld information or shock, without delivering what it implies.
Content recommendation widget: A content recommendation widget is a block of sponsored and editorial story links on a publisher's page, supplied by a network that pays the publisher for clicks.
Cost cap: A cost cap is a bid strategy, best known on Meta, asking the platform for as many results as possible while keeping average cost per result near a set amount.
Creative testing: Creative testing is running several versions of an ad side by side on small budgets to learn which image, headline or angle performs best before spending more.

Dayparting: Dayparting is scheduling ads to run, pause or bid differently at particular hours of the day or days of the week.

Geo-targeting: Geo-targeting is restricting an ad campaign to people in chosen countries, regions or cities, and excluding everyone else.
Google Demand Gen (Discovery): Demand Gen is a Google Ads campaign type that shows image and video ads on YouTube, Discover, Gmail, Maps and the Google Display Network.

Learning phase: The learning phase is the early period after launching or significantly editing a campaign, when the platform's algorithm is still testing who to show the ad to.
Lookalike audience: A lookalike audience is a targeting group an ad platform builds by finding people who resemble a seed list you supply, such as past converters.

Meta Advantage+: Advantage+ is Meta's family of AI automation features that choose audience, placements, budget split and creative variations for Facebook and Instagram ads.

Native advertising: Native advertising is paid promotion designed to look like the editorial content around it, typically a headline and thumbnail shown beneath or beside articles on news sites.

Paid social: Paid social is advertising bought on social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and Pinterest, shown inside people's feeds and stories.
Performance Max (PMax): Performance Max is an automated Google Ads campaign type that places one advertiser's ads across Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps from a single campaign.
Placement: A placement is the specific website, app, section or screen position where an ad appears.
Pop traffic (pop-under): Pop traffic is visits created when a website opens an advertiser's page in a new window or tab, usually behind the page the person was actually using.
Push notification traffic: Push traffic is clicks bought on browser or phone notifications sent to people who previously agreed to receive alerts from a website.

Spy tool (ad intelligence): A spy tool is software that collects and catalogues ads other companies are running, so buyers can study competitors' creatives, landing pages and trends.

Target CPA (tCPA): Target CPA is an automated bid strategy where the platform sets bids to win as many conversions as possible at an average cost you specify.
Target ROAS (tROAS): Target ROAS is an automated bid strategy that sets bids to reach a chosen ratio of conversion value to ad spend, such as $1.30 back for every $1 spent.
Tier 1 / Tier 2 / Tier 3 geos: Geo tiers are an informal industry ranking of countries by how much advertisers pay for their clicks, with Tier 1 the highest-paying markets.