Advertising Terms

Advertising termsMany podcasters and videocasters are interested in making money via the number of downloads their media achieves. The media space is a great medium for focused, relevant advertising. Ads can be placed on a website from which you download the media, or inside the media itself. Here are some terms used in the podcast advertising space.

Banner Ad – A type of advertisement, usually rectangular, placed somewhere on a web page. Like most website ads, clicking the link will direct the user to the advertiser’s website or a separate landing page.

Sidebar Ad – A website advertisement placed in a sidebar. The term sidebar, used also in newspaper and magazine layout, refers to an area of content placed adjacent to the main content area. It can contain ads, quick links to different parts of the site, links to external information, or tools such as quotes, polls or pictures.

Click-through – When someone clicks an online advertisement to get to the ad’s destination.

Click-through rate – The average number of clicks per hundred ad impressions (views), used to determine what keywords are used plus the marketing that attracts buyers.

Cost-per-acquisition (CPA)- A type of online advertising model in which return or payment is based on sales or registrations the advertiser receives.

Cost-per-click (pay-per-click) (CPC) – A type of online advertising model in which return or payment is based on how many times the ad is clicked. Per-click prices can range from 10 cents to $10 depending on the popularity of the content or the advertising agreement.

Cost per thousand impressions (CPM) – The cost of an advertising deal per 1,000 impressions, or views, of an advertisement. The ‘M’ in CPM is a cause of confusion for many. M is the Roman numeral representation for thousand.

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Hybrid (CPM & CPA) – A combination of cost per acquisition (CPA) and cost per thousand impressions (CPM).

Impression – A single view of an online advertisement.

Long tail – Refers to the exposure of content beyond the initial released time frame. Long tail exposure can be a beneficial factor for advertising, as the advertisement exposure extends beyond the measured time frame of the negotiated deal.

Paid placement – An advertising program where ads are guaranteed to appear in the results of particular search terms. Higher rankings can usually be achieved by paying more. Search networks such as Yahoo! and Google set up auctions where keywords and phrases are assigned a cost-per-click fee.

Return on investment (ROI) – The percentage of profit an advertiser makes from an advertising campaign. Advertisers seek to maximize their ROI by selecting alternative advertising channels such as blogging and podcasting.

Unique IP – Used to differentiate between multiple requests to download a file from one internet address (IP) and requests originating from many distinct addresses. Since this measurement looks only at the internet address that a download request came from, it is useful, but not perfect. A large network (college campus or corporate offices) may look like a single address to the outside world, even though numerous individuals may actually be downloading the file. This measurement helps podcasters and their advertisers have a more accurate gauge of the actual audience size.