TAP Glossary

Advertiser

A person or company who is buying ad space. Every advertiser is associated with one or more industries, which determines how the advertisers' campaign fits within industry-standard frequency caps.

Agency

An organization responsible for the design, production and management of an ad campaign. There are specialized or boutique ad agencies that concentrate in specific areas such as creative or media buying. Some agencies specialize in digital media and are typically referred to as interactive agencies.

Avails

A station or network’s advertising inventory that is available for sale.

Broadcast In-stream Media

Internet content that is streamed from the on-air broadcasts of terrestrial radio stations. On-air ads are usually removed and replaced with streaming ads or other content.

Bulk

Bulk inventory (sometimes referred to as "remnant advertising inventory" or "unreserved") is the left-over inventory that a publisher was unable to sell via their premium deals like direct ad sales. In TAP, bulk inventory has no reserved impressions so it is available to be delegated to third-party ad networks. Ads using unreserved inventory run after locally scheduled TAP ads have played, but before filler kicks in.

Campaign

The organized elements of a program to promote a company or its products. The campaign elements include different ad types, different media channels and different timings of flights for the ads based on the campaign objectives. Within TAP, a campaign is primarily a container for flights.

CPM

Cost Per Thousand impressions (literally, Cost per Mille, where mille is Latin for thousand). This is the standard metric used for most online advertising campaigns.

CPS

Cost Per Spot. This metric is used in TAP for calculating spot-based flights that cannot be measured or calculated on a CPM basis. If you choose to use spots, you should be aware that TAP will present your cost and goal calculations that way. Also be aware that CPS spots have various limits as compared with CPM ads.

CTR

The "Click-Through Rate" for banner impressions. The formula is: number of clicks / number of banner impressions. CTR is not calculated on spot-based campaigns, nor to audio-only campaigns.

Creative

The concept, design and artwork of an ad, including the actual media files. The most common creative technology for banners are GIF or JPEG images, and animated GIFs. Other creative technologies include JavaScript, HTML or streaming audio or video (third-party ad tags), which are commonly referred to as rich media banners.

Custom Segment ID (CSID/CSegID)

A custom segment ID is a numeric code that is used to identify a specific segment, group, or type of users. They can be used for ad targeting and to set custom frequency caps, as well as other targeting functions. Custom segment IDs are set up in collaboration with Triton Digital and are used with Triton Digital’s players and/or streaming services. For technical information, refer to the Triton Digital Advertising Specification.

Delivery Method

In TAP flights, the delivery method refers to the audio delivery medium (in-stream, on-demand, or podcast). Note that in Yield-Op content targeting, delivery method has a different meaning; it refers to how the audio is received by the player. In Yield-Op, protocol is used to refer to the audio delivery medium.

External ID

An external ID is any identifier (such as an Advertiser External ID or a Flight External ID) that is not generated by TAP. Typically, you use an external ID for your own reference, or as a way to track items that already have an ID in your other tracking or management systems. Some external IDs (such as Flight External ID) can appear as dimensions in TAP Explore reports, or can be used as a search filter.

Filler

Filler is unpaid content such as station promos, public service announcements, etc., that usually only plays when there is no paid content available. Typically, you create a special filler advertiser to associate with filler content, then you create filler campaigns and flights set up to delivery filler. Filler can be used with any delivery method, but is most commonly used by live-stream publishers. For more information, see Creating a Filler Campaign.

Flight

A flight is the fundamental building block in TAP. It is the definition of when an ad or set of ads are to be seen, and includes the start and end dates, the traffic method, impressions goal, pricing model and value, and can also include targeting and pacing definitions.

Frequency Cap

The maximum number of times an ad, or type of ad, can be played within a given time frame for a given listener (if you use time capping). Frequency caps help provide a better listener experience, increase click-through rates (CTRs), and reduce "banner burnout." For more information, see Frequency Caps.

IAB

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), which sets standards for online and interactive advertisements.

IAB Categories

TAP currently follows the industry standard of assigning IAB Content Categories to advertisers to enforce ad separation. More specifically, TAP uses the DAAST Ad Categories that extend the IAB Content Taxonomy version 1.0. (The Ad Product Taxonomy was recently developed by the IAB; while that is better suited, it hasn’t yet gained much adoption in the industry.) Adding Tier 1 and Tier 2 IAB content categories to your advertisers’ profiles helps optimize digital inventory and ensures precise and consistent ad separation; missing or inaccurate categorization could result in excessive separation gaps and corresponding lapses in impressions and revenue.

Impressions

Number of times an ad was delivered to users.

Impressions goal

The target number of impressions you wish to receive for a given flight.

Inventory

Inventory is the space a publisher has available for advertising. In traditional broadcasting, inventory is measured in spots; chunks of time on a broadcast schedule (typically 30 seconds) where ads can be placed. In digital advertising, inventory is measured in impressions. In TAP, inventory is described as the "available opportunities to play an ad," which is estimated by forecasting impressions based on the station or podcast's historical and trend data.

ISCI Code

An Industry Standardized Commercial Identifier (ISCI) code is used to identify commercials (aka "spots") aired on television and radio.

Make-good

In traditional advertising, a "make-good" is a free ad placement provided as a way to make up for an error in the original ad or its placement. In digital advertising, a make-good is usually done to compensate for under-delivery of ads, or a missed goal within a campaign. In TAP, a make-good involves running a flight that has low or zero CPM/CPS but a high-value priority override.

Missed Opportunity

A missed opportunity is when there was an opportunity to play an ad, but the opportunity was missed because no ads were available to be inserted/replaced. Remember: Inventory = Played impressions + missed opportunities.

For more information, see Understanding Missed Opportunities in the Measurement and Analytics knowledge base.

Organization

The top level of TAP's structure is the organization. Typically, there is only one organization per publisher, but in some cases there could be other organizations available, such as for testing or training.

OTI

OTI is the "on-track indicator" that appears in several places throughout TAP. It indicates whether or not your campaign delivery is on track (or "on schedule") by showing the percentage of the impression goal delivered per the percentage of time elapsed. The on-track indicator is always with respect to the current day.

Reach

The total number of unique people or households exposed at least once to an ad during a given period of time. In TAP Explore, Reach values are calculated to establish the most precise value first. So Reach values for device ID or app ID are used to establish the listener ID that calculates a specific listener. If there is no device ID or app ID, Triton takes the IP and user agent sent with the connection or download and uses that as the listener ID, as per IAB specifications.

In instances where there is no user agent, the IP address is used as the unique listener ID. This conforms with IAB standards while adding more precise information from device and app IDs. However, the nature of changing IP addresses means that Reach values are still subject to variance as, for example, a user moves from home to mobile, or their mobile IP address changes as they commute or travel.

TAP Explore uses intelligent data modeling for "Reach." Due to the presence of many different dimensions and dayparts, the typical variance is less than +/-3% versus the true Reach, and can vary over different queries.

Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX)

A United States federal law enacted in 2002 that established new standards for all U.S. public company boards, management and public accounting firms. The standards are primarily focused on increased security and accountability. TAP accounts are not SOX compliant by default; you need to specify you want SOX compliance when setting up or modifying TAP with your Triton Digital Solution Specialist. For more information, see Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Compliance.

Segment targeting

Audience segments targeting is an optional listener targeting tool that lets you target specific audience segments as defined by one or more audience measurement platforms, such as TAP's integration with TruAudience or an external DMP. For pricing and integration details, speak with your Triton Digital Client Success Manager.

Share of Voice (SOV)

An advertising revenue model that focuses on relative weight, or percentage of impressions, of advertisers.

Spot eCPM

Spot eCPM (effective CPM) is the forecasted value of a spots-based (CPS) flight expressed as if it were an impressions-based (CPM) flight. It is used for comparing relative values, such as when choosing a priority override of a CPS flight and the override values are shown as CPM figures. Spot eCPM values are also useful as a revenue comparison with CPM campaigns. In other words, if the spot eCPM for your spots is low, you might consider using CPM-based campaigns instead of spots to generate more revenue. There are many ways to calculate spot eCPM, but TAP's proprietary calculation, which is based on a calculation of the average number of impressions delivered per spot (the "avails count"), is considered to be quite accurate.

TAP's proprietary spot eCPM formula:

For more information, see Impressions vs. Spots.

Sweeper

A short audio (or audio with banners) unpaid ad that usually contains a station identifier or promo. Typically, sweepers appear at the beginning and/or end of an ad break.

Takeover

A "takeover" is an ad in which all available creative slots are used for the same ad. For example, while playing an audio ad, every banner position is also occupied with a banner containing creative for the same product. You can easily create a takeover when you build a creative set using one of the "banner" creative templates; simply fill as many of the banner positions as you can, and the player will use the ones in sizes it is capable of displaying and ignore the others.

TAP Direct

TAP Direct refers to the campaigns, flights, and other items that are used for direct advertising in TAP (via the “Ads” tab in the TAP menu bar). The other side of the TAP coin is TAP Programmatic.

Targeting

The ability to deliver the most appropriate ad to a user using different techniques, such as tracking of user demographic, usage, browser information, and other criteria.

Targeted in-stream media

Typically, ads that are played within the stream of playlist-based or "on-demand" content channels.

Team

Every organization is required to have at least one team. Teams are typically made up of the organization's administrator, campaign managers, traffickers, and so on. Teams are used to filter campaigns and flights so that team members only see campaigns and flights that are assigned to their team.

TTAG

Custom Targeting Tags in TAP work in conjunction with custom tags that are declared by your player. When there is a match, targeting is achieved and the campaign can deliver to that player.

Unreserved Inventory

See Bulk.