Stickypedia

An Interactive Advertising Glossary

Please note: This glossary is almost completely indebted to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an online, open source encyclopedia, edited by the public.

.NET: A Microsoft-developed development platform that is quite popular in web development circles, and actually not as bad as you would think. It is focused on rapid application development, platform independence and network transparency, and is a key part of Microsoft’s server strategy for the next decade.

3D Artist: A person who does 3D work for jobs that require it. Fiendishly specialized and complicated, with expensive software. For some reason these people seem to enjoy paintball a lot. And hang gliding. We’re not sure what the deal is.

3G: An acronym for “Third Generation,” describing third generation mobile technology. The services associated with 3G phones provide the ability to tranfer both voice and data, such as downloads, email, instant messaging, ringtones, etc., and hence is of interest to advertisers.

Accessibility: The consideration and circumstance of ensuring that the web experience that you develop is accessible to those who may be visually or hearing impaired. There are numerous accessibility guidelines out there, and it is often a requirement of a web production job.

Account: Agency term for the brand they are working on.

Accountability: The tricky part of advertising: how to make the product so desirable and enticing without promising too much?

Ad Buying: Purchasing advertising space for a campaign. The money can be spent on TV, Print, Radio, Online, Outdoor - you name it.

AdWords: An online marketing product by developed by Google. The advertiser’s content appears when certain keywords are typed in by searchers.

Advertiser: The company paying for the advertising AKA the client.

Advertorial: A combination of ‘advertisement’ and ‘editorial’. An advertisement written in the guise of an article in a magazine or newspaper.

Agency: The people creating the advertising campaigns.

Applications: Ways in which the creative idea is applied in various media.

Art Director: Working in conjunction with the copywriter, the Art Director or “creative” comes up with the campaign look and feel.

AJAX: Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. This is the latest craze (well, 3 years ago) in making robust web applications that do not require Flash and do more than a static page. AJAX has entered mainstram consciousness via the latest tools developed by Google, such as Google Maps and GMail.

Analytics: See “Metrics”

ASP: Active Server Pages. An older, but still very popular component of Microsoft’s server platform. Laypeople often see .asp at the end of URL strings in a browser. This is an indication that the page is being dynamically served (say a postcard message or an airfare), rather than being static content.

ATOM: Similar to RSS, Atom is an XML based format for the syndication of web content. This means I can write a blog, and syndicate it, and you can have a news reader that will scan 100 of your favorite blogs, and read the latest stories in each one of them. It also means someone else out there, say us, could make a reader for, say a cell phone, that read that blog.

Back-end: An online term used to refer to the code that sits behind a website and makes it work.

Bandwidth: Used to refer only to internet capacity, but has now taken on another meaning, as a way to describe how much time and space you have in your schedule to accommodate more work.

Banner: Invented by Wired magazine, a Banner Ad is the bread and butter of Web advertising. It entails embedding an ad into a web page, and is intended to attract traffic to a website by liking them to the site of the advertiser. Most banners are now developed in Flash, though Shockwave, Java, Gif and rich media technologies such as Pointroll and Eyeblaster are also used. Many banner ads work on a click-through payback system. When the advertiser scans their logfiles and detects that a web user has visited the advertiser’s site from the content site by clicking on the banner ad, the advertiser sends the content provider some small amount of money (usually around five to ten US cents). This payback system is often how the content provider is able to pay for the Internet access to supply the content in the first place.

Bitmap: A word to describe a type of digital image files that store their data in a structure representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels. Think a photo vs. a line drawing. A photo would be stored in a bitmap file. Popular bitmap file formats include JPEG, GIF, PNG, PSD and TIFF.

Blog: A weblog (web+log=weblog=blog) is a web-based publication consisting of periodic articles. This is basically the peanut gallery of the web. Blogs range in scope from personal diaries to political campaigns, media programs, amateur journalism and corporate PR. They range in scale from the writings of one occasional writer (the “blogger”) to the collaboration of a large community of writers. Most blogs now use one of several tools to maintain them. The most popular ones are Blogger, Moveable Type, LiveJournal and TypePad.

Blogosphere: The “world” of blogs. A place where much of the word-of-mouth advertising occurs online.

Bluetooth: A wireless protocol available in many cell phones. Because many of these phones are supposedly delivered with Bluetooth turned on by default, and because the Bluetooth protocol accepts short messages, many have theorized that the one-way “Bluejacking” or “Bluecasting” of marketing messages to consumers is possible. While not impossible, it is, at this stage, more or less an urban myth.

Brand: The sum of the product and its image.

Brand Initiative: Strategy to broaden and elevate the awareness of a specific brand in the marketplace.

Branding: The act of convincing the public that a brand has particular values and emotions associated with it. It is critical for a brand to get this message right. If a product has incorrect branding, its target market will be less likely to buy it.

Brand building: Turning your product into a product with an image.

Brand Truth: The ways consumers see a brand and the values they attribute to it (cool, environmentally friendly, functional, etc).

Brand Manager: The person who oversees the brand and hires agencies to come up with strategic and creative ideas to promote their product.

Bricks and Mortar: A term used to describe real world, non-virtual stores and businesses.

Brochureware: A term used to describe a static website that essentially tells the visitor the benefits of a product or service. Called brochureware because it is essentially the transferring of a company’s brochure to the web. It is often used disparagingly because of the belief that the web should engage and interact with a customer, yet there are certain times it is a good option. It is also a frequent first step for a small company or new product in their web marketing journey.

Budget: The money to be spent on a campaign.

Burnout: The point when an advertising has been shown so many times that its effectiveness decreases.

Business Lunch: An integral part of managing an account.

Buzz Marketing: Word of Mouth Marketing. This describes the activities that companies undertake t generate favorable word of mouth publicity, or “buzz.” It is often confused with Viral Marketing. A campaign can be both, or just one or the other.

Cache/Clearing Your Cache: In order to make a user’s web experience faster, all modern browsers remember the web pages you’ve been to, and save the data from them. This way, when you hit the back button in your browser, the previous page comes up immediately, rather than after a reload from the server. As a user, this is great, as a web developer, not so much. Clearing your cache is something you will need to do often. If you are a full time web person, you may want to set your browser to not use a cache at all (something all browsers can do in the preferences). This will allow you to see the most recent changes made to a site – a very common requirement during the QA period when many small fixes are happening rapidly.

Cannes Lions: The most prestigious international advertising festival.

Call to Action: The part of the advertisement that encourages the audience to buy or learn more about the products.

Campaign: The overall idea which will be expressed in each of the ads. The core message.

CDMA: Code Division Multiple Access. It is often used as a term to describe a type of cell phone implementation pioneered by Qualcomm that is popular in the US, perhaps more properly called CDMA Cellular.

Celebrity: The quick, easy and expensive way to associate an image with a brand in a visual campaign and gain market cut-through.

Centrport/CoreMetrics: Two web analytics companies offering session-based tracking statistics. That is, not just how many people came to your site, but what did they do while they were there?

Client: The person who can get you fired or promoted.

Client Service Executive: This is the person who will make sure everything’s groovy. They’re the one person on the team that is there for ALL of your company’s projects, while everyone else might be there for just one. They are the ones you go to when you have a concern, a complaint or a compliment, though you can go to other people if you have compliments, that’s fine. They’re the one who can cut deals and speed things up and all that jazz – all that “business relationship” stuff that the producer may not care about because they’re busy focusing on getting the thing done. They’re also the one you probably want to chat with regarding any new projects you have – they’re like your permanent Barbarian buddy. Sometimes, though not always, this is a partner.

Compression: Compression is the means of reducing file size to speed the transmission of a file over a network. There are two types of compression: lossy compression, which degrades file quality in order to achieve a smaller file size, and lossless compression, which does not. File formats like JPEG, Quicktime (except “uncompressed quicktime”), MP3, RealMedia, WindowsMedia, and GIF are examples of compression technology. Generally speaking, any lossless compression that is possible for transmission for the web has already been applied. If a further file size reduction is necessary (say, to meet the requirements of Yahoo! on running a banner), it is necessary to resort to lossy compression. Therefore, it is important to remember form this point on that compression represents a tradeoff between file size and image quality, and this is not always ideal. A workaround is to design your banners with the understanding, in advance, that they may need to be compressed, and avoid things like too many different colors and small type.

Consultant: Someone brought into the development of a campaign strategy who usually specalises in the product or “type” of campaign required.

Consumers: People who buy stuff.

Copywriter: The copywriter is the person on the project who is responsible for the written communication on the project. Now, we’ve already discussed our views on copy, but the important thing to keep in mind is that we find in many situations we find it necessary to include a copywriter on a project even if you have one, in order to write all the copy for the web that you may not have thought of. Like “click here,” or “please select up to three items from the list at left. Command-click to select multiple items.” Do you really want your rock star creative copywriter writing that sort of stuff? No, neither do we.

Copywriting: The art of writing for advertising. It requires linguistic, persuasive and sometimes poetic skills. A copywriter uses all these skills to come up with text, headlines or taglines which help sell the product.

Core Consumers: The most important people to speak to, the people most likely to purchase your product.

CPA/Cost Per Acquisition: The best indicator of your online campaign success. A measure of results from each online ad viewed or clicked. This number is worked out by comparing the amount of money spent on development and media spend with the number of people who signed up for the product or service.

CPC/Cost Per Click: A better indicator of your online campaign success. A lower cost per click means more people have clicked on your ad to view your website.

Creative Director: This person comes up with all the big ideas for a campaign.

CTR/Click Through Rate: A measure of how many people saw your ad somewhere online and clicked through to your website.

Cross-Platform (or multi-platform): A term used when the campaign will be seen in more than one type of media.

Customer Base: The people who buy the product on a regular basis.

Customisation: Tailoring a campaign so that your consumers receive information that is only relevant to them.

Cut-Through: With the volume of ads in the marketplace, the aim of every brand is to be noticed or gain “cut-through”.

CSS: Cascading Style Sheets. A means to format an HTML page so that you can change the look of a whole site without having to change the code on every page, but the language can be applied to any application of XML. The spec is maintained by the W3C.

CSS Coder: See HTML Coder, but for CSS

Dedicated Short Code: An exclusive short number or word (such as “VOTEFOX”) that you can send as SMS text message to on your phone to partake in exclusive services

Designer: The person on the team who is responsible for the visual graphic design on the project. You get the idea.

Desire: The thing advertisers try to induce in the audience.

Digital Signage: Self explanatory. Because the human eyes are drawn to dynamic movements, advertisers are now putting their visual campaigns on plasma or LCD screens in public places. This works very effectively in food courts where people try to eat their lunch peacefully while avoiding eye contact with strangers.

Direct Marketing: Marketing that goes straight to the consumer, avoiding broad campaigns. It is usually direct email, mail or telemarketing.

Direct Response Marketing: Marketing with a “call to action” asking consumers to do something. They are usually given a number or postal address to respond to.

Display Advertising: A category term encompassing banners * rich media, as opposed to “search” or text-based advertising.

Dynamic Text: Dynamic Text is text that loads into a web page or Flash movie at run time. This text usually, though not always, comes from a database. When you see something like a price on amazon, or a list of flight schedules on a website, this is dynamic text. The formatting options (font, size, leading, etc) of dynamic text are often limited compared to non-dynamic, or static, text.

E-Commerce: Selling stuff on the web.

Emerging Markets: Segments of society in which the customer base is new and growing. Advertisers are always interested in growing their customer numbers, and are keen to hear where the next audience may be.

End-to-end solution: Running an entire campaign from concept and strategy all the way to implementation across various platforms and reporting (how well the campaign went), a service that nearly every advertising agency offers these days.

Engage: A term often used by agencies to prove that they are going beyond merely seeking attention. Talking about “engaging the consumer” is a must have in any pitch, to make sure the brand manager can see that you know how to interact with the audience.

Engagement Partner: This is just what it sounds like. The partner at the Barbarian Group who is the “buck stops here” designee. The one of four big kahunas who will keep an eye on your project and is the ultimate person, here at the company, everyone needs to answer to on the project. Most likely, you originally met them at a bar, on a yacht, or at an awards show. That’s just how they roll.

EPS: Encapsulated PostScript. A vector-based graphics file format. Common for Logos, charts and the like, often made in Adobe Illustrator.

Eyeblaster: A rich media technology company specializing in providing tools to make smart, complex, and engaging banner advertising, deployable across many sites. They partner with media sites (Yahoo, MSN, etc.) as well as agencies in an effort to allow agencies to use their technology across many sites.

.FLA: A .FLA file is the source file for Adobe Flash. It is analogous to a PSD in Photoshop.

Facebook: A social networking website mainly used to find long lost friends, school mates or work collegues. Increasingly, advertisers are finding ways to invade this space with subtle campaigns usually involving a “facebook app”.

Facebook app: A game-like piece of content which usually contains subtle advertising messages.

First to market: When coming up with a new product or slogan, the first brand to get this into the market has a distinct advantage.

Flash: A web development application and protocol developed by Macromedia that allows motion, animation and rich media on the web. It benefits from a high “penetration rate” – the percentage of browsers out there that can handle the file type. This means it is the lowest-common-denominator for sound, video and animation on a web page. Flash movies have a .swf file extension, while the source files made to develop them have a .fla file extension. Flash is now owned and developed by Adobe, which aquired the product in its purchase of Macromedia on April 18, 2005.

Flash Intro: A really really bad idea. Do not make these anymore.

Flash Player: The small piece of software that is required to be installed on your machine in order to see Flash content on web pages.

Flash Penetration: Or penetration rates. The percentage of web browsers that are compatible with a specific version of Flash. This information helps us in deciding whether the latest version of Flash is something we should use, or an older version. Adobe publishes this information on the web here.

Flash Programmer: The Flash programmer, well, programs the Flash. I suppose it’s worth mentioning here that we don’t divide our flash programmers between “animation” and “coding” programmers. We only hire prodigies who can do both really well. It’s probably the number one reason our company isn’t 200 people, other than the fact that that seems kinda lame. They are some of the best in the world at what they do, and generally their opinions should be trusted, though occasionally candy makes them a bit less intractable.

Flight Sheet: A spreadsheet which tells you which banner ads are required, their dimensions and the sites they will appear on.

FMCG: Fast Moving Consumer Goods, i.e. grocery items.

FTP: File Transfer Protocol. A protocol (type of traffic) that is used over the internet. This protocol is made for the transfer of large files electronically over the web. An application that facilitates this use is an FTP Client.

Green Branding: As climate change becomes more of a concern today, advertisers create a green image for the brand which communicates the corporation as a caring, responsible and community-oriented service.

Greenwashing: The attempted annexation of green credentials by a brand that really doesn’t have any.

Gruen Transfer: Named after Victor Gruen, the guy who designed the very first shopping mall. The term describes that split second when the mall’s intentionally confusing layout makes our eyes glaze and our jaws slacken… the moment when we forget what we came for and become impulse buyers.

GPRS: General Packet Radio Service. A mobile data service available to users of GSM phones. Often referred to as 2.5G. It provides moderate speed data transfer.

GSM: Global System for Mobile Communication. The most popular standard for mobile phones in the world.

HTML: The HyperText Markup Language. A language used to develop web pages and other information viewable in a browser. HTML is a specification as well – a list of acceptable syntaxes and terms. The HTML spec is maintained by the W3C and is currently at version 4.01, which is also approved by the ISO and is referred to also as ISO HTML. This is also the language used to make a graphically rich marketing email.

HTML Coder: Slightly different from application development is markup. Markup is code that goes on the client side of your web experience – mainly consisting of HTML or CSS, though could also include, perhaps, Javascript (not really a markup language, but you know. Whatever).

High-traffic areas: The parts of a website that get a large volume of visitors.

Hosting: Or, Web Hosting. It is a service that provides you with online systems for storing web pages, video or any content accessible via the Web. Hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own for use by their clients. All web pages need to be hosted somewhere.

IA: Information Architecture, or Information Architect. The abstractive practice of structuring knowledge or data. A seminal writing on the subject states:
“When a Web site or help system lacks definition and structure, readers can get lost in the content. Information architecture is the practice of organizing and interrelating content so the reader remains oriented and gets answers. By defining formal design patterns for information architecture, content providers can apply tested architectures to improve the user’s experience.”

IM: Instant Messaging. Mad popular with the kids, it’s where people can type quick messages back and forth to each other. The most popular IM protocol is that of AOL, AOL Instant Messenger, or AIM. The two terms are often used interchangeably, though Microsoft, Yahoo and Google all offer IM services as well.

Information Architect: The Information Architect is responsible for, well, the information architecture. I think we covered the basics of this up in the interactive production tutorial, but they’re the ones that make the sitemaps and wireframes. They think about it all a lot, too, they’re not just drawing pretty line drawings. They are smart as whips and have enormous experience knowing how to present information in manageable manners (alliteration!) for the end user.
Information Architecture: See IA

Incentives: A term use to describe the prize or “free” giveaway offered to consumers to enter a promotion.

Infomercial: A one-hour advertising program on television, usually shown at off-peak hours, featuring repetitions of slogans, catchphrases and calls-to-action to encourage viewers to buy.

Infotainment: An advertising opportunity in the guise of a television program (usually a lifestyle program) which, unlike infomercials, is more seamless and subtle in its call-to-action placement.

In-Game Advertising: Advertising that appears in computer and video games, and delivers the lucrative target audience of 13-35 year-olds .

Initiative: Brands always love to be the “first to market” with any idea. One way to do this is to start an initiative. Do something great for the environment or kids and the brand will gain some legitimacy PLUS gain massive amounts of free PR.

Interaction & Game Designers: If your project includes the need for some seriously challenging interaction design, or requires game design, we may assign one of these specialists to the team. They usually come from within our ranks, though in very specific circumstances, we may work with a vendor.

Internet: The Internet is the worldwide, publicly accessible network of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP). It is a “network of networks” that consists of millions of smaller domestic, academic, business, and government networks, which together carry various information and services, such as electronic mail, online chat, file transfer, and the interlinked Web pages and other documents of the World Wide Web. Contrary to some common usage, the Internet and the World Wide Web are not synonymous: the Internet is a collection of interconnected computer networks, linked by copper wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections, etc.; the Web is a collection of interconnected documents, linked by hyperlinks and URLs. The World Wide Web is accessible via the Internet, as are many other services including e-mail, file sharing, and others described below. Though there is actually a project called “Internet 2,” this is a non-profit academic consortium and not relevant to anything we do. It also does not mean that the term “internets” is correct, despite its rampant ironic usage.

Java/J2EE/JSP: J2EE is the Java 2 Enterprise Edition. Java is a programming language. J2EE is the Java equivalent of .NET. It was developed by Sun. JSP stands for Java Server Page, which is rougly analogous to ASP, above.

Jingle: Infectiously catchy tune in TV and radio advertising which usually incorporates the brand name and, sometimes, the brand’s keywords or slogan.

JPEG: Originally short for Joint Photographic Expert Group. It is a file format for photographic images. It utilizes “lossy compression,” which is file size compression that degrades the image quality. It is popular for displaying photographs on the world wide web, but is not a good file format for storing, archiving or preserving images.

Keywords: Words relevant to the brand often repeated in original form and with variations in advertising copy; especially important when the advertising mainly communicates verbally and textually rather than visually (on radio).

LAMP: Refers to a solution stack of software, usually free and open source, to run a website. The original expansion of the acronym is Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP.

Launch Date: The time the campaign will go live. It is the driver which determines what can be done within the timeframe.

Logo: A very important aspect of advertising as it is the visual representation of branding. It conveys the image of the advertised product and becomes more important as the brand develops more merchandise. Clients often want their logo to be as big as possible in the ad. Creative folk are usually more concerned with the aesthetic or message of the campaign.

Lorem Ipsum: Used by graphic designers, it is dummy copy used to show where the words will go when the ad is finished.

Market Research: the systematic process of data gathering and analysis to gain more information about customers and market competition. The information is then used to plan campaign strategies, improve current products or diversify products within the brand.

Media Spend: The amount of money spent on buying media placements. This amount is usually 90% of the marketing budget, while the amount spent on creative is 10%.

Medium of choice: Basically this refers to the “media” your target market are consuming. It’s the answer to this question: do the people the brand is aimed at watch TV, read the newspaper, listen to the radio or go online?

Meme: A meme consists of any unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that gets transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another. Examples include thoughts, ideas, theories, practices, habits, songs, dances and moods and terms such as race, culture, and ethnicity. Memes propagate themselves and can move through a “culture” in a manner similar to the behavior of a virus.

Merchandise: When your brand is so good your consumer wants to wear it too.

Metrics: The art of measuring various things on a web site. This can include number of page hits, unique visitors, etc. There are several packages for measuring metrics on the web, costing from nothing to hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. Please read Our Philosophy on Metrics for our take on all this.

Mood Board: A board full of scrap imagery the art director has gathered to start working out what the look and feel of the creative is going to be.

Motion Graphics: Visual, animated graphics, on a website or in video. These can be overlaid on top of static or moving imagery, or on a solid background. The title design at the beginning of films is a popular application of motion graphics.

MySpace: A massive social network, MySpace has been used to launch many bands. It is also a space where usually younger people socialise online.

Network: Can be a TV Network or network of consumers or users.

Niche: A very small and targeted market, but can be quite lucrative due to the specific demand.

Optimise/ Optimisation: Most campaigns are seen or heard by a wide base of people. Optimising who is targeted means drilling down so the message is only seen or heard by people it is relevant to. It decreases your costs and improves your success rate.

On-Air: A term used to refer to TV campaigns. The On-Air date is usually the same as the launch date.

Objective: The main purpose of the campaign.

Out-of-scope: A term used by advertising agencies as a nicer way to say “no” when the client asks for more work.

Outdoor: Billboard and poster locations which advertisers rent to place their creative.

Pester Power: The indicator of effectiveness of campaigns targeting children; how much they will pester parents to buy the product?

Photoshop: It is the also default file extension of the file format. It allows for Photoshop formatting, including Layers, Drop Shadows, etc., and is an excellent archival format as it does not compress and is not “lossy” (see JPEG).

Plagiarism: most of this glossary of terms. We express our gratitude to The Gruen Transfer and Barbarian Group for compiling wonderful advertising and digital glossaries so that we didn’t have to write this from scratch.

Podcasting: A method of publishing audio and video programs via the Internet, allowing users to subscribe to a fered of new files, usually MP3s. It became popular in 2004, largely due to the automatic downloading of audio onto iPods. Hoewever, “Podcasting” is a portmanteau misnomer that combines the words “broadcasting” and “iPod.” The term can be misleading since neither podcasting nor listening to podcasts requires an iPod or any portable player. Also podcasting does not involve broadcasting or sending out of audio, since citizens need to point software to XML-tagged file to pull it down to their computer or portable device.

Pointroll/Eyeblaster: A rich media technology company specializing in providing tools to make smart, complex, and engaging banner advertising, deployable across many sites. They partner with media sites (Yahoo, MSN, etc.) as well as agencies in an effort to allow agencies to use their technology across many sites.

Postcard/Postcardware: The process of making an electronic greeting card, or ecard, and allowing one user to send them to another user. Often contains humorous content, and a personalized message. Allows for the user to spread the word about your site or product, and is often a key component of a viral initiative.

Product Placement: An advertising strategy in which commercial products or brands are placed within a play, film, broadcast program, video game or print medium for financial gain.

Promotion: A competition which is run by a brand to get people to buy the product and “Engage”. The key to a promotion is an incentive. Incentives which are one hundred precent guaranteed to work are FREE, CASH or HOLIDAY.

Public Relations: (PR) a useful discipline which controls or “spins” information about a product or incident to the brand’s benefit.

PHP: A popular, open source programming language used for developing server-side applications and dynamic web content, such as catalogs or prices. It used to stand for “Personal Home Page,” but now it stands for “PHO Hypertext Preprocessor,” which is both silly and a recursive acronym.

PNG: Portable Network Graphics. A file format similar to GIF, but better. Allows for transparencies and does not require a license to use. Pronounced “ping.” Think of it as a better GIF. Also, Flash imports PNG files so they are useful for sites that dynamically load imagery, to allow for future content refreshes (see above).

PDF: Portable Document Format. A format developed by Adobe to allow for the distribution of documents over the web that look exactly the way the producer wants them to, fonts, photos and all. Useful for catalogs and the like. Has gotten way more robust and complex now, but still it’s primary purpose in ad circles is for the online distribution of things like brochures.

PSD: Photoshop Document. The source file for saving documents in Adobe

QA: Quality Assurance. The process of assuring that your interactive project functions as intended and is produced to meet or exceed customer requirements and expectations.

QuickTime: Apple’s video format, popular on the web and the basis for iTunes, the iTunes Music Store and iTunes Video Store. Other popular supporters of QuickTime include AOL and NPR. It competes with Real Networks Real Player and Microsoft’s Windows Media Player

Ratings: The influential factor in the cost of TV advertising. The higher the TV show’s rating, the more expensive it is to buy the advertising space.

Resources: The creative people in the advertising process are usually referred to as resources.

Reconnect: Important to use this word when talking to a client who has a very tired/old brand which needs to be updated.

Refresh/Hard Refresh: Browsers do not necessarily update information in real time. If a web page has been updated – a common occurance during the web production process – it is sometimes necessary to do a refresh on your browser. This is accomplished in different ways, usually by hitting control-R or command R. A “hard refresh” is a more hard core removal of all pre-existing information from your browser. It is useful to k now how to perform these actions on the browser you commonly use. A hard refresh in Safari, for example, is option-shift-E.

Rich Media: Interactive media or advertising with a level of animation or interaction that extends beyond merely being able to click through to a web page from the banner. Flash is the best known rich media platform, and several popular rich media companies have developed enhanced-functionality rich media solutions on top of Flash, allowing for highly functional advertising, including video presentation, database interaction or fortune telling. Companies in this field include Pointroll and Eyeblaster.

ROI: Return on Investment.

Run of Site: A banner campaign which appears on every page of the website, as opposed to only one page, such as the home page.

RSS: Now stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” This is an XML-based syndication protocol similar to Atom, above. RSS is more widely-implemented than Atom, though some decry its simplicity and the closely-held control of the protocol by Harvard’s Dave Winer. RSS is the basis for many blogging services’s syndication, and is also the basis of iTunes’ Podcasting directory service.

Ruby on Rails: Often called just Rails, this is an open source web application framework. It strives for simplicity and easy of development, and is free. For smaller projects, it is an excellent alternative to .Net or J2EE.

Segmentation: Breaking up a campaign so you can send different messages to different (and relevant) groups of people.

SEO/Search Engine Optimization: The process of tooling your site or pages so that they appear higher in a search engine’s ranks. There are good and bad ways of doing this. It is important to know which is which.

Sitemap: Or Site Map. A web page or document that lists the pages on a web site, typically in a hierarchical fashion. This helps with the development of a website, by agreeing on the information architecture in the planning phases, so that development resources are not wasted with fundamental changes further down the line.

Slogan: Short, witty and memorable statements usually used to convey the image which the brand is associated

Slumvertising: Ad campaigns which use slum areas to advertise their product.

SMS: Short Messaging Service – a service available on most digital phones that allows the sending of short text messages. Much loved by Japanese schoolgirls, and basically taking over the world. Advertisers are experimenting with SMSing ads to users, though consumer resistance is high.

Social media: is an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories, and understandings. Social media can take many different forms, including Internet forums, message boards, weblogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures and video. Technologies include: blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing, and voice over IP, to name a few. Examples of social media applications are Google Groups (reference, social networking), Wikipedia (reference), MySpace (social networking), Facebook (social networking), Last.fm (personal music), YouTube (social networking and video sharing), Second Life (virtual reality), Flickr (photo sharing), Twitter (social networking and microblogging) and other microblogs such as Jaiku and Pownce. Many of these social media services can be integrated via social network aggregation platforms like Mybloglog and Plaxo.

Social Networking Sites: Websites promoting the circle of friends online social network. This describes the means of networking in virtual communities and became popular in 2003 with the advent of sites such as Friendster. The popularity of these sites skyrocketed, and major compines got into the act. Google launched Orkut. Yahoo launched Layoo 360. News Corp bought Myspace, the current reigning king of Social Networking sites, this year for a pre-boom sum of $500 Million. Insanely popular with the kids, MySpace is the 8th most popular English language site on the web.

Soft Launch: The act of not launching your site to much fanfare. Akin to a “soft opening” in the bricks-and-mortar world.

Source Files: Source files are the files needed and used to develop a website or project, and make future changes. These are different than the files that are actually transmitted over the internet to the end user machine. These files are editiable, and generally should be saved, even after a project is completed. Types of source files include .FLAs, .PSDs, Jars, Tiffs, Final Cut Pro Files and .project files.

Strategising: Coming up with a strategy.

Sticky content: refers to content published on a website, which has the purpose of getting a user to return to that particular website or hold their attention and get them to spend longer periods of time at that site. Webmasters use this method to build up a community of returning visitors to a website.

Examples of sticky content include the following: Chat room, Online forum, Webmail, Internet games, Weather, News, Horoscopes, and much more.

Sticky content is also sometimes called sticky tools or sticky gear. Websites featuring sticky content are often referred to as sticky sites.

Suit: An Account Manager.

Tag: A tag is a bit of meta information about something else. For instance, if I upload a photo to Flickr, I, or someone else, can add a tag to that photo saying something about it, like “portrait,” “black and white,” and “headshot.” Tags can be sorted by and explored, and clustered in a Tag Cloud. This is a popular element of sites that are deemed Web 2.0, and allows for many people to contribute information on a variety of subjects, enhancing the searchability of all the information. For an excellent example of tags, see http://www.flickr.com/tags.

Talent: The people in the ads. Having the right talent in your advertising helps to inspire the need or desire for the product in your audience. Famous people are usually very effective in getting your campaign noticed.

Talent Management: The people that help advertising agencies find the right talent to appear in their campaigns.

Target Market: The consumers a brand wants to aim the advertising message at.

TIFF: A high-resolution bitmap file format for storing photographic images. Frequently used in print but rarely on the web, it is relevant here bcause most photograph files you’ll get from a scanning service, your photographer, etc., will come in TIFF format. Short for Tagged Image File Format. Note: just because something’s in TIFF format doesn’t necessarily make it high resolution or lossless. It simply means it CAN be.

Tim Berners-Lee: the inventor of the Web. Genius.

Touchpoints: The points at which consumes interact with a brand. For example, consumers interact with a bank brand every time they see an ad, visit a branch, go to that bank’s website or receive a phone call from bank staff.

Trafficker: The person who launches and manages online campaigns.

Trust: The belief in the good character of one party, presumed to seek to fulfil policies, ethical codes, law and their previous promises. Mutual trust presumes this belief is held by two or more parties in relation to all other parties involved.

Urchin: Short for a report from software made by Urchin Software Corporation, now owned by Google. An Urchin report is a web traffic report. Similar to Centrport and Coremetrics.

URL: Uniform Resource Locator, or web address. www.barbariangroup.com is a URL.

Usability/Usability Testing: A means for measuring how well people can use some human-made object, such as a web page for its intended purpose. Usability testing measures the usability of a site. Rather than showing users a rough draft and asking, “Do you understand this?”, usability testing involves watching people trying to use something for its intended purpose. For example, when testing instructions for assembling a toy, the test subjects should be given the instructions and a box of parts. Instruction phrasing, illustration quality, and the toy’s design all affect the assembly process.

UGC: User Generated Content. Brands are increasingly inviting fans to participate in their online ventures, uploading their own videos and creative efforts.

User-centric: When an online campaign is built with the user in mind, making it very easy to use.

Video technical director: This is the person on the team in charge of the tehnical aspects of a video shoot. There are technical issues for the internet, for Flash, for computers, that are different than for your television. Frame Rates might be different. Alpha Channels may need to be preserved. You might even have a weird aspect ratio where the video is tall and skinny. It’s our experience that most ad art directors, and even most video directors and production houses haven’t had a lot of experience with this stuff, so we have this team member on the set to help with those issues.

Viral: Refers to the phenomenon when people find a piece of online content which is compelling and send it on to their friends, therefore saving the advertiser money in buying media space.

Viral Marketing: Marketing techniques that seek to exploit pre-existing social networks to produce exponential increases in brand awareness, through viral processes similar to the spread of an epidemic. It’s word of mouth delivered and enhanced online, and harnesses the network effect of the Internet.

WAP: Wireless Aplication Protocol. This is how mobile phones get the Internet.

Web 2.0: A fuzzy term that describes the direction the web’s heading in the post-boom resurgance we’re experiencing. Refers to things like blogs, social networking sites, Ajax, CSS and RSS. Coined by Dale Dougherty, of O’Reilly Media that clever guy.

WebTrends: Very popular, but very simplistic, web traffic reporting and tracking, primarily by log fine analysis. Not as robust as the other traffic methods we’ve mentioned here.

Wiki: A web application that allows users to add content, as on an Internet forum, but also allows others to edit the content, often in a completely unrestricted manner. Wikipedia is a popular example of this. The first Wiki was on the city of Portland, Oregon’s web page. Go figure.

Windows Media: Like QuickTime, but by Microsoft. Microsoft likes to say iPods and the iTunes Music Store are proprietary, because they use, um, an open source file format, AAC. Windows Media is a closed, proprietary file format, but somehow music and movie players that use Windows Media (such as WinAmp) are, um, more open. Don’t ask. It makes no sense.

Wireframes: Information Architecture documents that show, on paper, what content will exist on each page of a website. Like sitemaps, the purpose is to conserve development resources by agreeing on the information architecture in the planning phases, so that development resources are not wasted with fundamental changes further down the line.

World Wide Web: The World Wide Web (“WWW” or simply the “Web”) is a global, read-write information space. Text documents, images, multimedia and many other items of information, referred to as resources, are identified by short, unique, global identifiers called Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) so that each can be found, accessed and cross-referenced in the simplest possible way. The term is often mistakenly used as a synonym for the Internet itself, but the Web is actually something that is available via the Internet, just like e-mail and many other Internet services.

XML: The Extensible Markup Language. A versatile, W3C-recommended general-purpose markup language for creative special-purpose languages. Useful to us because it allows flash to work with dynamic data, meaning you can have a fully interactive site, in Flash, that displays live and real time data such a prices, times, or postcard messages.

Zag Theory: When everyone else zigs you must zag. Sticky applies this thinking to all campaigns to help clients stand out from the pack.

360 Campaign: An advertising strategy which covers all the media bases.