Dictionary of Internet and eMarketing Terms
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Above
the fold
Ad placement on the top half of a page before a viewer would need to scroll
down.
Access
Log
An access log is a list of all the requests for individual files that people
have requested from a Web site. These files will include the HTML files and
their imbedded graphic images and any other associated files that get transmitted.
The access log (sometimes referred to as the "raw data") can be
analyzed and summarized by another program.
Adjacency
A property of the relationship between words in a search engine (or directory)
query. Search engines often allow users to specify that words should be next
to one another or somewhere near one another in the web pages searched.
Ad Network
Using a combination of state-of-the-art technology and media expertise, ad
networks help advertisers and publishers make web advertising work by successfully
centralizing the planning, execution, control, tracking and reporting for
high-impact, online media campaigns. Ad networks leverage technology to create
solutions that help advertisers and publishers unleash the power of the Internet
for branding, selling products, and building relationships with customers.
A network of sites is usually grouped by vertical-sector and premium-branded
sites, with which to serve ads for efficient targeting, reach and reporting.
Ad request
When an ad is requested from the server. This happens when someone visits
a Web page that has an advertisement and the surfer's browser asks the server
to deliver the ad. For a variety of reason the ad may not always be successfully
served.
Ad Rotation
Ads are often rotated into ad spaces from a list. This is usually done automatically
by software on the Web site or at a central site administered by an ad broker
or server facility for a network of Web sites. For example, Latitude90, a
leading ad sales firm, provides an ad serving and tracking service, called
adMonitor, for the network of independent sites that it sells impressions
and sponsorships for.
Ad Space
An ad space is a space on a Web page that is reserved for ads. An ad space
group is a group of spaces within a Web site that share the same characteristics
so that an ad purchase can be made for the group of spaces.
Ad View
An ad view, synonymous with ad impression, is a single ad that appears (usually
in full view without scrolling) on a Web page when the page arrives at the
viewer's display. Ad views are what most Web sites sell or prefer to sell.
A Web page may offer space for a number of ad views. In general, the term
impression is more commonly used.
Advertising
There are a variety of definitions, with subtle but important distinctions.
While the general public frequently views advertising as encompassing all
forms of promotional communication, most advertising practitioners limit it
to paid communications conveyed by a mass medium. The latter definition distinguishes
advertising from other forms of marketing communication, such as Sales Promotion,
Public Relations, and Direct Marketing.
Advertising
Allowance
Money provided by a manufacturer to a distributor for the purpose of advertising
a specific product or brand.
Advertising
Budget
Money set aside by the advertiser to pay for advertising. There are a variety
of methods for determining the most desirable size of an advertising budget.
Advertising
Plan
An explicit outline of what goals an advertising campaign should achieve,
how to accomplish those goals, and how to determine whether or not the campaign
was successful in obtaining those goals.
Advertising
Research
Research conducted to improve the efficacy of advertising. It may focus on
a specific ad or campaign, or may be directed at a more general understanding
of how advertising works or how consumers use the information in advertising.
It can entail a variety of research approaches, including psychological, sociological,
economic, and other perspectives.
Advertising
Specialty
A product imprinted with, or otherwise carrying, a logo or promotional message.
Also called a promotional product.
Affiliate
A Web site that partners with an online merchant by including links to promote
the merchant's products or service. In exchange, the affiliate receives a
commission, flat fee, or other incentive for all valid transactions it refers
to its partner that generate a sale, a sales lead, or some other user action.
Affiliate
Marketing
Affiliate marketing is the use by a Web site that sells products of other
Web sites, called affiliates, to help market the products. Amazon.com, the
book seller, created the first large-scale affiliate program and hundreds
of other companies have followed since.
Affiliate
Solutions Providers
Online companies that provide solutions to merchants seeking to provide affiliate
programs. Affiliate solutions providers also enable affiliates to review and
join prescreened affiliate programs and manage their participation in such
programs.
Affirmative
Disclosure
A disclosure of information in an advertisement, required by the Federal Trade
Commission or other authority, that may not be desired by the advertiser.
This information frequently admits to some limitation in the product or the
offer made in the advertisement.
Agency
Commission
The agency's fee for designing and placing advertisements. Historically, this
was calculated as 15 percent of the amount spent to purchase space or time
in the various media used for the advertising. In recent years the commission
has, in many cases, become negotiable, and may even be based on some measure
of the campaign's success.
Aided
Recall
A research method frequently used to determine what consumers remember about
an advertisement they have seen or heard.
Ala Carte
Services
Rather than provide all advertising services for one price, an agency may
provide only the services that a client wishes to purchase.
Alert
A short, unexpected, e-mail focused on a single topic, typically encouraging
the recipient to pick up an incentive located on an unlinked page of you Web
site.
ALT Tag
Code that tells your browser to show specific text while a graphic is loading.
When a banner is downloading, the ALT text can be reinforcing the ad's message
with a simple line of text.
Alias
An alternate e-mail address to which mail is forwarded.
Agent
Name Delivery
The process of sending search engine spiders to a tailored page, yet directing
your visitors to what you want them to see. This is done using server side
includes (or other dynamic content techniques). SSI, for example, can be used
to deliver different content to the client depending on the value of HTTP_USER_AGENT.
Most normal browser software packages have a user agent string which starts
with "Mozilla" (coined from Mosaic and Godzilla). Most search engine
spiders have specific agent names, such as "Gulliver", "Infoseek
sidewinder", "Lycos spider" and "Scooter".
By switching on the value of HTTP_USER_AGENT (a process known as agent detection),
different pages can be presented at the same URL, so that normal visitors
will never see the page submitted to search engines (and vice versa).
In practice this is somewhat simplistic. Some search engines pretend to be
"plain mozilla" browsers to prevent use of agent name delivery.
Effective use of agent name delivery can be very difficult, and may not even
work.
How do you spot agent name delivery at work? This is quite difficult, as the
owners of web pages using agent name delivery can control what you see! You
may be able to guess that a page is using this technique if it appears to
be indexed incorrectly or the title or description don't match the page you
see, but this could also have been achieved by switching pages after the relevant
search engine has indexed it. If you really want to see the search engines'
tailored version of a page, write a program (e.g. a Perl script) to retrieve
the URL with HTTP_USER_AGENT set to each of the strings used by the search
engine spiders. If agent name delivery is in use, one or more of the retrieved
pages will be different to the others!
See also hidden text and IP delivery.
Altavista
A popular search engine with the largest database on the web, indexing more
than 140 million pages. Its main URL is http://www.altavista.com. Until 1998,
this search engine provided the search facility for Yahoo. Altavista indexes
all the words in a web page, and new pages are normally added to the database
fairly quickly, within a couple of working days. You are asked to submit just
the main page of your site. The Altavista spider will then explore your site
and index a representative sample of the pages. Some problems with spamming
have been noticed. The use of keyword meta tags is penalized. Altavista places
various alternative options before its search results, including suggested
questions (using the Ask Jeeves service), RealNames. Paid entries are beginning
to appear at the start of the search results.
AOL Netfind
The default search engine for users of the AOL internet service provider,
and hence a busy site. Its URL is http://www.netfind.com. It is essentially
the same engine as Excite.
Applet
A small program, often written in Java, which usually runs in a web browser,
as part of a web page. It is possible that the use of such a program may cause
spiders and robots to stop indexing a page.
ArchitextSpider
The name of the Excite search engine's spider.
Archive
A compressed or backed up data file.
Ask Jeeves
A meta search engine which can be asked questions in English. This service
is also in use at Altavista. http://www.askjeeves.com
ASP
Active Server Page. A Web page created dynamically in response to a user request
that uses ActiveX scripting.
Auditor
In Web advertising, this usually means a third-party company that audits the
number of visitors to or impression sent from a Web site during some time
period. When you try to sell advertising, having a third-party auditor gives
the prospect more confidence in your audience numbers.
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B2B
Abbreviation for business-to-business commerce or other industrial relationships.
B2C
Abbreviation for business to consumer commerce, or simply "retail".
On the web, retailing is sometimes called e-tailing, which is practiced by
e-tailers.
.
B2G
On the Internet, B2G is business-to-government (a variation of the term B2B
or business-to-business), the concept that businesses and government agencies
can use central Web sites to exchange information and do business with each
other more efficiently than they usually can off the Web. For example, a Web
site offering B2G services could provide businesses with a single place to
locate applications and tax forms for one or more levels of government (city,
state or province, country, and so forth); provide the ability to send in
filled-out forms and payments; update corporate information; request answers
to specific questions; and so forth. B2G may also include e-procurement services,
in which businesses learn about the purchasing needs of agencies and agencies
request proposal responses. B2G may also support the idea of a virtual workplace
in which a business and an agency could coordinate the work on a contracted
project by sharing a common site to coordinate online meetings, review plans,
and manage progress. B2G may also include the rental of online applications
and databases designed especially for use by government agencies. According
to the Gartner Group, B2G revenue is expected to grow from $1.5 billion in
2000 to $6.2 billion in 2005. B2G is sometimes called e-government.
Bait Advertising
Advertising a product at a very low price, when it is difficult or even impossible
to obtain the product for the price advertised.
Bait-and-Switch
The provision of one page for a search engine or directory and a different
page for other user agents at the same URL. Various methods can be used, e.g.
Agent Name Delivery or IP Delivery.
Bandwidth
The information capacity, usually measured in megahertz or bits per second
that can be transmitted by a particular line or cable, or managed by a piece
of hardware or software.
Banner
Ad
Standard, rectangular Web ad that links to another site.
BBS Bulletin Board System. Special-purpose electronic communications systems in which messages can be entered or retrieved either privately or publicly.
BCC
Blind Carbon Copy. The blind carbon copy feature of most e-mail programs permits
you to send the same e-mail message to numerous individuals without revealing
the recipient's e-mail addresses to each other.
Beyond
the Banner
This is the idea that, in addition to banner ads, there are other ways to
use the Internet to communicate a marketing message. These include sponsoring
a Web site or a particular feature on it; advertising in e-mail newsletters;
co-branding with another company and its Web site; contest promotion; and,
in general, finding new ways to engage and interact with the desired audience.
"Beyond the banner" approaches can also include the interstitial
and streaming video infomercial. The banner itself can be transformed into
a small rich media event.
Billings
Total amount charged to clients, including the agency commission, media costs,
production costs, etc.
Blurb
Short message about a business, product, service, or related topic.
Bookmark
Online reminder that flags a URL for future reference.
Booked
Space
This is the number of ad views for an ad space that are currently sold out.
Bounty
Program
A program that pays affiliates a predetermined flat fee for every new visitor
the affiliate delivers.
Boutique
An agency that provides a limited service, such as one that does creative
work but does not provide media planning, research, etc. Usually, this refers
to a relatively small company.
Box Ad
A square or almost square banner ad on a Web page.
Brand Advertising Brand advertising creates a distinct favorable image that customers associate with a product at the moment they make buying decisions.
Brand,
Brand Name, and Branding
A brand is a product, service, or concept that is publicly distinguished from
other products, services, or concepts so that it can be easily communicated
and usually marketed. A brand name is the name of the distinctive product,
service, or concept. Branding is the process of creating and disseminating
the brand name. Branding can be applied to the entire corporate identity as
well as to individual product and service names. In Web and other media advertising,
it is recognized that there is usually some kind of branding value whether
or not an immediate, direct response can be measured from an ad or campaign.
Companies like Proctor and Gamble have made a science out of creating and
evaluating the success of their brand name products.
Break-Even
Point
The exact sales volume where total revenues equal total expenses.
Brick-and-Mortar
Refers to traditional, physical, as opposed to digital, structures and vehicles-factories,
warehouses, trucks, and retail outlets. A brick-and-mortar company is one
with little or no significant Web presence.
Bridge
Page
See Gateway Page.
Broadband
Telecommunications bandwidth large enough to carry several channels at once;
often to handle real-time video, e.g., cable TV.
Bulletin
An announcement of a special promotion, typically located on an unlinked page
of a Web site.
Button/Bug
A small, usually square or rectangular ad in the following dimensions: 125
x 125, 12 x 90, 120 x 60, 88 x 31, or 120 x 240 pixels.
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Cache
Download information and store in memory for future use.
Call to
Action
A marketing and sales device that tells the customer how to take the next
step towards a purchase or execute an activity; often uses an imperative verb.
Cannibalization
Decreased sales of one or more products in a line when a new product is released.
Category
development index (CDI)
A comparison of the percent of sales of a product category in a market to
the percent of population in that market.
Cease-and-Desist
Order
An order by the Federal Trade Commission requiring an advertiser to stop running
a deceptive or unfair advertisement, campaign, or claim.
Centerless
Network
Network architecture that uses a redundant design so that multiple nodes remain
running even if one becomes inoperative.
C2C
Abbreviation for consumer-to-consumer commerce; that is, commerce with no
middle business people The most notable examples are Web-based auction and
classified as sites. Most large venues for such models (for example, eBay
and Classifieds2000) are quickly permeated by consumers who participate so
actively and regularly that they become small businesses for them. The presence
of these quasi-consumers and the obvious businesses that sell through these
sites blurs the distinction between b-to-C and pure C-to-C.
CGI
Common Gateway Interface - a standard interface between web server software
and other programs running on the same machine.
CGI Program
Strictly, any program which handles its input and output data according to
the CGI standard. In practice, CGI programs are used to handle forms and database
queries on web pages, and to produce non-static web page content.
Channels, Channel listings
Lists of links to selected (and usually popular) web sites. The links are
maintained by search engines and directories and are sorted into categories
or channels. Sites are picked by a channel editor, often because of a site's
already high ranking with the search engines. Some search engines and directories
allow visitors to nominate sites for inclusion in their channels.
Channels
of Distribution
The routes used by a company to distribute its products, e.g., through wholesalers,
retailers, mail order, etc.
Checkstand
A web software program that reviews and totals prices for items in a shopping
cart, adds shipping and taxes, and arranges for customer payment.
Churn
Negative term referring to constantly searching out new customers to replace
lost customers. A costly and inefficient way to run a business.
C/I ratio
Abbreviation for clicks per impression, or more commonly, click-though rate.
Classifieds
Short text advertisements organized by category.
Click
According to ad industry recommended guidelines from FAST, a click is "when
a visitor interacts with an advertisement." This does not apparently
mean simply interacting with a rich media ad, but actually clicking on it
so that the visitor is headed toward the advertiser's destination. (It also
does not mean that the visitor actually waits to fully arrive at the destination,
but just that the visitor started going there.)
Click-and-Mortar
Business models that are hybrid between Web-based and traditional (brick-and-mortar)
business models. The term is attributed to David Pottruck, co-CEO of Charles
Schwab, a firm whose Web services are tightly integrated with its traditional,
physical, customer service-oriented offices.
Click
Stream
A click stream is a recorded path of the pages a user requested in going through
one or more Web sites. Click stream information can help Web site owners understand
how visitors are using their site and which pages are getting the most use.
It can help advertisers understand how users get to the client's pages, what
pages they look at, and how they go about ordering a product.
Clickthrough
Click and clickthrough tend to be used interchangeably. A clickthrough implies
that the user actually received the page. Some advertisers are willing to
pay only for clickthroughs rather than for ad impressions.
Click
Rate
The click rate is the percentage of ad views that resulted in clickthroughs.
Although there is visibility and branding value in ad views that don't result
in a clickthrough, this value is difficult to measure. A clickthrough has
several values: it's an indication of the ad's effectiveness and it results
in the viewer getting to the advertiser's Web site where other messages can
be provided. A new approach is for a click to result not in a link to another
site but to an immediate product order window. What a successful click rate
is depends on a number of factors, such as: the campaign objectives, how enticing
the banner message is, how explicit the message is (a message that is complete
within the banner may be less apt to be clicked), audience/message matching,
how new the banner is, how often it is displayed to the same user, and so
forth. In general, click rates for high-repeat, branding banners vary from
0.15 to 1%. Ads with provocative, mysterious, or other compelling content
can induce click rates ranging from 1 to 5% and sometimes higher. The click
rate for a given ad tends to diminish with repeated exposure.
Client
1. A computer, program or process which makes requests for information from
another computer, program or process. Web browsers are client programs. Search
engine spiders are (or can be said to behave as) clients. 2. The ad agency's
term for the advertisers it represents
Click
through
The process of clicking on a link in a search engine output page to visit
an indexed site.
This is an important link in the process of receiving visitors to a site via
search engines. Good ranking may be useless if visitors do not click on the
link which leads to the indexed site. The secret here is to provide a good
descriptive title and an accurate and interesting description.
Cloaking
The hiding of page content. Normally carried out to stop page thieves stealing
optimized pages. See also Bait-and-Switch.
Closed
Loop Reporting
Measuring the achievement of goals beyond simple click-though orders leads,
etc. that are generated from specific banners on specific sites.
Clustering
The listing of only one page from each web site in a search engine or directory's
list of search results. This avoids occupation of all the top results by a
small number of web sites and makes the list of results clearer and more useful
to the user.
Co-Brand
Include two or more brand names in extended promotional activities to encourage
viewers to associate the two.
Code
On the Web, typically refers to HTML code (though programming purists point
out that HTML does not compile and is therefore merely a markup language,
not true code.) Affiliate solutions providers have online tools that provide
affiliates with the lines of code they need to add affiliate links to their
Web pages and/or clips. Affiliates can simply copy the appropriate code and
paste it into their on HTML pages.
Collectibles
A type of premium that consumers may desire to have as a part of a greater
collection of similar goods.
Co-Location
Provider
A secure physical locations for a business' server hardware. Typical Co-location
services include dedicated Internet connections and protection from power
outages, fire and other disasters.
Comment
The HTML <!-- and --> tags are used to hide text from browsers. Some
search engines ignore text between these symbols but others index such text
as if the comment tags were not there. Comments are often used to hide javascript
code from non-compliant browsers, and sometimes (notably on Excite) to provide
invisible keywords to some search engines.
Commission
The compensation paid to affiliates for participation in a merchant's affiliate
program. Commission rates vary from merchant to merchant. Technically, flat
fees are a form of commission, but most affiliate programs use the word commission
to refer to compensations based on a percentage of the sales price.
Commission-Based
Program
A program that pays a predetermined percentage commission on the revenue generated
by the sale of a product or service to a visitor who came from the referring
affiliate's site.
Community
Creating a feeling of loyalty among customers and prospects by permitting
them to share information with each other through chat rooms or moderated
discussion groups.
Comparative
Advertising
An advertising appeal that consists of explicitly comparing one product brand
to a competitive brand.
Comparison-PriceModel
Allows customers to search a variety of merchants and find a desired product
or service at the lowest price.
Competition-Oriented
Pricing
A pricing strategy that is based upon what the competition does.
Competitive
Parity
A method of determining an advertising budget, designed to maintain the current
"share of voice."
Comprehensive
Layout
A rough layout of an ad designed for presentation only, but so detailed as
to appear very much like the finished ad will look.
Comps
Preliminary designs for a graphic or Web presentation.
Computer
Network
Two or more computers connected together to share resources.
Computer
Usage Compliance Survey
Allow business owners to create a custom user's policy to define how the company
will monitor Web surfing, e-mailing, visits to restricted sites, downloading
of inappropriate images and use of encryption.
Concatenate
Chain together in a sequence.
Consent
Order
Also called a consent decree, this is a Federal Trade Commission order, by
which an advertiser agrees to make changes in an advertisement or campaign,
without the need for a legal hearing.
Consumer
Advertising
Advertising directed at a person who will actually use the product for his
or her own benefit, rather than to a business or dealer.
Consumer
Behavior
Study of how people behave when obtaining, using, and disposing of products
(and services).
Consumer
Jury Test
A method of testing advertisements that involves asking consumers to compare,
rank, and otherwise evaluate the ads.
Consumer
Profile
Collected personal information on a consumer, usually for marketing purposes.
Consumer
Stimulants
Promotional efforts designed to stimulate short-term purchasing behavior.
Coupons, premiums, and samples are examples of consumer stimulants.
Consumerism
(1) Advocating the rights of consumers, as against the efforts of advertisers;
(2) the emphasis of advertising and marketing efforts toward creating consumers.
These two definitions are almost opposite in meaning, but the former is commonly
used today, while the latter was common prior to the 1970s.
Container
Premium
Special product packaging, where the package itself acts as a premium of value
to the consumer.
Content
Delivery Service
Manages, updates, and distributes Web site content.
Content
Manager
Frequent and efficient updating of Web site content.
Continuity
Scheduling advertisements to appear at regular intervals over a period of
time.
Continuous
Advertising
Scheduling advertisements to appear regularly, even during times when consumers
are not likely to purchase the product or service, so that consumers are constantly
reminded of the brand.
Conversion
Rate
The percentage of visitors to a merchant's site who actually make a purchase
during that visit. High conversion rates suggest high-quality or prequalified
shoppers, those more likely to buy, as opposed to random visitors. Providing
helpful information alongside affiliate links (such as reviews of the products)
tends to weed out the uninterested, while motivating the interested to click
through to the merchant to buy.
Co-Op
Dollars
Advertising subsidy in which a manufacturer underwrites some of the promotional
cost incurred by its retailers or distributors.
Copy Testing
Research to determine an ad's effectiveness, based on consumer responses to
the ad.
Copyright
The protection given to the author of an original piece, including "literary,
dramatic, musical, artistic and certain other intellectual works," whether
the work has been published or not.
Core Fair
Information Practices
Established by the Federal Trade Commission regarding online marketing tactics
that involve using consumer information.
Corporate
Advertising Campaign
A campaign that promotes a corporation, rather than a product or service sold
by that corporation.
Corrective
Advertising
Advertisements or messages within advertisements that the Federal Trade Commission
orders a company to run, for the purpose of correcting consumers' mistaken
impressions created by prior advertising.
Cost Efficiency
Refers to the balance of effectively meeting reach and frequency goals at
the lowest price.
Cost-Per-Action
Cost-per-action is what an advertiser pays for each visitor that takes some
specifically defined action in response to an ad beyond simply clicking on
it. For example, a visitor might visit an advertiser's site and request to
be subscribing to their newsletter.
Cost-Per-Lead
This is a more specific form of cost-per-action in which a visitor provides
enough information at the advertiser's site (or in interaction with a rich
media ad) to be used as a sales lead. Note that you can estimate cost-per-lead
regardless of how you pay for the ad (in other words, buying on a pay-per-lead
basis is not required to calculate the cost-per-lead).
Cost-Per-Sale
Sites that sell products directly from their Web site or can otherwise determine
sales generated as the result of an advertising sales lead can calculate the
cost-per-sale of Web advertising.
Counter
A program that a Web site uses to count the number of visits to a Web page.
CPM
CPM is "cost per thousand" ad impressions, an industry standard
measure for selling ads on Web sites. This measure is taken from print advertising.
The "M" has nothing to do with "mega" or million. It's
taken from the Roman numeral for "thousand."
CPTM
CPTM is "cost per thousand targeted" ad impressions, apparently
implying that the audience you're selling is targeted to particular demographics.
(The)
Creative
Ad agencies and buyers often refer to ad banners and other forms of created
advertising as "the creative." Since the creative requires creative
inspiration and skill that may come from a third party, it often doesn't arrive
until late in the preparation for a new campaign launch.
Crawler
See Spider.
CRM
Customer relationship management. A generic term that means to build long-term
customer relationships by offing incentives for customers to remain loyal
instead of taking their business elsewhere.
Cross-Marketing
Creating marketing incentives in partnership with other non-competing businesses.
Cross-Media
Advertising
Uses a combination of rich media and traditional advertising forms to execute
an advertising campaign.
Cross-Sell
To recommend or display related or additional products to a customer who has
already exhibited interest in a particular product type. Examples include:
a grocery store displaying salsa next to chips; and the Travelocity site offering
the option to rent a car to somebody who just purchased an airline ticket
online.
Customer
Acquisition
Additional sales, which can result from having affiliates.
Customer
Development Cycle
Refers to the five stages that define the relationship between a business
and its customers and prospects.
Customer
Lifetime Value
A measure of customer loyalty based on customer revenue or profits a customer
generated over the length of the customer relationship rather than a single
time period.
Customer
Registration
Requiring visitors to fill out a form with personal information that is used
to create a profile.
Customer
Retention
The philosophy of treating customers so well that they lack any reason to
go anywhere else. The philosophy of building your business on the basis of
repeat sales, past customers, and word-of-mouth recommendations.
Cyber
Squatting
The illegal practice of registering someone else's trademarked, service-marked,
or personal URL with intention of resale.
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DAGMAR
This refers to a process of establishing goals for an ad campaign such that
it is possible to determine whether or not the goals have been met. It stands
for Defining Advertising Goals for Measured Advertising Results.
Data Compression
Method of reducing the amount of bandwidth required to transmit information,
thus increasing the speed of transmission.
Data Mining
The collection and mathematical analysis of vast amounts of computerized data
to discover previously hidden patterns or unknown relationships.
Day-After
Recall Test
A research method that tests consumers' memories the day after they have seen
an ad, to assess the ad's effectiveness.
Daypart
Broadcast media divide the day into several standard time periods, each of
which is called a "daypart." Cost of purchasing advertising time
on a vehicle varies by the daypart selected.
Day Trading
Making short-term trades in an attempt to profit off of market inefficiencies.
Dead Link
An internet link which doesn't lead to a page or site, probably because the
server is down or the page has moved or no longer exists. Most search engines
have techniques for removing such pages from their listings automatically,
but as the internet continues to increase in size, it becomes more and more
difficult for a search engine to check all the pages in the index regularly.
Reporting of dead links helps to keep the indexes clean and accurate, and
this can usually be done by submitting the dead link to the search engine.
Decay
Constant
An estimate of the decline in product sales if advertising was discontinued.
Deceptive
Advertising
FTC definition: A representation, omission, act or practice that is likely
to mislead consumers acting reasonably under the circumstances. To be regulated,
however, a deceptive claim must also be material. See Materiality, below.
Dedicated
Server
A web hosting server used by a single client company; more broadly, a single
computer in a network reserved for network needs.
De-listing
The removal of pages from a search engine's index. Removal can occur for various
reasons, including unreliability of the machine that hosts a site or because
of perceived attempts at spamdexing.
Demographics
Demographics is data about the size and characteristics of a population or
audience (for example, gender, age group, income group, purchasing history,
personal preferences, and so forth).
Denial
of Service
On the Internet, a denial of service (DoS) attack is an incident in which
a user or organization is deprived of the services of a resource they would
normally expect to have. Typically, the loss of service is the inability of
a particular network service, such as e-mail, to be available or the temporary
loss of all network connectivity and services. In the worst cases, for example,
a Web site accessed by millions of people can occasionally be forced to temporarily
cease operation. A denial of service attack can also destroy programming and
files in a computer system. Although usually intentional and malicious, a
denial of service attack can sometimes happen accidentally. A denial of service
attack is a type of security breach to a computer system that does not usually
result in the theft of information or other security loss. However, these
attacks can cost the target person or company a great deal of time and money.
Deployment
To initiate, as in launching an e-business.
Description
Descriptive text associated with a web page and displayed, usually with the
page title and URL, when the page appears in a list of pages generated by
a search engine or directory as a result of a query. Some search engines take
this description from the DESCRIPTION Meta tag - others generate their own
from the text in the page. Directories often use text provided at registration.
Digital
Cash
Electronic money purchased in advance of expenditures, as with a debit card.
May be stored as encrypted data in a digital wallet or in a cookie.
Digital
Certificate
Confirmation of identity in an online environment, often stored in a digital
wallet.
Digital
Wallet
Secure encrypted envelope that seals personal information including bank accounts,
credit card numbers, expiration dates, shipping and billing addresses, and
digital identification.
Digital
Watermarking
Used most commonly for intellectual property protection, a digital watermark
can be either visible or invisible. It is usually a company logo, copyright
notification or other mark or message that indicated the owner of the digital
document.
Direct
E-Mail
Sending e-mail for marketing purposes including advertising products and sending
special promotions.
Direct
Hit
A system which monitors the search engine users' selections from search engine
results, counting which results are clicked on most, and how long visitors
spend at that site, so as to improve relevancy. Used by HotBot and as a plug-in
to Apple's new innovative Sherlock search system. See www.directhit.com.
Direct
House
An advertising specialties company that manufactures and then sells its goods
directly with its own sales force, rather than through retailers.
Direct
Mail
Marketing communications delivered directly to a prospective purchaser via
the US Postal Service or a private delivery company.
Direct
Marketing
Sending a promotional message directly to consumers, rather than via a mass
medium. Includes methods such as Direct Mail and Telemarketing.
Direct
Premium
A premium provided to the consumer at the same time as the purchase.
Directory
A server or a collection of servers dedicated to indexing internet web pages
and returning lists of pages which match particular queries. Directories (also
known as Indexes) are normally compiled manually, by user submission (such
as at whatsnew.com), and often involve an editorial selection and/or categorization
process (such as at LookSmart and Yahoo).
Disintermediation
The removal (or obsolescence) of one or more intermediary roles on the value
chain between manufactures and consumers. An examples is Hewlett-Packard's
creation of a Web site that sells direct to end users, thereby circumventing
its traditional resellers.
Display
Large Web advertisement, generally varying in size from quarter-screen to
full-screen, which links to another site.
Discussion
List
An e-mail forum for people to discuss a particular topic. Discussion list
usually have a moderator who guides the discussion and ensures that it is
pertinent to the discussion list topic.
Distributor
A company or person that distributes a manufacturer's goods to retailers.
The terms "wholesaler" and "jobber" are sometimes used
to describe distributors.
Dogpile
A meta search engine. Found at http://www.dogpile.com.
Domain
A sub-set of internet addresses. Domains are hierarchical, and lower-level
domains often refer to particular web sites within a top-level domain. The
most significant part of the address comes at the end - typical top-level
domains are .com, .edu, .gov, .org (which sub-divide addresses into areas
of use). There are also various geographic top-level domains (e.g. .ar, .ca,
.fr, .ro etc.) referring to particular countries.
The relevance to search engine terminology is that web sites which have their
own domain name (e.g. http://www.nativetongues.com) will often achieve better
positioning than web sites which exist as a sub-directory of another organisation's
domain (e.g. http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/tijana/).
Domain
Name
Web site identification register with InterNIC, ending in a "top-level"
designation such as .com, .edu, .gov, .mil, .net, or .org.
Doorway
Page
A page designated as an entry point for viewers arriving from another site
or search engine. Can be existing page on a site or a page independently created
for that purpose.
Dot-Com
A Web-based business; often refers to a venture-funded startup that intends
to make an IPO.
Download
Time
A measure of the time it takes for Web pages to appear on a visitor's computer.
Large graphic files can significantly slow down your Web site's performance,
discourage visitors from remaining.
Dynamic
Content
Information on web pages which changes or is changed automatically, e.g. based
on database content or user information. Sometimes it's possible to spot that
this technique is being used, e.g. if the URL ends with .asp, .htm, .cgi or
.shtml. It is possible to serve dynamic content using standard (normally static)
.htm or .html type pages, though. Search engines will currently index dynamic
content in a similar fashion to static content, although they will not usually
index URLs which contain the ? character.
Dynamic
Rotation
Ads delivered on a rotating or random basis, allowing different users to see
different ads on a given page and for an ad to appear on more than one page.
Ads can also be dynamically rotated through a particular section of a site
or can be called up as part of a keyword search.
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