03 Aug The healthcare marketer’s guide to programmatic advertising terms, acronyms, phrases, and abbreviations

The jargon of digital programmatic advertising can seem like a foreign language. It’s chock full of arcane terms, acronyms, and abbreviations.

But the first step to understanding the benefits of healthcare programmatic advertising—and there are plenty—is to understand the terminology.

So we’ve created this simple yet thorough programmatic advertising guide to the important terms you need to know.

A

Ad budget: The amount of money you budget for your programmatic ad campaign.

Ad copy: The text in your ads that communicates all important features and benefits of your service or product. There’s generally a call to action that encourages your audience to click through to get more information or purchase your product/service.

Ad exchange: The computerized digital marketplace that facilitates media buying and selling between advertisers and publishers via bidding and real-time auctions.

Ad fraud: Scammers use bots to inflate an ad campaign’s number of clicks, conversions, and impressions, wasting the advertiser’s money and earning money for themselves. This is sometimes called “click fraud.”

Ad inventory: The amount of ad space a publisher has available to sell to advertisers. Also called “media inventory.”

Ad network: A technology platform or company that bundles ad inventory from different publishers and offers them for sale to advertisers. Google AdWords is a good example of an ad network.

Ad rank: The position Google ranks your ad in search engine results pages (SERPs). The higher your SERP rank, the more likely you are to receive clicks.

Ad server: The technology platform that decides, in real time, where to deliver programmatic ads (such as to a computer, tablet, or mobile phone) based on the target audience, relevance, and budget. Ad servers also provide performance metrics to allow advertisers to manage and measure the effectiveness of ads.

Ads.txt: Shorthand for “authorized digital sellers.” It’s a text file where publishers record who is authorized to sell ad inventory on the website. It also helps prevent ad fraud.

Agency trading desk: Created by agency holding companies to connect ad planning, buying, and managing services to increase the efficiency of programmatic ad purchasing.

Application programming interface (API): Facilitates connections to external applications and then transfers data from multiple platforms to a single dashboard.

Artificial intelligence (AI): Technology that enables computers and digital devices to learn, create and analyze. AI is used extensively in programmatic advertising to automate and manage ad campaigns.

Audience targeting: A process where publishers help advertisers target specific audiences based on demographics, behavior, interests, and more. For instance, HCPCS (Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System), CPT (Current Procedural Terminology), and NPI (National Provider Identifier) codes are often used to target healthcare professionals.

Automated guaranteed: An automatic transaction where an advertiser purchases and places programmatic ads for a fixed price and specific period of time.

B

Behavioral targeting: Uses real-time data to analyze your audience’s website browsing habits, such as search terms, sites visited, purchase histories, and click-throughs. Behavioral advertising uses third-party cookies to gather information, which is becoming increasingly unpopular due to privacy issues. Lately, marketers are trending toward contextual targeting.

Bid: The amount of money an advertiser offers in a pay-per-click (PPC) auction to secure a keyword that will help achieve a high ad placement in the search results.

Bid request and response: Bid requests help advertisers accurately bid on a publisher’s ad inventory. If the advertiser is interested in the inventory, they send back a bid response.

Brand lift study: Measures the effectiveness of digital campaigns to help advertisers understand their audience’s perception of their brand.

Brand safety: Helps advertisers avoid placing ads in channels that could potentially harm their brand’s reputation.

C

Call to action (CTA): Usually a colorful, eye-catching “button” that compels your audience to take a specific action, such as asking for more information, subscribing to a newsletter, or making a purchase.

Click: Measures the number of times your audience has clicked on your ad.

Click-through conversion (CTC): The number of times your audience sees your ad, clicks on it, and completes a desired action.

Click-through rate (CTR): The number of clicks that your ad receives divided by the number of times it is shown.

Connected TV (CTV): Enables your TV to connect to the internet and stream movies, shows,  and other digital content. Examples of CTV include smart TVs, gaming consoles (PlayStation, Xbox), and streaming devices like Apple TV, Roku, Google Chromecast, and Amazon Fire TV Stick.

Contextual targeting: Rather than targeting people’s behavior, contextual targeting focuses on keyword targeting and website content. Your ad is only served to websites that feature content that’s relevant and related to yours.

Cookie: A tiny piece of data from a website that is stored on your computer by a web browser. Cookies allow a website to remember a visitor and the actions they took on the site. They tell the server that users have returned to a particular website. Cookies also help advertisers to deliver personalized content to their target audience.

Cookieless advertising: A method of targeting without relying on cookies. Instead, cookieless advertising uses metadata such as keywords and website content relevant to target audiences.

Cost per acquisition (CPA): Determines the total cost for a customer to complete a defined action.

Cost per action (CPA): The average cost to achieve a pre-defined action (such as a sale or conversion). To calculate CPA, divide the total ad cost by the number of actions achieved.

Cost per click (CPC): The average cost of each click on your programmatic ad.

Cost per completed view (CPCV): An ad pricing model where advertisers pay publishers only when their video ads are viewed from beginning to end. This helps advertisers accurately target users at a much lower risk.

Cost per lead (CPL): A metric that determines the average cost to obtain a new lead.

Cost per mille (CPM): The cost of every 1000 impressions that an ad receives. (“Mille” is Latin for “thousand.”)

Cost per view (CPV): A metric that measures the amount an advertiser pays for each video view and intersection.

Cross-device targeting: Lets advertisers identify and deliver relevant ads to specific audiences on various devices, such as smartphones and computers.

Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes: Created by the American Medical Association (AMA) for development of care guidelines and other purposes, CPT codes identify services provided by healthcare professionals.

D

Data management platform (DMP): Software that collects, stores, and manages data collected from such sources as advertising, mobile apps, and websites. This helps advertisers improve ad targeting, media buys, and tracking.

Dayparting: A marketing strategy that automatically delivers ads at the optimal times for the greatest reach. Ads can be scheduled at specific times of the day and on specific days of the week.

Deal ID: A unique number generated by a publisher’s supply-side platform (SSP) for programmatic direct deals. The deal ID helps advertisers identify publishers who offer terms that meet their advertising needs and budgets, helping them purchase premium ad inventories more easily.

Demand-side platform (DSP): A programmatic advertising platform that helps automate the buying and managing of ad inventories from multiple publishers (SSPs). Once goals are defined by advertisers, DSPs determine the most effective ad inventory to reach the target audience and then report on performance.

Demographic targeting: Audience targeting based on such factors as location, age, gender, education level, occupation, and income.

Digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising: These include digital ads on billboards, at bus stops, in stores, on elevators, at gas stations—just about anywhere. You can place DOOH ads precisely where your target audience is.

Display advertising: These reach a wide audience across multiple platforms. Examples include banner ads appearing at the top, bottom, or sides of websites; interstitial ads covering the entire screen that appear before or after the main content; and rich media ads featuring video, audio, or other elements that encourage viewers to engage with your ad

Dynamic retargeting: Similar to standard retargeting but far more personalized.  Dynamic retargeting delivers customized ads based on specific web pages visited by your audience.

E

Endemic advertising: An ad placed in a channel that is aligned with or relevant to your product or service. For healthcare marketers, that would be advertising in channels focused on healthcare.

F

First-party data: Information that is collected from website visitors, your customer database, or subscribers. First-party data is valuable because of its accuracy.

First-price auction: A common type of sealed-bid auction where advertisers bid for ad impressions and the highest bid wins. Sometimes called a “blind auction.”

Floor price: The lowest price for which ad inventory can be sold, as defined by the publisher.

Frequency capping: Limits the number of times an ad is shown to the same person to avoid overwhelming audiences repeatedly with the same ad. Also called “impression capping.”

G

Geofencing: An innovative location-based technology that lets healthcare marketers precisely target patients, caregivers, and HCPs. Geofencing delivers personalized ads online on a tablet or phone at a hospital, clinic, doctor’s office, health fair, medical conference, or other location.

H

Header bidding: Allows publishers to offer their ad inventory in a unified auction to multiple ad exchanges at the same time and in real time; competition between the exchanges helps to boost publisher ad revenues. This differs from the traditional “waterfall” method, where ad inventory is offered to one ad exchange at a time.

Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS) codes: Used primarily for insurance billing purposes, HCPCS codes target your audiences based on the medical procedures and services they report to Medicare, Medicaid, and other health insurers.

I

Impressions: The number of times users see your programmatic ad.

In-game advertising (IGA): Ads that appear during video games.

Instream video ads: Video ads that play before, during, or after a video.

K

Keywords: Words or phrases you want to rank for in search engines such as Google. The terms should describe the content on your webpage or blog post and match the terms people are entering into search engines.

L

Landing page: A standalone webpage where your target audience “lands” after they click through an email or ad. Landing pages offer the opportunity to personalize your message to increase conversions and track results.

Linear TV: Traditional broadcast TV, with content delivered through a satellite or cable network (unlike OTT or over-the-top TV, which is delivered via the Internet). “Linear” refers to the fact that content is shown according to a predetermined schedule.

M

Machine learning: A branch of artificial intelligence (AI) that uses data and statistical algorithms to give computers the ability to learn and perform tasks without explicitly being programmed.

Maximum bid: The most an advertiser will pay any time a user clicks on an ad.

Multichannel advertising: A product-focused method targeting multiple channels to deliver relevant content to your target audience.

N

National Provider Identifier (NPI) codes: A unique code for HCPs. NPI codes allow you to target specific medical specialties, license type, hospital affiliation, address, practice name, and insurance carrier.

Native advertising: Content in an online publication that resembles editorial content but is paid for by an advertiser promoting a product or service. Sometimes called “sponsored content.”

Non-endemic advertising: An ad placed in a channel that is not directly aligned with your product or service but may have content relevant to it.

O

Omnichannel advertising: A customer-centric approach that uses all appropriate media channels to deliver a consistent brand experience to your target audience.

Open auction: Advertisers bid on ad impressions from a pool of publishers, with no pre-negotiated deals or contracts. The highest bidder wins the impression.  Also known as “real-time bidding” (RTB).

Outstream video ads: Video ads that display on a webpage.

Over-The-Top (OTT): Think Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Peacock, YouTube TV, Sling TV. Viewers pay to stream shows via the internet—no cable box or satellite service needed.

P

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising: A form of online marketing where advertisers pay publishers, such as Google or Facebook, a fee each time someone clicks on their ad.

Private auction: Similar to an open auction, although a private auction is exclusive, allowing only invited advertisers to bid on specific ad inventory.

Programmatic advertising: Uses automated software to plan and purchase ads in real-time plus artificial intelligence to optimize the ad content and placement to reach people on their mobile, smart TVs, or desktop devices. Programmatic ads can appear on various digital platforms, including websites, social media, video streaming services, and mobile applications.

Programmatic audio: Automates the selling and placement of audio ads on such platforms as digital radio, podcasts, audiobooks, and music-streaming services.

Programmatic direct: An automated transaction between an advertiser and a publisher conducted by a programmatic ad buying system, eliminating the need for ad exchange parties.

Programmatic video: Video ads that display on various platforms (streaming TV, websites) and various devices (laptops, smartphones, tablets).

Publisher: An individual or company that sells digital ad space on their website or app.

Q

Quality score: A diagnostic tool that gauges how well your ad quality and relevancy compare to other ads. This score is measured on a scale of 1 to 10.

R

Real-time bidding (RTB): A form of programmatic advertising purchasing where ad inventory is bought and sold in a real-time auction, typically on a per-impression basis. The advertiser with the highest bid wins the auction and their ad is displayed on the publisher’s website or mobile app.

Remarketing: A method of re-engaging target audiences who have previously visited your website or social media sites and have shown an interest in your product or service. Retargeted ads keep your brand top of mind and encourage conversions.

Return on ad spend (ROAS): Measures the amount of revenue earned compared to the amount spent on advertising so you can more accurately gauge the success of your campaign.

Return on investment (ROI): Calculates the profitability of your programmatic ad campaign by comparing the gain or loss to its cost.

S

Second-party data: Information you don’t collect yourself but acquire from a trusted partner so you know the data is accurate. You can use this data to target audiences and enrich your database.

Second-price auction: In this auction model, the highest bidder pays a penny more than the second-highest bid for an impression.

Supply-side platform (SSP): A technology platform that helps digital media owners and publishers efficiently sell their ad inventory. SSPs use real-time bidding and connect inventory to multiple ad exchanges and demand-side platforms (DSPs) to optimize yields for publishers.

T

Target audience: A specific group of people advertisers target with programmatic ads to promote and sell a product or service.

Third-party data: Information that is collected by aggregators from various sources and sold to advertisers, who use it to target audiences with advertising promotions.

Traffic source: Tells where website visitors are coming from. Traffic sources help you determine which ads are driving traffic to your website.

V

Video ads: These play before, during, or after user-selected video content on platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.

Video completion rate (VCR): The percentage of people who watch your video ad from start to finish. This helps advertisers measure engagement with their video ads.

View: A metric that measures the number of times users have seen your ad.

Viewability: A metric that tracks how many impressions of an ad were viewed.

View-through conversion (VTC): Measures the number of users who saw your ad but didn’t click on it and then later converted on your website within a defined time period.

W

Web traffic: The number of people who visit and interact with your website over a set time period, such as a month or a year. The most common tools used to measure web traffic include visits/sessions, unique visitors, page views, conversion rates, and average session duration.

Put the power of programmatic advertising to work for your brand

Targeted digital programmatic advertising is the proven method to ensure your audience receives personalized ads with relevant messages that drive awareness and sales. With unparalleled efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

Bryant Brown Healthcare specializes in all forms of healthcare marketing, including targeted programmatic advertising, to help brands connect with healthcare professionals and consumers.

Are you curious about the potential benefits of digital programmatic video advertising for your brand? Let’s talk!