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oRTB Glossary

50+ OpenRTB Terms and Metrics — essential concepts to understand programmatic advertising, optimize bidding strategies, and navigate the real-time advertising ecosystem.

Ad Creative

The actual ad asset (image, video, HTML) delivered to the user.

Ad Exchange

Marketplace connecting DSPs and SSPs for buying and selling ads.

Ad Fraud

Invalid traffic or activity to manipulate ad metrics.

Ad Slot

Space within a webpage or app where an ad can be shown.

Ad Verification

Tools/services ensuring ads meet compliance, brand safety, etc.

Attribution

Process of assigning credit to touchpoints in the conversion path.

Auction Type

Defines how the winning bid is selected (e.g., first-price, second-price).

Audience Segment

A group of users with shared characteristics or behavior.

Bid Request

Request sent by SSP to DSP with ad opportunity details.

Bid Response

The bid returned by a DSP with price and creative details.

Bid Throttling

Strategy to control bidding rate to manage cost or performance

Billing Notice

Signal from exchange when a winning bid becomes billable.

Conversion

Achievement of the desired user action after viewing or clicking an ad.

Conversion Rate

Percentage of users who complete a conversion after clicking an ad.

Cookie Matching

Syncing user identifiers between platforms.

CPM (Cost Per Mille)

Price paid per 1,000 ad impressions.

Creative Approval

Validation of ad creatives for policy and technical compliance.

CTR (Click-Through Rate)

Ratio of clicks to impressions.

Deal

A negotiated contract between buyer and seller with fixed or special conditions.

Deal Floor

Minimum price accepted for a deal-based bid.

Deal ID

Identifier for private or preferred deals in RTB.

DSP (Demand-Side Platform)

A platform used by advertisers to buy ad inventory.

eCPM (Effective CPM)

Effective cost per thousand impressions, calculated by dividing total earnings by the number of impressions (in thousands).

First-Price Auction

The highest bid wins and pays the exact amount bid.

Floor Price

Minimum price a publisher accepts for an impression.

Frequency Capping

Restriction on how often a user sees the same ad.

Global Placement ID (GPID)

A standardized identifier that uniquely represents an ad placement across the supply chain.

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Header Bidding

Technique allowing multiple demand sources to bid simultaneously before the ad selection.

Impression

The display of an ad on a user's device.

Inventory

Total ad spaces available for sale.

Latency

Time delay between request and ad serving.

Loss Notice

Notification to bidder when its bid has lost.

Loss Reason Code

Code explaining why a bid lost the auction.

Macro

Dynamic placeholders in ad markup or URLs replaced at runtime.

No-Bid Reason Code

Code indicating why a DSP did not bid.

oRTB

Open standard protocol for RTB communication between DSPs and SSPs.

Pending Notice

Indicates a bid won under OpenRTB but may not be final in non-compliant setups.

Pending Notice

Indicates a bid won under OpenRTB but may not be final in non-compliant setups.

Pixel

Tracking code embedded to measure user actions or conversions.

Private Marketplace (PMP)

Invitation-only auction with selected buyers and sellers.

Programmatic Direct

Programmatic deal with fixed pricing and guaranteed impressions.

QPS (Queries Per Second)

Number of bid requests received per second.

Real-Time Bidding (RTB)

Automated auction process to buy/sell ad inventory in real time.

Schain (Supply Chain)

Describes the supply path with all involved intermediaries.

Second-Price Auction

Winning bidder pays slightly more than the second-highest bid.

Source Object

Data about inventory origin, authentication, and chain of custody.

SSP (Supply-Side Platform)

A platform used by publishers to sell ad inventory

Supply Path Optimization

Strategy to reduce intermediaries and improve efficiency in ad delivery.

Test Mode

Indicates that the auction is a test and not billable.

User Sync

Mechanism to align user IDs between platforms.

Viewability

A metric that measures the number of impressions that were actually viewable or the percentage of a video ad that was watched.

Win Rate

Ratio of won bids to total bid requests.