Even the most experienced conservative political operatives need help staying on top of the myriad terms used by political advertising agencies. This political advertising glossary is the most comprehensive collection of terminology used by top conservative advertising agencies like Arena.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z #
A
Above the Fold: The upper half of a newspaper or the section of a webpage that is visible without scrolling.
Action: A measure in audio advertising indicating the number of times listeners took a specific action after hearing an ad.
ACT TV Retargeting: Automatic Content Recognition TV Retargeting uses technology that recognizes specific content played on a viewer’s TV, allowing you to deliver related content to the same viewer. Learn how Arena used ACR TV Retargeting to help Republican congressional clients win an election.
Advertorial: An advertisement that resembles a news article or editorial in a print or electronic medium that promotes a single program, service, or point of view.
Advocacy Advertising: Campaigns specifically designed to influence public opinion on political or social issues rather than electing candidates.
Ad Copy: The text of an advertisement. Good ad copy effectively communicates the value proposition and call to action to the target audience.
Ad Creative: The visual elements of an advertisement, including images, videos, and overall design.
Ad Exchange: A digital marketplace that enables advertisers and publishers to buy and sell advertising space, often through real-time bidding.
Ad Exposure: The number of times an audience sees an advertisement.
Ad Fraud: Illegitimate advertising practices intended to generate revenue by artificially inflating ad performance metrics.
Ad Impression: A measure of how often an ad is displayed, whether clicked on or not.
Ad Inventory: The total amount of ad space a publisher has available to sell to advertisers. Learn why quality inventory is critical in the conservative political advertising business.
Ad Network: A Demand Side Platform (DSP) company with digital technology that connects advertisers to web publishers that want to host advertisements. Also refers to a collection of DSPs and publishers that an advertising agency does business with.
Ad Positioning: The placement of an advertisement on a page or within content, which can affect visibility and performance.
Ad Rotation: The practice of rotating different advertisements in a single ad space to test effectiveness or to avoid ad fatigue.
Ad Servers: A web server that saves online ads and delivers them to website visitors.
Ad Tag: A snippet of code that is placed on a website to track performance or deliver targeted digital ads.
A/B Testing: also known as split testing, is a method of comparing two versions of a digital ad to determine which performs better based on a specific metric, such as conversion rate or click-through rate.
Ad Testing: The process of evaluating the effectiveness of an ad before fully launching it.
Ad Tracking: The process of collecting data and insights on the performance of an advertisement.
Addressable TV: Technology enabling different ads to be shown to different households, even though they are watching the same television program.
Affiliate Marketing: A marketing arrangement where an online retailer pays commission to an external website for traffic or sales generated from its referral. Commonly used in fundraising or awareness-building campaigns.
Agency: A business that provides advertising and marketing services to clients, acting as an intermediary between advertisers and media companies.
Agency Commission: The agency’s fee for designing and placing advertisements. Generally, this is calculated as 15 percent to 20 percent of the amount spent to purchase space or time in the various media used for advertising.
Aggregator: A publication that collects content about a similar topic from many sources and distributes to consumers. Most common in website and email newsletter formats.
Arbitrage: Paying publishers on one metric (e.g., CPM) and selling to buyers on another metric (e.g., CPC) to improve one’s margin, while reducing risk to buyers – they only pay for what they want (clicks in this example).
Attribution Model: A rule, or set of rules, that determines how credit for sales and conversions is assigned to touchpoints in conversion paths.
Audience Segmentation: The process of dividing a broad consumer or business market into sub-groups based on shared characteristics.
B
B2B (Business-to-Business): commerce transactions between businesses.
B2C (Business-to-Consumer): goods or service transactions between a business and the end-user or consumer.
Ballot Chasing: A specialized form of political advertising and marketing that attempts to get early votes by targeting registered Republican voters who haven’t cast their ballots yet. Read more about using the chase tactic in political campaign advertising.
Ballot Initiative Advertising: Advertising created specifically to influence voter opinions on ballot measures or referendums.
Banner Ads: A graphic image used on websites to advertise a product or service. Banner ads come in numerous sizes, but are often rectangular. Banner ads are typically placed at the top, in sidebars, or in inline content.
Behavioral Targeting: A technique used by online advertisers to present targeted ads to consumers by collecting information about their browsing behavior.
Bid Price Optimization: Automatically adjusting the amount a marketer will bid on a particular impression due to a variety of inputs that define the value of that impression to the marketer.
Billboard: An outdoor sign or poster. Costs for a specific billboard are determined by the billboard’s size and the amount of traffic that passes its location.
Bleed: The portion of a direct mail or magazine ad design that extends beyond the edge of the paper and gets trimmed off.
Blocklist: A list of IP addresses, publishers, advertisers, contexts & keywords, or products that should be excluded from a campaign.
Bounce: When a visitor quickly leaves a webpage without interacting further.
Bounce Rate: The percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page. In email marketing, bounce rate is the percentage of email addresses to which your campaign could not be delivered.
Brand Affinity: The likelihood of positive sentiment among a brand and a number of other elements (pages, people, other brands).
Brand Awareness: The extent to which consumers are familiar with the qualities or image of a particular brand.
Brand Equity: The value derived from consumer perception of the brand name of a particular product or service, rather than from the product or service itself.
Brand Lift: The measurable increase in consumer awareness and perception of a brand due to an advertising campaign.
Branding: The process of creating a unique image identity and reputation for a product or service in the consumer’s mind.
Bus Card: An advertising poster attached to the side or back of a bus.
Bus Wrap: An advertising message imprinted on high-quality vinyl adhesive that is attached to the bus exterior.
C
Cable TV: Television programming distributed by cable and paid for by subscription.
Call To Action (CTA): An instruction within an advertisement designed to prompt an immediate response from the audience. In digital advertising, the CTA is often designed as a button.
Campaign (advertising): A series of advertising messages that share a single idea and theme, which make up an integrated marketing communication (IMC).
Campaign (political): Refers to the organization managing a candidate running for election.
Canonical URL: The preferred URL version of a webpage, designated to avoid duplicate content issues affecting SEO.
Channel: Any medium through which a message can be sent to an audience, including oral communication, print media, TV, and the internet.
Chase Campaign: A specialized form of political advertising and marketing that attempts to get early votes by targeting registered Republican voters who haven’t cast their ballots yet. Read more about using the chase tactic in political campaign advertising.
Churn Rate: The percentage of subscribers to a service who discontinue their subscriptions within a given time period.
Circulation: The total number of distributed copies of a publication at a specified time.
Citation: Often used in conservative political advertising to provide the source of claims made in the ad copy.
Click Through: The action of clicking on a digital ad, which results in being redirected to the web page to which the ad is hyperlinked.
Click Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of impressions that resulted from a click-through, calculated by dividing the number of clicks by the number of impressions.
Closing Date: The date by which all advertising must be ordered from a specific medium in order to secure dates, times, and placements.
CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black): The four colors used on printing presses for political mail (direct mail). By combining these four colors, CMYK can reproduce approximately 16,000 colors.
Column Inch: A unit of measure by newspapers whereby advertisement space is priced by in units one column wide by one inch tall.
Comp: Short for comprehensive, this is a layout that resembles, as closely as possible, the finished project.
Conservative Political Advertising: A specialized form of advertising targeting independent and Republican voters.
Contextual Targeting: Matches an ad to a web page based on the relevance of its content. Enables advertisers to display ads to groups of consumers based on their interests.
Content Calendar: A tool used to plan and communicate dates and subjects of content, typically for blogs.
Conversion Rate (CR): The percentage of completed outcomes compared to the clicks that occurred.
Contrast Ad: A digital ad or direct mail piece that includes positive ad copy for one candidate or position, and negative ad copy for another.
Conversion: The act of a user performing a desired action on a website, such as filling out and submitting a form or making a purchase.
Cookie: A small text file stored on the user’s computer that enables web servers to fund and improve the experiences of people as they navigate across the web. See also First-Party Cookies and Third-Party Cookies
CPC (Cost Per Click): an online payment model used to charge advertisers for each click through on a digital ad. See also Pay-Per-Click.
CMS: Content Management System refers to web platforms like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and Wix.
Competitive Race: An election that is seen by a political party as winnable and thus a priority for funding the race.
Cost Per Click (CPC): an online payment model used to charge advertisers for each click through on a digital ad. See also Pay-Per-Click.
Cost Per Lead (CPL): The price an advertiser pays for each lead generated, usually identified as a form fill where contact information is obtained. Calculated as total cost divided by total leads.
Cost Per Mille (CPM): Cost per thousand impressions (Cost Per Mille). The amount a buyer pays publisher partners on a CPM basis, for every thousand impressions delivered on the partner’s website. (Revenue/Impressions) x 1000.
Cost Per View (CPV): The price an advertiser pays each time a video ad is viewed. Usually, a consumer must watch a minimum duration of the video ad for it to count as a completed view. Calculated as total cost divided by total completed views.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management): Refers to how a company manages data about its customers. Also refers to software tools designed to manage customer data.
CTV (Connected TV): Format where ads are served within shows and movies that are streamed via over-the-top (OTT) services on any connected TV (televisions with a built-in internet connection) or streaming devices (like Apple TV, Amazon Firestick or Roku).
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): The total marketing spend divided by the number of new customers acquired through a campaign.
Cross-Device Targeting: The practice of targeting the same consumer across multiple digital devices.
D
Demand-Side Platform (DSP): Technology platform used by marketers to achieve outcomes via targeting tactics, a centralized system for campaign management & reporting, plus access to a wide scale of inventory.
Demographics: Information regarding the size and characteristics of a particular population of interest, such as age, gender, income, education, etc.
Designated Market Areas (DMA): The geographical areas in which TV stations attract most of their viewers.
Digital Advertising: Advertising designed and delivered digitally, via the internet to web pages, smart TVs, email, and more. Learn about Arena’s Digital Services for Conservative campaigns.
Digital Fundraising: The practice of using online or digital technologies to raise money for an organization or cause. Political fundraising typically focuses on email and texting technologies like SMS and MMS. Learn more about Arena’s Digital Fundraising service.
Direct Mail: A form of unsolicited printed mail advertising sent directly to a target audience through the mail. Fun Fact: Political mail reaches 11% of swing voters in battleground states that are unreachable via streaming or linear TV. Learn more about Arena’s top-performing political mail service.
Direct Marketing: The process used to send advertising messaging directly to customers or potential customers; commonly used in mail and email campaigns.
Direct Response: Ads that allow recipients to respond directly to the sender to purchase a product or service or get more information.
Display Ad: Visual ads placed on websites, social media networks, or apps. They are typically image, text, or video banner ads that, when clicked on, take a consumer to a website or landing page.
Domain Authority (DA): a search engine ranking score, developed by Moz, that predicts how well a website will rank in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Domain Name: A human-readable address that corresponds to a website’s IP address (the unique numerical address of a computer on the internet). Domain names make it easier to remember and locate websites.
DOOH (Digital Out-of-Home): digital advertising that reaches consumers while they are outside their homes and would include advertisements placed on billboards, buses, shopping area directories, etc.
Drive Time: The hours when the most commuters are in their cars. During “drive time,” radio advertising costs more because of increased listeners.
Duration: The length of viewing/listening/broadcast time (in hours: minutes) for a radio, television, webcast, podcast, CD, video, or other electronically formatted production.
Dynamic Ad: An ad automatically personalized for the consumer viewing it to create additional engagement and conversions.
E
Earned Media: Media coverage earned without direct payment, such as news coverage or editorials.
Editorial Calendar: describes the editorial content planned for each issue in the coming year for blogs, magazines, and newsletters. See also “Content Calendar.”
Email Marketing Platform: software that helps organize, create, and track political email marketing campaigns, enabling them to streamline their email marketing efforts, manage contact information, and analyze campaign performance.
Endorsement Ad: Advertising that highlights public support or endorsements from prominent figures or organizations.
Exit Intent Popup: a type of popup that appears when a website user’s behavior suggests they are about to leave, offering a last-ditch chance to engage or convert.
F
First-Party Data: contact and demographic information a company collects directly from its customers or website visitors through their own channels, such as their website forms, app, or email marketing, without involving any third-party intermediaries.
First-Party Cookie (1P Cookie): small text files stored on a user’s device by the website they are currently visiting, used to enhance their experience and improve website functionality.
Frequency: Term used to describe the number of times an ad is shown to the same visitor during a particular session or time frame.
Full-Funnel Marketing: A strategy that addresses the full shopper journey and incorporates objectives for all stages of the purchase funnel: awareness, consideration, and conversion.
Full-Service Agency: An agency that handles all aspects of the advertising process, including planning, design, production, and placement. Arena is an example of a full-service conservative advertising agency.
Funnel: Refers to the stages of consumer engagement from initial awareness through consideration to conversion and loyalty.
Flat Rate: A media postage rate that allows for no discounts.
G
GOTV: Short for Get Out The Vote, a term used to describe ads designed to motivate registered voters to vote.
Geofencing: Technology that allows you to deliver messages to your target audience as they enter defined geographic boundaries.
Geotargeting: Showing ads or content based on the physical location of the user’s internet access.
GIF: Graphical Interchange Format—a graphic file extension.
H
Heatmap: Visual representation of website visitor activity, indicating the areas of highest user engagement.
HTML: Hyper Text Markup Language is the standard markup language for creating web pages, defining the structure and content of websites
Hyperlink: HTML code that, when clicked on, redirects the user’s browser to another web page.
I
IE (Independent Expenditure) Committee: A political organization that independently advocates for or against candidates without direct coordination with their campaigns.
Impressions: A metric that describes the number of times a piece of content—like an ad or a webpage—is displayed to a user, regardless of whether they click on it or not.
Indexing (SEO): The process by which search engines organize website content into their search results.
Inline Ad: An online ad located anywhere on the page that consists of a few lines of copy and/or an image together with a link or email address for action.
Insert: Advertisement or other promotional matter published by an advertiser to be inserted in a magazine or newspaper. It may be bound into the publication or inserted loose without binding.
Insertion Date(s): The day or issue month your advertisement appears in the publication.
Insertion Order: A written authorization for a publisher to run a print advertisement in a specific publication on a certain date at a specified price.
Intent Data: Information indicating the likelihood of a user taking a specific action or expressing interest based on online behavior.
Interactions: Touchpoints of when a consumer sees, clicks, visits a store, or engages in other activities related to the marketing and monetization efforts of our customers.
Interstitial Ad: Full-screen ads that cover the interface of a website or app.
IP Address: The numeric address that is translated into a domain name by a domain name server.
Issue Advocacy: Advertising that promotes or opposes a specific public policy or political issue.
J
JPEG (.jpg): A common image file format that is very effective at displaying high-color images in a compact file size. Photographs to be used on the internet are often compressed as .jpgs.
K
Keyword: A word or phrase entered into a search engine to receive matching and relevant results.
Keyword Density: The measurement of how frequently a keyword appears within a web page.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): The critical (key) quantifiable indicators of progress toward an intended result.
L
Landing Page: A web page where a user is taken after clicking on a digital ad, email link, or other digital CTA. A landing page can be a home page, but typically refers to a page that is not in a website’s menu structure and is designed to provide specific information.
Linear TV: Refers to traditional television mediums such as broadcast, satellite, and cable programming. As opposed to OTT technologies such as Streaming TV and CTV.
List Building: Refers to the act of physically gathering contact info (e.g., email, phone, etc.) and adding it to a list for marketing purposes. Typically starts as a spreadsheet and is then imported into an email or political texting platform.
Look-alike: An audience scoring process to identify similar audiences to an initial segment (called “seed data”), which is frequently a marketer’s existing first-party data.
Low-Propensity Voter: refers to individuals who are eligible to vote but have a history of infrequent participation in elections.
M
Mailing Indicia: a pre-printed graphic element on political mail that serves as a substitute for traditional postage stamps. The indicia indicates that the sender prepaid the postage and has authorization to use this form of mailing.
Marketing Campaign: A specific series of strategies, tactics, and activities designed to get desired marketing messages to intended target markets.
Media Kit: Information offered to potential advertisers by publishers to help the advertisers understand the publishers’ rates, visitor demographics, physical ad size specifications, terms, etc.
Media Buying: the process of purchasing advertising space or time in various media channels (e.g., TV, radio, print, digital) to reach a target audience and promote a product or service. Arena is one of the few conservative advertising agencies in America that has a full-time, in-house media buying team. Read more about the importance of in-house media buying in the agency world.
Media Outlet: A publication or broadcast organization that transmits information, news, entertainment, and advertising messages.
Medium (plural, Media): A vehicle or group of vehicles—such as newspapers, websites, television, cable television, radio, and billboards—used to convey information, news, entertainment, and advertising messages to an audience.
Microtargeting: a marketing strategy that uses detailed data about individuals or small groups to deliver highly personalized messages and advertising, aiming to maximize impact and engagement.
Mid-roll Video Ad: Video advertisements that play during the video on platforms like YouTube and Rumble. They differ from post-roll ads, which are ads that appear after the video plays, and pre-roll ads, which appear before a featured video.
Measurement Data: Data derived from analyzing the performance of marketing campaigns across the marketing funnel. Some of the data points captured across the marketing funnel include: Impressions, page views, clicks, unique visits, leads, sales/purchases, and repeat purchases.
Media Mix: Refers to a strategy that includes a diverse mix of media and communication channels to reach a target audience and achieve marketing goals. See also: multi-channel marketing.
Media Plan: Media planning is the process by which marketers determine who to engage, where to reach them, when to message, and how frequently to maximize engagements and ROI.
Mindshare (marketing term): Percent of an advertiser’s pre-defined audience that is exposed to at least one ad. See Reach.
MMS (Multimedia Message Service): allows you to send political text messages that include multimedia content like photos, videos, audio, and GIFs, extending the capabilities of traditional SMS. Learn more about how political texting works.
Mobile Ads: Standardized digital display ad units designed for mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets. Popular sizes include 300 x 250 px, 320 x 100 px, and 320 x 50 px.
Multi-channel Marketing: A strategy that uses multiple channels (like email, social media, print, and websites) to reach and engage customers, allowing them to interact with a brand through their preferred medium. See also Media Mix.
N
Native Advertisement: Sponsored content, in-feed ads, and other formats that seamlessly blend with the surrounding editorial content of the host site. Native advertising is less disruptive, more engaging, and is great at building trust.
Negative Keywords: Keywords excluded from digital advertising campaign targeting, to prevent unwanted impressions or clicks.
O
Online Fundraising Platform: a software or tool that allows nonprofits to securely collect and process online donations. Republican and conservative organizations typically use platforms like WinRed and Anedot. To learn more about online fundraising platforms, check out The Ultimate Guide to Digital Fundraising.
Online Video Advertising (OLV): Video ads are a form of OTT advertising that runs on platforms like YouTube and Rumble, as seen on web and mobile app devices (as opposed to Connected TV devices). Formats include pre-roll, mid-roll, etc.
Organic Search Traffic: Visitors reaching your website through unpaid search engine results.
OTT (Over The Top): refers to the delivery of video and audio content directly to viewers via the internet, bypassing traditional cable, satellite, or broadcast providers. OTT includes streaming TV, podcasts, and streaming audio, as well as online video services like YouTube.
OOH (Out-of-Home): advertising that reaches the consumers while they are outside their homes and would include advertisements placed on billboards, buses, shopping area directories, etc.
Opt-In: A process where a user voluntarily agrees to receive email.
Opt-Out: A process where a user requests to stop receiving email from a marketer. Also a user-signaled preference to no longer receive behaviorally targeted ads.
P
Paid Media: External marketing efforts that involve a paid placement, such as pay-per-click advertising, branded content, and display ads.
PAC (Political Action Committee): A tax-exempt organization that pools campaign contributions from members and donates those funds to campaigns for or against candidates, ballot initiatives, or legislation.
Page View: When a user’s browser requests a webpage.
Pay Per Impression: An Online payment model where advertisers pay for every 1,000 impressions of their ad.
Persuasion Mail: Direct mail is designed to influence undecided voters through targeted messaging.
Podcast/Podcasting: A media file (typically audio) that is distributed over the internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers.
Political Texting: A marketing service (SMS and MMS) that provides voter outreach and fundraising services to political campaigns and advocacy groups. Learn about Arena’s full-service political texting service.
Pop-Up: Advertising or editorial content that appears in a separate window either on top of or underneath the user’s current webpage.
Post-roll Video Ad: Video advertisements that appear after the video plays on platforms like YouTube and Rumble. They differ from mid-roll ads that play during the video and pre-roll ads that appear before a featured video.
Preferred Position: A position in a printed publication that is thought to attract more reader attention and is sold at a higher rate; for example, the back or inside front cover of a magazine.
Pre-roll Video Ad: Video advertisements that appear before a featured video on platforms like YouTube and Rumble. They differ from post-roll ads, which are ads that appear after the video plays, and mid-roll ads, which play during the video.
Predictive Bidding: An AI-driven algorithm that adjusts the bid based on the current context and the right time for each consumer.
Premium Ad Inventory: Ad inventory that is considered to be of high quality, brand safe, and is therefore valued at a higher price.
Programmatic Display Advertising: an automated process where software, rather than humans, buys and sells digital ad space in real-time, using algorithms and data to target specific audiences and optimize ad delivery.
Proof: Copy of the advertisement distributed for review prior to final approval.
PSA (Public Service Announcement): Announcement on television or radio serving the public interest, typically run by the media at no charge.
Push Campaign: A Tactic used in political advertising that includes sending voter registration forms to Republican voters and following up to increase registration. Read more about using the push tactic in your campaign advertising.
Publisher: A website that publishes content (news, etc.) and which often monetizes its traffic by selling ad placements. Also traditionally known as a company that publishes printed books and magazines, and other retail print products.
Q
Quality Score: Google Ads rating based on ad relevance, click-through rate, and landing page experience.
R
Rapid Response Advertising: Quickly produced and disseminated ads intended to counteract or respond to recent developments or attacks.
Rate: The amount charged to an advertiser based on a unit of space or time purchased.
Rate Card: Information cards provided by both print and broadcast media that contain information about advertising costs, mechanical requirements, special issues, closing dates, cancellation dates, circulation data, etc.
Reach: The total number of people or households exposed to an advertisement during a specified time.
Real-Time Bidding (RTB): Buying and selling of ad inventory through a programmatic exchange or software solution. Each ad impression is sold to the highest bidder in real time, in the split second it takes a potential customer’s browser or app to load an ad unit.
Remarketing List: A group of website visitors identified for remarketing based on past interactions.
Republican Direct Mail: a specialized form of political direct mail targeting independents and Republican voters.
Reservation Date: The day you request that a publication set aside space for your organization because you will be advertising in a particular issue.
Responsive Ad: Ads that automatically adjust their size, format, and appearance to fit various ad spaces.
Responsive Website: A website that adapts its layout and content to various screen sizes and devices, ensuring a consistent and user-friendly experience across desktops, tablets, and smartphones
RGB: A color model used in digital displays that uses Red, Green, and Blue to create a range of 16 million colors
Retargeting: Also called Remarketing, the display of ads to people who have previously interacted with first-party digital web content (e.g., visited a website or engaged with a mobile app).
Return on Investment (ROI): Digital marketing ROI is usually calculated as Revenue/Cost. Cost usually means initial investment, but also the cost of an ad campaign. ROI = 1/COS. In many cases, ROI is equivalent to Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).
Rich Media: An HTML5 form of a digital display ad that can include interactive elements, as well as audio or video.
ROAS: Return On Ad Spend is an important key performance indicator (KPI) in online and mobile marketing. It refers to the amount of revenue that is earned for every dollar spent on a campaign. Often presented as a ratio (e.g., 2:1).
ROI: Return on Investment is the process used to determine if the benefits of an ad campaign are above or below the amount of money spent.
Rotation: A banner that is in rotation on a page or group of pages; other ads may be shown when the ad is reloaded.
RSS: Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a format designed for automatically distributing headlines and other web content.
Run Date: The day your advertisement appears in the publication; also known as insertion date.
Run-of-Press (ROP): A newspaper publisher’s option to place an advertisement in whatever section is available rather than in a preferred section, such as business, education, or classifieds.
Run-of-Schedule (ROS): A broadcast station’s option to place an advertisement in any time slot they choose.
Run-of-Site: A website publisher’s option to place an advertisement on any webpage of the targeted site.
S
Same-Device Match: Links different IDs from different applications or browsers on the same device, such as linking a web cookie to a mobile advertising ID.
SEM: Search Engine Marketing is the practice of promoting a website through a search engine.
SERP (Search Engine Results Page): The page displayed by search engines in response to a user’s search query.
Session: A series of web page requests by a visitor without 30 consecutive minutes of inactivity.
Sidebar Ad: An online ad (also known as a skyscraper ad) that is vertically oriented and positioned on the left or right edges of the webpage.
SEO: Search Engine Optimization is the practice of promoting a website by publishing content to attract a search engine’s organic listings.
SMS (Short Message Service): a widely used method for sending short political text messages between mobile phones, utilizing cellular networks for communication. Learn how political texting works.
Snippet: typically AI-generated copy that appears at the top of a SERP, summarizing answers to a search query, aggregated from websites with high domain authority.
Social Media Advertising: A form of digital marketing where businesses pay to promote their products, services, or brands on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram. Can include designed display ads or boosting of existing posts.
Social Pressure Advertising: Messaging designed to motivate voter turnout by emphasizing community expectations or voting history comparisons.
Spam: Sending unsolicited emails in bulk, often containing commercial advertising messages.
Splash Page: Also known as a “jump page”—a special entrance page to a site.
Specialty Mail: Direct mail that incorporates special features such as die-cuts, pop-ups, foil applications, lenticular imagery, etc. This form of mail is more expensive than standard mail, but it is more memorable.
Split Run: Sending an ad or webpage, with different headlines or copy to three or more different groups to determine the effectiveness of each.
Spot (Spot Announcement): 15-, 30-, or 60-second radio or television commercial.
Spot Television (or Radio): Time slots purchased on a market basis rather than through a network and allowing for greater flexibility for advertisers.
Sticky: A term used to describe a website on which visitors stay for longer than normal.
Sticky Post: A blog post set to display at the top of a blog page.
Storyboard: A series of illustrated panels roughly depicting scenes, copy, and shots proposed for a television commercial.
Streaming Audio: Audio ads that run on streaming music and podcasting platforms like Spotify and Apple, and interrupt the content flow to reach a captive and engaged audience.
Streaming TV: View on demand, video-based programming distributed digitally to televisions connected to the Internet. Some of the more popular streaming TV providers include Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime, and Apple TV.
Submission Date: Date by which advertisement must be provided to the medium in order to appear on or in a specific date, time, or place.
Subway Card: Advertising poster attached to the interior of a subway car or train.
Supply-Side Platform (SSP): A tool that publishers rely on to optimize the yield of their indirect sold inventory. SSPs act as an aggregator of inventory for media buying solutions.
Swing Voter: A person whose vote is regarded as decisive to the outcome of an election because it is not predictable which candidate or party they will vote for.
Syndication Feed: A form of syndication in which content on a website is made available for other sites to use.
T
Target Audience: A specific audience or demographic group for which an advertising message is designed.
Third-party Cookies: Small text files set by a domain different from the one a user is visiting, often used for tracking user activity across multiple websites for advertising and analytics purposes.
Third-Party Data (3P Data): Data sold by a partner. 3P data is used to enhance and scale audiences.
Time Slot: A specific time bought for airing a commercial on radio or television.
Total Audience Plan (TAP): A radio advertising package rate that guarantees a percentage of spots in the better parts of the day.
Triggered Messaging: A rule set that delivers media based on specific consumer activity, often within a specific time after an event (e.g., send a thank you email 24 hours after purchase, or send a reminder ad banner 24 hours after an abandoned cart).
U
UI (User Interface): The means by which a user interacts with a device or application. It’s the visual and interactive elements that allow users to input commands and receive feedback from a system
Unique Visitors: The total number of distinct visitors to a site within a specified time frame.
URL (Uniform Resource Locator): The internet “address” of a website or webpage. A browser requires this information in its location bar in order to load a webpage.
User: An individual with access to the Internet. A user can access the Internet through multiple browsers or devices, and thus have multiple cookies/user IDs.
UTM Codes: Parameters added to URLs for tracking campaign effectiveness in analytics tools.
UX (User Experience): Refers to the overall experience a person has when interacting with a product, service, or system. It encompasses all aspects of the user’s interaction, including their perceptions, emotions, and behaviors, from the initial encounter to the final interaction.
V
Vanity Metrics: Performance metrics like likes, shares, or followers that don’t directly correlate with campaign effectiveness.
Variable Print: Digital printing process used in political mail that personalizes each piece of mail with specific information tailored to individual recipients.
Voice Over: A recorded narrator who is heard but not seen in video content.
Voter Contact Operation: The process of reaching out to voters directly in order to persuade them to support a particular candidate or issue.
Voter Database: A voter database is a database containing information on voters for the purpose of assisting a political party or an individual politician in their Get-Out-The-Vote (GOTV) efforts and other areas of the campaign.
Video Completion Rate (VCR): KPI for video campaigns, expressed as a percentage. It is the ratio between the number of completed views and the number of impressions.
Viewable Advertising: Measure of whether a given advert could actually be seen by a human being, as opposed to being out of view or served as the result of automated activity. It also covers how long a certain ad was visible and viewed by a consumer.
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White Label: a business practice where a company (the reseller) takes a product or service produced by another company (the manufacturer) and rebrands it to sell under their own name. Example: Unlike some conservative advertising agencies that utilize white label media-buying services, Arena is staffed with a full-time, in-house team of media buyers.
Whitelisting: The process by which an email domain is registered as trusted by a recipient server. Email coming from a whitelisted domain will not be flagged as spam.
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Yield: Ad yield is the amount of revenue you earn from your ads. In other words, it is an indicator of how successful your advertising efforts were.
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