Glossary

The terms used on this site and in our documentation, in plain words.

Popunder

An ad format: the advertiser's page opens in a new browser window or tab behind the current one, and the user sees it when they leave the site. In OpenRTB terms the ad (adm) is simply the URL of that page.

OpenRTB 2.5

The industry standard protocol for real-time bidding: the seller describes an impression in a JSON bid request, buyers answer with bids. We use version 2.5.

SSP (supply-side platform) / publisher

The seller of traffic. A publisher or an SSP sends us bid requests for its impressions and is paid for the confirmed ones.

DSP (demand-side platform) / advertiser

The buyer of traffic. A DSP receives bid requests from us, answers with bids and pays for the impressions it wins and that are confirmed.

Bid request

A message describing one opportunity to show an ad: the site, the device, the country, the minimum price and the time limit.

Bid

The answer to a bid request: the price the buyer offers (CPM), the ad, and the notice URLs.

No bid

An answer meaning “not interested this time” — HTTP 204 without a body.

CPM

Cost per mille: the price for 1000 impressions. A bid of 0.04 means $0.04 per 1000 impressions, that is $0.00004 for one impression. All our prices are CPM in US dollars.

Bidfloor

The minimum CPM the seller accepts for an impression (imp.bidfloor). Bids below it are not returned.

First-price auction

The winner pays exactly the price it bid. There is no “second price” discount, so no price macro is needed in the seller's billing notice.

burl (billing notice URL)

The URL called when the impression is actually shown. It is the only event that counts an impression and moves money. Publishers call our burl; we then call the advertiser's.

nurl (win notice URL)

The URL called when a bid wins the auction. A win is not yet an impression: the win notice is for statistics only.

${AUCTION_PRICE}

A macro in a notice URL that is replaced with the price when the notice is sent. With us it is replaced with the advertiser's bid price exactly as it was sent.

tmax

The time limit, in milliseconds, for answering a bid request. Answers that arrive later are ignored. We work with up to 250 ms.

QPS

Queries per second: how many bid requests per second a partner sends or receives. We agree a QPS cap for each feed.

Feed

One connection with a partner: its endpoint, limits, filters and statistics. A partner may have several feeds.

Filters

Rules that let only the wanted traffic through — allow or block lists by country, OS and version, browser, device type, domain or site.

eCPM

Effective CPM: the money actually earned or spent per 1000 billed impressions.

Reconciliation

Comparing our numbers with the partner's numbers for the same day, to find and settle differences early.