From above the line to zero-party data: 120 advertising terms across creative, media, planning, digital, measurement and UK regulation, each defined in one or two plain sentences.
This advertising glossary explains 120 terms in plain English, from above the line to zero-party data, in the order you would look them up. It covers creative, media planning, digital and programmatic, measurement and effectiveness, the awards, and the UK regulatory system of CAP, BCAP, the ASA and Clearcast. Each entry is one or two sentences, because a definition that needs more usually means the term is doing less work than its user thinks.
Advertising jargon exists for the same reason as any other: it saves time between people who already know what it means, and it keeps everyone else out. The second function is the one clients pay for without meaning to. Where a term has a longer explainer on this site, the entry links to it.
Terms are grouped by first letter under an H2 for each. Acronyms are listed under the phrase they stand for, with the acronym in brackets, so CPT is under cost per thousand and TVR is under television rating. Where two words mean the same thing, the entry says so rather than pretending there is a distinction.
Above the line (ATL). Old shorthand for mass media advertising, television, press, radio, outdoor and cinema, on which agencies once earned commission. Below the line was everything else.
Account planning. The discipline, started at BMP and J Walter Thompson in London in 1968, of representing the consumer inside the agency and turning research into strategy. The planner writes the brief.
Ad exchange. The marketplace where programmatic impressions are auctioned between the platforms that sell them and the platforms that buy them.
Ad recall. A survey measure of whether people remember seeing an ad, prompted or unprompted. Cheap, common and only loosely connected to sales.
Ad server. Software that stores the creative, decides which ad to show and counts impressions and clicks. Advertisers and publishers each run their own.
Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). The UK’s independent regulator of advertising across all media. It enforces the CAP and BCAP Codes, cannot fine, and publishes every ruling with the advertiser’s name on it; our guide to UK advertising rules explains the system.
Agency of record (AOR). The lead agency a client appoints to handle its advertising, usually on a retainer rather than project by project.
Arrow. A British Arrows award, the UK industry’s own prizes for television and film advertising, judged by the people who make it.
Attention metrics. Measures of whether an ad was actually looked at, from eye-tracking panels and the predictive models built on them, as opposed to whether it was served or viewable.
Attribution. Any method of crediting a sale to the ads that preceded it. Last-click attribution gives all the credit to the final touch, which is why search always looks brilliant.
Awareness. The share of a target audience that knows a brand exists, measured prompted (shown a list) or spontaneous (asked to name brands). Top of mind is the first one named.
BARB. The Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board, which measures UK television viewing through a panel of homes and supplies the currency television is bought in.
BCAP Code. The UK Code of Broadcast Advertising, written by the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice for television and radio services licensed by Ofcom and enforced by the ASA.
Below the line (BTL). Direct mail, sales promotion, point of sale, sponsorship and everything else outside commission-paying media. The line has mostly gone; the phrases have not.
Brand lift. The change in awareness, consideration or intent among people exposed to a campaign compared with a matched group who were not. Platforms sell the study alongside the media, which is worth remembering when reading the result.
Brand platform. The long-term idea a brand’s communications are built on, from which individual campaigns and endlines are drawn. “Should’ve gone to Specsavers” is a platform; each joke is an execution.
Brand purpose. The reason a brand claims to exist beyond making money, and the most argued-over idea in marketing this decade.
Brand safety. Keeping ads away from content that would embarrass the advertiser, through block lists, inclusion lists and verification vendors.
Brand tracking. A rolling survey of awareness, consideration and image among category buyers, used to see whether advertising is moving anything the sales figures cannot yet show.
Brief. The document that tells an agency what problem it is solving, for whom, with what evidence and against what measure. A bad brief produces a precise answer to the wrong question; here is how to write a good one.
CAP Code. The UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising and Direct and Promotional Marketing, covering print, outdoor, online, social, email and advertisers’ own websites. Written by the Committee of Advertising Practice, enforced by the ASA.
Category entry points (CEPs). The situations, needs and moments that bring a category to mind, such as “something quick for the kids’ tea”. Ehrenberg-Bass argues brands grow by being linked to more of them.
Clearcast. The body that checks television ads against the BCAP Code before the major commercial broadcasters will air them. Radiocentre does the same job for commercial radio.
Click-through rate (CTR). Clicks divided by impressions. Useful for direct response, close to meaningless for brand advertising, where most of the people who matter never click.
Connected TV (CTV). Television watched through an internet connection, on a smart TV, a streaming stick or a games console, and the advertising sold into it.
Consideration. The share of category buyers who say they would consider the brand next time, sitting between awareness and purchase in most tracking studies.
Copy. The words in an ad. A copywriter writes them, an art director handles the pictures, and together they are the creative team.
Cost per acquisition (CPA). Media cost divided by the number of sales or sign-ups it produced. The number performance marketers are paid on.
Cost per thousand (CPT, or CPM in America). The price of reaching a thousand people or delivering a thousand impressions. The basic unit of comparison between media.
Creative director. The person responsible for the quality of an agency’s work. Executive creative directors and chief creative officers sit above them, and the titles multiply in proportion to the agency’s size.
D&AD Pencil. The award of D&AD, the British design and advertising body founded in 1962. Yellow Pencils are rare, Black Pencils rarer, and a Graphite or Wood Pencil is still worth having.
Demand-side platform (DSP). The software an advertiser or agency uses to bid for programmatic impressions across many publishers and exchanges at once.
Digital out of home (DOOH). Screens rather than paper posters: roadside digital 48-sheets, rail and shopping centre screens, and the programmatic pipes that now sell them by the hour.
Direct response. Advertising that asks for an immediate action, a call, a click or a coupon, and is judged on how many it gets.
Distinctive brand assets (DBA). The non-logo elements that trigger a brand in memory: colours, characters, sounds, shapes and typefaces. Jenni Romaniuk’s work at Ehrenberg-Bass measures them by fame and uniqueness; our explainer covers how to build one.
Econometrics. Statistical modelling of sales against everything that might have moved them, price, weather, distribution, competitors and media, to isolate what the advertising did. Also called marketing mix modelling.
Effie. The effectiveness awards founded in New York in 1968 and now run in most markets, judged on business results rather than craft.
Emotional selling proposition (ESP). The feeling a brand owns where the product cannot claim a functional difference. The counterpart of the USP, and the more common case.
Endline. The line at the end of the ad, also called a strapline, sign-off or, in America, a tagline. What makes one work is a longer question than it looks.
Excess share of voice (ESOV). Share of voice minus share of market. Brands that spend above their market share tend to grow, and the size of the gap predicts how fast; John Philip Jones found the pattern and Les Binet and Peter Field made it a planning rule.
Experiential. Advertising you can walk into: pop-ups, stunts, sampling and events, judged on the people who came and the far larger number who saw the footage.
First-party data. Information a brand collects itself, from its customers, its website and its loyalty scheme, as opposed to third-party data bought from others. More valuable since the cookie became unreliable.
Flighting. Running advertising in bursts with gaps between them, as against continuous presence. Pulsing is a low continuous level with bursts on top.
Focus group. Six to ten people, a moderator, a two-way mirror and a plate of biscuits. Qualitative research that tells you why, never how many.
Frame. A single poster site. Outdoor campaigns are bought in frames, and Route measures who passes them.
Frequency. The average number of times each person reached saw the ad. Reach multiplied by frequency gives gross rating points.
Grand Prix. The top award in a category at Cannes Lions, the IPA Effectiveness Awards and most other shows. There is usually only one, and some years none.
Green claims. Environmental claims in advertising, governed by section 11 of the CAP Code and the CMA’s Green Claims Code. The rules and the ads that broke them are covered separately.
Gross rating points (GRPs). The sum of the ratings delivered by every spot in a campaign. A hundred GRPs might be half the audience twice or a quarter of it four times, which is why reach and frequency are reported separately.
Halo effect. The lift a campaign for one product gives to the rest of the range or to the brand as a whole. Skoda’s Fabia advertising sold Octavias.
Header bidding. A technique that lets a publisher offer each impression to several exchanges at once before its ad server decides, rather than in a fixed order. It raised publisher prices and undermined Google’s first look, which is why it featured in the US antitrust case.
HFSS. Food and drink high in fat, salt or sugar as scored by the Nutrient Profiling Model. Since 5 January 2026, qualifying products from businesses with 250 or more staff cannot be advertised on television before 9pm or in paid online media; the ban explained.
Impression. One delivery of an ad to one screen. It does not mean anyone saw it.
Incrementality. The sales that would not have happened without the advertising, measured by comparing exposed and unexposed groups or regions. The only honest answer to “did it work”.
Influencer marketing. Paying creators to feature a brand to their own audience. In the UK the post must be identifiable as an ad before the audience engages with it, and the rules are stricter than most creators think.
In-house agency. A creative or media team employed by the advertiser rather than an outside agency. Specsavers and Dyson make their own ads.
Insight. A truth about people that explains their behaviour and suggests what to say. An observation is what people do; an insight is why.
IPA Effectiveness Awards. The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising‘s awards, running since 1980, which demand a written case proving the advertising caused the result and ruling out the alternatives. The papers form the IPA Databank, the evidence base for most of what follows.
JICs. Joint industry currencies: the bodies that measure audiences so buyers and sellers argue from the same numbers. BARB for television, RAJAR for radio, Route for outdoor, PAMCo for publishing and JICMAIL for post.
Jingle. A sung advertising message. Rarer than it was, and still in the nation’s head forty years later when it worked; music in advertising covers the wider question of what a track does and costs.
Kantar. The research company whose Link pre-testing and BrandZ valuations are industry standards, and which runs much of Britain’s brand tracking.
Key visual. The single image that carries a campaign across formats, from the 48-sheet to the Instagram square.
KPI. Key performance indicator: the number a campaign has agreed to move. If there are more than two, there is usually none.
Last-click attribution. Giving all the credit for a sale to the final ad clicked before it. It flatters search and retargeting and ignores whatever created the demand in the first place.
Linear TV. Television watched as broadcast, on a schedule, as against on demand. Still the biggest single source of reach in Britain, and shrinking every year.
Lion. A Cannes Lions award, given each June since 1954 at the International Festival of Creativity. Bronze, Silver, Gold, Grand Prix, and a Titanium for work that breaks the categories.
The long and the short of it. Les Binet and Peter Field’s 2013 IPA analysis showing that emotional brand building produces larger long-term effects than rational activation, and that budgets split about 60:40 between them do best. It underpins our approach to planning a campaign.
Made for advertising (MFA). Websites built to sell impressions rather than to be read, with ad-to-content ratios above 30 per cent and traffic bought from social platforms. The trade bodies agreed a definition in September 2023.
Marketing mix modelling (MMM). See econometrics. The phrase has come back into fashion since cookie-based attribution stopped being trusted.
Mascot. A character the brand owns, from the Andrex puppy to Kevin the Carrot. A distinctive asset that never asks for a pay rise, which is why it outperforms a celebrity.
Media agency. The agency that plans and buys the space, separated since the 1990s from the creative agency that fills it.
Media plan. The schedule of what runs where, when, at what weight and at what cost, agreed before the creative is finished and revised the moment it is.
Mental availability. Byron Sharp’s term for how easily a brand comes to mind in a buying situation. It is built by reaching many people, often, with distinctive assets, and it is most of what advertising does.
Native advertising. Ads designed to look like the editorial around them, labelled so that readers can tell, in theory. The CAP Code requires the label to be obvious.
Net reach. The number of different people who saw the campaign at least once, counting each person once however many times they saw it.
Nutrient Profiling Model. The Department of Health scoring system that decides whether a product is HFSS: four points or more for food, one or more for drink.
Ofcom. The communications regulator, which licenses broadcasters, contracts television and radio advertising regulation to the ASA, and sits behind it with the power to fine.
Opportunity to see (OTS). The number of times the average person reached could have seen the ad. Another name for frequency, with the honesty built in.
Out of home (OOH). Posters, transport, retail and street furniture advertising, paper and digital. Route is its audience currency.
Penetration. The share of category buyers who bought the brand at least once in a period. Ehrenberg-Bass’s evidence is that brands grow mainly by increasing it, not by getting existing buyers to buy more.
Physical availability. Sharp’s counterpart to mental availability: how easy the brand is to find and buy, in distribution, on the shelf and on the screen.
Pitch. The competition agencies enter to win a client, usually unpaid, often months long and occasionally worth it.
Positioning. Where a brand sits in the buyer’s mind relative to the alternatives, from Al Ries and Jack Trout’s 1972 articles and 1981 book. Avis’s “We try harder” is the textbook case.
Pre-roll. A video ad that plays before the content the viewer chose. Skippable after five seconds on YouTube, which is why the first five seconds are where the money goes.
Pre-testing. Researching an ad before it runs, on an animatic or the finished film, to predict its effect. System1 and Kantar Link are the two most used methods.
Private marketplace (PMP). An invitation-only programmatic auction on a named publisher’s inventory, above an agreed floor price.
Programmatic. Buying and selling ad space by automated auction, impression by impression, through DSPs, exchanges and SSPs. Roughly four-fifths of UK display is now traded this way.
Programmatic guaranteed. A fixed-price, fixed-volume deal between one buyer and one publisher, executed through programmatic pipes. A direct buy with the paperwork automated.
Proposition. The single promise the advertising is built to deliver, written in one sentence in the brief. Single-minded is the adjective that always goes with it.
Qualitative research. Small numbers, deep answers: groups, interviews and ethnography. It tells you what is going on and why.
Quantitative research. Large numbers, shallow answers: surveys and panels. It tells you how many.
Rate card. A media owner’s published prices. Nobody pays them.
Reach. The share of the target audience that saw the campaign at least once. The first number on any media plan and, on the evidence, the most important.
Real-time bidding (RTB). The auction that decides which ad fills a programmatic slot, run in the milliseconds while the page loads.
Retail media. Advertising sold by retailers on their own sites and apps, and increasingly elsewhere, targeted with what people actually buy. The IAB UK put it at about £3.8 billion in 2025.
Retargeting. Showing ads to people who have already visited a website or abandoned a basket. Efficient, irritating and heavily credited by last-click attribution.
Return on marketing investment (ROMI). The profit generated by advertising divided by what it cost. The number IPA papers are judged on and the hardest one to prove.
Route. The audience measurement body for UK out of home, which estimates who passes each frame and whether they could see it.
Share of search. A brand’s share of Google searches for the brands in its category, which Les Binet showed in 2020 predicts market share six to twelve months ahead. Free from Google Trends.
Share of voice (SOV). A brand’s share of its category’s total advertising spend or impressions. See excess share of voice.
Single-minded proposition. The one thing the ad must say, chosen because attention is scarce and memory ignores lists.
Sponsorship. Paying to be associated with a programme, event or team rather than to interrupt it. The bumpers around Coronation Street are sponsorship; the break inside it is advertising.
Storyboard. The frame-by-frame drawing of a television ad, used to sell it to the client and to Clearcast before it is shot. An animatic is the storyboard filmed with a soundtrack.
Substantiation. The evidence an advertiser must hold, before publication, for every objective claim, under CAP Code rule 3.7. “Clinically proven” without a trial on file is a ruling waiting to happen.
Supply-side platform (SSP). The software a publisher uses to offer its impressions to exchanges and DSPs and to set the minimum price it will accept.
System1. The research company whose Star Rating scores ads on the emotion they produce, on a scale from one to 5.9, and has been validated against market share growth. It is one of the inputs to how we score every campaign.
Tagline. American for endline.
Target audience. The people the campaign is meant to reach, defined by demographics, behaviour or category use. The evidence favours defining it broadly.
Television rating (TVR). One TVR means one per cent of the target audience saw a spot. TVRs are the unit in which UK television is bought and the rows in which it is reported.
Testimonial. An ad in which a customer or celebrity vouches for the product. The CAP Code requires the endorsement to be genuine and the views to be the endorser’s own.
Tone of voice. The personality a brand’s language has, agreed in a guideline document and ignored by the first person to write a press release.
Unique selling proposition (USP). Rosser Reeves’s 1961 term for a specific benefit the brand promises that the competition cannot or does not claim. Melts in your mouth, not in your hand.
Upweight. Adding media weight in a region or period, often to test whether more spend produces more sales before committing nationally.
User-generated content (UGC). Content made by customers rather than the brand, whether it arrived unprompted or was paid for and reused in ads.
Video on demand (VOD, BVOD). Programmes watched when the viewer chooses. BVOD is the broadcasters’ version, ITVX, Channel 4 and Sky, where ads are sold with television-style audience data.
Viewability. Whether an ad had the chance to be seen. The industry standard is half the pixels in view for one second for display and two seconds for video, a low bar that many impressions still fail.
Voice-over (VO). The unseen speaker in a television or radio ad. The script will say MVO or FVO.
Walled garden. A platform that sells its own ads with its own data and its own measurement and lets nobody else check: Google, Meta, Amazon and TikTok.
WARC. The World Advertising Research Center, which publishes case studies, effectiveness rankings and the papers from the IPA and Effie awards.
Wearout. The point at which an ad has been seen so often it stops working. The evidence suggests it arrives much later than the client’s boredom.
Yield. What a media owner earns per thousand impressions after the fees. Publishers optimise for it; advertisers should ask who else is.
Zero-party data. Information customers give a brand deliberately, in a preference centre or a quiz, as opposed to first-party data collected by watching them.
Reach counts people; impressions count deliveries. A campaign that serves ten impressions to the same person has a reach of one and a frequency of ten.
The CAP Code covers non-broadcast advertising, including online and advertisers’ own social accounts. The BCAP Code covers television and radio licensed by Ofcom, and both are enforced by the ASA.
A television rating: one TVR is one per cent of the target audience seeing a spot once. Add up the TVRs of every spot and you have the campaign’s gross rating points.
Above the line meant mass media on which agencies earned commission; below the line meant everything else. The distinction is a relic of how agencies were paid, and most people now say brand and activation instead.
He plans, buys and reviews advertising for a living, and helps score campaigns on the site against the same five Crown Score criteria alongside other authors and contributors.
A character you invent is a freehold asset; a celebrity is a rental. The evidence on fluent devices, the twelve points of share of voice most brands leave on the table, and the mascots that failed.
Distinctiveness, brand linkage, longevity and truth. Four tests that separate a slogan from a positioning statement, with the lines that passed and the famous ones that were thrown away.
A track can carry a film, move a record to number one and date a campaign inside a quarter. What sync and master licences actually cover, roughly what they cost, and where brands get burned.