Digital out-of-home has a habit of hiding simple ideas behind acronyms. Here's every term you'll meet buying or selling screen advertising, defined in one breath each — alphabetical, jargon-free, and honest about where the industry's numbers come from.
Ad exchangeCMSCPMCreativeDaypartingDigital signageDOOHDSPDwell timeFill rateFootfallHouse contentImpressionLoopMedia playerOOHPay-per-displayPMPProgrammaticProof of displayProof of playRTBShare of voiceSlotSSPVerification
- Ad exchange
- The marketplace where screen inventory is bought and sold — advertisers' demand meets screen owners' supply and plays get transacted, either by auction or at fixed prices.
- CMS (content management system)
- The software a screen network uses to schedule and manage what its screens show — playlists, house content, and ad slots.
- CPM (cost per mille)
- A price per thousand impressions. In DOOH the 'impressions' are usually modelled estimates of how many people had the opportunity to see the screen, not counted viewers.
- Creative
- The ad itself — the image or video file that plays on screen. DOOH creatives are typically 10–30 seconds, designed to work without sound.
- Dayparting
- Scheduling ads for specific times of day — breakfast offers in the morning, happy hour in the evening — on the same screens.
- Digital signage
- The screens-in-venues industry generally: any digital display showing scheduled content in a public or commercial space, whether or not it carries paid advertising.
- DOOH (digital out-of-home)
- Advertising on digital screens in public places — billboards, transit displays, and screens in venues like gyms, cafés and shopping centres. The digital half of out-of-home (OOH).
- DSP (demand-side platform)
- The buying tool of programmatic advertising: software advertisers and agencies use to bid on and book inventory across many screen networks at once.
- Dwell time
- How long people stay near a screen. A gym or waiting room has minutes of dwell time; a corridor has seconds. Longer dwell means more chances for an ad to land.
- Fill rate
- The share of a screen's available ad slots that actually carry paid ads. Unfilled slots typically show the venue's own house content.
- Footfall
- The number of people passing through a venue or past a screen. The single biggest driver of what a screen's advertising is worth.
- House content
- A venue's own material — menus, promotions, community notices — that plays in ad slots no advertiser has bought, so screens never sit blank.
- Impression
- One exposure of an ad to its potential audience. In DOOH this is often an estimated 'opportunity to see' derived from footfall or traffic data — worth asking how any given platform counts it.
- Loop
- The repeating sequence of content a screen plays, usually a few minutes long, divided into slots shared by advertisers and house content.
- Media player
- The small computer that drives a screen and renders content on it. In most DOOH reporting, the player is also the device that logs whether an ad 'played'.
- OOH (out-of-home)
- All advertising encountered outside the home — billboards, posters, transit ads. DOOH is its digital subset.
- Pay-per-display (PPD)
- A pricing model where you pay a fixed amount for each individual play of your ad, rather than per estimated audience or per block of time. Admitt's native model.
- PMP (private marketplace)
- An invitation-only programmatic auction on curated inventory — more control and quality assurance than the open exchange, with negotiated access.
- Programmatic
- Buying and selling ad space through automated software rather than manual negotiation — spanning open auctions, private marketplaces and fixed-price guaranteed deals.
- Proof of display
- Independent confirmation that an ad actually appeared on a screen, from verification hardware separate from the media player. The standard Admitt bills on: unverified plays are never charged.
- Proof of play
- A log entry from the media player stating it rendered an ad file. The industry-standard delivery evidence — and self-reported, so it can't detect a screen that was off or faulty.
- RTB (real-time bidding)
- The open-auction form of programmatic: inventory is offered to all bidders in the moments before a slot plays, and the highest qualifying bid wins.
- Slot
- One position in a screen's loop, the basic unit of screen time an ad occupies — commonly around 10 seconds in venue-based DOOH.
- SSP (supply-side platform)
- The selling tool of programmatic advertising: software screen owners use to offer inventory to buyers and manage pricing and rules.
- Verification
- Any process confirming ad delivery. The strength of a verification claim depends entirely on the witness: self-reported logs (proof of play) versus independent observation (proof of display).