Programmatic advertising is full of acronyms, and your clients won't all know them.
The Digital Advertising Dictionary explains 500+ ad tech, programmatic and paid media terms in plain language.
The terms that cause the most confusion
- DSP vs SSP vs ADX - a DSP buys inventory for advertisers; an SSP sells it for publishers; an ad exchange (ADX) sits in the middle and routes traffic between them. AdTech Europe sells all three, plus a DMP for audiences. See What is the SSP? and What is the ADX?.
- QPS - queries per second, the rate of bid requests. The DSP and DMP have no QPS fees or limits; rented SSP and ADX plans are priced by QPS. See How QPS is priced.
- CPM vs CPC - cost per thousand impressions vs cost per click. Which applies depends on the format. See Ad formats and creative specs.
- Pre-bid vs post-bid - pre-bid filtering refuses traffic before money is committed; post-bid analysis reviews what was already bought. Both are used. See How AI-powered fraud detection works.
- ads.txt / sellers.json - public files that declare who is allowed to sell a publisher's inventory, used to stop domain spoofing.
Tip for operators: you can point your own clients at these definitions, or reproduce the explanations in your own help content under your brand.
Nov 13, 2026