media glossary - A

ABC
Audit Bureau of Circulations. An independent auditing organization who's purpose is auditing and certifying circulation practices and statistics of magazines.

ABC Statement
Publisher's statement of circulation statistics as submitted to be audited by ABC. (See ABC)

ABM

Association of Business Media.

ABP

Association of Business Publishers. See also ABM for Association of Business Media to which it changed it's name to encompass Internet media etc.

absolute space
The physical size of an advertisement. For example: for accounting purposes, a full page ad counts as 1.00 (one page) absolute space.

ACATS

Advisory Committee on Advanced Television Service, formed in 1987 by the FCC to develop an American HDTV format.

access line
A telephone line; the line that connects a phone or computer to a phone network.

access time
The elapsed time between requesting and receiving data from a computer, or by a computer CPU requesting and receiving data from a storage device.

accounts payable
Payments to be made by a company usually based on invoices received and approved for payment. In accounting it is considered a liability.

accounts receivable
Payments due to a company usually based on invoices issued but not paid. In accounting it is considered an asset.

accounts receivable report
An accounting record of each customer's balances outstanding, showing how long they have remained unpaid beyond the regular terms of sale. Transactions are broken down by age, i.e., under 30 days, 30 to 60 days, 60 to 90 days, etc. (Credit Department) (See: ATB, Aged Trial Balance)

accrued billing
Revenue earned in a certain accounting period but not yet invoiced.

accrued expenses
Acknowledged current expenses for goods or services provided in a certain accounting period but not yet paid.

accrued income
Income earned in a certain accounting period but not yet collected.

acetate
Clear plastic sheets used for overlays on paste-ups, etc.

acknowledgment
A confirmation of receipt of an order for ad placement or other service by a client or the client's agency or record.

acquisition
A merger or taking over of a controlling interest of one business by another.

active matrix screen
The liquid crystal display used in notebook computers. Each pixel on the screen is a separate circuit that can be activated independently of all other pixels.

adapter
Your PC has a hard time speaking the lingo. So it needs its own translator, which converts information to tidy packages that neatly flow down network wires (see Packet). Every PC on a corporate network has one of these adapters, which come in the form of circuit boards that cost $50 at the low end to more than $1,000 for superfast communications.

ad banner
An ad on a Web page, often using moving images and sound as well as text. Clicking on a banner usually hyperlinks the user to an advertiser's Web site.

ad caption
Partial headline of an advertisement used by a Production Department to identify film.

ad request
An ad request occurs each time the user's browser requests information from an ad server. If a Web page contains an ad, the browser will automatically request the in- formation from the ad server.

ADSL
Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. A digital signal-processing technology that expands the useable bandwidth of copper telephone wire. Designed to provide video-on-demand to the home, it may also be used for high-speed Internet access.

ad space
Refers to actual advertisement or advertisements. Space may mean a full-page, half-page, quarter-page, etc.

ad view
Technically, an ad view (also called an exposure) occurs every time an ad is requested from an ad server. Or, on the front end, an ad view represents the number of times a banner ad is seen on a Web page.

address correction requested (acr)
When this statement is printed in the upper left-hand corner of an evelope (below the return address), it authorizes the Post Office to provide the new address (where known) of a person no longer at the address on the mailing piece. There is a fee for this service.

advanced renewal
A subscription which has been renewed by the subscriber prior to the expiration of the current subscription.

advertised price
The basic subscription or single copy price of a publication.

advertiser
A person or company who places advertising space in media such as newspapers, magazines, or periodicals for their own company. (See Client)

advertorial
An advertising page which appears to be editorial, but was not created by the editors of the particular publication usually for the purpose of advertising.

affiliate marketing
A system of advertising in which site A agrees to feature buttons from site B, and site A gets a percentage of any sales generated for site B. It can also be applied to situations in which an advertiser may be looking for marketing information, rather than a cash sale. Popular among startups with very small marketing budgets.

affinity marketing
Marketing efforts, including — e-mail promotions, banners or offline media - aimed at consumers on the basis of established buying patterns. (For example, "Dear Widget Maker, as a valued widget making equipment customer, you are invited to a special Webcast preview of our newest product: Widget Machine 2010. Act today!)

agate line rate A basis measurement of advertising space, generally in newspapers, 1/14 inch deep and one column wide. Also referred to as "line rate" and "open line rate."

aged trial balance An accounting record of each customer's outstanding balances showing how long they have remained unpaid beyond the regular terms of sale. All transactions are broken down by age, i.e., under 30 to 60 days, 60 to 90 days, etc. (See Accounts Receivable Report)

agency A relationship between two parties in which one is authorized to act for another. A large percentage of advertisers are represented by advertising agencies. Agencies are normally responsible for designing the advertisements; for deciding which publications will get ad placements and for payment of advertising invoices (in most cases). (See Agency of Record)

agency commission A standard 15% of ad cost paid or deducted from gross advertising invoices as compensation to an agency for services rendered to an agency's client. An invoice deduction taken off the adjusted gross advertising charges for ad placement. In some cases, the percentage may vary or may not be applicable.

agency of record
Current agency authorized to represent the advertising interests of a client. Usually for the purposes of media billings and 'agency discounts.' (See Agency)

airbrushing
Painting with a hand-held, highly accurate sprayer to retouch or change photographic appearances, enhance photos, or create cutaway views.

airdate
The actual date and time that a radio/television program and/or commercial is scheduled to be, or is, broadcast.

AKA
A short term for "also known as." Some advertisers do business under more than one name. (See D.B.A)

alert box
A dialog box that appears on your screen to notify you that a virus or suspicious acitivty has been detected. You must repond by clicking on a button or pressing Enter.

alias A representative screen icon and compter code that points to an original file, folder, or disk. Aliases give you quick access to applications, files, folders, and disks without having to seek out the originals. An alias looks like its original counterpart except the name appears in italics.

allocation
A method used by accountants to charge business segments and/or departments a fair share of expenses (such as General and Administrative) which cannot be directly attributable to such segments or departments.
allowance for bad debts Estimated percentage of revenue or accounts receivable that may prove uncollectible. (See Bad Debt Reserve)

alpha
The first version of a new computer program, usually expected to be full of bugs. (Reference to Greek alphabet)

alphanumeric
A computer term describing characters that may be either letters of the alphabet, numerals, or symbols.

amount due
The total owed on a billable transaction after deducting all applicable discounts. (See Balance, Balance Due, Net)

analog
The opposite of digital! Not really, but it might as well be. An infinitely variable characteristic or signal such as time or temperature, as opposed to a discretely variable (digital) characteristic or signal such as a on or off pulse, or representation only by digits. Currently TV, radio and telephone are all analog.

analog TV transmission
A signal that varies continuously, representing fluctuations in color and brightness.

anonymous FTP A public FTP file archive that any Internet user can access. Anonymous refers to a generic account that is usable by anyone. (See FTP)

ANSI
American National Standards Institute coordinates the U.S. voluntary standards system. ANSI formed an Information Infrastructure Standards panel in January 1996 to identify gaps in existing standards for the National Information Infrastructure.

AppleShare
An extension that lets you access shared files on other networked Macintosh computers or AppleShare file servers.

AppleTalk A network communications environment (developed by Apple Computer) in which many different kinds of computers, related hardware (peripherals), and software can work together.
application A computer program written for a specific purpose, such as word processing or creating a spreadsheet. Also called program or application program.

architecture
The configuration of the hardware and software in a computer system.

archive file
A single file or group of files that have been compressed into one file. (See Compressed File)

ARPANET
A network created by the Advanced Research Projects Agancy to study how to make computer networks secure in the event of nuclear war.

ascender
The portions of letters that extend above the body of type. The letters "t", "f", "l", and "h" have ascenders while "m" and "e" do not.

ASCII
American Standard Code for Information Interchange (pronounced "ASK-ee"). A standard that assigns a unique binary number (a byte) to each text character and control character.

asset
A tangible or intangible holding or resource owned by a company or entity.

aspect ratio
The width of a picture relative to its height. If an NTSC picture is 4 feet wide, it will be 3 feet high; thus it has a 4:3 aspect ratio.

asymmetrical digital subscriber line (ADSL)
ADSL provides the capability of delivering video signals into homes over the existing telephone network by simply adding equipment to each end of the line. ADSL is limited to transmitting 1.5 to 6 Mbps, enough for VCR quality video-on-demand when used in conjunction with MPEG digital compression, but it cannot handle live programming or HDTV at this point.

ATIS
Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions is the support group for Committee T-1, which develops public network standards, and other network reliability and interoperability. (202-434-8822)

ATM
Though cash machines run on data networks, this ATM has nothing to do with banks. Short for Asynchronous Transfer Mode, it's a new way of designing data packets that's particularly suited to sending video and audio information as well as text. Besides offering very high speed, ATM is attracting attention because it is favored by phone companies, cable operators and corporate computer users alike, which may make for easier networking between offices and homes.

ATM Forum, The
A cross-industry forum working out variety of issues surrounding ATM switch deployment. (415-578-6860)

audiotext
Automated telephone information, such as stock prices, sports scores and movie listings.

audit
An examination of records to check their accuracy. Usually done by an internal audit staff or a public audit firm.

authoring
The assembling of various multimedia content into a viable product.

avatar
An interactive representation of a person in a virtual reality environment. The word is Sanskrit for the earthly incarnation a god takes on Earth.

average page rate
The total monies billed out to customers for ad space divided by the number of pages used to run those advertisements. Shows the approximate amount of revenue received for each page of advertisement.

average paid circulation
Average paid circulation of all the issues of a publication in a specific period of time, usually 6 months. Arrived at by dividing the total paid circulation of all the issues during the period by the total number of issues.

AVI
Windows video file.