Speaking the Right Language

Years ago, I visited Puerto Vallarta for vacation. Even got to play a golf course that was one of the World Championship Golf tournament courses.  You know, the ones Tiger Woods used to own.  The course was so tough, especially for a hacker like me, I was required to have a local as a caddy. Fortunately, I know a decent amount of Spanish. Fortunately, my caddy's English was better than my Spanish. It didn't help my golf game. (Losing 18 balls in a round is a bad round of golf no matter where you are.)

Maybe it was not having my regular clubs.  Not!

I'm sure you have probably visited a foreign country whose language differs from ours. In a lot of ways, the digital media landscape's language is different than ours as well.

For grins, I was looking at the IAB website this morning. Yes, even the web guys have their own advertising bureau, the Interactive Advertising Bureau. We in radio may be justifiably proud of the RAB and its programs, but the IAB really takes their training to a whole new level. It starts with the terminology. We have ATE, TSL, Cume, etc.

So how much do we know about digital terminology?

Here are some required terms to know from the IAB certification exam. How many of these do you know?

ATF
BT
BTF
CPA
CPC
CPD
CPE
CPM
CPO
CPS
CPV
CTC
CTR
CTV
DMA
DMP
DR
DSP
eCPM
FEP
GRP
HTML
IAB
IO
IP
KPI
LDA
MMM
MRAID
MSA
OOH
OPA
OVP
PII
POP
RFI
RFP
ROAS
ROI
ROS
RPM
RSS
RTB
SEM
SEO
SOV
SSP
T&C
TRP
UGC
VAST
VMAP
VOD
VPAID
WAP
WWW

Try here to see how you did.

The terms come straight for the IAB Study Guide for their Digital Media Sales Certification examination. There are a few terms that cross between the two media disciplines. DMA and GRP are a couple of pieces that are exactly what we radio guys know them to be.

Whether you are in programming or sales, knowing the language like a native is always going to get you better service. While radio has been trying to jump into the digital land for the last decade, it might help to know the language.