Glossary

ABC/ABCi – Audit Bureau of Circulation/Audit Bureau of Circulation Interactive. This is the company that audits newspaper circulation claims. They now are auditing web traffic, too.

Above the line/below the line – Expenses often are expressed this way. An above the line express is something that hits above the line on a spreadsheet that shows your EBITDA. In other words, it counts against your profitability. Below the line expenses don’t count against your profitability and are expressed below the line on the spreadsheet where EBITDA is expressed.

Ad impressions – The number of times an advertisement is viewed on a website.

Ad serving software – Double Click/Net Gravity and Open Ad Stream (OAS) are two examples. This software is designed to serve ads onto Web pages. It includes features that allow users to set up “campaigns” dictating how often an ad is served and in some instances, to whom. It can target specific pages or sections with ads, or it can serve ROS ads.

Amortization – The repayment of loans in periodic installments. Loan amortization is included on a company’s books, but you’ll often hear companies express their EBITDA earnings, which means they’re not including the effect of loans that are being repaid.

Animated GIF – Have you noticed how banner ads on Web sites cycle through two or three images? That’s an animated GIF. GIF is a file format for images, similar to TIF, JPG, etc. By animating the image, artists can build ads that cycle through two or three “images” to get more in an ad.

Assumptions – These are “variables” in a pro forma that affect the results. For instance, you might have the following assumptions: We’ll have 4 ads per page selling for a $2 CPM and we’ll serve 100,000 pages per month with all of our inventory sold out. Based on these assumptions, we’ll be expecting $800 in revenue per month. Here’s the math: First, figure out how many thousands are in 100,000, since you’re getting $2 for every thousand page views (CPM.). The answer is there are 100 thousands in 100,000, so a $2 CPM will yield $200 per ad avail. With four ad avails, that gives you $800 total. See how easy it is?

Audience management systems – Software that allows websites to track users’ movements on a site, usually through planting a cookie on their browser and tracking their site usage over time

Banners -- The building block of Web advertising. These are the ads you see on Web pages. They range in size from "button ads" -- 120x90s -- to skyscrapers, waterfall ads, in-content ads. Internet banner ads are much maligned, but part of the problem is that the creative is lacking.

Behavioral targeting – targeting advertising or content to user based on their habits on the site. This usually is done via an audience management system

Capital expense – This differs from regular expenses and is measured differently. In a nutshell, capital expenses are created in the process of building something that will result in a tangible asset for the company. For instance, if you spend $500k to build a content management system, that would be a capital expense because if the company were to be sold tomorrow, that content management system would be a tangible asset that could increase the overall value of the company. Conversely, if you were to contract with a company to provide a content management system, the cost of that would be expense since you don’t take possession of this system and it doesn’t belong to your company. You’re merely paying them to use a resources that belongs to them. This is true of buildings, software, computers and a variety of items.

CMS – Content management system. Essentially, an editorial system for online websites. They range wildly in features and functionality. In general, they include some sort of workflow that allows for approval of stories and editing of information that is being placed on a website. They also allow editors to manage stories and information that’s being shoveled from the print edition to the web. Generally, the remove the journalists from the computer code needed to render websites. This allows journalists to focus more on journalism and less on being geeks.

Collaborative publishing – a more sophisticated approach to community publishing that features a suite of features mixing functionality from discussion groups, weblogs and rating systems. Generally, these publishing systems allow users to comment on, correct and approve items that are being posted. They also can feature a variety of roles for members of the community, such as editor, reporter, reader, etc. Two great examples are Slashdot.org and Kuro5hin.org.

Convergence – Efforts to pull multiple media together, often with the web as the fulcrum. Media General’s Tampa Bay operations are a prime example of this. WFLA, The Tampa Tribune and TBO.com share the same resources and work across media on stories and content.

Cookies – a small piece of code that a website plants on a viewer’s computer. This code can perform a variety of functions. For instance, it can remember your username/password when you return. It can assign a unique ID so a user can be tracked over time. Some ad software uses cookies to ensure that it serves a given ad to a specific user only a set number of times (i.e. once per session).

CPM – cost per thousand. “We sold the banner campaign for a $5 CPM.” In other words, the advertiser is paying us $5 for each 1,000 times the banner is seen on the site.

Creative – This is the ad itself, and unfortunately, we’re horrible at it. When people say Internet ads don’t work, what they’re really saying is the creative is horrible. Good creative should have a call to action and clear, concise message. It should grab the viewer’s attention without being annoying.

Dayparting – The realization that web audience behave more like radio and TV audiences than newspaper audiences. Web users tend to have specific types of information in mind when they visit websites depending on what time of day it is. In the morning, they’re more news focused. But as the day progresses, they become more interested in entertainment and shopping. Think of radio: Drive time programming is much different from programming at noon and in the evening. Some websites are starting to take the same approach.

Discussion groups – Online forums, usually threaded, where users can post comments on a variety of topics. Some require registration. Some are wide open. Usenet is an early form of this.

Depreciation – Capital items – computers, buildings and other assets – lose value over time. Companies have to depreciate them on their books, usually based on schedules dictated by the tax code. For instance, if you spend $1 million building a content management system, it will depreciate – lose value – and eventually no longer be listed as an asset on your books. Depreciation is the process of recording how much value certain pieces of capital lose each year.

EBITDA – Pronounced ebit-da. Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization. This is the “profit” or loss that usually is stated for a business. Essentially, this is what you have left after you deduct expenses from revenue, but it excludes the impact of interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.

Expenses – Two types: Operational and capital. Operational expenses are your costs of doing business – employees, rent, utilitites, office supplies, hosting fees, etc. Capital expenses are different and have a different effect on your bottom line. In essence, the don't impact your profitability the way operations expenses do.

Hits – This sometimes is used interchangeably with page views, but it really is a different metric. A hit is a specific request to the server that results as a page loads. So a single page can have multiple hits as it calls to the server for photos, icons and other components it needs to assemble the page in its entirety. In the early days, we used to assume that roughly 5-7 “hits” equaled one page view, but that number has increased as HTML pages have become more complex, requiring more elements to constitute a page.

In-content ads -- This is not as nefarious as it sounds. This is simply an ad that appears with the story on a site. The text wraps around the ad or the ad breaks the text in two. These ads should have a clear label telling the reader they are advertising.

IP address – The numerical ID of a person (or website) on the internet. A website name, www.scripps.com, for instance, really is the following IP address: 209.215.174.131. And you can get to Scripps by typing that IP address or the URL into your browser window. URLs are used because they’re easier to remember than numbers.

OCF – Operating Cash Flow. This is your profit. After you’ve deducted all expenses, this is what’s left.

Operating margin – This is the result of dividing your profit (or loss) into your total revenue. So if my site generated $15 million in revenue and had $5 million EBITDA, my profit margin would be 33%. Conversely, if I lost $5 million (i.e. my expenses exceeded my revenue by $5 million) and had top line revenue of $15 million, by margin would be negative 33%.

Page views – The number of times a specific page is loaded, or viewed, but a web browser. This replaced hits as a key audience metric and was then replaced itself by unique users.

Participatory Journalism (as defined by Bowman and Willis in We Media) – “The act of a citizen, or group of citizens, playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information. The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires.”

Peer-to-peer – Ranging from Gnutella to AOLs instant messenger, these networks allow users to exchange files and information by linking them directly to each other. Napster was a peer-to-peer network that ran afoul of federal copyright law. It's remade itself as a site where people can purchase music legitimately.

Profit and loss statement (P&L) – A detailed earnings statement for the previous full year (if you are currently in business). Existing businesses are required to show a Profit and Loss Statement for the current period to the date of the Balance Sheet.

Pro forma – A projection or estimate of what may result in the future from actions in the present. Estimate of how the business will turn out if certain assumptions are achieved.

Registration – The current trend among many newspapers. Requiring that users provide some demographic information before allowing them to view newspaper content online. Some require a lot of information – interests, mailing address, e-mail and an assortment of other data. Some put up only a ZAG wall.

Rich media ads – These are ads that contain video, Flash or some other technology that makes them more active and noticeable than the traditional banner or animated GIF.

RFP – Request for proposal. Ad agencies often issue an RFP, asking Web sites what types of campaigns they can offer an advertiser. For instance, the agency might put out an RFP that stipulates it's trying to reach a certain audience in a specific geography, and it's willing to pay up to a certain CPM. Web sites can then answer the RFP with what they propose for the campaign. This also is used in technical projects, where the RFP is a detailed document describing a technical project that needs built. Vendors then answer the RFP with how they will approach it and what it will cost.

ROI – Return on investment. This is a key financial term. When we spend money on a program or initiative, we need some sense of how much money we will make on it. That’s our return on investment.

ROS – Run of Site. This is an ad that runs throughout the site and is served by ad serving software.

RSS – Rich Site Summary (also often called Really Simple Syndication). A type of XML feed that allows sites to pick up headlines and updates from other sites. A newspaper, for example, could offer an RSS feed that sports fans could use to have recent hockey headlines on their sites.

Shovelware – a somewhat derogatory term used to describe content that is almost literally shoveled from the print publication to the online publication with little, if any, value added. Most newspaper sites are awash in shovelware, mostly because it's relatively easy to do and can be an automated process. Shovelware in and of itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, but an online site needs much more to full leverage the advantages of presenting news in a different medium.

Skyscrapers -- these are long, tall ads, usually in the left margin of a newspaper Web site. The also are referred to as waterfall ads.

Spam – Bulk e-mail that clutters in-boxes. This differs from responsible e-mail advertising in several ways. Legitimate e-mail marketers send only to lists of people who have opted in to receive messages from them. Spammers gather e-mail addresses in bulk through a variety of nefarious means and send mass mailings to all addresses.

Sponsorships – These differ from banner ads in that they generally are anchored on a page and don’t rotate. An advertiser might buy a sponsorship for a given section front, and her ad will appear there all the time.

Targeted advertising – This is an ad or ads that are aimed at a specific consumer or group of consumers. Where ROS ads cast a wide net hoping to pull in the target audience (i.e. women), targeted ads are served only to the specific demographic that is desired.

Unique visitors – This is perhaps the most slippery and, at times, deceptive way of measuring audience on the Internet. In general, a unique user is one individual who visits a website. But this number can be measured several ways, each of which an skew the numbers. So when someone says their site has 400,000 unique users per month, you have to know if that’s measured with IP or browser/IP pairing. IP alone can be very deceptive since numerous people can share the same IP. Browser/IP pairing is a bit more reliable since it consider what specific browser is coming to the site by planting a cookie. But that can be deceptive, too, since it’s tied to the browser rather than the actual user. If I use multiple browsers (Internet Explorer at home and work, or Opera, Internet Explorer and Mozilla on the same computer), I’ll be seen as multiple users when in fact I am a single “unique” user. The same is true if I turn off cookies on my computer.

Up-sells – This is the cornerstone of the online newspaper business model. In short, it involves up-selling a print advertiser to the Web. In general terms, it works something like this. An advertiser calls in wanting to put an ad in the classifieds for a car. The phone room person quotes the price, noting that the pricing includes the Internet. If the seller says he doesn’t want the Internet, the phone room person will try to sell him on the advantage of having the ad online. Some papers “force” the up-sell, meaning ads go online whether the consumer wants it or not. Others use the “assumptive sell,” which is the example above. We state the full price assuming the consumer will want the whole package and unbundled it if they don’t.

URL – Uniform resource locator. Think of this as an Internet street address. It directs your browser to the site you are looking for.

Verticals – Traditionally, the major classified product lines: automotive, real estate and recruitment. This term also can refer to other deep niches of advertising or content. For example: “We are developing a fishing and boating vertical for our site.”

Waterfall ads –These are long, tall ads, usually in the left margin of a newspaper Web site. They also are referred to as skyscrapers.

Weblogs – A shortening of Web log. The format this class uses to discuss online journalism. They allow for individuals or groups of individuals to post comments, links, etc., and give the rest of the community the ability to comment on those posts. Some weblogs don’t allow any comments on the posts (i.e. Instapundit.com).

XML – Extensible Markup Language. This is a means of embedding code in content that describes the content. The code can then invoke certain styles, etc., appropriate to that content type. For instance, reporter bylines might be wrapped with the XML tag BYLINE. That way, whenever the content is being pulled from the database, the computer will see that the words enclosed in the BYLINE tag and should be given a look and feel that has been assigned to bylines in that publication. The advantage to this is that once you've wrapped content in XML, it's easier to change the look. If you change the way BYLINE's look, you just change the code the BYLINE XML invokes. You don't have to find every byline on the site and change the code around it to make it look the way you want.

XML syndication – Often facilitated by RSS, this allows sites to pick up headlines feeds from other sites, thus sharing information and providing links to relevant content.

ZAG wall – A form of registration that requires Zip Code, Age and Gender before users are allowed to view content.