The following table includes terminology you may encounter in our documentation while building out your integration with Vistar.
| Integration term | Definition |
| Ad exchange | A digital marketplace that enables advertisers and media owners to buy and sell inventory, through real-time auctions. Media owners make inventory available on the ad exchange through the ad platform and media buyers purchase inventory using a DSP (Demand Side Platform). |
| Ad server | A system that enables the request, bidding, and serving of digital ads, as well as reporting on the performance of the campaigns executed. |
| Ad request / ad response | Your CMS makes calls (ad requests) to Vistar’s ad server for an ad. If an ad qualifies for the specified parameters, the ad server returns an ad response to your CMS. |
| Assets | These are transcoded versions of the creative. See Transcoding in this table for more information. |
| CPM | Cost per mille (CPM) is the cost per 1,000 impressions. All pricing in the ad platform is CPM. Media owners can set a CPM floor, which is the minimum they will accept in exchange for displaying 1000 impressions on their screens. This can be set on a network or venue-level. |
| Creatives | The media file ( image or video) uploaded to the ad platform. A creative is for a particular advertiser and can be associated with multiple campaigns. |
| Impression | Vistar measures delivery of advertisements in units of impressions. An impression represents one person seeing one ad. For digital-out-of-home (DOOH) screens, it is not possible to know the true number of people who saw an ad. For that reason, the number of impressions is estimated based on third-party data that the media owner provides to Vistar. |
| Lease | An ad returned by the ad server when a request is made. |
| Network | A collection of venues. A media owner can have one or more networks set up in their account. |
| Proof of play (PoP) | Vistar Media provides a proof of play (PoP) to advertisers to prove that their ads appeared on a screen. The media owner’s player (which rendered the ad) sends a signal back (the PoP) to the ad server. It shows that the ad was displayed and includes a timestamp. |
| Spot | A single play of an ad. |
| Transcoding | The process of automatically generating formats for static and video assets, based on the original file that is uploaded. |
| Venue | A place where ads are displayed. This can represent a single ad unit (such as a billboard) or a physical brick and mortar location (such as a gas station) with multiple screens that display the same ad. |