The MDA along with Effective Measure have designed an informative glossary to bring clarity and explain newly introduced and specialized terminology relevant to Media Agencies, Advertisers and Digital Content Owners.

Access devices
The different machines, tools and gadgets used to access the Internet. Example: mobile device, tablet, desktop computer, laptop computer, etc.

AID (Automatic Interaction Detection)
A multivariate statistical technique used to find the interaction between a set of predictor variables and a single dependent variable.

Audience Measurement
The process of measuring a websites audience to arrive at a number of metrics that provide insight into the website visitation. This can be achieved via the user of cookies, or panel based methodologies, or both (hybrid measurement).

Audience Reach
Calculate the total de-duplicated audience of a combination of websites, publishers or networks, to arrive at a figure that represents the unique audience covered by those multiple properties.

Browser
Software applications including Internet Explorer and Netscape etc - that are used to interact with the World Wide Web. One PC can have multiple browsers.

Category Market Size
The total de-duplicated and aggregate figures for a specific audience & category combination.

Category Ranking
Ordered list of websites in a particular audience and category combination, sorted by Unique Browsers by default.

Click Stream
The reporting of where users were before (referrals) and in some cases where possible, after (destinations) visiting a reporting entity (e.g. website or a section of a website).

Content Stream
The number of times a piece of content is streamed / requested by the browser (either video or audio).

Cookie
A file placed on the user's computer during an interaction with the Internet, in order to collect information or track Internet surfing. The user may choose to accept or refuse the installation of cookies on their disk (through their browser’s configuration) or may remove them from the disk at any time.

Crawler
A web crawler is a computer program that browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner. Also known as ants, automatic indexers, bots, web spiders or web robots.

Currency
The accepted market standard for audience measurement.

Digital Audience Benchmarking
A common measurement methodology which can be applied across numerous websites to provide a fair and consistent ranking of their popularity, with insights into specific metrics and demographic details as compared to the market average.

Digital Helix™ Census Page Tagging Technology
A market wide generic piece of measurement JavaScript which is placed on a website; including support of both a First and Third Party Cookie for accurately calculating unique Browsers.

Digital Helix™ Tracking Software
A piece of software, which recruited panelists opt in to install that measures their behaviour across the Internet, including every website and page that they visit. This information is then aggregated to form a representative online view of the Internet population in a particular market.

Disqualify
In a survey "Is Disqualify" will stop the survey and no results will be recorded, which is most commonly used if the respondent is under 14 years of age.

Domain
An aggregation of unique sites that automatically roll up under the same root name, as determined by a company's server architecture.

The Domain name is generally part of the URL - i.e. .domain-name.*. Where domain- name is the name of the domain and * is for example com, net or edu. This includes all the Web pages that are under that domain.

EM OpenView
This is Effective Measure's hybrid measurement methodology at work, and consists of a combined view between census based data collected through tags found on sites, and weighted and scaled panel figures for sites which do not have our tag on them. OpenView provides a combined view of verified websites that have tagged up and broader international sites such as Facebook and Google.

Frequency of Visitation
Frequency measures how often visitors come to a website. It is calculated by dividing the total number of sessions (or visits) by the total number of unique visitors. Sometimes it is used to measure the loyalty of your audience.

Hierarchy
Pages or URL’s form a Site. Domains are formed by the aggregation of unique Sites. Properties are formed by the aggregation of Domains and URL’s.

Hit
Each element of a requested page recorded as an individual entry on a web site's server log file. The number of hits bears no relationship to the number of pages downloaded, Please note that the industry no longer recognises the term “Hit” as a valid metric for measuring traffic to a particular website as the number of hits bears no relationship to the number of pages downloaded, and therefore cannot be used to determine estimates of consumers’ opportunities to see (OTS).

Home page
The page designated as the main point of entry of a Web site (or main page) or the starting point when a browser first connects to the Internet.

Host
Any computer on a network that offers services or connectivity to other computers on the network. A host has an IP address associated with it.

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)
A set of codes called markup tags in a plain text (*.txt) file that determine what information is retrieved and how it is rendered by a browser. There are two kinds of markup tags: anchor and format. Anchor tags determine what is retrieved, and format tags determine how it is rendered.

HTML Page
A HyperText Markup Language document stored in a directory on a Web server and/or created dynamically at the time of the request for the purpose of satisfying that request. In addition to text, an HTML page may include graphics, video, audio, and other files.

Hybrid online measurement system
A system that integrates panel and site based data – linked back to people and metrics that are accurately calibrated, weighted and projected.

Hyperlink
A hyperlink is a reference to a document that the reader can directly follow or that is followed automatically. Also know as a link.

IAB
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is the peak trade association for online advertising in a number of countries.

Internet Server
Hardware and software solution used to support the provision of on-line services, in particular for data access.

IP Address
The Internet Protocol Address is an identification number attached to an Internet connection. A single computer can have a different address for each connection it services. An IP address may correspond to several different computers (e.g. when using a proxy).

ISP (Internet Service Provider)
An organisation that provides access to the Internet. An ISP can be a commercial provider, a corporate computer network, a school, college, university, or the government.

Log File
A file that records transactions that have occurred on the Web server.

Normalisation
The process of removing statistical error from measured data.

Number of People
The number of people accessing a reporting layer (e.g. website or section of a website). This information is based on a representative sample of the market population.

Online Ad Spend
A general reference to the total % of advertising dollars which are placed online. In developing markets there is a significant opportunity to channel advertising spend to online channels with the right data and oversight mechanisms in-place.

OTS (opportunities to see)
A measure of the number of chances an average member of the target audience will have of being exposed to an advertisement in an advertising campaign.

Over counting
The process of counting a variable more the actual number due to system restrictions or other factors.

Page
Multimedia document, consisting of files delivered by one or more servers, and presented in the user's browser window. Files are presented in one or more frames (visual subdivisions of a page).

Page Views
A file, or combination of files, sent to a valid browser as a result of that browser's request being received by the server. In effect, one request by a valid browser should result in one Page View being claimed.

Panel
A panel - whether for TV, Radio or Internet - is a continuous sample of people that are chosen with like characteristics to that of the universe to be measured. A panel should be randomly selected so that people with like characteristics have an equal chance of being selected. A panel should be representative so that its behaviour (i.e. viewing, listening or surfing) can be projected up to the universe being measured. Please note that samples and panels are similar except for ONE fact. Panels are used for REPEAT observations whereas samples are interviewed ONCE. Therefore only panels can deliver "longitudinal" analysis like Reach.

Property
A consolidation of multiple Domains and URLs that are owned by a company, corporation, organization, government agency, private group or other institution that has a controlling interest in those Domains or URLs.

A Domain or Unique Site can exist in only one Property to prohibit double counting. A site that is co-owned can be placed in only one Property.

A Property includes all Domains belonging to that Property and all sites that automatically roll into those Domains.

It should be noted that an organisation can have more than one Property provided the above criteria are satisfied - this is unusual because companies generally wish to group all domains to achieve a higher ratings.

Proxy (server)
A relay server allowing an access provider, or other intermediary, to store locally the Web pages requested most often. Queries managed by proxies are not usually passed on to the main site and are thus not included in the latter's audience, unless a particular procedure is used.

(Re-)targeting
Select user do a survey based on previously provided demographic information or responses to other questions.

Robots (or Bots)
A software program that visits pages of the Web to create indexes for search engines. Commercial robots are programs that are used to fetch Web pages, but the user never has an opportunity to see the content of the requested documents. Personal robots provide the user with the opportunity to see the requested Web pages, usually in an offline mode. Also referred to as spiders, bots, crawlers and intelligent agent.

Run of Network (RON)
Term describes the full scope of a advertising network.

Segmentation Panel
Surveyed users who are grouped into a number of segmentation categories based on detailed answers to psychographic and lifestyle choices, then used to draw inferences about the types of visitors a website attracts.

Server
A computer, which distributes files that are shared across a network.

Server Log
A log file or several log files automatically created and maintained by a server of activity performed by it.

Sessions / Visits
A series of one or more Page Views, served to one browser, which ends when there is a gap of 30 minutes or more between successive Page Views for that browser.

Simulation
The process of representing certain key characteristics or behaviors of a selected physical or abstract system.

Site
Site is the consolidation of multiple URL's associated with a domain name. A URL is considered a Site based on the absence of forward slashes in its name and that it general ends in and is associated with a domain name.

Site Centric
Reporting based on a cookie, usually as part of a web analytics implementation.

Site Tagging
The placement of a JavaScript or beacon file within the HTML source of a website in order to facilitate measurement or some other form of additional functionality.

Tag Code
The JavaScript or Beacon code placed on a page to collect visitation data about the users.

Tagged website
A website which has implemented the Digital Helix™ Census Page Tagging Technology. Traffic measurement using browser-side methods such as additional tracking code which runs when a page is rendered, rather than server-side methods such as log files.

Time Spent
The Average Total Time spent by a user during the reporting time period, either Hourly, Daily, Weekly or Monthly. Reported as an aggregated average of all users.

Trending
Comparing individual websites, publishers or networks over a user definable period of time.

Universe
The total population of audience being measured.

Unique Browsers
A unique device (e.g. a computer or mobile phone) that has made requests for content to the site in the period being measured.

Unique Visitors
A unique visitor is a statistic describing a unit of traffic to a website, counting each visitor only once in the time frame of the report. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unique_visitor

Unique Browsers vs Unique Visitors
The Unique Browser (UB) figure in Effective Measure is the most accurate representation of the Digital Helix methodology, whereas the Unique Visitors (UV) figures include additional traffic from "untrusted" cookies. When we are unable to set or retrieve valid cookies on a device, this traffic is flagged and excluded from the UB figure. Portions of this traffic are included in the UV figure however, and more closely resemble the way some other measurement systems approach their methodology.

Simply put, the UB figure more closely resembles the number of legitimate people visiting the site and the UV figure provides a better comparison with other measurement methodologies.

URL
Uniform Resource Locator, the addressing system used in the World Wide Web and other Internet resource.

Website Rankings
For a given content category, market or audience, website rankings will provide a visitor based view of how websites compare to each other.