First to the party: Building a first-party data strategy

Glossary

Terminology	Definitions
Ad server	Technology that serves, tracks and optimises online ads for brands across digital publishers. Ad-serving companies can help make online advertising more streamlined for brands by serving as a single point of contact across a number of publishers.
Ad tracking	The method for recording campaign delivery metrics between adservers. Third-party adserving tags or 1x1 tracking pixels are commonly used to track this data.
Attribution	Attribution is the technique used to measure the monetary impact a piece of communication has on real business goals. For example: sales (volume and total), profit, revenue and retention. The application of attribution modelling in digital advertising allows marketers to understand what events (e.g. display ad exposure, active search, search ad exposure, price comparison site) truly influence individuals to convert and thus allocate credit to different formats and tactics within the customer path to purchase. Early attribution models include first-touch and last-touch attribution. Models broadly recognised as more accurate include, but not only, multi-touch linear, multi-touch time decay and multi-touch algorithm-based.
Browser	A web browser, or simply "browser," is an application used to access and view websites. Common web browsers include Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Apple Safari.
CDP	Focused on storing and leveraging first-party customer data, mostly for marketing.
Click	An interaction between a user and the browser in which the user moves their cursor or pointer to an active area of the screen and then deliberately interacts with that area by clicking a button on their device, triggering an event. In the case of touch-screen devices, the user “clicks” by touching the active area with their finger
CMP (Consent Management Platform)	A CMP is an application used by website owners to manage the process of confirming a user’s consent to any terms and conditions which may be associated with the use of the website being accessed. CMPs help website owners comply with regulations regarding consent collection by automating the process of informing users of the terms and conditions, as well as any data collection policies that may be in effect for the website.
Content management systems (CMS)	Software tools or web services for creating and amending website content. Typically, CMS are browser-based web applications running on a server. All enable users to readily add new pages within an existing page template. One of the most common CMS systems is Drupal.
Contextual Targeting	Contextual targeting is a subset method of ad targeting. It allows advertisers to serve ads to users based on the “context” of the content on the page that the user is visiting. For example, an advertiser in the automotive industry might choose to match their ads with all blogs that talk about car repairs, track racing, car insurance, and car reviews. To accomplish this functionality, contextual targeting typically relies on content being labelled with certain keywords by a publisher and having advertisers select those keywords when configuring an ad campaign to match contextually relevant ads with certain types of content.
Cookie	In the context of adtech, a cookie is a small text file containing data that’s downloaded and stored locally on a user’s computer within the file directory of their web browser. This information is most commonly used for remembering a user’s preferences on certain websites, providing an enhanced browsing experience. Cookies have also traditionally been used in advertising to identify users, based on the unique sets of data found in the stored cookies. This data has traditionally allowed advertisers to target ads toward users based on their interests, among other details which have been identifiable via a technique called “cookie matching” or “cookie syncing”. However, these advertising techniques will be phased out of ad tech.
CPM (Cost Per Mille) (aka “Cost Per Thousand Impressions”)	In digital marketing, the term CPM (cost per mille) refers to the price an advertisers pay for serving 1,000 ad impressions through a publisher source.
CRM	Focused on storing and leveraging known lead data, mostly for sales pipelines.
Customer Data Platform (CDP)	A customer data platform (CDP) is software that collects and unifies first-party customer data—from multiple sources—to build a single, coherent, complete view of each customer.
Customer relationship management (CRM)	Customer relationship management is a technology or software used to manage the relationships and interactions that a company has with its customers.
Data Management Platform (DMP)	Platforms that allow advertisers, agencies, publishers and others to control their own first-party audience and campaign data, compare it to third-party audience data, and give the ability to make smarter media buying and campaign planning decisions via behavioural targeting or extending audiences via lookalike modelling. Advertisers and agencies generally utilise DMPs in order to buy more effectively while publishers typically utilise DMPs in order to segment their audiences and sell more effectively.
Data Protection Authority (DPA)	DPAs are independent public authorities that supervise, through investigative and corrective powers, the application of the data protection law. They provide expert advice on data protection issues and handle complaints lodged against violations of the General Data Protection Regulation and the relevant national laws.
Demand-side platform (DSP)	An advertising technology platform which allows marketers to manage their online media campaigns by facilitating the buying of auction-based display media and audience data across multiple inventory and data suppliers in a centralised management platform.
First-party Data	First-party data is the information you collect directly from your audience or customers. It includes data from behaviours, actions or interests demonstrated across your website(s) or app(s), data you have in your CRM, subscription data, social data. It can also include non-online information such as completed surveys, customer feedback and other customer information stored in your CRM database.
FLoC	Federated Learning of Cohorts is a type of web tracking. It groups people into "cohorts" based on their browsing history for the purpose of interest-based advertising.
GA3	Google Analytics 3
GA4	Google Analytics 4
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)	The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the new legal framework governing the use of personal data across EU markets from 25 May 2018. It's implemented in UK law by the Data Protection Act 2018.
IAB Europe	IAB Europe is the Trade Association representing National IAB's across Europe to European decision-makers. IAB UK is represented on the Board of IAB Europe.
ICO (Information Commissioner's Office)	The ICO is the UK's independent data protection regulator, which upholds information rights in the public interest, promotes openness by public bodies and data privacy for individuals.
Internet protocol (IP) address	An IP address is a unique number assigned to each device upon connecting to the Internet. An IP address can be dynamic, meaning it changes over time, or it can be static, meaning it does not change.
Key Performance Indicator (KPI)	A measurable value that demonstrates how a company is performing against its key objectives.
Local Storage	A hard drive or solid-state drive (SSD) directly attached to the device being referenced. The term would be used to contrast the storage in that unit from the storage on servers in the local network or on the Internet (see SAN, NAS and cloud storage)
Personal data	Personal data is covered by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and comprises any information relating to a person who can be directly or indirectly identified in particular by reference to an identifier, including name, identification number, location data or online identifier.
Personally-Identifiable Information (PII)	Information that can be used to distinguish or trace an individual’s identity—such as name, social security number, biometric data records—either alone or when combined with other personal or identifying information that is linked or linkable to a specific individual (e.g., date and place of birth, mother’s maiden name, etc.).
Programmatic	The buying and selling of online ad inventory through automated methods rather than human actions. This includes but is not limited to Real-Time Bidding (RTB).
Script	Scripts are used by the majority of websites. On the web, a script is a set of instructions, usually written in JavaScript, that is executed by the web browser rather than by the client computer processor or the web server. Scripts such as these typically run in the background of a website without a website visitors’ knowledge.
Second-party Data	Is essentially someone else’s first-party data. The seller collects data straight from their audience, and it all comes from one source. You can feel confident in its accuracy. You purchase second-party data directly from the company that owns it. There’s no middleman in such a transaction. It requires you to seek out companies with the data you need and form a relationship with them. Second-party data is similar to first-party data, but it comes from a source other than your own audience. It could include data from many of the same sources first-party data comes from, such as activity on websites, mobile app usage, social media or customer surveys. While second-party data is a relatively new concept compared to first- and third-party data, it can be extremely useful if you find the right data set.
Site analytics	The reporting and analysis of website activity – in particular user behaviour on the site. All websites have a weblog which can be used for this purpose, but other third-party software is available for a more sophisticated service.
Tag	In advertising, a “tag” is used to define a typically short “snippet” or “block” of code, which is placed on a website, providing some sort of functionality, often in relation to a part of a broader system, software, or set of functionalities with which the tag is associated. In the context of ad tech, tags are sometimes used by publishers to deploy certain functionalities to their websites – such as the functionalities of ad tech tools including ad servers, SSPs (supply-side platforms), and DMPs (data management platforms), among others.
Targeting	Various criteria to make the delivery of an advertisement more precise (age, geographical location or behavioural cues etc.)
Third-party Data	Third-party data is data that you buy from outside sources that are not the original collectors of that data. Instead, you buy it from large data aggregators that pull it from various other platforms and websites where it was generated. These aggregators pay publishers and other data owners for their 1st party data. The aggregators then collect it into one large data set and sell it as 3rd party data. Many different companies sell this kind of data, and it is accessible through many different avenues. Third-party data differs from second-party data in that third-party data can be amalgamated from many different sources, while second-party data is originally accrued from a single, first-party source.
Traffic	The number of visitors who come to a website.
Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF)	The IAB Europe Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) is the only GDPR consent solution built by the industry for the industry, creating a true industry-standard approach. TCF v2.0 enables consumers to grant or withhold consent and also exercise their ‘right to object' to data being processed. Consumers also gain more control over whether and how vendors may use certain features of data processing, for example, the use of precise geolocation.
User	An anonymous person who uses a web browser to access web content.