Immersive Media Glossary

180 Degree Video – Video where a consumer is able to look around within the view of a half circle (i.e. 180 degrees). This type of video allows publishers and developers to keep the user’s attention to the front where the action of the video often is. It also creates a more seamless consumer experience where users don’t have to spin their head or mouse to view the content.

360 Video – Also referred to as immersive videos or spherical videos, these are video recordings where a view in every direction is recorded at the same time, shot using a 360 degree camera or a collection of cameras.

360 VR – VR / 360 content where the headset is not “tethered” or attached to a powerful computer, but instead is experienced through a smartphone and/or a cardboard headset.

Ad Network -Advertising network or an ad network is a company that connects advertisers to websites that want to host advertisements. The key function of an ad network is an aggregation of ad supply from publishers and matching it with advertiser’s demand.

Ad Tech Stack – Tech stacks are thrown around like acronyms. As it relates to advertising, an ad tech stack is a grouping of technologies that marketers and advertisers leverage to conduct and improve their marketing activities. Often, the focus of ad technologies is to make difficult processes easier, and to measure the impact of marketing and advertising activities and drive more efficient spending.

Algorithm -An algorithm is a set of unambiguous instructions that a mechanical computer can execute. A complex algorithm is often built on top of other, simpler, algorithms.

Artificial Intelligence – The theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages. AI enables businesses to better leverage the large amounts of data that naturally result from the consumption of Immersive Advertising and Content and make sophisticated recommendations and predictions that result in overall better ad performance.

Augmented Reality (AR) –  AR is an enhanced version of reality where live, direct or indirect views of physical real-world environments are augmented with superimposed computer-generated images over a user’s view of the real-world, thus enhancing one’s current perception of reality. Taking off like crazy, Augmented Reality is being used in Social Media campaigns, App, and Digital Ad Campaigns. It’s also used in experiential, pop-up, and influencer based campaigns.

Business Intelligence – Business Intelligence (BI) refers to technologies, applications and practices for the collection, integration, analysis, and presentation of business information. The purpose of Business Intelligence is to support better business decision making.

Camera Array – A system of multiple cameras arranged in order to capture multiple images of the same moment that can later be stitched together to create a spherical image. (IAB)

Chatbot – A chatbot is a type of bot designed to interact with humans conversationally, based on its programming. A chatbot can automate the process of interacting with your website visitors and social media followers in an attempt to create the best user experience. (Hubspot)

Conversion Funnel – A conversion funnel is an eCommerce term that describes the different stages in a buyer’s journey leading up to a purchase.

Creative Optimization – When a Smart Ad is adjusted creatively, to showcase consumer preferences in images, messaging or design elements based on overall performance or on audience segment. Leveraging proprietary data captured directly from with in the ad unit, creative can be tracked and optimized in real-time and throughout an entire campaign.  (also see Optimization)

Device Motion – Immersive Ads introduce “device motion” as a new metric. Because of a smartphone’s sensory inputs (gyroscope, magnetometer, accelerometer etc.), consumers can engage with immersive ads (content) on a mobile device without actually “clicking” on an ad. Instead, simply by moving their smartphone in any direction a consumer can easily engage with branded content (ads) without fear that they’ll be taken away from the content they were consuming. This ultimately can drive time spent with a brand.

Digital Out Of Home (DOOH) – Don’t confuse the acronym with anything from The Simpsons! Digital Out-of-Home as defined by IAB, is a dynamically-served visual medium that reaches consumers on the move, with advertising that is targeted, un-skippable, and always above the fold. DOOH refers to ads, content, and video showcased outside the home. The message delivery is supported by rich and dynamic digital technology, maximized with real-time capabilities to target consumers on-the-go.

Emerging Technology – A new technology that will substantially alter the business and social environment is considered an emerging technology. These include information technology, psychotechnology, artificial intelligence, on-demand printing, cognitive science, nanotechnology, educational technology, biotechnology, and advanced robotics. All of these are currently improving or developing, or will be developed within the next five to ten years.

First Party AR Ad Delivery – A branded AR experience that is delivered through a brand’s proprietary app (IAB)

Gaze-Through – When a user views a VR advertisement and accepts a call to action. It is the functional equivalent of a click-through and helps measure ad effectiveness. For example, the user is looking at an ad for a specified amount of time and triggers some sort of action (i.e. see more branded content) (IAB)

Hotspots – An area of an ad unit, which when rolled-over/rolled-on by the user’s cursor, triggers an event (i.e. expand ad). (IAB) In the case of ads with 1-touch VR mode, hotspots are triggered by the user’s stare. Hotspots can lead to more content within an ad unit or lead to an external URL.

IAB Compliant – The International Advertising Bureau provides the rules & regulations of digital advertising and therefore, as a marketer or an advertiser, your ads must be compliant to their standards. IAB strives to create guidelines that will help advertisers deliver less annoying ads.

Immersive Advertising – This is the adoption of Immersive Media as an IAB compliant programmatically delivered ad unit. Immersive Advertising has been proven by the likes of Nielsen Media to drive higher brand recall, higher content recall, and increased intent to purchase. Immersive Ad campaigns have also illustrated that they deliver higher levels of engagement (aka interaction rates), more time spent with a brand, and higher click through rates than traditional display and digital video advertising.

Immersive Media – This form of media includes the non-traditional formats driven by emerging technology platforms such as 360 degree video (including 360 images), mobile 360, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), extreme reality (XR), wearables and the internet of things (IoT).

Immersive Technology – Any technology that leverages the 360 space. This means that content that leverages this technology essentially lives inside a sphere. Examples include 360 degree videos, 360 degree images, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), and extreme reality (XR). Some also consider wearables and smart speakers (Amazon Echo, Google Home) as leveraging immersive technology because the enable a brand to be immersed in a consumer’s life.

Interacted View Time (IVT) – Correlates the length of time viewed with interactivity to get an “active” length of time viewed metric. IVT can be compared to Video for cost per seconds viewed.

Interaction Rate – The percentage of viewers that interact with an ad unit. This metric shows an ad’s ability to initiate engagement.

Internet of Things – The interconnection via the Internet of computing devices embedded in everyday objects, enabling them to send and receive data.

Live VR – Virtual reality live video (often 360 degree video) that can be viewed as the event or experience is actually happening through apps such as Facebook, YouTube and other compatible 360 players. (IAB)

Location-Based VR – (Experiential Marketing) A VR experience that takes place outside the home—in a movie theater, mall, amusement park, etc. In location-based VR, a user is wearing a head mounted display and the location itself is designed in a way to heighten the experience further (i.e. if the user walks past a virtual air conditioner, they will feel cold air). One of the benefits of location-based VR is that it provides the user the opportunity to interact with other people. While these experiences have less scale, they can be a value add for advertisers in terms of additional foot traffic and word of mouth from visitors. (IAB)

Mixed Reality (MR) – Mixed reality is a type of hybrid system that involves both physical and virtual elements and environments. It is sometimes described as the bridge between a fully physical environment with no virtual elements, and a completely virtual environment.

Mobile VR – This encompasses virtual reality (VR) content that can be consumed using a mobile device such as a smartphone. Examples of Mobile VR include Samsung Gear VR, Google Daydream, Google Cardboard, and Oculus Go. Some Immersive Ad units (like those made by Advrtas) can also be consumed as Mobile VR experiences by selecting a VR mode icon within the ad unit.

Mobile Optimization – Mobile optimization is the process of ensuring that visitors accessing your website from mobile devices have an engaging and user-friendly experience that’s been optimized for that specific device.

Monoscopic VR – A form of VR that is captured with one lens. Monoscopic VR is used to create flat 360 degree images and is typically less immersive than stereoscopic VR. (IAB)

Neural Networks – Neural networks are a set of algorithms, modeled loosely after the human brain, that are designed to recognize patterns

One-touch VR mode – A feature that allows consumers viewing 360 content to view it in virtual reality at one touch of a button – usually symbolized by a cardboard headset icon.

Optimization – We pride ourselves on how well and how quickly we optimize our ads. In general, optimization is defined by finding an alternative with the most cost effective or highest achievable performance under the given constraints, by maximizing desired factors and minimizing undesired ones. In the advertising world, this could mean adjusting your creative, traffic, or targeting to best match consumer behavior in order to achieve the best performance.

Programmatic Advertising – Programmatic advertising helps automate the decision-making process of media buying by targeting specific audiences and demographics. Programmatic ads are placed using artificial intelligence (AI) and real-time bidding (RTB) for online display, social media advertising, mobile and video campaigns, and is expanding to traditional TV advertising marketplace.

Predictive Analytics – Predictive Analytics is a branch of advanced analytics used to make predictions about unknown future events. Predictive analytics uses techniques from machine learning, data mining, and artificial intelligence to analyze current data and make predictions about the future.

Real Time Bidding (RTB) – Real-time bidding refers to the buying and selling of online ad impressions through real-time auctions that occur in the time it takes a web page to load. Those auctions are often facilitated by ad exchanges or supply-side platforms.

Room Scale VR – A highly immersive VR experience where the user can explore the experience as though they were physically present. The user is able to move in all directions with 6 degrees of freedom motion tracking (i.e. forward/backward, up/down, left/right). This is available today within tethered headsets that use computer generated graphics environments. (IAB)

Self-Optimization – The process of ads being able to optimize themselves without human interaction. This is possible in part because ad delivery, load, view and interactivity is tracked directly from within the ad unit

Six Degrees of Freedom (6DOF) – Refers to the ability of a user to move around in space. With six degrees of freedom, users are able to move forward, backward, up, down, left, and right in a virtual reality experience. Tethered headsets like HTC Vive and Oculus Rift enable six degrees of freedom. With Advrtas Immersive Smart Ads, you are able to leverage the same functionality, by just moving your mobile device.  (IAB)

Smart Ad – Ads that learn and respond to user interaction leading to higher levels of ad performance thereby paving the way for personalized ad engagement. Using the latest developments in artificial intelligence and automation, smart ads turn the ambiguous and highly subjective process of advertising into one that is surprisingly predictable and far more efficient.

Speech Recognition –  Siri, Google Voice, Amazon Alexa all leverage speech recognition.  Speech recognition is a technology that identifies words or phrases in spoken language and converts them into machine readable or audio format.

Stitching – The combination of two or more images or videos in order to create a product that is larger and/or has a higher resolution than the original. This technique is often used to create 360 videos. Stitching can be done manually or automated. Automatic stitching is often cheaper but the stitching may not be as seamless. (IAB)

Supply-Side Platform  (SSP) – Also called a sell-side platform, a supply-side platform is a technology platform to enable web publishers and digital out-of-home (DOOH) media owners to manage their advertising space inventory, fill it with ads, and receive revenue.

Total Brand Time (TBT) – The total number of seconds viewers spent actively interacting with branded content. This number is used to determine the cost per engagement value of the campaign vs. other campaigns and advertising mediums (i.e., video and display ads).

Third Party AR Ad Delivery  – A branded AR ad experience that is delivered by an entity outside of the brand’s content application, such as social media platforms, gaming platforms, 3-D rendering engines/platforms, etc. (IAB)

Three Degrees of Freedom (3DOF)  – Refers to the ability of a user to move around in space. With three degrees of freedom in VR, a user is able to look in every direction but is not able to move around the scene as is possible with six degrees of freedom (i.e. cannot jump or walk). For example, mobile VR and 360 video have three degrees of freedom, while Advrtas Immersive Smart Ads provide six. (IAB)

Virtual Reality – Where the user wears a headset that completely covers their eyes blocking out all their surroundings. Wherever they turn their head they are completely surrounded by a virtual scene that can be created graphically or by capturing real world situations using 360 degree.

Virtual Room – A virtual reality native ad format in which the viewer can choose to enter a room filled with sponsored advertising content. Key components of a virtual room include the environment (the world the user sees in the room), the objects (interactive 3D, 2D and 360 video ads, audio tracks represented in the room), and interactions (produces a transition to another part of the scene or introduces new visual or interactive element).(IAB)

Voice Recognition – (See Speech Recognition)

Volumetric Capture – The ability to capture real people or objects in 3D to be used in VR environments. The opposite technique would be to start with a 3D object and try to make it look realistic. With volumetric capture, a real world object (i.e. a car or sofa) is scanned and re-rendered into a 3D scene. (IAB)

VR Ads In-App – These are advertisements that sit inside of virtual reality app experiences. These are in contrast to Immersive Ads for Mobile that have VR mode because the latter are ads that can be delivered to traditional apps, the mobile web, and desktop browsers that happen to have an optional 1-touch VR mode where users can consume the ad content via a mobile VR headset.

Web GL – A JavaScript API for rendering interactive 3D and 2D graphics within any compatible web browser without the use of plug-ins. (Mozilla)

XR (Extended Reality) – Extended Reality (XR) refers to all real-and-virtual environments generated by computer graphics and wearables. The ‘X’ in XR is simply a variable that can stand for any letter. XR is the parent category that embodies all forms of computer-altered reality, This may include: Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MR), and Virtual Reality (VR). It includes any type of Immersive content.