Glossary

The content management system’s ask, when a programmatic slot is coming up, for what should play in it — one face, one moment — and the answer that comes back. In full, a programmatic ad request. Tracked end to end — which partners were offered the opportunity, which won, what was charged, whether the play was confirmed. The product’s own code and older interfaces historically call this a recommendation; that name predates the platform speaking real-time bidding and must not be used in writing. Distinct from the bid request, which is the platform offering the same opportunity onward to a demand partner.

See also: bid request.

How CityScreen Context fills a programmatic slot that no programmatic guaranteed campaign claims — the default of the four sales models and the one the others are measured against. Every demand partner named on the covering price list is offered the opportunity together, the bids that come back are compared, and the winner pays the second price. Only partners the operator has connected and priced take part, so in industry terms this is a private auction rather than an open one.

Industry term: private auction.

A booked campaign with a reserved volume of ad plays at an agreed price, approved by the operator before it runs and then pushed straight into the content management system, which plays it in classic slots of its own loop rather than putting it through the auction. It automates a classic direct buy — the operator stops hand-managing creative changes, and proof of play comes back to the buyer through the platform instead of by spreadsheet.

The price list governing which faces a demand partner may book automated guaranteed campaigns on, and at what price. Carries a frequency-based price grid rather than a floor price, and the two ceilings that bound how much may be booked at all. Edited on its own screen, separate from the price lists that govern real-time bidding.

A per-organization, per-demand-partner setting listing partners whose creatives are confirmed the moment they arrive, with no human review and no position consulted. Creatives from a partner not on the list follow the normal review path. CS Context’s own file checks still run; only the human decision is skipped.

See also: moderation request.

An outstanding amount, not a wallet and not a prepaid budget. Each organization sees its own balance (delivery revenue earned and not yet paid over), what it owes the platform, what the platform owes it, and one figure per demand partner it sells to. A balance rises as delivery is confirmed and falls only when somebody records a payment. Nothing in the platform reads one before deciding anything — there is no credit limit and no suspension threshold.

CS Context’s offer of an upcoming advertising slot to a demand partner — the message that opens every real-time-bidding transaction, carrying the face, the moment and the constraints an answer must meet. One ad request from the content management system fans out into a bid request to every demand partner the covering RTB price list names, together.

See also: ad request.

The calendar month CS Context reports revenue over. A scheduled job closes the month and produces the period’s figures; it is a reporting boundary, not a state change — financial transactions are written continuously as delivery is confirmed, and closing a period does not lock or alter them.

A slot in the content management system’s loop that is sold before it plays. The content management system controls the playout — either it already knows the creative, which is an automated guaranteed booking, or it knows which partner to ask for one, which is a private deal. No internet connection is needed at the moment of play; a private-deal slot that gets no answer falls back to a configured action. One classic spot cannot be held by an automated guaranteed campaign and a private deal at once.

See also: programmatic slot.

The organization-facing side of the CS Context interface, where an organization’s employees manage their own inventory, prices, creatives, campaigns and reports. What an employee can do inside it is decided by their employee role; what they can see is bounded by their organization, and for a viewer possibly by a single legal entity.

The credential that lets an organization’s content management system ask CS Context what to play, presented on every call the content management system makes. One token per organization — not per face, not per player, not per demand partner and not time-limited — created with the organization and regenerable at will, with no overlap between old and new. The interface labels it the recommendation access token.

The platform’s cut of a transaction — a percentage, optionally with a flat minimum. Configured per organization and per deal type. Older parts of the product call the same thing a fee or a tax; all three name one concept.

A piece of advertising content submitted to play on faces — the unit that is reviewed, approved and played. In the real-time-bidding path it arrives from a demand partner and produces a moderation request; in the automated guaranteed path the interface calls it a layout.

An additional per-face attribute defined for a particular integration type, carrying data the standard face model has no place for. Which custom fields exist is a property of the integration, not something an organization configures for itself.

The RTB price list that covers every face nobody has explicitly targeted. Each organization has exactly one — the first price list it creates becomes the default automatically, another can take the role only by being made the default itself, and the default cannot be deleted. Taking a face off any other RTB price list returns it to the default rather than leaving the face uncovered.

See also: RTB price list.

A buyer of airtime on the operators' faces offered through CS Context: a DSP or another buying platform. A partner can buy only after four steps: the platform administrator registers it, the organization enables it, a price list admits it, and the partner gets the identifiers it needs to call in. It pulls the inventory catalogue itself and buys airtime on the faces its price lists open. An exchange SSP differs: it can also supply inventory to the platform.

See also: exchange SSP.

An organization-defined review group — legal, brand safety, and so on — that employees can belong to. Positions route creative review. A moderation request is put to every position the organization has defined, and each records its own verdict. A position is not a job title and grants no permissions; permissions come from the employee role.

The organization role that manages the organization itself — its employees, positions, legal entities and settings. Distinct from the platform-wide administrator role, which belongs to the operator of the installation and not to any organization.

The organization role that runs day-to-day commercial operations — inventory, prices, campaigns, creatives and reports — without managing employees, positions or legal entities.

The organization role dedicated to reviewing creatives, for the positions the employee belongs to. Excluded from the audit log.

The top-level role of an organization and its ultimate point of contact, holding everything the admin role holds and standing above it.

The read-only organization role. The only role that can be narrowed to a single legal entity, which restricts what inventory the employee sees.

A counterparty exchange CS Context is connected to, in either direction — supplying inventory to it, or drawing inventory from it. Distinct from a demand partner, which is always a buyer of this platform’s inventory.

One append-only record of money moving as a result of delivery — written per confirmed ad play for real-time bidding, never edited or deleted afterwards. Not every sales model produces them the same way. A programmatic guaranteed campaign’s whole budget is written as transactions once, at activation, with nothing further per play; automated guaranteed campaigns carry a price for the campaign as a whole in the campaign’s own data; private deals settle outside the platform.

The interface’s name for a creative submitted through the automated guaranteed path. A layout is reviewed as a creative in its own right and does not produce a moderation request.

One of an organization’s billing identities, with its own tax details and its own attached faces. An organization with several legal entities uses them to keep inventory and invoicing separate; an organization with one uses its organization profile instead.

The video or image file behind a creative. CS Context verifies the file when the creative is submitted, and the content management system fetches and stores its own copy, so the moment of play does not depend on downloading anything.

The record CS Context creates when a demand partner submits a creative for review through the real-time bidding path. It carries the creative, the scope it is meant for, and the review state. Creatives arriving through the automated guaranteed path do not create one — they are reviewed as layouts.

One employee position’s verdict on a moderation request — confirm or reject, with an optional reason. Every position defined by the organization records its own; rejection reasons are passed back to the demand partner.

The unit price of one ad play on a programmatic guaranteed price list, optionally varying by time of day. The abbreviation is not expanded anywhere in the product.

See also: programmatic guaranteed price list.

The object that decides how CS Context airtime is priced and who may buy it. Three kinds exist, one per sales model that is billed on the platform — the RTB price list, the programmatic guaranteed price list and the automated guaranteed price list. A private deal has no price list, because its price is agreed outside the platform.

See also: RTB price list.

A named tier of demand partners inside an RTB price list, intended to let a lower-numbered group’s winner take precedence over a higher-numbered group’s.

See also: RTB price list.

A reserved, non-auction path in which a classic slot is sold ahead of time to a named partner, whose own system selects what plays in it; CS Context passes the request through, records the delivery and applies its commission. The deal’s volume and price are agreed outside the platform — one supported partner reports what it paid, the other transmits no price at all. Related in spirit to the industry’s preferred deal and private marketplace, but neither of those describes it, because there is no curation step, no competing buyers and no fixed price agreed inside the platform. Unrelated to the deal of CS Deals, which is a sales contract.

A buy negotiated and paid for in advance that reserves a budget and a number of ad plays per hour on named faces, then delivers in the same programmatic slots the auction fills, drawing down its reservation rather than bidding afresh. Price and volume are both settled before delivery begins, and while a reserved hour is running the campaign takes the slot ahead of anyone bidding for it.

The per-face, per-day allowance of ad plays a programmatic guaranteed campaign has reserved, broken down by hour. Computed when the campaign is reserved so that two such campaigns on the same face do not reserve the same airtime twice. Despite the name, it is not a slot in the player’s loop — the slots a campaign actually plays in are programmatic slots.

See also: programmatic slot.

The price list a programmatic guaranteed campaign is priced from — an amount per ad play, for one creative length over one date range, optionally varying by time of day. Unlike an RTB price list, several can cover the same face at once. Reserving a campaign freezes the matching entry onto it, together with the commission of that moment, and later edits to the price list do not reach a campaign already reserved.

A slot in the content management system’s loop that belongs to nobody until seconds before it plays. The content management system sends CS Context an ad request, and CS Context decides what the slot carries — a programmatic guaranteed campaign still owed plays takes it first, otherwise the auction does. An internet connection at the moment of play is mandatory.

See also: classic slot.

A sequence of creatives and its playback schedule, produced by a private-deal partner’s system and handed to the content management system to play directly, instead of CS Context deciding what plays at the moment of each opportunity.

A stretch of time an automated guaranteed price list puts out of bounds, excluded when CS Context works out how much airtime is still available to sell against that price list’s grid. It belongs to the automated guaranteed price list specifically — an RTB price list carries no restriction period, and real-time-bidding availability is never reduced by one.

See also: automated guaranteed price list.

The price list behind real-time bidding. One RTB price list decides, together, which demand partners may buy, which faces they may buy, what the floor price is, and how the answers that come back are compared — bids compared on price ordinarily, or the first usable answer taken in waterfall mode. A face carries at most one RTB price list; taking a face off one moves it to the organization’s default price list rather than leaving it uncovered. Unrelated to the automated guaranteed price list, which governs a different sales path and can cover the same face alongside it.

An external identifier a particular demand-partner integration expects when it refers to a face. It belongs to that partner’s own catalogue and has nothing to do with the screens and faces of CS Context — it is stored on a face only so that the partner can be answered in its own terms.

Which content management system or exchange operates an organization’s screens. Independent of which demand partners that organization sells to.

The product’s own name, in its interface, for a photo capture — a timestamped photograph of a screen while a given advertisement is on it, taken up to three times a day as visual proof of play. It does not mean a play of the advertisement, and documentation says photo capture.

The interface CS Context publishes for demand partners and exchanges — the platform’s own protocol, not an implementation of anyone else’s. A partner integrates against it to receive offers, answer with bids, submit creatives for review and read back what was played.

One complete pass of pulling an inventory catalogue from a source system. Every record the pass touches is stamped with the run, which is how CS Context tells what the source has stopped reporting.

What kind of demand partner a registered buyer is, and therefore how CS Context talks to it. The type decides whether the partner takes part in bidding at all, whether several accounts of it may exist, and which protocol is used.

What an organization publishes about the creatives it will accept — free text, optionally with attached documents. Held separately at organization level and at face level, and read by people rather than checked by the platform. The industry calls the structured version of this creative specs; this is the unstructured version.

An RTB price list’s alternative comparison rule — take the first usable answer instead of comparing bids. Every demand partner the price list admits is asked at the same moment, and whichever answer arrives first with a bid wins, at the amount it bid; there is no price comparison and no fallback. Unlike the industry’s waterfall, there is no ordered fall-through of tiers — the partner order recorded on the price list plays no part in who wins.

See also: RTB price list.

The notification CS Context sends the winning demand partner, carrying the clearing price, dispatched before the answer goes back to the content management system. Where to send it arrives with the bid itself, and an answer without a win notice URL is rejected.