Definition

Technology that stores, manages, and delivers advertisements to websites or apps, deciding in milliseconds which ad you're about to ignore. The invisible infrastructure making targeted advertising possible and privacy advocates nervous.

Example Usage

Our ad server processes 50 million requests per day, deciding which banner ad will fail to capture attention at incredible scale.

Origin

Developed in the mid-1990s with early commercial servers like NetGravity and DoubleClick (1995-1996)

Fun Fact

Modern ad servers make decisions in under 100 milliseconds, faster than human reaction time, which is why ads appear before you've finished yawning.

Source: Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) technical standards and ad tech infrastructure documentation

Related Terms

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user-generated content

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demand generation

Marketing activities designed to create interest in a product or service where none previously existed, rather than just capturing existing demand. Building the haystack before finding the needle.

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shopping cart abandonment

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Drip Campaign

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Vanity Metrics

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