Definition

A fake bid in programmatic auctions designed to artificially inflate prices without intent to win. The ad tech equivalent of sending your friend to bid up prices at an estate sale.

Example Usage

We suspect ghost bids in our exchange are driving CPMs up 40% without corresponding demand quality improvements.

Origin

Emerged with real-time bidding ecosystem complexity in the early 2010s

Fun Fact

Ghost bidding is technically prohibited by most exchanges but remains difficult to detect and prove in real-time auctions.

Source: Programmatic advertising and ad fraud terminology

Related Terms

Intermediate

micro-conversion

Small user actions indicating progress toward a primary goal, like newsletter signups or video views. The participation trophy of marketing metrics, celebrating tiny victories on the path to actual business outcomes.

📣 Marketing / Advertising
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zombie account

A customer account that's technically active but generates no revenue or engagement, cluttering your metrics like digital dead weight. They're not users, they're ghosts.

📣 Marketing / Advertising
Intermediate

voice of customer

Customer feedback and insights captured through surveys, reviews, support tickets, and other channels that reveal their needs and preferences. Abbreviated VOC, it's all the complaints and suggestions companies collect and then ignore.

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publicity

The art of getting people to pay attention to something through media coverage, press releases, and strategic information drops, ideally without having to pay for advertising. It's what happens when your brand does something newsworthy enough that journalists actually care to write about it. Unlike advertising, publicity is theoretically "earned," though publicists would argue they work pretty hard to make it look effortless.

📣 Marketing / Advertising
Intermediate

bounce

In email marketing, when your carefully crafted message gets rejected and returns to sender like an unwanted boomerang—the digital equivalent of your mail being marked "return to sender." Bounces come in hard (permanent failures like invalid addresses) and soft (temporary issues like full inboxes) varieties. High bounce rates are the email marketer's nightmare and ISPs' favorite excuse to label you as spam.

📣 Marketing / Advertising
Advanced

virulence

In medical terms, how aggressively a disease can mess you up. In marketing, how quickly and devastatingly a campaign can spread (for better or worse). The measure of potency, whether it's a virus destroying cells or a brand message destroying your competitor's market share.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

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See “ghost bid” in Corporate Speak, Gen-Z Slang, Pirate Speak, and more.

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