Glossary · 25 terms
AI advertising, defined.
The terms you meet when you buy ads in ChatGPT, Google’s AI answers and AI apps, each with what it means and how it affects what you buy. Channel facts link to the provider’s own pages.
- Ad review
- Ad review is the check an ad platform runs on an ad, and often on its landing page and advertiser, before the ad is allowed to serve.
- Ads in AI Mode
- Ads in AI Mode are Google Search ads that appear within or alongside responses in Google’s AI Mode, including across follow-up questions.
- Ads in AI Overviews
- Ads in AI Overviews are Google Search, Shopping or Performance Max ads that serve within or alongside an AI Overview, labeled “Sponsored”.
- Agentic advertising
- Agentic advertising is buying and running ad campaigns through AI agents that call an ad platform’s API or MCP tools within limits a person sets.
- AI ad network
- An AI ad network places ads inside AI products such as chatbots, agents and AI search, and the apps that host them earn from the ads.
- AI explainers
- AI explainers are Gemini-generated text that Google may show next to an ad in AI placements; advertisers can’t write, edit, approve or opt out of them.
- AI Max for Search
- AI Max for Search is a suite of Google Ads enhancements for Search campaigns: search term matching, text customization and final URL expansion.
- Attribution window
- An attribution window is the period after an ad click or view during which a conversion is credited to that ad.
- Budget reservation (Admux)
- A budget reservation is the hold Admux places on your prepaid balance for a campaign’s full budget when you submit the campaign.
- Context hints
- Context hints are ad-group descriptions of the products, use cases or needs an ad is relevant to, used for ChatGPT ads instead of exact-match keywords.
- Contextual matching
- Contextual matching picks an ad based on the conversation or AI response around it, not only on a keyword the person typed.
- Conversions API
- A conversions API sends conversion events from your server directly to an ad platform, instead of relying only on a pixel in the browser.
- CPA
- CPA (cost per acquisition) is the cost of one conversion, such as a sale or sign-up, either billed directly or calculated as spend divided by conversions.
- CPC
- CPC (cost per click) is the price of one click on an ad, used either as the billing event or as a metric equal to spend divided by clicks.
- CPM
- CPM (cost per mille) is the price of 1,000 ad impressions: at a $10 CPM, 1,000 impressions cost $10.
- Daily budget
- A daily budget is the average a campaign may spend per day; most platforms let single days run over and balance spend across a longer period.
- Lifetime budget
- A lifetime budget caps what a campaign can spend over its whole run, rather than setting an amount per day.
- MCP server for ads
- An MCP server for ads exposes ad-platform actions as Model Context Protocol tools, so an AI agent can plan, fund and report on campaigns.
- Optimized bidding (oCPC and oCPM)
- Optimized bidding lets the platform bid toward conversions while you still pay per click (oCPC) or per 1,000 impressions (oCPM).
- Prepaid balance (Admux)
- A prepaid balance is money you deposit before advertising; Admux uses one USD balance to fund campaigns on ChatGPT, Google Search and Gravity.
- Responsive search ad
- A responsive search ad (RSA) is a Google Search text ad you supply as a set of headlines and descriptions rather than one fixed version.
- Review before launch (Admux)
- Review before launch is Admux’s default launch mode: approved campaign legs wait for you to launch them instead of going live on approval.
- Scoped API key and spending limit (Admux)
- A scoped Admux API key allows only the actions you grant, and its spending limit caps the new budget it can authorize per day, week, month or lifetime.
- Settlement (Admux)
- Settlement is the step where Admux confirms a channel’s final spend on a campaign leg, charges it and returns unused reserved funds to your balance.
- Sponsored Agents
- Sponsored Agents is a ChatGPT ad format that lets people chat with an AI representative of a business.