The Basics
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      Glossary of Terms

      The Narrative team knows purchasing and selling data should be easy, so we put together a glossary of commonly used terms to help.

      Term

      Definition
      ADID Advertising ID (Google Play): The advertising ID is a user-resettable, unique, anonymous ID for advertising, provided by Google Play. It gives consumers control over privacy and advertising tracking and provides developers with a simple, standard system to continue to monetize their apps.
      API Application Program Interface: An API is a set of programming instructions and standards allowing an app to access a server-based software application or tool. A software company releases its API to the public so that other app and software developers can design products that are powered by its service. Examples include the Facebook Connect API, which allows app developers to utilize the Facebook account system for login.
      Consumed Resource URI
      		 Also known as App ID or Bundle ID, this is an identifier that defines a particular Application. More info here
      CPM Cost Per Thousand: Abbreviated with the Roman numeral M for 1,000, CPM is a campaign more similar to television or print campaigns; the buyer pays one cost for every thousand rows of data.
      DMP A data management platform is a software platform used for collecting and managing data, mainly for digital marketing purposes. They allow businesses to identify audience segments, which can be used to target specific users and contexts in online advertising campaigns.
      Digital Consumption Digital content (apps or websites) associated with an identifier (cookie or mobile ad ID) available for purchase via Narrative’s marketplace.
      Data Lake

      A centralized repository that allows you to store all your structured and unstructured data at any scale. You can store your data as-is, without having to first structure the data, and run different types of analytics—from dashboards and visualizations to big data processing, real-time analytics, and machine learning to guide better decisions.

      Data Point

      (aka "attribute," "column," "field")

      The smallest possible unit of data that still has meaning to a user of the platform.  Examples of data points include: a user id, a location latitude/longitude, a gender.
      Date Range Date Range specifies the lower and upper bound timestamps for observations to be included in an order. In other words, Date Range filters on observation timestamp, not ingestion timestamp.
      DAU Daily Active User: The number of active users of an app on a given day. Often reported as an average.
      Delivery The transfer of data observations from a buyer (hosted by Narrative) to a seller. Commonly done via Amazon Web Services.
      Derived Country Code A field in the data lake containing country information based on lat/lon information or IP address (in that order), if available.
      Deterministic Pairs Identifiers describing the same individual as confirmed by Personally identifiable information, or PII, (as opposed to probabilistic pairs, which are less certain).
      Direct Deal A buy/sell agreement between one buyer and one seller at a flat fee (monthly, yearly, or just a one time purchase).
      DTC Direct to consumer.
      eCPM Effective Cost per Thousand: Calculated by dividing total earnings of a publisher by total number of impressions in thousands.
      Event A piece of data tied to a specific individual at a specific point in time.
      Event Timestamp The date/time at which the data observation occurred (or was collected by the supplier).
      Expiration Timestamp The date/time at which a buyer is contractually obligated to purge purchased data based on the licensing terms.
      Firehose Defines all of the data from a supplier.
      Flight Dates The date range that a buyer wants to buy observations within. For example, if a commercial is airing for the month of June, the flight time is the month of June.
      Geofencing
      		 Geofencing uses GPS to create a virtual boundary or radius. Geofencing can be used to send app users offers or messages when they enter a certain range.
      Geotargeting
      		 Targeting users based on their current location and sending app messages relevant to where they are.
      Hashed Email Hashing is a way of encrypting a piece of data, like an email address, into a hexadecimal string. Each email has its own unique hexadecimal string that remains consistent no matter where the email is used as a login. More info here
      IAP In-app purchase: something bought from within an application, typically a mobile app running on a smartphone or other mobile device.
      ID Mapping (ID matching) - Using a piece (or pieces) of originally personally identifiable information to link data across multiple sources or channels. An anonymized or hashed email address commonly serves as the match key.
      IDFA ID For Advertisers: Created by Apple to replace tracking by UDID, the IDFA is an anonymous tracking identifier (similar to a cookie) that allows developers and marketers to track a user’s activity for advertising purposes. The IDFA is not specific to the user’s hardware, and can be reset if the hardware changes ownership.
      Incrementality An ambiguous term similar to "overlap analysis.”
      Ingestion The absorption of data from a client into the Narrative data lake, meaning that the data is normalized per the data lake schema and made available in automatic orders. Not to be confused with receipt of files, which means that they are available in a Narrative-hosted S3 bucket.
      Ingestion Timestamp When a data observation hits the Narrative data lake.
      Latency The time between the event timestamp and the ingestion timestamp. Low latency means an event is ingested and made available in the lake very quickly.

      Lookback

      (lookback window)

      		 The time elapsed between two separate data events (e.g. Event 1: a user sees an ad, Event 2: the user buys a product - the time between Event 2 and Event 1 is the lookback window).
      Mobile Advertising ID (MAID) A unique pseudo-anonymous identifier tied to a mobile phone. iOS and Android have their own unique identifiers
      Match Rate The percentage of overlap between two sets of user ID information (usually between a partner's user ID list and a data source, i.e. the Data Lake). It is always better to specify what two ID types need to be matched.
      MAU Monthly Active User: A user who has engaged with your app at least once in the last month.
      Observation A piece of data describing a specific data instance. May be independent of timestamp (if slow-moving data, e.g. gender).
      Onboarding Data Taking data from one source, joining it to other sources so that individuals can be viewed across multiple channels, and pushing the data to other destinations.
      Opt-Out
      		 Opting out means a user will take action to withdraw their consent for their data to be collected.
      Subscription A request by a client to buy or sell data. One order is bound by a common business need and may share a set of specifications or requirements, including but not limited to ID type, date range, pricing structure, and country code. One order may contain more than one data type or different specifications, but the main boundary between one order and another is a different client end goal.
      Order Forecasting A Narrative purchase enablement tool allowing a buyer to estimate the volume of data.
      Comparison Analysis A comparison between two or more data suppliers to gauge the amount of data that is provided by more than one data supplier versus the amount of new data that a supplier offers.
      PII Personally identifiable information: Any data that could potentially be used to identify a particular person. Examples include a full name, a home address, a phone number, driver's license number, email address, and more. More info here
      POI The definition of Point-of-Interest is a specific physical location which someone may find interesting. Restaurants, retail stores, and grocery stores are all examples of Points-of-Interest.
      Programmatic Automated bidding on advertising inventory done by an algorithm or computer program.

      Recency

      (recency constraint)

      		 The time range between the current day and when a data observation occurred (current day - event timestamp).
      SDK Software Development Kit: A SDK or “devkit” is a set of software development tools that help developers create new software. SDKs provide developers with libraries and tools to create, modify, improve or configure the software. While many SDKs contain APIs, they are not identical. SDKs are often available as app platforms.
      Access Rule An Access Rule is a collection of business rules that define the data being sold, the commercial terms of the purchase, and who has access to the data. 
      Transaction The batch of data observations pulled and delivered when an active buy order line item is matched to an active sell order.
      Transaction Timestamp The time at which a transaction was executed.
      UDID Unique Device ID: Historically, each Apple device came with a 40-character Unique Device ID that was used for advertising tracking. UDIDs came from the manufacturer and never changed, even if one person sold their device to another, creating problems for mobile advertisers. Apple now uses an Advertising ID or an IDFA.

       

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