There’s a very strange and mystical lexicon involved with the digital marketing. Here’s a list of terms you’ll need to know. Email me additions and corrections. If you can't find a definition and can't wait for me to get one to you try Dictionary.com or Urbandictionary.com.
.com
The main site. Use this as short hand for signifying you’re talking about the client’s main website as opposed to a microsite.
.net
Anchor tags
API
Apps
Alternate Reality Game (ARG)
An interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants' ideas or actions.
The form is typified by intense player involvement with a story that takes place in real-time and evolves according to participants' responses, and characters that are actively controlled by the game's designers, as opposed to being controlled by artificial intelligence as in a computer or console video game. Players interact directly with characters in the game, solve plot-based challenges and puzzles, and often work together with a community to analyze the story and coordinate real-life and online activities. ARGs generally use multiple media (such as telephones, email, and mail) but rely on the Internet as the central binding medium.
Atlas
Average Interaction Time
One of the many things you should measure when doing anything digital. It is what is says, the average amount of time a user interacts with your creative.
Awstats
Backend
Backend Database
Banner Ad
The most common form of advertising on the internet. They are the skinny ads you generally see on the tops and sides of a web page. When discussing them, they’ll often be referred to by their placement on a web page: “Leaderboard” for the top of the web page and “Skyscraper” for the side of the web page. Sometimes their size will be referred to such as 728x90 or 120x600. In this case, the first number is their width and the second their height.
Breadcrumbs
The term is taken from the trail of breadcrumbs left by Hansel and Gretel in the popular fairytale. They are a navigation technique used in user interfaces to give users a way to keep track of their location within programs or documents. Here’s one from ussoccer.com.
Click tags
Click-through rate
A way to measure the success of online advertising, particularly banner advertising.
CMS (Content Management System)
Co-op Partners
Daughter Window
Also a sister window. It’s a window that’s linked to a site and launched by a user click. For instance, you click on a picture and it pops open in a new window.
Desktop Widget
See Widget
Dreamweaver
E-mail Capture
Episodic Game
An Episodic Game is a single game experience made up of multiple episodes, or chapters, each released over a period of months or years. Every episode is a main event that drives the core experience forward. This type of game has many advantages over traditional games:
1) Allows the game developer to create “buzz” with each new episode rather only at the launch of a single game.
2) Keeps gamers involved over a longer period of time.
3) The developer gets several chances to hit the market with a lower level of risk each time, as opposed to a single chance to make good a lone product that has far more investment riding on it.
4) Developing in smaller chunks means developers can better adapt to community feedback in between releases.
Expandable Banner
EyeBlaster
First Person Shooter (FPS)
A genre of video games which is characterized by an on-screen view that simulates the playable character's perspective and a focus on the use of ranged weapons such as guns.
Flash
Floating Ads
Frames
Geo Cache
Google Search
Heavy
Homepage
Host
HTML
IA (Information Architecture)
IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau)
IMP
Junkmail Test
Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG)
A computer game which is capable of supporting hundreds or thousands of players simultaneously. By necessity, they are played on the Internet, and feature at least one persistent world.
MMOGs can enable players to cooperate and compete with each other on a grand scale, and sometimes to interact meaningfully with people around the world. They include a variety of gameplay types, representing many video game genres. Many MMOGs require players to invest large amounts of their time into the game.
Meta Data
Meta Tag
NAV (Navigation)
Open Source
Page Takeover
PHP
Players
Pointroll
Populate
Preroll Video
Printigration
The act of taking a print ad and repurposing it for banner ads. There is generally no effort to use the interactive nature of banner ads. Some think this creates synergy and integration with the print work. It does not. Don’t do this, ever, ever, ever.
RSS
Sharepoint
Sim
A simulation game, or sim game is a game that contains a mixture of skill, chance, and strategy to simulate an aspect of reality, such as a stock exchange. In computer games, simulation games is a wide super-genre covering titles such as MS Flight Simulator, SimCity, Civilization, RollerCoaster Tycoon, and The Sims. Some simulation games are intended to simulate the real world; others are intended to simulate a fictional world; still others (The Sims 2 for example) are designed to be able to do both.
Skip Page
Social Network
Refers to any number of websites designed to create online communities. These communities can be focused around common interests, goals, or simply away for people to interact. List of Social Networks.
Splash Page
Static
Subject Line
Tabs
Tag
Usability Test
Usability Testing
UX (User eXperience)
Virtual World
Widget
A small program usually designed to do one very specific thing. They can exist on a website, on a users desktop, as a part of an operating system, pretty much anywhere. On Facebook and MySpace, widgets are used by members to personalize their pages. Southwest Airlines has a great desktop widget that alerts users to low fares as soon as they’re available.
Wireframe
XTML