‘New Media’ glossary

Advergaming
Advergaming normally falls into one of three categories: At first a company provides interactive games on its website in the hope that potential customers will be drawn to the game and spend more time on the website, or simply become more product aware. The games themselves usually feature the company's products prominently. These games are often reworked arcade classics but occasional new developments can be found such as the Dyson game, Intel's IT manager Game, the a classic from Nurofen or the recent 3D real-time advergame developed for Toyota. The first in-box CD-ROM cereal box advergames were Chex brand's Chex Quest and General Mills All-Star baseball, which starred Trix Rabbit and friends playing baseball against Major League teams and stars.

2) In the second form, games are published in the usual way and cause players to investigate further. The subjects may be commercial, political or educational. The most recent of this form of advertising was the use of the King mascot from hamburger chain Burger King, starring in three video games titled the King Games series. Cool Spot was the mascot for 7Up and appeared in a game of the same name. Games themed for a specific sporting organization such as Formula One racing can also fall into this category. An example of educational advergaming is Food Force made by the United Nations World Food Program and Urban Jungle - an educational traffic simulation.

3) In the third category, advertising is used within a game. This is similar to advertising in films, where the advertising content is within the "world" of the movie or game. A fictional example is Pepsi banners lining the inside of a virtual Soccer stadium in a video game made by EA Sports. With the growth of the internet, advergames have proliferated, often becoming the most visited aspect of brand websites and becoming an integrated part of brand media planning in an increasingly fractured media environment.
Advergames theoretically promote repeated traffic to websites and reinforce brands. Users choose to register to be eligible for prizes which can help marketers collect customer data. Gamers may invite their friends to participate which could assist promotion from word of mouth, or "viral marketing".

Ambient advertising
It is the name given to a new breed of out-of-home products and services determined by some as Non-Traditional or Alternative Media. Ambient media advertising can be used in conjunction with mainstream traditional media, or used equally effectively as a stand-alone activity. The key to a successful ambient media campaign is to choose the best media format available and combined with effective message.

Examples are messages on the backs of car park receipts, on hanging straps in railway carriages and on the handles of supermarket trolleys. It also includes such techniques as projecting huge images on the sides of buildings, or slogans on the gas bags of hot air balloons.

Banner
A web banner or banner ad is a form of advertising on the World Wide Web. This form of online advertising entails embedding an advertisement into a web page. It is intended to attract traffic to a website by linking them to the web site of the advertiser. The advertisement is constructed from an image (GIF, JPEG, PNG), JavaScript program or multimedia object employing technologies such as Java, Shockwave or Flash, often employing animation or sound to maximize presence. Images are usually in a high-aspect ratio shape (i.e. either wide and short, or tall and narrow) hence the reference to banners. These images are usually placed on web pages that have interesting content, such as a newspaper article or an opinion piece.

Blog
A blog is a website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order. Blogs often provide commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. Most blogs are primarily textual although some focus on photographs (photoblog), videos (vlog), or audio (Podcasting), and are part of a wider network of social media. The term "blog" is a contraction of "Web log." "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Buzz marketing
Buzz marketing is a viral marketing technique that attempts to make each encounter with a consumer appear to be a unique, spontaneous personal exchange of information instead of a calculated marketing pitch choreographed by a professional advertiser. Historically, buzz marketing campaigns have been designed to be very theatrical in nature. The advertiser reveals information about the product or service to only a few "knowing" people in the target audience. By purposely seeking out on-on-one conversations with those who heavily influence their peers, buzz marketers create a sophisticated word-of-mouth campaign where consumers are flattered to be included in the elite group of those "in the know" and willingly spread the word to their friends and colleagues. Although buzz marketing is not new, Internet technology has changed the way it's being used. Buzz campaigns are now being initiated in chat rooms, where marketing representatives assume an identity appropriate to their target audience and pitch their product.

Cookie
The most common meaning of "Cookie" on the Internet refers to a piece of information sent by a Web Server to a Web Browser that the Browser software is expected to save and to send back to the Server whenever the browser makes additional requests from the Server. Depending on the type of Cookie used, and the Browsers' settings, the Browser may accept or not accept the Cookie, and may save the Cookie for either a short time or a long time.
Cookies might contain information such as login or registration information, online "shopping cart" information, user preferences, etc. When a Server receives a request from a Browser that includes a Cookie, the Server is able to use the information stored in the Cookie. For example, the Server might customize what is sent back to the user, or keep a log of particular users' requests. Cookies are usually set to expire after a predetermined amount of time and are usually saved in memory until the Browser software is closed down, at which time they may be saved to disk if their "expire time" has not been reached.

Copyleft
The term CopyLeft describes the tight relation of a piece of copyrighted work and a certain type of license. The license permits you to modify the work. If you redistribute that modified version you are required to do so under the original license. This license gives you the freedom to modify the work and redistribute it, if you do so under the same license. A common example is the GNU Free Documentation License

Cost-per-click
Cost-per-Click is an online-specific ad revenue system that pays website owners that host ads based on the number of clicks each ad link receives from site visitors. Although the dominant form of online advertising (as of 2006), it is highly susceptible to click fraud, the act of clicking on an ad multiple times to generate revenue. As an alternative to Cost-per-Click, Google is experimenting with a Cost-per-Action system, which pays only as a result of some form of tangible consumer action.

Digital Rights Management
(generally abbreviated to DRM) is an umbrella term that refers to any of several technologies used by publishers or copyright owners to control access to and usage of digital data or hardware, and to restrictions associated with a specific instance of a digital work or device. The term is often confused with copy protection and technical protection measures; these two terms refer to technologies that control or restrict the use and access of digital content on electronic devices with such technologies installed, acting as components of a DRM design.
Digital Rights Management is a controversial topic. Advocates argue DRM is necessary for copyright holders to prevent unauthorized duplication of their work to ensure continued revenue streams. Some critics of the technology, including the Free Software Foundation, suggest that the use of the word "Rights" is misleading and suggest that people instead use the term Digital Restrictions Management. The position put forth is that copyright holders are attempting to restrict use of copyrighted material in ways not granted by statutory or common law applying to copyright. Others, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation consider some DRM schemes to be anti-competitive.

Gamer2gamer
Gamer2Gamer refers to the practice of trading virtual assets between players of online game communities.

Googlebombing
A Google bomb or Google wash is an attempt to influence the ranking of a given site in results returned by the Google search engine. Due to the way that Google's PageRank algorithm works, a website will be ranked higher if the sites that link to that page all use consistent anchor text.

Hypertext fiction
Hypertext fiction is a genre of electronic literature, characterized by the use of hypertext links which provides a new context for non-linearity in "literature" and reader interaction. The reader typically chooses links to move from one node of text to the next, and in this fashion arranges a story from a deeper pool of potential stories. Its spirit can also be seen in interactive fiction.

Identity management
Identity management refers to technologies, including password management (synchronisation and self reset), user provisioning and access management. It enables and maintains user access to network resources. This includes the creation of the user entity, authorization and permissions, and a single point of administration for de/provisioning accounts.

In-game advertising (IGA)
refers to the use of computer and video games as a medium in which to deliver advertising. In-game advertising is seen by some in the games industry as offering a new revenue stream, allowing developers to offset growing development costs and to take more risks in gameplay. Some advertisers see in-game advertising as a prime way to target the male 18-34 demographic, who are increasingly neglecting television in favor of computer and video games.

Intellectual property
In law, intellectual property (IP) is an umbrella term for various legal entitlements which attach to certain types of information, ideas, or other intangibles in their expressed form. The holder of this legal entitlement is generally entitled to exercise various exclusive rights in relation to the subject matter of the IP. The term intellectual property reflects the idea that this subject matter is the product of the mind or the intellect, and that IP rights may be protected at law in the same way as any other form of property.
Intellectual property rights (IPRs) in the digital era have added a new dimension to the traditional regime of IPRs. The complexity and jurisdictional issues relating to the Internet are challenging the IPR regime drastically. Though, TRIPS Agreement has tried to harmonise the IPRs all over the world yet the digital issues are vexing the IPRs enforcement everywhere. There is no harmonised law vis-à-vis IPRs in the digital era and this gives rise to conflict of laws. At the same time certain technological measures have also been adopted to tackle the violations of IPRs in the digital environment but their efficiency and effectiveness is yet to be examined.

Internet service provider
An Internet service provider (abbr. ISP, also called Internet access provider or IAP) is a business or organization that provides to consumers access to the Internet and related services. In the past, most ISPs were run by the phone companies. Now, ISPs can be started by just about any individual or group with sufficient money and expertise. In addition to Internet access via various technologies such as dial-up and DSL, they may provide a combination of services including Internet transit, domain name registration and hosting, web hosting, and colocation.

MMORPG
A massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is an online role-playing game in which a large number of players interact with one another in a virtual world. As in all role-playing game (RPGs), players assume the role of a fictional character (often in a fantasy setting) and take control over most of that character's actions. MMORPGs are distinguished from single-player or small multi-player RPGs by the game's persistent world, usually hosted by the game's publisher, which continues to exist and evolve while the player is away from the game.

MMS
Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) is a standard for a telephony messaging systems that allow sending messages that includes multimedia objects (images, audio, video, rich text) and not just text messages as in Short message service (SMS). It is mainly deployed in cellular networks along with other messaging systems like SMS, Mobile Instant Messaging and Mobile E-Mail. Its main standardization effort is done by 3GPP, 3GPP2 and Open Mobile Alliance (OMA).

Myspace
MySpace is a social networking website offering an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and videos. Myspace is currently the world's fifth most popular English-language website and the fifth most popular website in any language

Open source
Open source describes practices in the production and development of software that promote access to the product's source code. Some consider it a philosophy promoting a "free," "democratic" and "open" culture. Others consider it a pragmatic development methodology.

Phishing
A prevalent type of online attack that combines e-mail spam and fraudulent web sites made to look like trusted sites, which are aimed at tricking a user into giving up sensitive information such as a credit card or Social Security number. Almost 17,500 phishing Web sites were reported to the Anti-Phishing Working Group in April

Podcasting
A podcast is a media file which is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds, for playback on portable media players and personal computers. Like 'radio', it can mean both the content and the method of syndication. The latter may also be termed podcasting. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster. The term "podcast" is a portmanteau of the name of Apple's portable music player, the iPod, and broadcast; a pod refers to a container of some sort and the idea of broadcasting to a container or pod correctly describes the process of podcasting. More about the name itself can be found in the History of podcasting article.

Though podcasters' web sites may also offer direct download or streaming of their content, a podcast is distinguished from other digital audio formats by its ability to be downloaded automatically, using software capable of reading feed formats such as RSS or Atom.

Product placement
Product placement (PPL) is a promotional tactic used by marketers in which a real commercial product is used in fictional or non-fictional media, and the presence of the product is a result of an economic exchange. When featuring a product is not part of an economic exchange, it is called a product plug. Product placement appears in plays, film, television series, music videos, video games and books, and is a relatively new idea (first appearing in the 1980s). Product placement occurs with the inclusion of a brand's logo, or a favorable mention or appearance of a product.

Pop-up
Pop-up ads or popups are a form of online advertising on the World Wide Web intended to increase web traffic or capture email addresses. It works when certain web sites open a new web browser window to display advertisements. The pop-up window containing an advertisement is usually generated by JavaScript, but can be generated by other means as well.

Sandboxing
The practice whereby a search engine manipulates search results by eliminating or hiding specific results in order to decrease traffic to a specific website.

SMS advertising
An increasingly employed marketing tool is Advertising SMS because of its high prompt response rate. It depends on profiled SMS, when the target audience is not collected is a well defined DATABASE (Mobile Numbers), the provider will help you to choose the required profile for your required service and then you can send Advertising SMS to this profiled target.

Social network service
A social network service is social software specifically focused on the building and verifying of online social networks for whatever purpose. Many social networking services are also blog hosting services. As of 2005, there are over three hundred known social networking web sites. MySpace, Facebook and Friendster are some examples.

Spam
E-mail spam is a subset of spam that involves sending nearly identical messages to numerous recipients by e-mail. Most definitions of spam are based on the e-mail being Unsolicited Bulk E-mail (UBE). That is, spam is e-mail that is both unsolicited by the recipients and there are many substantively similar e-mails being sent. Spam is usually also unwanted, commercial and sent by automated means and some definitions include those aspects

Spyware
Spyware is computer software that collects personal information about users without their informed consent. The term, coined in 1995 but not widely used for another five years, is often used interchangeably with adware and malware (software designed to infiltrate and damage a computer respectively).
Personal information is secretly recorded with a variety of techniques, including logging keystrokes, recording Internet web browsing history, and scanning documents on the computer's hard disk. Purposes range from overtly criminal (theft of passwords and financial details) to the merely annoying (recording Internet search history for targeted advertising, while consuming computer resources). Spyware may collect different types of information. Some variants attempt to track the websites a user visits and then send this information to an advertising agency. More malicious variants attempt to intercept passwords or credit card numbers as a user enters them into a web form or other applications.
The spread of spyware has led to the development of an entire anti-spyware industry. Its products remove or disable existing spyware on the computers they are installed on and prevent its installation. However, a number of companies have incorporated forms of spyware into their products. These programs are not considered malware, but are still spyware as they watch and observe for advertising purposes.

Targeted adverting
Targeted ads are a form of Internet marketing. Using sophisticated data collecting technologies, Web sites can combine a user's personal information with surfing preferences to create ads that are specifically tailored for that user.

Trustmark
Loosely defined, a trust mark is any symbol or sign that can be relied on by the viewer as an assurance of some understood message. The meaning of some markings, such as those described above, reside in the party with whom one is doing business: the doctor or the lodging. Other marks, such as the Good Housekeeping “Seal of Approval” or even the “Intel Inside” logo, extend the meaning to include derived trust. In this paradigm,one relies on a third party to provide an assurance about another. The reliability of the third party – the one providing the assurance – is implicit.

UMTS
Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is one of the third-generation (3G) mobile phone technologies. The currently most common form uses W-CDMA as the underlying air interface, is standardized by the 3GPP, and is the European answer to the ITU IMT-2000 requirements for 3G cellular radio systems.To differentiate UMTS from competing network technologies, UMTS is sometimes marketed as 3GSM, emphasizing the combination of the 3G nature of the technology and the GSM standard which it was designed to succeed.

Video on demand
Video on demand (VOD) systems allow users to select and watch video content over a network as part of an interactive television system. VOD systems either "stream" content, allowing viewing in real time, or "download" it in which the program is brought in its entirety to a set-top box before viewing starts. The latter is more appropriately termed "store and forward". The majority of cable and telco based VOD systems use the streaming approach, whereby a user buys or selects a movie or television program and it begins to play on the television set almost instantaneously.

Video sharing
Video sharing refers to websites or software where a user can distribute their video clips. Some services may charge, but the bulk of them offer free services. Many services have options for private sharing and other publication options. Video sharing services can be classified into several categories, among them: user generated video sharing websites, video sharing platform / white label providers and web based video editing. Please note that websites that are solely search engines and do not provide the hosting of their video content (such as SingingFish) are not included in this article.

Viral marketing
Any advertising that propagates itself. In a new media context it can be defined as a marketing technique that seeks to exploit pre-existing social networks to produce exponential increases in brand awareness, through viral processes similar to the spread of an epidemic. It is word-of-mouth delivered and enhanced online; it harnesses the network effect of the Internet and can be very useful in reaching a large number of people rapidly.

Virtual advertising
Digital advertising goes one step further than product placement by using computer technology to add products to scenes that were never there to begin with. This practice is common in sporting events coverage, where ads are digitally inserted onto the billboards, sideboards and playing surfaces in arenas and stadiums.

While digital ads are mainly used in sports coverage, virtual advertising is starting to break into the entertainment world as producers digitally insert products into TV scenes after the scenes are shot. The technology also allows product names to be altered in scenes, creating the potential for new advertising revenues when series are sold into syndication.

Virtual world
A virtual world is a computer-based simulated environment intended for its users to inhabit and interact via avatars. This habitation usually is represented in the form of two or three-dimensional graphical representations of humanoids (or other graphical or text-based avatars). Some, but not all, virtual worlds allow for multiple users. The world being computer-simulated typically appears similar to the real world, with real world rules such as gravity, topography, locomotion, real-time actions, and communication. Communication has, until recently, been in the form of text, but now real-time voice communication using VOIP is available. This type of virtual world is now most common in massively multiplayer online games (Second Life, Entropia Universe, The Sims Online, There, Red Light Center), particularly massively multiplayer online role-playing games such as EverQuest, Ultima Online, Lineage, World of Warcraft, or Guild Wars

Web 2.0
A phrase coined by O'Reilly Media in 2004, refers to a supposed second-generation of Internet-based services — such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies — that let people collaborate and share information online in previously unavailable ways. O'Reilly Media, in collaboration with MediaLive International, used the phrase as a title for a series of conferences and since then it has become a popular (though ill-defined and often criticized) buzzword amongst certain technical and marketing communities.

Web 3.0
Is used to describe a theoretical stage (to come) of the Internet's revolution which renders the Internet "more of a guide" and "less of a catalog." Specific characteristics might include functions of artificial intelligence that would enable trend forecasting and prediction, semantic properties enabling high degrees of personalization and adaptation to the user, and a ubiquitous presence in the minute-to-minute lives of users.

Webcrawler
A web crawler is an automated program that accesses a web site and traverses through the site by following the links present on the pages. Known as a bot, robot, spider or Web Crawler.

Wiki
is a web application that allows users to add content, as on an Internet forum, but also allows anyone to edit the content. Wiki also refers to the collaborative software used to create such a website.

Wikipedia
is a multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project. Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers; its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the web site. The name is a portmanteau of the words wiki (a type of collaborative website) and encyclopedia. Its primary servers are in Tampa, Florida, with additional servers in Amsterdam and Seoul.

Word of Mouth advertising
Word of mouth (WOM) , aka Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM), is a formalized marketing effort designed to stimulate the passing of information by verbal means, especially recommendations, but also general information, in an informal, person-to-person manner, rather than by mass media, advertising, organized publication, or traditional marketing. Word of mouth is typically considered a face-to-face spoken communication, although phone conversations, text messages sent via SMS and web dialogue, such as online profile pages, blog posts, message board threads, instant messages and emails are often now included in the definition of word of mouth. There is some overlap in meaning between word of mouth and the following: rumour, gossip, innuendo, and hearsay; however the negative connotations of these words are not included in the meaning of word of mouth.

Youtube
YouTube is a popular free video sharing website which lets users upload, view, and share video clips. Videos can be rated, and the average rating and the number of times a video has been watched are both published.