Documentation
Start typing to search…

Key Concepts & Glossary

Core terminology and important concepts for understanding Ring DAS platform

Key Concepts & Glossary

Understanding Ring DAS requires familiarity with key advertising concepts and platform-specific terminology. This page defines core concepts organized by domain.

Platform Architecture Concepts

Network

A Network is a tenant in Ring DAS that segregates the space where deals, line items, and advertising campaigns exist. Networks provide complete isolation of configuration, campaigns, and data.

Key Characteristics:

  • Each customer typically has one production network and one staging network
  • Networks have separate configuration for inventory, audience segments, and settings
  • Network ID is required for all API operations
  • Maximum limits are applied per network (e.g., 100,000 deals per network)

Example Use Cases:

  • Separate networks for different regions (US, EU, APAC)
  • Separate networks for different business units
  • Production vs. staging/test networks

Ring DAS

Ring DAS (Digital Advertising System) is the overall SaaS platform that integrates ad serving, delivery optimization, and analytics. When referred to colloquially, "DAS" often means the ad server component specifically.

Campaign Management Concepts

Deal

A Deal represents a commercial agreement between advertisers and publishers that outlines specific terms and conditions for the delivery of ads.

Key Characteristics:

  • Top-level campaign container
  • Contains one or more line items
  • Defines overall campaign budget and date range
  • Associated with a specific advertiser
  • Has approval workflow states

Example: A Q4 holiday campaign deal between Brand X and Publisher Y for $50,000 budget.

Line Item

A Line Item is a specific set of targeting criteria, budget, and delivery parameters within a deal. Line items are the operational units that the ad server evaluates for delivery.

Key Characteristics:

  • Child of a deal
  • Defines specific targeting (audience, placement, key-values)
  • Has its own budget and pacing rules
  • Associated with one or more creatives
  • Has states (draft, reserved, active, paused, completed)
  • Has priorities (sponsorship, standard, price, house)

Example: Within a holiday campaign deal, a line item targeting mobile users in the sports section with a $10,000 budget.

Learn More: Line Item States

Creative

A Creative is the actual ad unit that will be displayed to users. Creatives include the visual assets and metadata required for rendering.

Key Characteristics:

  • Associated with one or more line items
  • Supports multiple formats (display, video, rich media, native)
  • Can be static or dynamic (product ads)
  • Has approval states (pending, approved, rejected)
  • Includes landing page URL and tracking pixels

Supported Formats:

  • Display: Image banners (JPG, PNG, GIF)
  • Video: VAST/VPAID formats
  • Rich Media: HTML5 creatives
  • Native: Structured ad components
  • Dynamic: Product-based creatives populated from catalogs

Draft

A Draft is a creative that has been created but not yet associated with any deal or line item. Drafts are used for creative review and approval before going live.

Key Characteristics:

  • Cannot be delivered to users
  • Used for stakeholder review
  • Can be exported to other ad servers (e.g., Google Ad Manager)
  • Converted to creative when approved

Priority System

Ring DAS uses a four-tier priority system for ad selection:

Sponsorship Priority (Guaranteed)

Highest priority, used for guaranteed delivery campaigns. The ad server will always attempt to serve these line items first.

Use Cases:

  • Direct-sold campaigns with guaranteed impressions
  • High-value partnership deals
  • Roadblock takeovers

Standard Priority

Medium-high priority for direct campaigns without guaranteed delivery.

Use Cases:

  • Direct-sold campaigns with performance goals
  • Preferred deals
  • Most direct campaigns

Price Priority

Medium priority where line items compete based on bid price. Used for programmatic and auction-based delivery.

Use Cases:

  • Programmatic campaigns
  • Real-time bidding (RTB)
  • Header bidding line items

House Priority

Lowest priority, used for filler ads when no higher-priority campaigns are eligible.

Use Cases:

  • House ads (internal promotions)
  • Public service announcements
  • Placeholder content

Learn More: Priority & Bidding

Line Item States

Line items progress through a state machine that controls their eligibility for delivery:

  • DRAFT: Initial state, not eligible for delivery
  • RESERVED: Prepared for activation, awaiting approval
  • ACTIVE: Live and eligible for delivery
  • PAUSED: Temporarily stopped by user
  • COMPLETED: Finished (reached end date or exhausted budget)
  • EXPIRED: Past end date
  • ARCHIVED: Soft-deleted, not shown in active lists

Learn More: Line Item States & Lifecycle

Ad Delivery Concepts

Decision Engine

The Decision Engine is the ML-powered component that determines which ad to serve for each request. It evaluates all eligible line items and selects the optimal creative based on predicted performance.

Key Components:

  • Ad Decision Engine: Selects which line item and creative to show
  • Offer Decision Engine: Selects which products to show in dynamic creatives
  • ML Models: Predict CTR

Learn More: Decision Engine Overview

Bidder

The Bidder is the high-performance application that executes the decision engine logic for each ad request. It calculates bids based on:

bid = base_bid_price + ML_CTR_prediction × optimization_factor

Key Characteristics:

  • Sub-150ms decision latency (p95)
  • Evaluates up to 100 candidates per auction
  • Supports RTB and header bidding protocols
  • Configurable with 32+ parameters

Learn More: DAS Bidder Deep Dive

Pacekeeper

Pacekeeper is the budget management component that ensures campaigns deliver evenly over their flight dates.

Key Functions:

  • Calculates optimal daily impression/spend targets
  • Adjusts delivery pace based on historical performance
  • Prevents budget exhaustion too early or too late
  • Handles day-parting and daylight saving time

Learn More: Pacekeeper & Budget Burn

Creative Selection Logic

The process by which the ad server chooses which specific creative to display when a line item wins an auction:

  1. Filter creatives by eligibility (state, date range, frequency caps)
  2. Apply creative-level targeting
  3. Select creative using rotation strategy:
    • Even rotation: Equal distribution
    • Optimized rotation: Favor higher-performing creatives
    • Sequential rotation: Show in fixed order
    • Weighted rotation: Custom weights per creative

Inventory Concepts

Ad Unit

An Ad Unit represents a specific advertising placement location on a website or app.

Key Characteristics:

  • Has dimensions (e.g., 300×250, 728×90)
  • Has position/location identifier
  • Can support multiple formats
  • Associated with one or more placements

Example: "Homepage_RightRail_300x250" ad unit

Placement

A Placement is a logical grouping of ad units, often representing a page or section.

Key Characteristics:

  • Groups related ad units
  • Used for reporting and targeting
  • Can have placement-level floor prices
  • Associated with content categories

Example: "Sports_Section" placement containing multiple ad units

Key-Value (KV)

Key-Values are custom targeting parameters used to match ads to specific contexts.

Key Characteristics:

  • Key: Category name (e.g., "section", "author", "content_type")
  • Value: Specific value (e.g., "sports", "john-smith", "article")
  • Up to 100 custom keys per network
  • Up to 5,000 predefined values per network
  • Passed in ad requests for contextual targeting

Example:

{
  "section": "sports",
  "league": "nfl",
  "team": "patriots",
  "content_type": "article"
}

Learn More: Targeting Key-Values

Tag

A Tag is a code snippet (typically JavaScript) that loads advertising functionality on a website.

Types:

  • Ad tags: Request and render ads
  • Analytics tags: Track user behavior
  • Tracking pixels: Record conversions
  • Header bidding tags: Enable programmatic auctions

Learn More: Tag Management

Floor Price

A Floor Price is the minimum bid price required for an ad to be eligible to serve in a specific placement or ad unit.

Key Characteristics:

  • Set at network, placement, or ad unit level
  • Can be dynamic based on context (e.g., higher for premium content)
  • Enforced by the bidder before creative selection
  • Used for yield optimization

Example: Homepage placements have $2.00 CPM floor, article pages have $1.00 CPM floor

Audience & Data Concepts

Audience Segment

An Audience Segment is a group of users who share common characteristics or behaviors.

Segment Types:

  • Behavioral: Based on browsing history, purchases, engagement
  • Contextual: Based on current page context
  • Demographic: Based on age, gender, location
  • First-Party: Based on your own user data
  • Third-Party: Imported from external data providers

Key Characteristics:

  • Up to 1,000 segment definitions per network
  • Real-time membership updates
  • Used for line item targeting
  • Can be combined with boolean logic (AND, OR, NOT)

Learn More: Building Segments

LU (User Identifier)

LU is a browser-based identifier stored in third-party cookies that tracks anonymous users.

Key Characteristics:

  • Starts with timestamp (e.g., 201905161437551994208900)
  • Persists across sessions
  • Used for frequency capping and behavioral targeting
  • Subject to browser cookie policies

AID (Account Identifier)

AID is a logged-in user identifier, typically a hashed email address.

Key Characteristics:

  • Identifies authenticated users
  • Persists across devices (cross-device tracking)
  • More stable than LU
  • Used for advanced targeting and attribution

Activity Group

An Activity Group is a collection of related tracking events for a specific pixel implementation.

Key Characteristics:

  • Up to 50,000 activity groups per network
  • Up to 50 activities per group
  • Used to organize conversion and engagement tracking
  • Associated with specific campaigns or advertisers

Product & Catalog Concepts

Product Catalog

A Product Catalog is a collection of products available for advertising in retail media campaigns.

Key Characteristics:

  • Up to 10 million products per catalog
  • One product catalog per network
  • Synchronized via API or file upload
  • Includes product metadata (name, price, image, category, brand)

Learn More: Product Catalogs & Sync

Offer

An Offer is an advertising product or promotion that can be displayed in dynamic creatives.

Key Characteristics:

  • Up to 50 million offers per network
  • Organized into offer catalogs (up to 50,000 catalogs)
  • Includes offer-specific data (pricing, availability, promotions)
  • Selected dynamically by Offer Decision Engine

Product Schema

A Product Schema defines the structure and validation rules for product data.

Key Characteristics:

  • Flexible field definitions
  • Custom attributes supported
  • Versioned for backward compatibility
  • Used for catalog sync validation

Learn More: Product Schemas

Tracking & Events Concepts

DAS Pixel

The DAS Pixel is a JavaScript SDK and HTTP API for tracking user activity and eCommerce events.

Note: DAS PIXEL is a separate module from AUDIENCE. The pixel collects raw events, which AUDIENCE then processes into segments.

Tracked Events:

  • Page views
  • Product detail views
  • Add to cart / Remove from cart
  • Cart views
  • Checkout initiation
  • Purchase (conversion)
  • Search queries
  • Custom events

Key Characteristics:

  • Up to 50 million events per day per network
  • Event ingestion latency: ≤ 60 seconds
  • Event retention: minimum 30 days
  • Supports both anonymous (LU) and logged-in (AID) tracking

Learn More: Activity Tracking (Pixel)

Session

A Session is a continuous period of user activity on a website, tracked by the DAS Pixel.

Key Characteristics:

  • Starts on first page view
  • Expires after 30 minutes of inactivity
  • Associated with LU or AID
  • Used for attribution and engagement metrics

Conversion

A Conversion is a tracked event that represents a desired user action (e.g., purchase, signup, download).

Types:

  • View-through conversion: User saw ad, later converted without clicking
  • Click-through conversion: User clicked ad, then converted
  • Assisted conversion: User interacted with multiple ads before converting

Attribution Concepts

Attribution Model

An Attribution Model determines how credit is assigned to ads for driving conversions.

Ring DAS Attribution Tiers:

Direct Attribution (Tier 1)

Credit assigned to ads that directly led to product purchases (click or view).

Use Cases:

  • Performance campaigns
  • ROI calculation
  • Vendor billing

Halo Attribution (Tier 2)

Credit for influencing purchases of related products in the same order.

Example: User clicks ad for Product A, but purchases Product A + Product B + Product C. Halo attribution credits the ad for influencing B and C.

Omnichannel Attribution (Tier 3)

Credit for online ads influencing offline purchases, or vice versa.

Requirements:

  • First-party cookie integration
  • Loyalty card or user ID linking
  • Offline transaction data sync

Learn More: Attribution Models

ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)

ROAS measures the revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising.

ROAS = Revenue / Ad Spend

Example: $5,000 ad spend generates $25,000 in sales = 5.0 ROAS (or 500%)

Self-Service Concepts

Advertiser Portal

A white-label self-service portal where advertisers can create and manage campaigns independently.

Key Features:

  • Campaign creation workflow
  • Budget management
  • Creative upload
  • Performance dashboards
  • Billing and invoicing

Brand Portal

A specialized portal for retail media vendors/brands to promote their products on a marketplace.

Key Features:

  • Product catalog visibility
  • Sponsored product campaign creation
  • ROAS tracking
  • Competitive insights

Agency Portal

A multi-client portal for agencies managing campaigns on behalf of multiple advertisers.

Key Features:

  • Client hierarchy management
  • Cross-client reporting
  • Campaign duplication
  • Bulk operations

Learn More: Self-Service Portals

Reporting Concepts

Metric

A Metric is a quantitative measurement of campaign performance.

Common Metrics:

  • Impressions: Number of times ad was displayed
  • Clicks: Number of times ad was clicked
  • CTR (Click-Through Rate): Clicks / Impressions
  • Conversions: Number of tracked conversion events
  • Conversion Rate: Conversions / Clicks
  • Revenue: Total revenue generated
  • ROAS: Revenue / Cost

Learn More: Key Metrics & Dimensions

Dimension

A Dimension is an attribute by which metrics can be grouped and analyzed.

Common Dimensions:

  • Date: Day, week, month
  • Deal: Campaign identifier
  • Line Item: Line item identifier
  • Creative: Creative identifier
  • Placement: Ad placement location
  • Device: Desktop, mobile, tablet
  • Browser: Chrome, Safari, Firefox, etc.

Query

A Query is a saved report configuration defining metrics, dimensions, filters, and date ranges.

Key Characteristics:

  • Up to 1,000 saved queries per network
  • Can be scheduled for automatic execution
  • Support CSV, JSON export formats
  • Can be accessed via API

API Concepts

ADP API

The ADP API is Ring DAS's primary GraphQL-based API for programmatic platform access.

Capabilities:

  • Campaign and creative management
  • Inventory and targeting configuration
  • Audience segment operations
  • Report generation

Key Characteristics:

  • GraphQL schema-based
  • Bearer token authentication
  • Rate limited (500,000 requests per day per network)
  • Average response time: ≤ 500 ms per month

Learn More: API Overview

Delivery API

REST-based APIs for ad serving and event tracking:

  • Ad Request API: Fetch ads for display
  • Activity Pixel API: Track user events
  • Event Tracker API: Record custom events
  • Click Tracker API: Track ad clicks

Learn More: Delivery APIs

Machine Learning Concepts

CTR Prediction

The CTR Prediction model estimates the probability that a user will click on an ad.

Used By:

  • Bidder for bid calculation
  • Creative selection logic
  • Campaign optimization

Training Data:

  • Historical impression and click data
  • User features (segments, behavior)
  • Context features (placement, device, time)
  • Creative features (format, size, content)

Smart Deals / Traffic Mixer

Smart Deals (also called Traffic Mixer) is an ML-based optimization module that manages budget allocation across channels.

Capabilities:

  • Dynamic budget redistribution
  • Cross-channel optimization (on-site + off-site)
  • Goal-based optimization (CPS, ROAS, CPA)
  • Real-time performance monitoring

Use Cases:

  • Omnichannel campaigns
  • Performance marketing
  • Budget optimization

Learn More: Smart Deals

Compliance Concepts

GDPR

The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is EU regulation governing personal data processing.

Ring DAS Compliance Features:

  • User consent management
  • Data access and deletion requests
  • Privacy policy integration
  • TCF v2.2 support

Learn More: GDPR Compliance

TCF v2.2

The TCF v2.2 (Transparency & Consent Framework) is an IAB standard for managing user consent.

Key Concepts:

  • Purposes: Why data is collected
  • Special Purposes: Specific use cases
  • Features: How data is used
  • Vendors: Third parties processing data

DSA

The DSA (Digital Services Act) is EU regulation requiring transparency in online advertising.

Ring DAS Compliance Features:

  • Ad transparency disclosures
  • Advertiser identification
  • Content moderation tools
  • Ad repository

Learn More: DSA (Digital Services Act)

Getting Started

Now that you understand key Ring DAS concepts, continue to Architecture to see how these components work together, or explore specific domains:

By Domain:

By Role:


Updated 5 days ago