You do not need to be a media buyer to use Adwave. This page explains the words you will hear in Adwave and a sales call, including every channel in the mix.
Products and how Adwave works
Adwave builds your ads and runs them on TV, search, social, and the web from one daily budget.
Adwave
Advertising software that builds ads from your website and runs them on TV, search, social, and the web from one daily budget. Creative, media buying, and measurement are part of the same campaign.
Related: Adwave campaigns, Wavemaker
Adwave campaigns
Paste a website. Adwave proposes personas, builds the ads, and airs one daily budget across TV, social, search, and web. Creative is built in. You never open a Google, Meta, or TV ad account.
Related: Persona, Daily budget, Ad account
Wavemaker
A standalone product that makes video, image, and audio. Give it a URL, photos, or a prompt. It returns finished creative. It does not buy media, and you do not need it to advertise with Adwave. It lives at wavemaker.io.
Related: Prompt, Chat editor, Credits
Persona
A picture of who you want to reach, built from your website. Adwave proposes personas (who they are, what they care about, where they live). You pick which ones the campaign is for. You do not upload customer lists or build lookalikes.
Related: Targeting, Lookalike audience
Chat editor
Natural-language edits on a generated ad. Tell it to change the hook, swap a photo, or shorten the voice-over. Copy-only tweaks are free. A new render takes a minute or two.
Related: Creative, Voice-over
Starter credit
$60 starter credit for new Individual (business) signups. You can review recommended ads without a card. The credit and going live activate when you add a deposit, within 14 days. Agency workspaces skip it. It is a one-time wallet credit, not a monthly plan.
Related: Prepaid wallet
Prepaid wallet
You fund a balance. Each active day, Adwave charges the daily budget from that wallet. No subscriptions, no contracts, no platform fees, and you cannot go into debt. Pause and charges stop. Optional auto-refill keeps a long campaign funded.
Related: Daily budget, Auto-refill, Under-delivery
Daily budget
The most Adwave will charge for one active day. Range is $30 to $10,000 per day. That number is a ceiling. Undelivered media is credited. It is the media bill for the mix, not a CPM you pick and not a monthly subscription.
Related: Channel unlock, CPM
Auto-refill
An optional setting that tops up the prepaid wallet so a campaign does not stall when the balance runs low. Minimum refill is $100. It aims for a 3-day runway. Three failed charges turn it off. You can leave it off and add funds yourself.
Related: Prepaid wallet
Channel unlock
Extra placements that turn on as you raise the daily budget. At $30/day you get mobile web, mobile apps, TV, Google follow (YouTube and Demand Gen), and Facebook plus Instagram. Reddit unlocks around $35. Google Search around $67. TikTok around $91 is an early access unlock from Customize, not part of the default live mix. Confirm the live ladder in campaign setup. Do not treat those dollars as CPMs.
Related: Daily budget, Demand Gen, TikTok
Tracker
One first-party script tag on your site. It records that someone saw the ad and later opened a page. TV is not clickable, so this is how Adwave counts the visit instead of asking you to install a Meta pixel and a Google tag and a TV vendor pixel.
Related: Count, Pixel, Attribution
Pause
Stop the campaign. Daily charges stop. The prepaid wallet keeps the unused balance. Resume when you want. No contract penalty.
Related: Prepaid wallet
Ad account
The login a platform gives an advertiser (Meta Ads Manager, Google Ads, a TV seat). Adwave buys those placements for you. You never create or log into those accounts.
Related: Adwave campaigns, Self-serve
Self-serve
You launch without an agency or a media buyer. Paste the URL, approve personas and ads, set a daily budget and location, go live.
Wavemaker credits
How Wavemaker bills generation when you use it as a creator tool. Pricing lives on wavemaker.io. Adwave campaign ads follow Adwave billing (starter credit and the prepaid wallet), not a Wavemaker credit pack.
Channels and placements
One Adwave campaign can buy this mix. Named platforms unlock on the budget ladder. Web, mobile, and TV are in from the $30 floor.
Meta's feed, stories, and in-stream video. Image ads and social video. On at Adwave's $30/day floor with Instagram.
Related: Instagram, Meta, Social video
Feed, stories, Reels. Square (1:1) and vertical (4:5 or 9:16) creative. Bought with Facebook at the $30/day floor.
Related: Facebook, Aspect ratio
Meta
The company that owns Facebook and Instagram. In Ads Manager you would log into a Meta ad account. In Adwave those placements are just Facebook and Instagram in the mix.
Related: Facebook, Instagram, Ad account
YouTube
Google's video platform. Ads before, during, or around videos, including Shorts. Part of Adwave's Google follow at the $30/day floor, with Demand Gen.
Related: Demand Gen, Follow ads, Google Search
Demand Gen
Google's campaign type for image and video in YouTube, Discover, Gmail, and related feeds. Adwave treats YouTube plus Demand Gen as Google follow, on at $30/day. It is not the same as Google Search text ads.
Related: YouTube, Follow ads, Display
Follow ads
Adwave's name for the Google image and video that follows someone after they have seen you elsewhere in the mix. YouTube and Demand Gen. On at $30/day. Search text ads unlock later.
Related: Demand Gen, YouTube, Retargeting
Google Search
Text ads on Google results when someone types a query. Unlocks on the Adwave ladder around $67/day. This is where branded search from a TV spot often gets caught.
Related: Search ad, Halo effect, Channel unlock
Display advertising
Image or native ads on websites and apps (news, weather, recipes), not in a social feed and not a search result. In Adwave this is the web channel, on at $30/day.
Promoted posts in communities. People are already talking about a problem or a town. Unlocks around $35/day.
Related: Reddit ad, Channel unlock
TikTok
Short-form vertical video in the For You feed. Unlocks around $91/day on the Adwave ladder. Live campaigns may not have it yet if the daily budget is below that floor.
Related: Social video, Aspect ratio, Channel unlock
Web
Ads on publisher sites (Yahoo, the New York Times, BBC, weather, recipes, and the rest of the open web). Same $30/day floor as mobile and TV. Not a social network.
Related: Display, Publisher, Mobile
Publisher
A site or app that sells ad space (a newspaper, a recipe site, a streaming app). Adwave buys that inventory programmatically. You do not pick each site by hand.
Mobile
Ads in phone browsers and in apps. On at $30/day with web and TV. Same campaign as the living-room screen, not a separate mobile product.
In-app
Ads inside mobile apps rather than in a browser tab. Part of Adwave's mobile inventory at the $30/day floor.
Related: Mobile
Audio
Streaming and digital audio inventory (music, podcast-style environments). Adwave can include audio in a campaign mix. It is not a separate product you buy on its own, and it is not a second daily budget.
Related: Omnichannel, Voice-over
Omnichannel
One campaign, one daily budget, several places (TV, social, search, web, mobile, and audio when the mix includes it). The point is the halo between them, not a dashboard per channel.
Related: Halo effect, Daily budget
Creative and formats
Adwave builds image ads, social video, and TV-ready spots from your site. Wavemaker does the same from a prompt when you only need the file.
Ad creative
The ad people see. Video, images, and words. Good creative is specific to the business, not a stock template with your logo dropped on.
Related: Chat editor, Persona
Image ad
A still (photo plus copy). Used in feeds, display, and some social placements. Adwave generates these from site photos and offers.
Related: Social video, Display ad
Social video
Short video for feeds (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Reels). Often 9:16 or 4:5. Sound-on helps. Captions help when sound is off.
Related: Aspect ratio, TikTok, TV spot
TV spot
A commercial built for the TV screen, usually 15 or 30 seconds, 16:9. Adwave generates TV-ready spots from your site. People cannot click a TV. They remember the name and act later.
Related: Streaming TV, View-through, Bumper
Aspect ratio
Width by height. TV is 16:9. Facebook feed often 4:5. Instagram feed 1:1. TikTok, Reels, and Shorts are 9:16. Wavemaker and Adwave generate the shape the placement needs instead of cropping a TV spot into a phone later.
Related: Social video, TV spot
Search ad
A text ad on Google results. Headline, description, your URL. No video. Unlocks with Google Search around $67/day.
Related: Google Search, Landing page
Reddit ad
A promoted post. Title, body, and often a card image. It should read like the community, not like a TV script pasted into a thread.
Related: Reddit
Display ad
A banner or native unit on a website or in an app. Adwave's web channel. Built as an image ad, not a 30-second spot.
Voice-over
The spoken line in a video or TV spot. Wavemaker and Adwave generate a professional voice. You can change the script in the chat editor.
Related: Chat editor, TV spot
Call to action (CTA)
What you want after the ad. Call, book, visit the site, walk in. On TV the CTA is a name, a URL, or a phone number, because there is nothing to click.
Related: Landing page, QR code
Bumper ad
A very short ad, typically 6 seconds. A reminder, not a full pitch. Adwave and Wavemaker also make longer social video and TV spots (often 15 or 30 seconds). You are not limited to one length.
Related: TV spot, Social video
QR code
A scannable code in a TV spot. Optional. Useful when you want a phone path from the couch. Not required. Most local campaigns lean on the business name and the site.
Related: CTA, Landing page
Landing page
The page that matches the ad. If the ad is a cleaning, that page should be the cleaning, not the homepage carousel. Clickable ads (search, social, web) send people here.
Related: Conversion, Search ad
Prompt
A line you type to Wavemaker when you do not want to start from a URL. "30-second spot for a Baltimore roofer, rain on a new roof, book this week." Adwave usually starts from the website instead.
Related: Wavemaker, Chat editor
How ads are bought and billed
The industry talks in CPM and auctions. You set a daily budget. Adwave does the buying.
CPM (cost per thousand)
What an advertiser pays per 1,000 impressions. TV CPMs are usually higher than web or social. Adwave does not ask you to pick a CPM. You set a daily budget. Mix and rates move by channel and by day.
Related: Daily budget, Impressions
CPC (cost per click)
What you pay when someone clicks. Search and some social buy this way in Ads Manager. Adwave still bills a daily budget. TV has no click, so CPC is the wrong scoreboard for the whole mix.
Related: CTR, Google Search
CPA (cost per action)
What you paid divided by the actions you wanted (calls, bookings, sales). Useful once the tracker is counting. Not the same as the daily budget.
Related: Conversion, ROAS
Inventory
Ad slots for sale. A commercial break, a feed unit, a search result. Premium shows and live sports cost more. Ad-supported streaming added a lot of TV inventory that used to require a cable buy.
Programmatic advertising
Software buys the slot instead of a person calling a sales rep. You set budget, targeting, and creative. The system bids. That is how a TV and digital mix can launch in minutes.
Related: RTB, Programmatic TV
Real-time bidding (RTB)
An auction that finishes in milliseconds when a slot opens. You never see it. The winner's ad plays.
Related: Programmatic
Private marketplace (PMP)
A gated auction for premium inventory, not the open exchange. Brands use PMPs for specific networks. Adwave handles access. You do not negotiate a PMP deal.
Related: Inventory, Programmatic
Programmatic TV
Automated buying of streaming TV slots. This is how Adwave can put a local business on 100+ premium streaming networks from $30/day instead of a five-figure cable insertion.
Related: CTV, Daily budget
Under-delivery
The day did not spend the full daily budget (not enough matching inventory, or the campaign was paused mid-day). Media shortfalls and failed launch days are credited back to the prepaid wallet. You pay for what ran.
Related: Prepaid wallet, Daily budget
Platform fee
An extra percentage some tools add on top of media. Adwave does not add a platform fee, subscription, or contract. The daily budget is the media bill.
Related: Daily budget, Prepaid wallet
DSP (demand-side platform)
Software that buys ads across many publishers. Agencies sometimes ask for a white-label DSP. Adwave's agency path is its campaign workspace under your brand, not a separate DSP login to resell.
Related: White-label, Programmatic
Objective
What a native ad account optimizes for (traffic, sales, awareness). Adwave runs one campaign against your daily budget and personas. You do not pick a Google objective and a Meta objective and a TV objective.
Related: Persona, Ad account
Targeting
Who sees the ad, where they are, and when. Adwave starts from personas and the location you set.
Targeting
Choosing who can see the ad. Location, persona, and (on TV) the household. Tighter targeting wastes less budget. Too tight and the day under-delivers.
Related: Persona, Geotargeting
Geotargeting
Show the ad in a place. City, state, or national. A plumber in Dallas does not need households in Denver. You set this in Adwave.
Related: Hyperlocal, DMA
Hyperlocal
Tight geography. People who can walk in, call, or book, not the whole internet. Same ads can run on TV, search, social, and web inside that map.
Related: Geotargeting, Omnichannel
DMA (designated market area)
A Nielsen TV market (a city plus the counties that watch it). Cable sales still talk this way. Adwave targeting is the location you set. You do not have to buy a whole DMA.
Related: Geotargeting, Linear TV
Demographics
Age, gender, household income, presence of children. Useful when the buyer is obvious (a pediatric dentist, a retirement community). Personas from your site usually carry this without you filling a grid.
Related: Persona, Household targeting
Household targeting
The TV (or the home), not one phone. Purchase decisions are often household decisions. CTV buys this way. Mobile ads usually do not.
Related: CTV, Demographics
Retargeting
Show ads to people who already visited, watched, or engaged. Someone browsed the site and left. A later TV or social ad brings them back. Adwave follow ads (YouTube and Demand Gen) cover part of this without a pixel you manage.
Related: Follow ads, Pixel, Conversion
Dayparting
Run ads at certain hours. Breakfast in the morning. Pizza at dinner. A bar on Friday night. You can control when the daily budget is spent.
Related: Daily budget
Contextual targeting
Match the content, not only the person. Cooking shows for a grocer. Live sports for a sports bar. The page or the program is the signal.
Related: Targeting, Streaming TV
First-party data
Data you collected (email list, purchase history, site visits). You own it. It got more valuable as third-party cookies went away. Adwave's tracker is first-party on your site.
Lookalike audience
A Meta Ads Manager tool that finds people similar to a list you upload. Adwave does not ask you to build lookalikes. It proposes personas from your website and buys the mix.
Measurement and performance
What ran, who saw it, and whether they came back to the site. TV is scored on views and later visits, not clicks.
Impressions / views
How many times the ad was shown. One view is one serving. The same person can see it more than once.
Reach
How many different people (or households, on TV) saw the ad. Three impressions on one person is still reach of one.
Related: Frequency, Impressions
Frequency
How many times the average person saw the ad. Memory takes repeats. Most TV campaigns aim for about 3 to 5.
Related: Reach, Brand recall
Video completion rate (VCR)
Share of viewers who watch to the end. CTV is often 90% or higher because the ad is not a skippable YouTube pre-roll. Your full line gets heard.
Related: CTV, Non-skippable
View-through conversion
They saw the TV ad, did not click (they cannot), and later visited or bought. That is the "I saw that on TV" path. The tracker is how you see it.
Related: Tracker, Conversion, Halo effect
Click-through rate (CTR)
For clickable ads, clicks divided by impressions. A 2% CTR is 2 clicks per 100 views. TV has no CTR. Score TV on views, recall, and later visits.
Related: CPC, Conversion
Conversion
The action you wanted. Purchase, booking, call, form. Good advertising creates conversions. The tracker is what counts them on your site.
Count
Adwave's simple scoreboard. They saw the ad. They opened the site. It counted. One first-party tracker, not four platform dashboards.
Related: Tracker, View-through
Attribution
Which effort gets credit for the sale. TV, search, social, a referral. Last-click gives everything to the last click and ignores the TV spot that caused the search. The mix needs a wider lens.
Related: Last-click, Halo effect
Last-click attribution
100% of the credit goes to the last click before the conversion. Search and branded Google ads look like heroes. TV and upper-funnel social look like they did nothing. That report is incomplete.
Related: Attribution, Google Search
UTM parameters
Tags on a URL (utm_source, utm_campaign) so analytics can label the click. Useful on search and social. They do not capture a TV view that turned into a typed URL. That is the tracker.
Related: Tracker, Google Search
Pixel
A snippet Meta or Google asks you to put on the site to track visitors. Adwave uses one first-party tracker instead of making you install every platform pixel.
Related: Tracker, First-party data
ROAS (return on ad spend)
Revenue attributed to ads divided by ad spend. If you spent $100 and can tie $400 in sales, that is 4x ROAS. It is only as honest as the attribution behind it.
Related: ROI, Attribution
ROI (return on investment)
What you made compared with what you spent. If you spend $100 and make $500, that is 5x. Positive ROI means the advertising paid. Include the full mix, not only last-click search.
Related: ROAS
Brand awareness
How many people know you exist. TV and video make the name familiar so the later search or social ad is not a stranger.
Related: Brand recall, Halo effect
Brand recall
Whether people remember you after the ad. Up to 60% higher brand recall with TV in the mix than digital alone.
Related: Frequency, Halo effect
Halo effect
The lift other channels get when awareness advertising runs. TV viewers are 3x more likely to search for your brand after seeing a spot, so search ads capture demand that TV created, and social ads feel familiar instead of random. Consumers trust TV ads about 4x more than social media ads (roughly 80% vs 19%). That is why the mix beats one channel alone.
Related: Brand awareness, Google Search
Incremental reach
People you reached on CTV who you would miss on cable or on social alone. Cord-cutters still watch TV. They watch streaming. CTV is additive to the rest of the mix.
Related: Cord-cutting, CTV
TV and streaming
The living-room screen is still TV. The pipe is the internet. These are the words networks and buyers use.
Streaming TV
Shows and movies over the internet instead of cable or satellite. Hulu, ESPN, Peacock, Tubi. The ad plays on a TV, a phone, or a tablet.
Learn more about streaming TV advertising
Connected TV (CTV)
A TV on the internet. A smart TV, Roku, Apple TV, or Fire Stick. When people watch streaming on the TV screen (not on a phone), that is CTV.
Related: OTT, Streaming TV, Linear TV
OTT (over-the-top)
Content delivered over the internet, skipping cable or satellite. Another way to say streaming. Your ad still runs on those services.
Related: CTV, Streaming TV
Linear TV
Traditional TV. Everyone watches the same show at the same time (the 6 PM news, Monday Night Football). Opposite of on-demand streaming.
AVOD (ad-supported video on demand)
Streaming that is free or cheaper because it shows ads. Tubi, Pluto TV, Peacock's free tier, Hulu with ads. This is where CTV ads run.
Related: SVOD, FAST, Streaming TV
SVOD (subscription video on demand)
You pay, and ads are gone or rare. Netflix Premium, Disney+ without ads, Apple TV+. Many SVOD apps now sell a cheaper ad tier, which adds inventory.
Related: AVOD
FAST (free ad-supported streaming TV)
Completely free, ad-supported live-style channels. Tubi, Pluto TV, Freevee, Samsung TV+. Think cable channels that live on streaming.
Related: AVOD, Streaming TV
vMVPD (virtual cable)
Live TV over the internet that works like a cable bundle. YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, Sling, fuboTV. Sports and news live here. Ads can too.
Related: Linear TV, Streaming TV
Addressable TV
Different households see different ads in the same show. A family with kids might see a minivan. A couple might see a sports car. CTV makes this much easier than old cable zones.
Related: Household targeting, CTV
Ad pod
A group of ads in one break. On streaming you might see three or four in a row. Your spot can be first, middle, or last.
Related: Pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll
Pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll
Where the ad sits relative to the show. Pre-roll before it starts. Mid-roll in a break. Post-roll after. Mid-roll usually gets the most attention because the viewer is already in the story.
Related: Ad pod, Non-skippable
Dynamic ad insertion (DAI)
Ads spliced into the stream in real time, based on who is watching, when, and where. That is what makes targeted streaming ads possible.
Related: Addressable TV, Programmatic TV
Cord-cutting
Dropping cable or satellite and watching streaming instead. Those households still see ads on AVOD, FAST, and ad-tier SVOD. CTV is how you reach them.
Related: Incremental reach, AVOD
Non-skippable
The viewer cannot skip. Most CTV pods work this way. YouTube pre-roll is often skippable after five seconds. That is one reason TV completion rates run so high.
VOD (video on demand)
Watch when you want, not when the network schedules it. Most streaming libraries are VOD. Ads in VOD are inserted around episodes, not in a live clock.
Related: Streaming TV, AVOD
Agencies and partners
Two different programs. Agencies run client campaigns. Partners refer advertisers who buy from Adwave themselves.
White-label
Your brand on the agency domain and on the sign-in clients see. Agencies run a workspace per client from one login. Media is at cost. This is not the partner referral program.
Related: Agency workspace, Partner program
Agency workspace
How an agency runs more than one client. Each campaign has its own prepaid wallet, budget, targeting, and reporting. Agency workspaces are not commissionable in the partner program.
Related: Pass-through, Prepaid wallet
Pass-through
The client's prepaid wallet is the spend. Easy to invoice, no mystery markup line if you bill it that way. Daily budgets from $30 to $10,000 per campaign.
Related: Prepaid wallet, Daily budget
Partner program
A referral program for sending advertisers who buy from Adwave directly. You earn 10% of net applied spend for each referred organization's first 12 months. It is not agency white-label.
Related: Net applied spend, First-touch, White-label
Referral link
Your partner URL, like /a/your-code. Optional sub tags show which post drove the signup. Create a Adwave account, open Partner program, accept terms, copy the link.
Related: Partner program, FTC disclosure
First-touch
The first valid referral cookie wins for 90 days. When someone signs up and creates their Individual organization, the referral is stamped once. Self-referrals are ignored. This is partner attribution, not campaign attribution.
Related: Partner program, Attribution
Net applied spend
Campaign daily charges and ad creation charges, minus refunds, delivery credits, and dispute clawbacks. Partner commission is 10% of this amount for the first 12 months. Agency workspaces do not count.
Related: Partner program, Under-delivery
Commission hold
Partner commissions sit for 30 days after they accrue, then become payable. Payouts run monthly through Stripe when the payable balance is at least $50. A US bank account is required at launch.
Related: Partner program, Net applied spend
FTC disclosure
Say you earn a commission before the link or the recommendation. An approved short line is, "Disclosure: I earn a commission if you sign up for Adwave through my link." Do not bury it in hashtags or a footer alone.
Related: Referral link, Partner program
Have questions?
If a term still is not clear, reach out and we will explain it in plain English. Or create your first ad. You do not need this glossary to get started.
Paste a website. Adwave builds the ads and runs one daily budget across TV, social, search, and web from $30/day. New accounts get $60 starter credit. See how it works
