Ad Delivery Glossary of Terms

Below is an alphabetized glossary of terms commonly used with Comcast Technology Solutions' Ad Delivery Service.

Account Profile Spec - The agreed upon format the sender will upload to the product. Expressed in frames.  Example - 30/150/60/30. The file will contain 1 second of black, 5 seconds of slate,2 seconds post slate black, CONTENT 1, second post spot black. If they don’t follow spec, duration rejection will occur upon upload

Agency – Company submitting spots on behalf of their client

Archive - In a Sender account, a vault for older spots, spots that need revisions, etc. If a client can’t find a file, advise them to “include Archive” in a search

Audio Sampling - The amount of times that a digital audio files are “looked at” per second; 48000 (expressed as 48Khz) is broadcast standard.

Brand – The product or service being advertised in the commercial 

Center-Cut Title Safe/Center - Cut protected 

Client – Person or company an individual is working with or for

DCR - Delivery Confirmation Report. Product generated report for sender once an order has reached 100% completion

Destination - The final recipient of an order or spot. Destination can be expressed as a System Code (Syscode) Call Letters (KNBC) or Network (LifeTime)

Download - The process of receiving a file, pulling from the server 

File Transfer Protocol (FTP) - a standard network protocol used to transfer computer files from one host to another host over a TCP-based network, such as the Internet

Frame Rate - Video is made up of still pictures shown in quick succession. 29.97 is current broadcast standard, 30 individual pictures per second

HD - High Definition. The current broadcast “Standard” Frame (picture) size of 1920x1080, 920 lines of video (top to bottom), and 1080 lines of video (from side to side). More information can be added to the signal resulting in better picture/sound

Interlaced - Used in traditional analog television systems where only the odd lines, then the even lines of each frame (each image called a video field) are drawn alternately, so that only half the number of actual image frames are used to produce video.

ISCI – Individual Standardized Commercial Identifier. For Lite Users, the spot number generated upon submission becomes the ISCI

Order - If you think of spots as a letter, an order is the address being sent to. Spots + metadata + destinations = an order 

Order Status - The state in CAD an order is in; example: waiting, transcoding, sending delivering, etc.

PO Number - Customer created number reflecting an individual order

Progressive Scanning (alternatively referred to as non-interlaced scanning) - is a way of display, storing, or transmitting moving images in which all the lines of each frame are drawn in sequence

Scan type -The process used to decode/scan the individual picture (frame)

SD -  Standard Definition. A lower resolution format with a frame size (picture size) of 720 lines (top to bottom) and 480-512 Lines (side to side) of video content. The “standard” prior to high definition

Slate - Visual display of spot metadata, title, agency, brand, etc. Holdover from tape days, some receive sites require slate, while others do not. Product generates slate if required. Lite users do not need slate or black, spots should be ready for air

Spot – commercial, media to be sent

Spot Status - The state of existence of the video/audio file is in within the CAD product

Upload - The process of moving the file from computer to server for ingest