SAU: Standard Advertising Units – Widths, depths, and column inch sizes accepted by newspaper.

Sattelite Dish-used to collect signals from a satellite in orbit and focus them to the front of the dish where a feed horn collects them and passes the signals on to the LNB to be amplified and sent to a satellite receiver.

Scatter Package-An arrangement to air television commercials at various times and intervals.

Scrambler-an electronic device that alters a signal so it can be viewed on a normal TV unless a decoder is attached to the subscriber’s set to unscramble the picture. It’s located in the headend.

Session – A series of page requests by a visitor without 30 consecutive minutes of inactivity. The number 30 is arbitrary but most commonly used among web advertisers and publishers. Also called a visit.

Sets-in-Use – The number of TV households tuned in at a particular time in relation to the total possible number of sets in a given universe.

Share of Audience (share) – The percent of households using TV (HUT) or persons using TV (PUT) tuned to a specific program or station at a specified time. Many people confuse ratings with shares since both are shown as percentages. A rating always relates to a total population (e.g. Census Data), whereas audience “share” always is expressed in terms of the total viewing activity taking place during a particular time period.

Shockwave – A software plugin that enables browsers to play multimedia animations. Some rich media advertisements require users to have this plugin.

Showing – A term used within outdoor industry to reflect GRP groupings. Many outdoor and transit vehicles are sold in 25 GRP increments, such as #25, #50, #75

And #100. For example, a #25 GRP Showing is equivalent to 25 daily GRPs.

Single Column Inch – Display advertising space in newspaper is commonly sold in multiples of this size, which are 1 inch deep and 1 column wide.

Skyscraper – A type of ad unit that is much taller than it is wide. Often used in columns of web pages where there is allot of unused vertical space but limited horizontal space.

Slogan-A phrase identified with a firm.  A motto used in selling enterprise or company.

Soft Sell – Technique of using low pressure appeals in advertisements to generate a sale or response.

Spam – The sending of unsolicited emails or newsgroup posts in bulk often containing commercial advertising messages. Considered bad netiquette, bad business and illegal in some US states. The opposite of spam would be permission based email whereby customized information is emailed to individual users who have previously requested such information. See opt in.

Spider – A software program that automatically follows links on the world wide web. The most common types of spiders are those used by search engines for the purpose of indexing web pages. Many spiders follow banner links thus over counting click throughs.

Split-Run – The testing process of sending the same advertisment to two or more groups with different headlines or copy to determine effectiveness of each

Sponsorships – A form of advertising in which an advertiser pays to sponsor a section of a web site. It may take the form of the typical banner and/or text that mentions “this section sponsored by:”. Works best when the content of the sponsored web page is directly related to but not competitive with the advertisers products or services.

Spot-The actual advertisement, or the actual placement of advertisement in a radio or TV line up.

Spot Advertising-Any advertising presented in selected locales rather than on a national level.

Spot Color – Two-color press ad, black plus one other standard process color.

Spread – An advertisement printed on two facing pages in a magazine.

SSI – A server side include is a line of code in an HTML document that gets processed by the server each time the page is loaded. Used to output dynamic content on a web page such as from a rotating banner script.

Standards – A set of voluntary standards created by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) for online advertisement sizes, dimensions and names.

Starch/Inra/Hooper – A research company providing magazine and newspaper ad recall and ad effectiveness research information.

Start Date – The date on which a advertising campaign starts.

Statement Stuffers – Ads which are enclosed with monthly statements mailed by department stores, banks, oil companies, cable companies, etc.

Statistics – The records that an ad serving software keeps each time it serves an ad and the ad is clicked on. The statistics recorded may be as simple as total impressions and click throughs or more detailed info such as browser types, geographical location, operating system & more.

Sticky – A term used to describe a web site on which visitors stay at for longer than normal. This is often due to the variety of content and features offered to the visitor which prevents them from needing to go elsewhere for more information. For example, online game sites are sticky as users tend to stay and play for awhile where as link directories are not as visitors tend to leave as soon as they find what they were looking for.

Stop Set – In radio a group of commercials grouped together and aired one after another.

Storyboard – The layout for a television advertisement, showing the action and copy in frames.

Street Furniture – Outdoor displays which include, but are not limited to: transit shelters, newsstands/news racks, kiosks, shopping mall panels, convenience store panels and in-store signage.

Strip Show – A program which airs at the same time each day, usually from Monday to Friday, such as Good Morning America.

Subscriber– a customer who pays a fee for cable TV.

Subliminal – Subliminal persuasion is the use of an advertising message presented below the threshold of consciousness. A visual or auditory message that is allegedly perceived psychologically, but not consciously. Also called subception.

Supers – Words superimposed on the picture in a TV commercial.

Superstation – An independent station whose signal is transmitted to different markets via satellite. (i.e., WOR- New York, WPIX- New York)

*WTBS in Atlanta and WGN in Chicago were superstations until they became cable networks.

Supertitials – Rich media advertisements that download in the backround while a visitor is reading a web page and launch a browser window only when it has complete downloaded. They are attractive to advertisers as they permit larger and more interactive ads than a traditional banner and since they preload in the backround are not as annoying as pop ups and intersitials.

Sweep – TV and radio survey periods during which audience listening habits are measured and are available for purchase by market.

Syndicated Program – A program offered by an independent organization for sale to stations or advertisers who are not able or do not want to use network advertising. Also, a TV program sold by an independent producer to a local station for local sponsorship.