A

Ad clicks: When a visitor uses an advertisement link to go to another website.

Ad copy: The text used for an advertising campaign.

Ad inventory: The number of ads a website or publication can sell in a given period.

Ad views (or impressions): When a visitor pulls an advertisement's image from the server, it is assumed they saw it and have the opportunity to visit the advertiser's website by clicking on the link. One person looking at one ad.

Access service provider: A company providing access to the internet through a variety of methods, possibly including dial-up, cable modem, wireless, and DSL.

ActiveX: A programming language supported by Microsoft Internet Explorer which works a lot like Java. ActiveX is more invasive than Java, and can transmit computer viruses. If you use Explorer, turn off ActiveX.

AIM: AOL Instant Messenger.

Affiliate Program: An advertising program offering a monetary incentive for webmasters to drive traffic to the advertiser's website. This eliminates the necessity for the advertiser to find websites with related content to list their banners. It also increases the response rate by giving the "affiliate" websites a stake in the response rate. Affiliate programs are a great plan for the websites offering them, but the websites that participate often become underpaid sales representatives.

Alt Text: Text provided with an image as an alternative to viewing the actual image. It will appear before the image is fully loaded, if your visitor has their graphics turned off, and if your visitor positions their mouse on the image. Alt text is also important because search engine spiders often read it. The code for alt text is as follows: <img src="capitalsal.gif" alt="your text">.

Article bots: Computer programs that search for articles on your favorite subject. They're the oldest bots.

ASL (or a/s/l): Marketing abbreviation for the Age, Sex and Location of people an ad will be presented to. Many experienced advertisers and ad agencies will ask you for this demographic information about your website or newsletter.

Authentication: Technique which allows access to certain webpages only by offering a username and password. This process shows that the person entering the pages is an authorized user.

Autoresponder: A program which will respond to your email immediately with a pre-designed response. They're great for confirmation messages, but be careful not to rely on them too heavily.