Glossary

Plain-English definitions for the terms you'll see across ATDb. If a tooltip leaves you wondering "what does that actually mean?" — start here.

Sorted alphabetically.

AdTech

Short for "advertising technology." The software, platforms, and services that move money and data through digital advertising — from the demand side (advertisers and agencies buying ads) to the sell side (publishers and platforms selling ad inventory) and everything in between (measurement, identity, fraud detection, creative production).

ATDb is a database of AdTech companies, the people running them, the deals they make, and the news that shapes the industry.

Acquired

A company status. This company was bought by another company. The acquirer owns it now. The acquired company may still operate as its own brand or product (e.g., "Instagram by Meta") or may have been folded into the parent. See operational status.

Beta wave

ATDb is in private beta. Users join in batched "waves." Wave 1 are the founding contributors invited to dogfood the site and shape its direction; later waves expand access as the product matures. See Getting Started for what beta access includes.

Community correction

An anonymous public submission flagging something wrong on an entity page (a company, person, event, or article). Submitted via the "Spotted an error?" link in the footer or any "Report a field" pill on a page. Each correction is reviewed by an admin before any change is applied — submissions are never auto-applied to the data.

Connection

See relationship — they refer to the same thing.

Defunct

A company status. This company is no longer operating. It may have been shut down, gone out of business, or had its assets sold without a continuing brand. Examples: Quibi, Vine. See operational status.

Editor / Trust level

ATDb has tiered editing rights based on trust:

L0 — New — just registered. Can browse, watchlist, vote.
L1 — Contributor — can suggest edits to entity metadata.
L2 — Trusted Editor — edits go live faster with lighter review.
L3 — Moderator — full editing rights, plus moderation tools.

Trust level is granted by admins as your contributions accumulate.

Entity

The general term for anything ATDb tracks: a company, a person, an event (deal, acquisition, funding round), or a news article. Each entity has its own page with metadata, relationships, and history.

Fact source

A structured record linking a specific fact on an entity page (e.g., "parent company = Omnicom") to the source URL that supports it (e.g., a press release, a regulator filing, a trade-press article). Fact sources power the verification seal: the more independent sources back a fact, the higher its verified confidence. See Verification.

Fuzzy match / fuzzy matching

A way of comparing two text strings that might describe the same thing despite small differences — "Snowflake" vs "Snowflake Inc." vs "snowflake.com." ATDb uses fuzzy matching internally to link companies mentioned in news articles, deduplicate entries, and match competitor lists. The matcher returns a confidence score; high-confidence matches are auto-applied, low-confidence ones get human review.

Hallucination score

A confidence score the AI applies to each new fact it proposes, measuring how well the proposed claim is supported by the source the AI cited. Catches the most common AI failure mode — confidently asserting something the source doesn't actually say. Low-scoring facts get a Help confirm CTA asking the community to verify. See Verification.

Help confirm

A small CTA badge that appears next to a specific fact on an entity page when our automated hallucination scorer is uncertain whether the source backs the claim. Clicking it opens the entity's /verify/[slug] page where you can suggest an edit or send a corroborating source. See Verification.

Knowledge graph / network

The interconnected web of entities and the relationships between them. Visualized at /graph. When you read "the network" or "the knowledge graph" elsewhere on ATDb, this is what's meant.

Merged

A company status. This company combined with another to form a new entity, or was consumed in a merger of equals. The original brand may or may not survive. Example: Magnite (formed by the Rubicon Project + Telaria merger). See operational status.

Origin (verification)

In the context of the verification seal, an "origin" is a distinct, independent publisher. Wire-syndicated reprints of the same press release count as one origin, not many. The "Verified · N sources" chip on an entity counts origins, not raw article URLs — so a heavily-syndicated story doesn't artificially inflate confidence.

Operational status

The current real-world state of a company. ATDb tracks five non-default statuses (a company without one of these is active — operating normally):

Status	What it means
Acquired	Bought by another company.
Merged	Combined with another into a new entity.
Rebranded	Changed its name. The same legal entity continues.
Subsidiary	Owned by a parent company; operates as its own brand.
Defunct	No longer operating.

The colored badge under a company's title shows its status. Click any badge for the definition + examples.

Rebranded

A company status. The same legal entity, operating under a new name. The company didn't change owners — it just changed what it calls itself. Example: Meta (formerly Facebook, Inc.). See operational status.

Relationship

A typed, directional link between two entities — e.g., "Snowflake is a competitor of Amazon Redshift" or "Jane Doe is the CEO of Acme Corp." Relationships are how ATDb connects companies to other companies, people to companies, events to companies, etc.

Common types:

competitor_of — bidirectional rivalry
acquired — source company acquired the target
subsidiary_of — source is owned by target
partner_of — bidirectional partnership
integrates_with — bidirectional technical integration
ceo_of, founder_of, employee_of, board_member_of, advisor_to — person-to-company roles
mentions, covers, involves — news/event linkages

In graph-theory terms a relationship is called an "edge" — you may see that word in some technical contexts. Same thing.

Source class

A categorization of where a fact's evidence comes from. Five classes carry different weight in our verification scoring: primary_regulator (SEC, FTC, regulator filings — highest weight), primary_corporate (company IR, official newsrooms), editorial (trade press: Adweek, Digiday, AdExchanger), press_wire (PRNewswire, BusinessWire — useful for the originator but not for editorial verification), and tertiary_reference (Wikipedia and similar — prefer the underlying citation when present). See Verification.

Stance classifier

An automated classifier that reads each cited source and tags how it frames a fact: support (the source confirms the claim), deny (the source contradicts the claim), or rumored (the source describes the claim as exploratory / unverified / in-talks). Only sources whose stance matches the canonical claim count toward verification — so a "they're reportedly in talks" article doesn't trigger a "Verified · acquired" chip.

Subsidiary

A company status. Owned by a parent company. Operates as its own brand but is under parent control — financially, strategically, or both. Examples: YouTube (Google subsidiary), Instagram (Meta subsidiary). See operational status.

Tier

ATDb's S / A / B / C / D scale for company importance in AdTech. See the Tiers help page for full criteria + examples per tier. Click any tier badge on a company page for a quick definition.

Verification seal

The small chip on every company/person/event/news header that tells you how solid the underlying evidence is — "Verified", "Verified · N sources", or "Unverified". See the full explainer at Verification.

Watchlist

Companies you want to follow. ATDb sends a weekly email digest summarizing news, deals, and people changes for everything on your watchlist. Add/remove from any company page via the bookmark icon. See Watchlist.

Don't see a term you're looking for? Send us a note via the feedback link — we'll add it.