Ad Call Definition | The Online Advertising Guide

What does Ad Call / Ad Request mean?

An Ad Call or Ad Request is when one computer requests an ad from another. It is a generic term that refers to the request for an ad. It is useful for many descriptive purposes but can get a bit messy if you chase down all the things it refers to. The whole process is somewhat reminiscent of the old woman who swallowed a fly.

What is an Ad Call?

When you load a webpage on your computer, your computer is actually asking a server to send it the webpage including the ads on it. Each ad on the page is ‘called’, and each ad that fully loads counts as one ad impression.

The actual webpage on the server can also be said to make ad calls. This is because the ads aren’t usually part of the webpage. They are stored elsewhere, which is why they are different every time you load them. What happens is your computer asks the server to see the webpage. Then once the webpage is loading it ‘calls’ the ads from another server. This then sends the ads to your computer to be a part of the webpage.

If an ad server is being used by the website, then that is what is actually making the Ad Call. So your computer asks the server for the webpage, the webpage asks the ad server for the ads, and the ad server makes an ad call for the ads and sends them back down the line.

Of course, an ad server is generally used to manage ads from many different places, so it could also in turn be asking another server/vendor/platform (some sort of computer) for the ad, and that would be the actual original ad call when you load a webpage.

Any of these actions can (and are) referred to as ad calls, and it’s just really a convenient way to refer to the action. It would usually be said either in terms of statistics (“the website made 10,000 ad calls this morning”) or troubleshooting (“there is a problem with the ad calls on the ad servers end”).