# Glossary

> The words Awaitful uses, defined precisely: sponsored line, surface, slate, share of voice, the pot, verified impression, house ad, still clearing.

- Source: https://awaitful.com/docs/glossary
- Updated: July 19, 2026

The words Awaitful uses, defined precisely. When a dashboard label or a docs sentence uses one of these, it means exactly this - the vocabulary is part of the contract.

## Terms

### bid

The amount an advertiser offers per thousand verified impressions. A winner pays its own bid - see [How the auction works](https://awaitful.com/docs/how-the-auction-works).

### daily budget

A hard cap on a campaign's spend per UTC day. Serving stops for the day when it is reached; the spend counter resets at midnight UTC, but an exhausted campaign does not return to the auction on its own - see [Bidding and budgets](https://awaitful.com/docs/bidding-and-budgets).

### device token

The narrow, revocable credential a linked machine holds: fetch lines, report views, read its own earnings summary, nothing more - see [Sign in and link your editor](https://awaitful.com/docs/link-your-editor).

### house line

The platform's own fallback message when no advertiser is bidding. It carries a zero bid, bills nobody, pays nothing, and declares itself wherever it renders - see [House ads and quiet markets](https://awaitful.com/docs/house-ads).

### placement

The wire name for where a line renders (for example status-bar or thinking-line). Placements carry different price weights. The reader-facing word is surface.

### the pot

The total of every live bid at a given moment. Shares of voice always sum over it.

### share of voice

A campaign's bid divided by the pot: its probability of holding any given sponsored moment, and over time its delivered share of all of them.

### slate

The set of three slots served for one surface, drawn weighted by bid and cached for about a minute. The editor round-robins through it between thinking turns, never showing the same line twice in a row.

### slot

One draw result inside a slate. Not a rank: draws are with replacement, so one campaign can hold several slots in the same slate.

### sponsored line

The one-sentence ad plus its link - the entire format. Visibly set apart wherever it appears - see [One line, one link](https://awaitful.com/docs/creative-rules).

### still clearing

Earned money inside the holdback window, credited but not yet withdrawable - see [Payouts and your balance](https://awaitful.com/docs/payouts).

### surface

Where the line appears in your tools: status bar, thinking line, chat banner, or terminal status line - see [Choose where the line appears](https://awaitful.com/docs/choose-your-surfaces).

### verified impression

A view that met the whole rule: the threshold of cumulative visible time, a focused window, and an agent genuinely thinking. The only kind of impression that bills or pays - see [What counts as an impression](https://awaitful.com/docs/verified-impressions).