Working with an advertising agency often means measurable results, friendly customer service, and creative ideas that drive brand awareness. But it also can mean confusing jargon. Here are some common terms you may come across while working on your next campaign.

Jargon

While we’re trying to clarify the jargon we may use, it’s important for you to remember not to use your own jargon in messages to your audience. Always assume you’re speaking to the least knowledgeable member of your audience (unless you’re speaking directly to like-minded individuals, such as in a trade publication) and replace all industry-specific words with layman’s terms.

Job Number

Every project we start or retainer we hold is given a job number. For our agency, the number is usually two letters, sometimes three, followed by two or more numbers (for example, XX-123). This is a number you’ll see on most documents related to the project, but it’s not something you need to worry about. It’s a number used internally for organization and billing purposes.

JPEG

Standing for Joint Photographic Experts Group, a JPEG is a file format traditionally used for web images and digital photography. It is a very common format because it compresses large image files to a more usable size. This lessens the storage needed so web pages can load faster. However, you may lose image quality the more it is compressed.