I assume you are an IB client because that term "adaptive urgent market order" seems to only apply to their system. When you ask questions like this, it would help to tell us the asset class, but I expect only IB would have that metric as to what order gets to the market faster. As you are new to Elite Trader, you may not know that there is an IB forum here for just their questions.
Stocks, Options, futures? To be honest, I can't imagine it makes a material difference. It should appear to be instantaneous.
It's "adaptive" in that it looks how much liquidity there is. It's not an order that ignores price. It's useful for very large orders. When something is trading 5000 shares per minute and you want to trade 500,000 a market order is out of the question -- it's either a dark pool or an adaptive order that is automatically split into smaller segments.
Ron, This forum is fine. As d08 states, the order depends on size and liquidity. If your order size will move the market higher, it could be order capped. Extreme case for example, a stock has an average daily volume of 1000 shares (hardly trades) and there is little depth on the offer. If you place a market order for 5000 shares you could end up moving a stock several hundred percent if the order is true market (i.e. fill immediately at any price). That wouldn't make you or the regulators happy. So there is a chance your order will get capped in some shape or form it it would move the market. As for order types, it doesn't matter much. Limit, market, adaptive, etc. They all get sent to an exchange with a price and size. Based on price time priority you'll get a fill. There are some advantages to the adaptive in that it gives the Algo a little more discretion on getting a fill but frankly, I suggest limit order a tick or two through the market assuming it is not large size. It would serve the same purpose as a market and allow SMART to do it's thing.