The popular convention treats vectors in $\mathbb{R}^n$ as column vectors. With this convention, the standard inner product of two vectors
$$ v = \begin{pmatrix} v_1 \\ \vdots \\ v_n \end{pmatrix}, w = \begin{pmatrix} w_1 \\ \vdots \\ w_n \end{pmatrix} $$
can be written as
$$ \left< v, w \right> = v^T \cdot w = (v_1, \dots, v_n)\begin{pmatrix} w_1 \\ \vdots \\ w_n \end{pmatrix} = \sum_{i=1}^n v_i w_i $$
where the expression $v^T \cdot w$ is the product of the $1 \times n$ matrix $v^T$ with the $n \times 1$ matrix $w$ and we identify the result (a $1 \times 1$ matrix) with a number. In particular, we can write things such as
$$ \left< Av, w \right> = (Av)^T \cdot w = (v^T \cdot A^T) \cdot w = v^T \cdot (A^T \cdot w) = \left< v, A^T \cdot w \right>.$$