There are 1 billion websites in the world, Sovrn CEO Walter Knapp tells me enthusiastically. Eighty percent of those are inactive. Of the remaining 200 million sites, half are “porn or hate” and not suitable for advertising. Which leaves 100 million websites and tens of millions of publishers, all battling each other for attention and ad dollars. […]
Month: April 2014
Programmatic Primer for Data-Savvy Publishers (ClickZ, Maja Millicevic)

Originally published by ClickZ on April 18, 2014. Embracing programmatic sales tools can allow publishers to jump ahead of the competition. Here are a few considerations to keep in mind as you build out your programmatic strategy. Programmatic has been one of the hot topics of discussion for the last couple of years and will […]
Video Advertising Transparency: How to Make your Supply Attractive to Advertisers

In our effort to advocate for our publisher base, Sovrn Holdings strives to provide a fully transparent and well-segmented supply chain for our advertising partners. We take pride in educating and assisting our publishers about industry best practices and in this article we will discuss transparency and the advantages of complying with these standards. Programmatic […]
All atwitter for Gnip: Boulder waits to see impact of Twitter’s purchase of local firm
A little blue bird made a pretty big deal last week in Boulder.
Twitter Inc., the San Francisco-based social networking company that built a $25 billion market cap off tweets of 140 characters or less, snapped up Boulder-based Gnip Inc., a longtime partner that provides social media data to a variety of firms. […]
Programmatic Primer for Data-Savvy Publishers
Embracing programmatic sales tools can allow publishers to jump ahead of the competition. Here are a few considerations to keep in mind as you build out your programmatic strategy.
Programmatic has been one of the hot topics of discussion for the last couple of years and will likely continue to be as wider adoption exposes new challenges. We’ve come a long way. Once, the advertising industry equated programmatic with low-quality supply threatening the high CPMs publishers commanded using direct sales. Today, with the emerging ecosystem of private marketplaces and programmatic direct, programmatic is poised to become a universal sales tool that both publishers and advertisers embrace. However, we’re still in the infancy of accepting programmatic as the underlying technology that will enable publishers and advertisers to benefit from faster transactions across all channels and mediums. […]
Publisher Spotlight: Incredible Infant

www.incredibleinfant.com Heather Taylor began blogging in 2007. Her newest site, www.incredibleinfant.com, launched in June 2013. A mother of 3 and passionate about all things parenting – especially help, information, and humor for new parents, Heather’s goals for Incredible Infant are to: Provide factual, well-researched information about a particular topic that new parents care about. Sprinkle […]
Why Fewer Ads Will Benefit Our Entire Industry

Originally published by MediaPost on April 10, 2014. The most potent opportunity of digital marketing is the ability to access and leverage data about nearly everything. Data-driven or “programmatic” marketing isn’t just about RTB, exchanges, DSPs, or trading desks – those are means, not results. It’s about the ability for marketers to understand and make […]
Scott Cunningham Hired as VP of Ad Operations at IAB

Earlier today, the IAB announced that it was hiring Scott Cunningham as the Vice President of Technology and Ad Operations. Immediately prior to this, Scott was the SVP of Product Management here at Sovrn. When the opportunity to join the IAB first came up way back in November of last year, Scott and I discussed […]
Blogger Advice: Finding Your True Fans

This article is written by Kourosh Karimkhany, Head of Publisher Development at Tugboat Yards, a Sovrn publishing partner. If you have a blog with a sizable audience (about 100,000 unique visitors per month, or so), you likely have a sizable group of true fans — people who come to your site more than 30 times […]
Why Fewer Ads Will Benefit Our Entire Industry
The most potent opportunity of digital marketing is the ability to access and leverage data about nearly everything. Data-driven or “programmatic” marketing isn’t just about RTB, exchanges, DSPs, or trading desks – those are means, not results. It’s about the ability for marketers to understand and make intelligent decisions about where their messages are being placed, to whom they’re being targeted, and with what specific outcomes. This is an incredible economic opportunity for both marketers and publishers if the two sides come together and get it right. […]
Catching the Elusive Creature: The "Profitable Blogs"

Originally published by ClickZ on March 21, 2014. Profitable blogs do, in fact, exist, and here’s what they’re doing to succeed, including creating original and enticing content and diversifying revenue streams. My kids have great imaginations and are fascinated with mythical creatures like leprechauns. They make up these descriptions and stories that are so detailed and […]
LinkSmart Uses Link Monetization to Put Contextual Content Discovery in Publishers' Hands
sovrn has recently partnered with LinkSmart to give publishers more great tools for contextually relevant content discovery and audience development. Here’s a message from Suttida Yang, senior director of marketing at LinkSmart. LinkSmart is a link monetization solution for publishers built by publishers. We believe publishers are increasingly losing control of some of the most […]
5 Questions with Walter Knapp, CEO of Sovrn
Earlier this year, Federated Media Publishing sold its content marketing business to LIN Digital Medial LLC for $22.4 million.
As a result of the purchase, Federated Media spun out its programmatic media business — created when the company acquired Boulder-based Lijit — into a stand-alone firm called Sovrn. […]
Destined to Be an Entrepreneur
As a trailblazer, John Battelle’s insights into emerging trends are highly sought after and considered the gold standard by many in the industry. As an entrepreneur, he is best known as the co-founder of Wired, and launched the Industry Standard, Federated Media Publishing and, most recently, Sovrn. Sovrn is an advocate and partner to 20,000 publishers and represents more than a million sites, which use their platform to grow their audience, engage their readers as well as monetize. In addition to founding several media properties, Battelle co-founded and co-hosted the annual Web 2.0 Summit and his highly anticipated book, What We Hath Wrought, aims to forecast the interconnected world in 2040. A true Rainemaker indeed. […]
Is It Good? Blog Resources

“Is it good?” I hear this often. On just about everything. Food. Sunglasses. Cars. Shoes. My new solar panels. It’s a simple enough question, but what does it mean? When someone asks it, what do they want to hear? Take these shoes for instance. Are they good? Well, they’re a couple of my favorites for […]