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#asksovrn: How to Survive Ad Blocking

Sovrn Publisher Advocate // November 23, 2015

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For this #asksovrn, we wanted to answer, “How can I survive adblocking as an independent publisher?”

There definitely has been a surge in ad blocking. It really hit mass media after iOS 9’s release, which included ad blocking extensions for Safari. Paid ad blockers have also surged in popularity – in October 2015, Purify Blocker became the sixth most downloaded paid app in the iTunes AppStore.

While unfortunately the rise of adblocking correlates to bad ad experiences, at Sovrn we pride ourselves on being one of the cleanest exchanges. To combat bad ads, our ad ops team uses third-party tools to keep bad ads, malware and fraud out of sovrn’s network.

The question is how do advertisers and websites adjust. There’s software like Pagefair that circumvent ad blocking software – but the most impactful way to prevent ad blocking is to have a clean site.

This means

  • Having 5 ad zones or fewer per page
  • Having 75% of the page be content-related, and 25% of the page be ads, additional widgets or plugins
  • Not using obtrusive ads like auto-video, pop-ups, or whole-page take-overs.

For more information about adblocking – sign up for our webinar on Dec. 3rd. We will be sitting with Sean Blanchfield, CEO of Pagefair, to better understand how to maintain revenue in an adblocking world.  

Have a question? Use #asksovrn in your post and we’ll get right on it!

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