1. What do you do at Sovrn and how does that work contribute to Sovrn’s mission? I’m a product manager at Sovrn’s Boulder Headquarters. My role is a bit unique in that the engineers I work with are based in our London office. They’re the original engineering team from OnScroll, a UK based company we […]

  All publishers want to boost traffic to their sites, however as the industry evolves, both buyers and sellers are becoming acutely aware that not all traffic is good traffic. When Facebook announced in January that it would start “de-prioritizing” publisher and brand content, the publishing world saw one of the biggest sources of traffic […]

With a portfolio of nearly 100,000 sites, which collectively reach around 1 billion unique internet users per month (that’s 1/3 of total web users), Sovrn feels strongly that preventing downtime, delivering real-time reporting and optimizing the performance of our platform are all extremely important. In March of 2017 we started a major upgrade to our […]

Monetize Your Engaged Readers Gain access to more spend, without sacrificing your user experience, by showing advertisers your users are engaged with your content. How many ads on your page are actually engaged with by your readers? For many publishers, this is a question that is very difficult to answer. Why care? Because, advertisers want […]

Sovrn’s new Workbench plugin for WordPress speeds up your workflow for formatting, distributing and promoting your blog articles so you can focus on what matters: writing the best content for your readers. Here’s what you can expect from Workbench: Mobile Optimized Publishing Workbench automatically formats your content for Facebook Instant Articles, Google Accelerated Mobile Pages, […]

Viewability and reload ads have been around for a while, but bringing engagement into the mix is an entirely new concept for advertisers and publishers alike. By combining viewability and engagement, publishers are able to unlock the full revenue potential of their sites. We achieve this with our viewability tools, powered by OnScroll technology. These […]

There’s no doubt that the mobile revolution is shaking up online publishing, and more specifically, the way users are discovering and consuming content on the web. In fact, in the United States alone, mobile represents 71% of the total minutes spent online. And that number is even higher in other countries. Damn. Because of this […]

It’s no secret that publishers work day in and day out optimizing their ad-serving options to monetize their content. However, as the industry sees advancements in technologies for publishers, the tedious process of ad-stack optimization may not be necessary in order to maximize revenue. First, let’s set the stage by taking a look at how […]

Header bidding provides publishers with more control and transparency into the value of their inventory. Many publishers are excited about the boost in yield that header auctions provide, but this advanced tech is not suited for everyone. The implementation process can be complex and each publisher’s setup is a little different than the next. So, […]

In-view ads are in high demand across the advertising industry. Instead of rubbing the genie’s belly hoping their ads are seen by a reader, advertisers can now guarantee that their ads are being engaged with. Say what? When understanding in-view ads, there are three metrics to pay attention to: dwell time, engagement time and percent […]

Does this sound like you? “It was frustrating that we got the same revenue per pageview for a reader who was on a page for 10 seconds and a reader that was on a page for 2 minutes, I knew we could do better.” – Jan Van Der Crabben, Ancient History Encyclopedia If you’re looking […]

Calling all publishers – I’d like to introduce to you Sovrn’s new OnScroll technology. You’re not going to want to miss this, trust me. What is OnScroll? OnScroll is a new, 100% additive advertising technology that allows publishers to sell more inventory on existing placements without impacting user experience. How do we do it? It […]

We recently hosted an Ask Me Anything (AMA) event in Sovrn Community with Gavin Dunaway, Editorial Director at AdMonsters. It was an amazing Q&A session with community members on a wide range of topics. Of the many topics covered, header bidding was by far the most popular. So, we’ve compiled a list of all the […]

In this interview, we discuss strategies to improve revenue and user experience with Emry Downinghall, VP of Advertising at StudyBreak Media & Chegg. Thanks for meeting today and thanks ahead of time for being our Ask Me Anything guest March 27-30 – we’re excited to have you featured! I’ve been wanting to interview you for our thought leader series. […]

Managing Global Round-the-Clock Platform Operations and Rapid Growth Over the past several weeks, the real-time reporting publishers have come to expect from Sovrn has experienced delays. We believe strongly in transparency and continual learning & improving, so we thought we should provide a longer explanation of the reasons behind the delays and what we are […]

In 2016, header bidding grew up. Previously known as “tagless ad tech,” “advance bidding,” “header auction,” among many others, header bidding became a nearly ubiquitous term. What began as a word of mouth technical adaptation between savvy publishers blossomed into a significant slice of the programmatic ad business. The presence of header bidding forced Google […]

In this interview, we discuss digital marketing and content strategies with Peter Houston, Editor at Large for TheMediaBriefing.com and Founder of Flipping Pages, a digital media consultancy for publishers. First off, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you help publishers? Since you are based in the U.K., our customers in […]

Top FAQs What is OnScroll? OnScroll is a product that allows you harness the power of your engaged readers through collecting valuable engagement and viewability metrics. What products are available that take advantage of this technology? We have 2 great options to empower you to monetize your readers: Option 1 (Whitespace monetization) Take advantage of […]

Ancient History Encyclopedia is the world’s most-read history encyclopedia. Their mission is to improve history education worldwide by creating the most complete, freely accessible and reliable history resource in the world. In November 2016, Jan Van Der Crabben, CEO of Ancient History Encyclopedia partnered with Sovrn and their OnScroll product. While he was using a […]

In this interview, we talk to Ian Logue, Owner of PatsFans.com. Ian has built a community of passionate New England Patriots fans that use his site for the latest updates on news, players and game stats as well as talk with other fans on his message boards and forums. CH: Hi, Ian. I’ve been looking […]

Optimal has been acquired by Sovrn. Please read post from Sovrn’s CEO, Walter Knapp, for more information. Post from Walter Knapp, CEO of Sovrn Post from Rob Leathern, CEO/Founder of Optimal To learn more, please email us at adblocking@sovrn.com or join the discussion on our community forum.

This is Kiki. Kiki blogs about her experiences as the corner’s foremost lemonade distributor in a three block radius. Kiki is going to help take us on a journey to understand how bloggers like her can make money from their content. Publishers like Kiki are crafty by nature, so it’s no wonder that publishers across […]

In this interview, we talk to Chris Cummings, CEO of Curiosity Media and Mike Miller, Director of Revenue and Analytics at Curiosity Media’s SpanishDict.com. Curiosity Media are the people behind Spanish learning websites, SpanishDict and Fluencia which collectively help more than 100 million people each year. Hi Chris and Mike, I’ve been looking forward to […]

In the space of two years, header bidding has gone from a virtual unknown to an industry standard. According to Business Insider, nearly 70% of digital publishers are using header bidding. However, until now publishers have utilized browser-side header bidding solutions, which can potentially contribute to ad-load and page-load latency. Why browser-side header bidding causes […]

Let’s face it, building your newsletter list can be tough. There are many different ways to do so, but they all take extra time and management. But! A thriving email list can really throw some gas on the growth of your website. Why? Email is super shareable – Ever forward along an awesome newsletter to […]

In this interview, we talk with Gavin Dunaway, Editorial Director at AdMonsters. Gavin has an infectious passion and deep knowledge of ad tech. We met Gavin last year at the AdMonsters Tech Forums facilitating discussion amongst 100+ ad tech professional on all things ad tech, from header bidding to direct deals and programmatic video. On […]

Historically, the industry has seen increases in programmatic advertising spend during Q4, especially around the holidays. As a publisher, this means you are likely seeing an uptick in ad performance as Q4 comes to a close. However, this may not last for long. Brands pull back on their programmatic ad dollars as Q1 and the […]

WordPress is a fantastic platform on which to host your blog or website. But it’s not a perfect out-of-the-box solution; WordPress functions best in conjunction with plugins. So here’s a collection of the best WordPress plugins that will help your site run smoothly. I’ve personally used all of these and consider them indispensable. And the […]

They say the only true path to improvement is through constant measurement. We created a viewability measurement tool to help publishers understand how improvements in viewability can lead to improvement in CPM and overall site revenue. To better understand viewability, view our blog post that outlines the following major themes in viewability strategy: “An ad is […]

Watchers on the Wall, a prominent Game of Thrones news site, has nearly doubled their advertising revenue since working with Sovrn. “Depending on the month, we earn anywhere between 70 and 100% more than we did with AdSense alone,” says Oz, co-founder of WatchersontheWall.com. Oz and a group of fellow writers founded Watchers on the […]

Many of our developing publishers use Sovrn along with Google AdSense to jump-start their advertising income. Here’s a sneak peek into how two of our publishers, PTZtv and Fae’s Twist & Tango, are using Sovrn and AdSense together to maximize ad revenue. PTZtv PTZtv relied solely on AdSense for their programmatic advertising income. Over time […]

Your site is approved, your ad tags are live, but you’re not making any money. So, what’s the deal? There are a few different things to look at if your Sovrn ad tags are live but you’re not seeing any revenue roll in. We’ll break it into two different buckets: for those publishers who are […]

Discrepancies are a fact of life in digital advertising, and for most publishers hover around 10%. But if your discrepancies are 20% or more, you’ll want to figure out why. Here are four quick tips for keeping your discrepancies are as low as possible. 1. Make sure your site has been whitelisted. The biggest reason we see our publishers […]