SOVRN SSP DISPLAY HEADER BIDDING – REVIEW AND BENEFITS

Are you a marketer or business owner who owns a website with millions of page views per month and thinking to monetise those page views via display banner ads?

eDigital Consultants can help you find the right Display monetisation partner or commonly known as Supply Side Platforms.

Below is some key information (not conclusive) and review on Sovr  which is a header bidding SSP (Supply Side Platform) provider.

Sovrn General Information

• Background: Sovrn own & operate a proprietary ad technology stack with direct connections to every major buyer in the world. Sovrn is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado USA with offices in Denver and New York. Bought OnScroll (UK) on September 2016.
• Sovrn has been around for 10 years (started on 2006). They were initially selling content via partner publishers and bloggers.
• Sovrn works with major networks to small bloggers.
• Pay at min $25 dollars of inventory sold while Google Adsense is $100.
• CEO: Walter Knapp
• Sovrn bought UK-based viewability company OnScroll in April 2016. So if a user usually scrolls to the bottom of the page, OnScroll will serve a below-the-fold placement. That increases overall ad inventory by 7% to 15%. Because Sovrn’s mostly long-tail publishers don’t have the resources to redesign for viewability, such as “lazy loading” ads that only serve when they’re in view, OnScroll will enable its publishers to quickly improve their viewability averages.

Sovrn offering

• Sovrn helps online publishers through display advertising solutions, real time analytics and a suite of third party tools and integrations.

Size of Sovrn Network

• 80k publishers. Source: adexchanger
• More than 1 million websites
• $1 million weekly payout to publishers
• 4th Largest global ad network

Sovrn Technology

• Mainly Header bidding: Sovrn started using header bidding on 2015. Seen best results for header bidding.

Sovrn Benefits

• We focused on small publishers. Tech team implement the header package.
• Personal account manager: checking site and performance.
• Phone schudelue with tech manager.

Sovrn Pricing (Nov 2016)

• No contracts.
• At least 2-3 months commitments.
• CPM= you will see a wide variety of CPM. On conversation with them, they estimate a CPM around $4 dollars to $7 which I think it is quite high. Better to double check with one of their clients.
• Sovrn take a maximum of a 30% cut on every transaction.

Things to consider before implementing

• Get your ad server ready with very poplar ad sizes: 300×250, video ads getting good CPM.

Sovrn Implementation

• Sovrn recommends Adserver: Double CLick for publishers
• Very straight forward and easy once client is set up with Double Click for publishers.

Ad Inventory optimisation via Sovrn

• Price floors: Client can set price floors (in case you do not want to sell inventory too cheap)
• Sovrn Interface: allows to see the usual details like CPM and fill rates along with more unique ones. Publisher can break down CPM by category to see what vertical is paying higher CPMs. Publisher can also compare their clearing prices to those of its peers, offering more transparency into performance.
• The dashboard gives Publishers enough oversight to turn their focus back to content.
• Sovrn can block certain verticals from not buying your ad space but cannot run ads from a specific vertical.
• Client can sell ad inventory directly to a specific advertiser (direct deals). In this scenario, client will have to block the ad inventory from being sold by Sovrn or any other SSP via the ad server.
• Autoplay video and autoplay Audio can be turn off/on? need to be checked.
• Mobile Viewability Optimisation: Is the any considerations to ensure banner ads appear nicely on Mobile devices? Two options here to review are: a) Responsive publisher site with sidebar ads are less optimal as ads would get push down to the bottom decreasing viewability and ad impressions. b) Custom Mobile template: creates a unique layout just for mobile will give more impressions and more viewability. However, it has the potential to be a poor user experience in that they’re seeing more ads.

Sovrn Clients

• Curse – Game publisher
• Sally’s baking addiction – Cooking publisher

Sovrn Trust Signals

• Industry accreditation programs, such as the IAB and MRC? to be confirmed.
• The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) registration? to be confirmed.
• Utilisation of multiple anti-fraud partners and tactics? to be confirmed.
• Third-party audits? to be confirmed.

Sovrn Competitors

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SOVRN REVIEW