Factsheet

• Founded in: 2014
• Supported model: CPM
• Payment method: PayPal, Wire Transfer, ACH, Check, and eCheck
• Payment terms: NET-45
• Minimum payment threshold: $25
• Supported language: English
• Reporting: Real-time dashboard
• Live publishers: 692,556 (as per Similar Tech)
• Minimum traffic: None
• Website: https://www.sovrn.com/, https://www.viglink.com
• Employee count: 51-200

Overview

Sovrn (pronounced Sovereign) holding was founded in 2014, before that it was known by the names Federated Media and Lijit. LLN Media purchased it from Federated Media and started the programmatic advertising branch. Just a few months after launch, Sovrn was ranked the 4th largest network in the advertising industry by Quantcast.

The company offers tools, technologies, and services to help publishers earn more from their ad inventories. Sovrn is certified by IAB, TAG, and JICWEBS. 

Here are some products and services offered by Sovrn:

• //Advertising: Sovrn’s advertising tools include header bidding and waterfall advertising. The ad network is compatible with server-to-server bidding, Google’s Open Bidding, and Amazon’s Transparent Ad Marketplace (TAM). Sovrn promises higher CPMs with all these solutions. 
• //Data Monetization: Under this offering, publishers can leverage mobile data monetization and email monetization. Publishers can essentially combine email monetization plans with Sovrn’s advertising solutions to enhance the performance of their email campaigns. Sovrn further claims that publishers won’t face any issue regarding privacy or security-related matters. 

• //Signal: This product lets publishers create new ad units. //Signal measures the activity and engagement of the audience and gives publishers insights on how to monetize it. Ad refresh feature reloads ads after every 30 seconds, further increasing publisher revenue. Next, it has sticky ads and whitespace optimization features for better page space management that adds more value to the inventory.
• //Consent: Publishers who respect user consent have more valuable inventories. Privacy initiatives like GDPR and CCPA are forcing ad tech to innovate and do better with user data management. //Consent by Sovrn takes publishers one step ahead by following the IAB guidelines on Transparency and Consent Framework.
• //Commerce: After acquiring VigLink, Sovrn launched //Commerce. The product offers an in-text advertising solution and tracks the purchasing behavior on the publisher’s inventory to decides which dealing method would be more beneficial for the publishers.
• Analytics: Track audience, revenue, and optimize the performance using real-time analytics. Analytics includes data management, bid-level reporting, and data filtering. Publishers can see earnings in different metrics like CPM and RPM.
• Server-to-server bidding: Client-side header bidding is known to increase page latency, to counter that Sovrn has a server-to-server header bidding option available for the publishers. S2S takes the auction to the server rather than doing it on the user’s browser. It is faster than client-side bidding and offers a better user experience, but targeting is compromised due to a lack of use of low user match rates. 
• Plug-and-play advertising: Sovrn offers header bidding, server-to-server bidding, and waterfall advertising to publishers of all business sizes. To enable these solutions, they just need to plug in to Sovrn’s demand by placing its code snippet on the websites/apps.
• AdBlock Unlock: Detect and measure the users with ad blockers with different web browsers. Then recover revenue by asking users to whitelist your website..
• Forbidden content: Sovrn doesn’t allow adult, profane, and violent content. Check the policies for exact guidelines to know about the disallowed content type.

Sovrn uses its in-house Meridian platform to manage publisher accounts. Meridian enables publishers to manage everything related to their account from one place. The platform delivers, among other things, header bidding, VAST, VPAID, OnScroll, and InView ads.

Sovrn has recently partnered with Google to provide the Exchange Bidding. For header bidding, Sovrn uses the Prebid.js wrapper, a flexible header bidding wrapper, and allows industry-wide demands (adapters) to connect.

Sovrn is often recommended as an AdSense alternative. It also works smoothly with AdSense. When using both, publishers are recommended to use AdSense as the passback network.

Pros

• Low minimum payment threshold: Sovrn wires the payment as soon as the earnings of the publisher reach $25. While for other ad networks including AdSense, threshold payment is high. For small publishers, this gives them the opportunity to make money at an early stage of their business with minimum traffic.
• Multiple ad formats and sizes: Having multiple ad formats and sizes to choose from lets publishers test more formats, which enables publishers to test with multiple ad types and to find out the ad formats that work best with their content.
• Header bidding with managed demand: The header bidding services are available via client-side and server-side. Both methods require active demand management. For this, Sovrn offers a dedicated account manager to handle publisher’s demands.

Cons

• Invite-only network: Once a publisher shows interest in Sovrn. The company audits the publisher’s inventory. Basis the minimum requirements, it approves or rejects the publisher. This process can take anywhere from a few days to weeks, keeping publishers on the edge of their seats.
• Supports only CPM model: Sovrn publishers miss out on opportunities offered by CPC, CPA, and CPL models. Sure, CPM is the most common metric used in the industry, but cutting down on options means reduced advertiser demand.
• Low eCPM for non-US traffic: Sovrn works best with traffic from top-tier countries like US. For publishers with majority non-US traffic, Sovrn fails to provide good eCPMs.

How to Get Started

To get started with Sovrn, visit the website and sign up as a publisher. Sovrn has an internal auditing process, where it checks the publisher’s website for content type, traffic, and audience demographics. Once approved by Sovrn, you can move to the onboarding steps.

Publishers will be asked about their properties (websites and apps) to be added for the Sovrn services. The next step is to add Sovrn code to the website, in order to access the dashboard and analytics. After this, you can create ad units and place them on the website.

In the case of header bidding, publisher, with the help of ad operations, integrates the wrapper to the site and add demand partners. Header bidding onboarding is time-consuming as it requires precise campaign setup for which publishers are offered, dedicated account managers.

After the successful activation, ads start appearing almost instantaneously.

AdPushup

Managed Demand. Adblock Recovery. Greater Revenue.

AdPushup is a full-stack ad revenue optimization platform for publishers. The features include ad layout optimization, header bidding implementation, automated A/B testing, and AdBlock recovery.

The ad ops team at AdPushup takes care of all the heavy lifting of tasks related to operations and inventory management. Additionally, they have demand-partnership with top-tier ad networks and exchanges such as Google AdX, AppNexus, Rubicon, and OpenX, among others.

AdPushup is a Google Certified Publishing Partner and trusted by 300+ publishers, including CNET, Deccan Chronicle, NDTV, and more.On average, AdPushup offers a 40% revenue uplift for their publishing partners. Get on a call with AdPushup to understand the potential of your inventory.

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