Signal dynamic pricing floors proven to increase CPMs and programmatic revenue across multiple SSPs

BOULDER, CO – March 13, 2024 – Sovrn, a publisher technology platform that helps content creators earn and keep more revenue, today announced that Sovrn’s Signal product has proven to deliver a 10% revenue uplift. Over a 90-day period starting in December 2023 across 8 billion auctions, with publishers representing 190 domains, testing proved that Signal delivered an unmatched ability to create higher yields, increased CPMs, and greater programmatic revenue across multiple SSPs.

Results included:

• 10% revenue increase across all programmatic channels throughout the testing period.
• Increased yield across all ad units versus the control group.
• Steady revenue uplift even amid traffic spikes, dips, and cyclical demand trends.
• Yield increase across all programmatic channels, including in Google AdX.

Signal measures the attributes of a bid request and sets the optimal price, then broadcasts and routes it via multiple SSPs to buyers most likely to bid at the estimated market price. Available through a free, 21-day trial, Signal is a simple software solution, priced at a one-cent CPM impression fee. In addition, publishers have the option to bundle the Sovrn Ad Exchange to receive a zero percent take rate on impressions sent through the Sovrn Exchange. Signal is currently available for Prebid activation, with future versions offering dynamic pricing within Google Ad Manager (GAM) and Amazon Transparent Ad Marketplace (TAM).

Two publishers involved in the testing, Mumsnet and Daily Voice, each saw significant overall revenue increase. Mumsnet, the go-to online community for UK parents with eight million unique users, realized a 21% yield uplift when a floor was present. Similarly, Daily Voice, a digital news platform reaching over two million unique monthly users, also saw a 20% yield uplift. 

“A better understanding of our first-party data assets and their value has been the key to unlocking yield success” said Nino Stylianou, head of programmatic yield at Mumsnet. “So many factors play into the challenges of dynamic pricing, which is why we partnered with Sovrn to help us with the heavy lifting. We’re thrilled to continue to strengthen our collaboration with Sovrn, allowing us to elevate our pricing strategies and face the future head-on.”

At its core, Signal is a data decisioning engine that enriches a publisher’s first party data in a privacy-compliant manner with intelligence and insights from the Sovrn Data Collective, the largest source of privacy compliant, open-web behavior data in the world, to understand and generate maximum value from every advertising transaction. Signal is a plug-and-play solution, allowing publishers to capture and activate page-level data without changing their Prebid settings or making any ad server modifications. 

“At Sovrn, we are always looking for opportunities to help publishers capture higher revenue from their quality content, which is why we created Signal in the first place,” said Babac Vafaey, vice president of data products at Sovrn. “By embedding robust data intelligence into dynamic pricing, we help publishers maximize their earnings across every programmatic channel and with all their SSP partners in the ad stack.”

Learn more about Signal dynamic pricing and how to get started with a free trial.

About Sovrn

Sovrn provides products and services to thousands of online publishers to help them understand, operate and grow their business. Sovrn is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, with offices in New York, San Diego, and London.

With thousands of customers deploying advertising, affiliate commerce, and data products across more than 50,000 websites, Sovrn reaches 500 million active consumers across more than 40 billion page views every day. Sovrn has been a leader in online publisher technology since its founding, and has been recognized by IAB, JICWEBS and TAG for its role in combating fraud and promoting pro-transparency initiatives. Sovrn is dedicated to helping content creators do more of what they love, and less of what they don’t. www.sovrn.com 

The post Sovrn Signal Delivers 10% Revenue Uplift appeared first on Sovrn, Inc..

In theory, buying and selling programmatic ad inventory should be a relatively simple transaction. Yet, countless variables can influence an ad’s value — including ad size and position, context, site traffic, geographic location, audience demographics, audience engagement, device type, day and time, market demand, and so much more. Then there’s seasonality; simply put, the same ad on Cyber Monday commands a much higher price because more buyers are bidding during Cyber Five than on January first.

The result? A system that makes it a challenge for buyers and sellers to land on a mutually agreeable price for each ad impression given the myriad of constantly changing variables and inherent complexity.

And, while buy-side technology uses sophisticated algorithms to help advertisers optimize their bids and ultimately save money, most publishers lack the robust data to effectively determine and broadcast to buyers the fair market value of their ad properties. Supply-side technology that leverages data-rich, dynamic pricing can level the playing field and help publishers drive more revenue from their valuable ad inventory.

Price floors 101: static vs dynamic

A price floor is the minimum price that a publisher is willing to accept in exchange for a given ad placement, providing a degree of control over how ad inventory is valued and sold. 

Static price floors specify a fixed minimum bid for a given ad placement. Some ad tech platforms allow for tiered price floors based on certain basic variables (such as geographic location or device type) — but even then, the price floor does not change once it’s been set unless it is manually updated. 

So finding the optimal static price floor for each ad impression is tricky. Set a floor that’s too high and buyers may not be willing to meet the minimum, leaving unfilled ad space. Set a price that’s too low and risk missing out on valuable ad revenue.

Dynamic floors are different, using advanced technology and data intelligence to estimate the fair market value of an impression at the moment of the auction. Similar to the algorithms used by demand-side platforms (DSP), dynamic pricing tools analyze massive amounts of data in an instant to set the optimal price floor for every impression.

But wait, isn’t price flooring a bad thing?

Recent criticism from The Trade Desk (TTD) regarding price floors and their subsequent decision to essentially ignore price floors established by publishers and supply-side platforms (SSP) has been in the news. While many argue this is a step too far, TTD has raised valid concerns about abusive pricing practices:

1. SSPs adding their own commission (or “take rate”) on top of a minimum asking price. For example, a publisher setting a minimum bid of $1.00 might have its inventory sold by an SSP at a rate of $1.20. The publisher receives its minimum asking price ($1.00) and the SSP keeps the additional $0.20. This practice can artificially inflate minimum asking prices set by publishers, so they no longer reflect the actual value of ad impressions.

2. Layers of complexity, duplication, and non-transparency. The average publisher works with 20+ different SSPs and exchanges, each of which may apply their own fees and formulas that alter the minimum price presented at auction. As a result, the same buyer may see 20+ different price floors for the identical ad impression. This inconsistency makes it hard to rely on price floors as anything more than an approximation or guideline.

Sovrn Signal is designed to solve both of these problems and provide clear (and fair) price guidance by generating an estimated market rate for an ad impression and then sending it to all demand channels – one price for all. 

Plus, bundling Signal with Sovrn Ad Exchange eliminates the take rate for impressions sent via the Sovrn SSP, creating a more transparent indicator of fair market value. Not only does this ensure publishers keep 100% of their ad revenue, it offers buyers greater efficiency and ROI, making bids without a take rate more attractive.

Impact of a Zero Take Rate

Dynamic price floors increase ad revenue

It’s easy to see how dynamic price floors could improve programmatic yield in theory. But these two Sovrn customers demonstrate a real-world impact to the bottom line.

• Digital news platform Daily Voice relies on programmatic channels for 90 percent of its ad revenue. They ran static price floors on several SSPs which were updated regularly to capture market movement. However, they needed a better way to maximize programmatic yield. Daily Voice used the data decisioning engine in Sovrn Signal to understand and generate maximum value from every advertising transaction, resulting in a 20% average yield uplift across all ad formats. (Visit the case study for more details.)

• Longtime Sovrn customer Mumsnet was looking to increase both programmatic ad yield and operational efficiency. Despite leveraging static price floors across several SSP partners, they wanted a better way to optimize ad pricing and increase revenue during peak periods. Using the dynamic pricing tool embedded in Sovrn Signal, Mumsnet achieved a 10% overall revenue increase and $0.39 average CPM uplift per ad unit. (Read the case study.)

By adding a single line of JavaScript code to each webpage, both Daily Voice and Mumsnet were able to implement dynamic price floors to:

• Measure the attributes of all impressions including visit details, viewability and attention, audience segments, and addressability.
• Price each ad using those attributes to predict and set the optimal price floor.
• Broadcast the price floor in bid requests to all SSPs.
• Monetize by routing buyers most likely to bid at or above the estimated market price. 

Get started today

Ready to start maximizing your ad revenue with Sovrn Signal? Sign up to start your free trial today or reach out to sales@sovrn.com with questions.

The post Why (and How) You Should Use Dynamic Pricing appeared first on Sovrn, Inc..

Overview

A long time Sovrn customer, Mumsnet wanted a better way to increase both its programmatic advertising yield and its operational efficiency. Mumsnet is the go-to online community for UK parents, with eight million unique users. Established in 2000, it offers support, advice, and a vibrant platform for parents to connect and share experiences.

Key Takeaway: Mumsnet captured a 10% average revenue uplift using Signal dynamic pricing.

Opportunity: Optimize Yield in Q4 (and Beyond)

Mumsnet monetizes some of their inventory via programmatic advertising channels using demand partners through Prebid, Amazon’s Transparent Marketplace, and Google’s Open Bidding and AdX.

Mumsnet ran static price floors across several supply-side platform (SSP) partners, updating manually on a semi-regular cadence to capture market movements. However, by the last quarter of 2023, Mumsnet was actively seeking a dynamic pricing solution to increase revenue during its peak season by optimizing ad pricing.

Solution: Sovrn Signal Dynamic Pricing 

The Sovrn team invited Mumsnet to participate in Beta testing the dynamic pricing tool embedded in Sovrn Signal, a data decisioning engine to understand and generate maximum value from every advertising transaction. Signal would measure, price, broadcast, and monetize the value of every ad unit to dynamically generate the best price and send it to bidders.

By adding a single line of JavaScript (JS) code to each Mumsnet.com webpage, Signal could dynamically:

• Measure the attributes of all impressions including visit details, viewability and attention, audience segments, and addressability.
• Price each ad using the attributes to predict and set the optimal floor.
• Broadcast the floor price in bid requests to SSPs.
• Monetize by routing requests to buyers most likely to bid at or above the estimated market price.

Throughout the testing period, Signal automatically updated pricing floors to maximize yield while alternative floors were tested concurrently to capture market changes. Signal-generated dynamic pricing was passed to the Sovrn Ad Exchange plus several additional SSPs during the test, while a control group comprising at least 5% of Mumsnet’s ad inventory was maintained to measure the revenue uplift. 

Results

• Overall revenue increase across all programmatic channels through testing period
• Yield increased across all ad units when dynamic pricing was passed versus the control
• Revenue uplift remained steady, even accounting for traffic spikes, dips, and cyclical demand trends
• Overall yield increased across all programmatic channels, including in Google AdX

Methodology

During a three-week period between December 13, 2023 and January 2, 2024, Signal’s prediction and pricing algorithm continuously ran against a control sample, in order to determine both the effective market rate and the impact of dynamic pricing. In the control set no floor was passed at all to provide a true benchmark of the market rate without interference.

We determined revenue uplift by calculating the yield (or, total revenue divided by the total number of ads available) for ads with Signal dynamic pricing enabled or from the control group, and then compared the results. Yield for the control group was applied to the total number of requests that received dynamic pricing to determine what revenue would have been without Signal.

For the revenue uplift figures quoted above, custom targeting key values were passed through to Mumsnet’s Google Ad Manager to denote if dynamic pricing was set or whether the impression was part of the control group. 

Start benefiting from the true value of your audience.

Maximize your revenue with Sovrn Signal. Reach out to sales@sovrn.com to get started.

The post Higher Yields, More Revenue for UK-Based Parenting Platform appeared first on Sovrn, Inc..

Overview

A long time Sovrn customer, Daily Voice wanted a better way to increase both its programmatic advertising yield and its operational efficiency. Daily Voice is a digital news platform, reaching over two million unique monthly users by focusing on hyperlocal journalism. Serving the northeastern US, Daily Voice bridges the “news desert” between national and hyper-local, reporting on town, city, county, and state news to inform and connect communities. 

Key Takeaway: Signal dynamic pricing delivers 20% average revenue uplift across all ad formats.

Opportunity: An Efficient Way to Increase Revenue

Ninety percent of Daily Voice’s ad revenue is via programmatic advertising channels using demand partners through Prebid, Amazon’s Transparent Marketplace, and Google AdX.

Daily Voice ran static price floors across several supply-side platform (SSP) partners, updating on a semi-regular cadence to capture market movements. However, by the last quarter of 2023, it was actively seeking a way to optimize ad pricing and increase revenue during peak advertising season (and beyond).

Solution: Sovrn Signal Dynamic Pricing 

In the fourth quarter of 2023, Daily Voice agreed to Beta test the dynamic pricing tool embedded in Sovrn Signal, a data decisioning engine to understand and generate maximum value from every advertising transaction. Signal would measure, price, broadcast, and monetize the value of every ad unit in the test group to dynamically generate the best price and send it to bidders.

By adding a single line of JavaScript (JS) code to each DailyVoice.com webpage, Signal could dynamically:

• Measure the attributes of all impressions including visit details, viewability and attention, audience segments, and addressability.
• Price each ad using the attributes to predict and set the optimal floor.
• Broadcast the floor price in bid requests to SSPs.
• Monetize by routing requests to buyers most likely to bid at or above the estimated market price.

Throughout the testing period, Signal automatically updated pricing floors to maximize yield while alternative floors were tested concurrently to capture market changes. Signal dynamic pricing was passed to the Sovrn Ad Exchange plus several additional SSPs during the test, while a control group comprising at least 5% of Daily Voice’s ad inventory was maintained to measure the revenue uplift.

Results

• 10% overall revenue increase across all programmatic channels throughout the testing period
• Yield increased across all ad units when dynamic pricing was passed versus the control
• Revenue uplift remained steady, even accounting for traffic spikes, dips, and cyclical demand trends
• Overall yield increased across all programmatic channels, including in Google AdX

Methodology

During a three-week period between December 13, 2023 and January 2, 2024, Signal’s prediction and pricing algorithm continuously ran against a control sample, in order to determine both the effective market rate and the impact of dynamic pricing. In the control set no floor was passed at all to provide a true benchmark of the market rate without interference.

We determined revenue uplift by calculating the yield (or, total revenue divided by the total number of ads available) for ads with Signal dynamic pricing enabled or from the control group, and then compared the results. Yield for the control group was applied to the total number of requests that received a floor to determine what revenue would have been without Signal.

For the revenue uplift figures quoted above, custom targeting key values were passed through to Daily Voice’s Google Ad Manager to denote if a price floor was set or whether the impression was part of the control group.

Start benefiting from the true value of your audience.

Maximize your revenue with Sovrn Signal. Reach out to sales@sovrn.com to get started.

The post Increasing Programmatic Yield From Every Ad appeared first on Sovrn, Inc..

At Sovrn, we believe that publishers who create engaging content and rich user experiences should be able to maximize the attention they capture. Until now, however, much of the ad ecosystem has not been set up to reward those publishers.

In late April, the IAB announced it is creating a new protocol allowing publishers to communicate their ad refresh practices to ad buyers. Through this update to OpenRTB specs, publishers can now give buyers a better line of sight into the triggers that cause ads to be refreshed, as well as the minimum interval before an ad is refreshed.

This is a big step forward for the industry. Publishers who maintain the quality of their advertising inventory through reloading now have a way to differentiate themselves from those who do not. On the buyer side, advertisers will be better equipped to make informed decisions and use their marketing budgets efficiently.

Sovrn is proud of the role we’ve played in driving this change. We are long-time advocates for increased transparency in the ad marketplace and a stronger focus on attention as a measure of ad quality. For more than seven years, we’ve offered publishers a way to measure and monetize user attention through multiple mechanisms, including the industry’s only attention-based ad refresh.

What is ad refreshing?

Ad refreshing (or ad reloading) happens when one ad is replaced by a new ad in the same slot after a certain amount of time. This practice is commonly employed by publishers to increase the number of advertising placements made available to buyers. When done properly, it creates valuable inventory to both publishers and advertisers without adding clutter or diminishing user experience. 

However, this tactic can also be abused to create low-value and nonviewable inventory as well as poor user experiences. Simply put, not all refreshed impressions are created equal. 

For advertisers, this can create problems because there are currently no standards for ad refresh quality — which means the value of refreshed ads can vary widely. For example, an ad that reloads only after 20 seconds of cumulative attention is far more valuable than one that is refreshed every 20 seconds, regardless of whether it is in view.  

That’s why smart ad buyers have begun to seek out attention deals — high quality, highly-engaged ad inventory that’s been segmented and packaged in unique Deal IDs. These attention deals are available through a DSP’s deal library, and some advertisers even work with their partners to create custom attention deals targeting specific audience segments. 

This additional layer of information allows buyers to prioritize and reward high-quality inventory by factoring attention into their media purchase decisions. When combined with IAB’s new OpenRTB protocol, this creates a new level of transparency that benefits all constituents in the ecosystem.  

What does this mean for me as a publisher?

If you currently refresh your ads, you should review your setup to ensure it is delivering a consistent quality of ad impression to advertisers. Attention should be a central element of your ad refresh practices — because an engaged audience is more valuable than one not paying attention. 

However, in order to leverage the value of attention in your refresh strategy, you need a tool that can help you quantify user engagement, package up high value audience segments, and broadcast them to buyers. Our data product, Sovrn Signal, is built to do just that.

Signal is built on Sovrn’s engaged time metric, which combines viewability with more than 50 distinct on-page reader actions like swipes, click, scrolls, and mouse movements. Engaged time measures not only when an ad is in view, but also when a person is actively engaged with the content. 

Signal includes a reload feature that can be used to refresh your ads after a set period of engaged time. With Signal, publishers can:

• Identify, segment, and broadcast your most engaged audience segments
• Harness the power of attention to deliver more value to ad buyers
• Earn more ad revenue from your high value inventory
• Validate your reload strategy and troubleshoot performance with the reload dashboard

To maintain ad quality and raise the bar for ad refreshing, we also recommend the following best practices:

1. Ads should never be refreshed if:
   1. A user is in a separate tab from which the ad appears
   2. More than 25% of the ad or 50% of the page content is obfuscated by another window
2. Ad reloads should only be triggered when at least 51% of the ad is in view
3. The minimum interval for ad refreshes should be 30 seconds of page “dwell time”  
4. The minimum interval for ad refreshes should also be 15 seconds of cumulative “viewable time”
5. Ad reloads should not be initiated if the user has triggered less than 10 “engagement events” with the page (e.g., clicks, key strokes, or mouse movements)

Get started today!

Signal technology gives publishers a simple, scalable way to measure user attention on every page — and then use those insights to maximize ad value and optimize refresh practices. To learn more, visit the Signal page on our website.

Let us know if you’re ready to get started. Our team will be happy to demonstrate how Signal can work for you.

The post New IAB Ad Refresh Protocol Increases Ecosystem Transparency appeared first on Sovrn, Inc..

Online advertising faced a challenging year in 2022, and 2023 is shaping up to be just as difficult. Ad budgets have been slashed across the board, leading to a significant drop-off in year-over-year CPMs in 2022. Forecasts indicate that ad spend is expected to fall even further in the year ahead. 

Faced with these challenging conditions, publishers need a new approach to optimizing their ad programs. In 2023, one of the keys to success for publishers is to think like an ad buyer. They’re under tremendous pressure to meet their KPIs, do more with less, AND deliver the best possible ROI, so every ad dollar has to work harder. They are looking for publishers that deliver content that captures attention, and those that do should be rewarded with a larger share of ad spend. The key to this is enabling publishers a way to ensure buyers can target based on attention.

Simply put, advertisers need consumers to engage with their ads — which means they must be confident their ads will actually be seen.

The importance of attention deals

Advertisers know that an engaged audience is more valuable than one not paying attention. Engaged users are more likely to view an ad, click on it, and eventually make a purchase. Buyers are willing to pay higher rates to reach these audience segments, because they represent a more efficient use of ad spend. 

That’s why smart ad buyers have begun to seek out attention deals — high quality, highly-engaged ad inventory that’s been segmented and packaged in unique Deal IDs. These attention deals are available through a DSP’s deal library, and some buyers even work with their partners to create custom attention deals targeting specific audience segments. 

As a publisher, you’re in a great position to help advertisers capitalize on audience attention — and earn more ad revenue in the process. It starts with creating high quality content that resonates with your readers and keeps them coming back for more. But you also need a tool that can help you quantify user engagement, package up high value audience segments, and broadcast them through attention deals. 

Capture audience attention with Sovrn Signal

Every time a user visits your site, they emit “signals of intent” — things like clicks, swipes, scrolls, and mouse movements. Every interaction tells you something about where the reader’s attention is focused and their level of engagement. 

This idea is the foundation of Sovrn’s engaged time attention metric, which combines viewability with more than 50 distinct on-page reader actions. As a result, engaged time goes beyond basic viewability to help you truly understand the attention visitors are paying to your content. It measures not only when an ad is in view, but also when a person is actively engaged with the content. This falls under “proxies derived from engagement,” one of the IAB’s main methods of measuring attention. 

This ability to analyze attention and forecast performance is the foundation of our data product, Sovrn Signal. With Signal, publishers can:

• Understand the metrics buyers use to value ad inventory
• Benchmark your ad performance against the market and other sites like yours
• Identify, segment, and broadcast your most engaged audience segments
• Deliver higher value inventory to buyers through attention deals

Across the entire programmatic ad stack, Signal leverages attention metrics to pinpoint the most engaged — and most valuable — ad inventory. That same data tells buyers which ad units are most valuable and which factors contribute to higher ad engagement.

At Sovrn, we believe attention is a common ground where advertisers and publishers alike can solve some of their top challenges — from declining ad revenue and budget cuts to addressability and cookie deprecation. And while the “attention economy” has been a focal point of countless articles, webinars, and industry events over the past year, including Cannes Lion 2022, advertisers and publishers are still struggling with a way to quantify and scale attention deals. To help solve this dilemma, Sovrn is an active part of the IAB’s working group to define attention and is partnering with an attention measurement organization, Adelaide, in a groundbreaking initiative to bring buyers and sellers together in a curated high-attention marketplace.

Quantifying the value of engagement

Our interest in attention goes far beyond the theoretical. Signal offers a simple, scalable way to measure user attention, package high-value ad inventory, and broadcast engagement signals to ad buyers. To deliver these audiences to buyers, we have established 20+ high attention Deal IDs on the Sovrn Exchange.

In order to qualify for these attention deals, inventory must meet stringent quality thresholds, including staying in view of engaged users for at least five seconds. Buyers are willing to pay more for these deals because of their high-engagement impressions — and our data shows they deliver a significant uptick in performance as well.

Get started today!

Change is coming to the ad ecosystem, which means both buyers and publishers will need to adjust. But change often brings opportunity for those who are prepared to embrace it. If publishers have the right tools to capture attention metrics and broadcast engagement signals to advertisers, everyone stands to gain.

Sovrn Signal harnesses the power of attention, delivering more value to ad buyers and increased opportunities for publishers to optimize revenue from highly engaged audience segments. To see Signal in action, just email us at sales@sovrn.com to request a demo. 

If you’re an ad buyer looking for new ways to identify and purchase high attention inventory, we can help. 

The post Attention: The New Currency of Value for Ad Deals appeared first on Sovrn, Inc..

This blog was originally published on Digital Context Next InContext.

Speculation about the future of digital advertising abounds, now that the end of third-party cookies is almost certain — whether that’s in 2024 or years down the road. Most predictions focus on the negative: how an inability to target ads will lead to a less personalized experience, more paywalls, diminishing ad value, and loss of revenue. In fact, the IAB’s most recent State of Data report suggests that advertisers could lose up to $10 billion in annual revenue.

However, there’s another side to the story. For publishers who recognize the opportunity, the coming loss of third-party cookies may provide a way to take control of ad rates and even increase ad revenue by capitalizing on one of their most valuable assets: audience attention.

Attention creates an opportunity in a cookieless future

In the current ad marketplace, ad buyers hold all the cards when it comes to ad pricing. But with the loss of third-party cookie IDs, advertisers will be forced to rethink how they execute ad targeting, optimization, and measurement. Without a universal way to identify and authenticate users across the web, ad buyers will become more reliant on publishers for audience data that ties back to useful performance metrics.

This represents a pivotal change in how advertising is bought and sold. Rather than simply selling ad space to the highest bidder, publishers will be uniquely positioned to identify highly desirable audience segments, broadcast audience data to ad buyers, and set appropriate prices on valuable ad properties. For those who can get out ahead of the coming changes, there is a real opportunity to shift the balance of power in the ad marketplace back to publishers.

Attention puts publishers in control

Smart publishers have long understood the importance of audience engagement. Engaged readers are more likely to become repeat visitors — and over time, repeat visitors who trust your content are more likely to generate revenue by clicking an ad or making a purchase through an affiliate link. 

Ad buyers are beginning to embrace this connection, and there’s an increased willingness to pay premium rates for ads that reach relevant, engaged visitors. Advertisers even appear ready to move on from viewability — which fails to consider whether a reader interacts with or even notices an ad — as the standard metric for ad performance.

This trend toward attention was evident at the recent Cannes LIONS event where the “attention economy” was a key theme. Speakers there noted that buyers are looking for new, attention-focused metrics and technology to scale their campaigns, and advertisers show a clear preference for publishers who can demonstrate high levels of reader engagement through clear attention signals.

Capturing the signals of audience attention

To capitalize on this opportunity, publishers need a reliable way to capture, measure, and broadcast engagement data to ad buyers. But the fact is, there’s currently no universal definition for audience attention — much less a widely accepted methodology for measuring it.

As the IAB’s Elizabeth Lane stated in our recent ebook, Capturing the Signals: How Reader Attention Can Drive More Revenue, “Advertisers are excited about using attention to measure [ad] effectiveness, but they’re confused about all the different definitions being used in the market. The risk is that this confusion will lead to them not using attention as a metric and not taking advantage of the insights it can offer.”

The need for a scalable measure of attention is clear. Yet today’s ad marketplace isn’t set up to reward user attention. As a result, publishers often miss out on potential ad revenue because they struggle to identify, target, and broadcast valuable audience segments to ad buyers.

The power of engaged time

Engaged time combines viewability with 45 distinct on-page reader interactions — including clicks, scrolls, mouse movements, and more — to help publishers truly understand when visitors are paying attention to their content.

To analyze the correlation between engaged time and the current attention metric, viewability, Sovrn partnered with demand-side platform Avocet and attention technology company Lumen. Using Lumen’s eye tracking data and predictive modeling, the study identified that engaged time is a truer measure of a reader’s attention, capturing more than double the attention and three times greater CTR than viewability alone

Pay attention to attention

Change is coming, and players on both sides of the ad ecosystem will need to adjust. But change often brings opportunity for those who are prepared to embrace it. And just as the loss of one sense can heighten those that remain, the absence of third-party data may clear the way for new and innovative ways of evaluating audience segments, measuring ad performance, and driving ad revenue. Luckily, with the right tools and mindset, publishers have the power to use attention to identify and target their most desirable audience segments, and broadcast that value to buyers.

The post Leverage audience attention to maximize ad value appeared first on Sovrn, Inc..

Today, more than 40% of the web is cookieless and not addressable. Regardless of Google’s plans for deprecating third-party cookies — whether in 2024 or beyond — regulatory and privacy pressures are removing the ability for publishers and advertisers to accurately target their most valuable consumers.

This presents an opportunity for publishers to better communicate the value and identity of their audiences to buyers and to better control how audiences are valued. The challenge is that most open web publishers today do not have the capacity to leverage their own data assets.

To address this gap, Sovrn and its partner ID5, a market-leading identity provider for digital advertising, tested the efficacy of Sovrn Signal plus the ID5 ID to deliver privacy-safe solutions publishers can use to enrich and segment their first-party data. Results released this week show that using Signal plus the ID5 ID can unlock a near two times greater lift in CPMs.

“Advertisers are excited about using attention to measure effectiveness, but they’re confused by all the different definitions being used in the market. The risk is that this confusion will lead to them not using attention as a metric and not taking advantage of the insights it can offer.”

A Smarter Data Feed

Sovrn Signal linked permissioned, first-party data from the Sovrn Data Collective on each applicable user visit to an ID5 ID, which was then passed to buyers for evaluation. Publishers could also use the same Signal infrastructure to securely broadcast a bid request, in real-time to any SSP, enriched with:

• Viewability, attention, and CTR prediction scores
• Available deterministic attributes, including HEM, MAID, 3PC, and offline data
• An applicable floor price
• Interest, intent, and demographic user segments
• Eligible deal segments

The Signal difference

By using Signal to tap the power of the Sovrn Data Collective, publishers using a first-party identifier can enrich and segment their first-party data, benchmark ad performance against other publishers in the collective, link hashed emails, and append Sovrn’s full event stream. 

And, Sovrn Signal provides robust analytics capabilities that make it easy to track ad performance and benchmark your ad inventory performance against the market. Effective optimization of your ad strategy requires the ability to evaluate ad quality, monitor trends, and recognize potential problems.

Take a deep dive into the Signal difference →

Get started with Signal today

Publishers using Prebid can request free access to Signal to unlock, in a cookieless-environment, greater on-page attention and engagement to effectively segment and scale inventory and audience segments. They can then broadcast enhanced impression information and price recommendations to buyers through Sovrn’s Ad Exchange private marketplace to increase CPM value. In addition, publishers using Signal can tap real-time insights to benchmark how their ad inventory CPM compares to the market, adjust their pricing strategy accordingly and drive greater revenue per user visit. 

The world of online advertising has reached a pivotal moment, with a unique opportunity for advertisers and publishers to join forces and unlock new solutions that will benefit everyone involved. Sovrn Signal gives publishers a simple, scalable way to measure user attention, access deep audience insights, deliver the data buyers need to target high-value audience segments, and maximize inventory value. 

Sovrn Signal delivers a simple, scalable way to measure user attention, analyze ad performance, and access deep insights to maximize the value of your ad inventory. To learn more, visit the Signal page on our website or send an email to sales@sovrn.com. Our team will be happy to demonstrate how Signal can work for you.

The post Sovrn and ID5: Addressability at Scale appeared first on Sovrn, Inc..

September 13, 2022 – Boulder, CO – Sovrn, a publisher technology platform that empowers content creators to remain independent and thrive on the Open Web, announced today new results from Sovrn Signal that demonstrated a doubling of deal revenue for participating publishers. In addition, advertising inventory enhanced by Signal was up to two times more likely to accurately predict how long a user would engage with a given ad.

In partnership with more than 175 independent publishers, Signal generated billions of targeted, actionable audience and inventory segments across viewability, attention, interest and intent. These segments were delivered to the ad auction via the Sovrn Ad Exchange’s private marketplace in real time across a core of 1,500 domains, offering participating buyers’ multiple options to better optimize their ad spend.

“The challenge for publishers today — and especially tomorrow — is how to better expand and communicate the value of our audience data at scale to advertisers,” said Marc Boswell, Chief Revenue Officer of LoveToKnow Media. “Having the right tools and partners opens up a hugely powerful opportunity for publishers, especially smaller ones, to capture more revenue and have any form of impact in the future.”

Today, publishers using Prebid can request free access to Signal to unlock, in a cookieless-environment, greater on-page attention and engagement to effectively segment and scale inventory and audience segments. They can then broadcast enhanced impression information and price recommendations to buyers through Sovrn’s Ad Exchange private marketplace to increase CPM value. The paid version of Signal extends this functionality to other supply-side providers (SSP) and demand channels.

In addition, publishers using Signal can tap real-time insights to benchmark how their ad inventory CPM compares to the market, adjust their pricing strategy accordingly and drive greater revenue per user visit. Sovrn’s recent “Advertising Performance Benchmark Report” showcases this technology, offering current, accurate and reliable benchmark data for the first half of 2022 and analysis into how much buyers will pay for ads and how rates are affected by industry trends and economic factors.

Further, Sovrn is rapidly adding capabilities so publishers can unlock greater insights into reader engagement and to curate, package and expand their addressable audiences. This will allow publishers to identify, target and price their most valuable inventory, increasing their eligibility for deals across all their supply-side partners and ability to assign audience segments to cohorts in their ad server.

Powering the Signal functionality is the Sovrn Data Collective, comprising more than 6,000 independent publishers reaching 500 million daily consumers who generate over 30 billion daily page views across more than 80,000 websites. The Data Collective delivers access to safe, privacy-compliant data, helping ensure that publishers can tap enhanced consumer understanding, enriched audience profiles and insights into revenue performance to better compete for advertiser spend.

“The uncertainty around the loss of third-party cookies and looming privacy pressures are forcing publishers to grapple with choosing the right path forward to mitigate potential revenue declines,” said Walter Knapp, Sovrn CEO. “We aim to take that headache away with Signal, a plug-and-play solution that unlocks greater earnings for publishers by ensuring they can better understand and communicate the value of their audience engagement to buyers.”

To learn how Signal can be used to measure, compare and monetize reader attention and capitalize on audience engagement, download, “Capturing the Signals: How Reader Attention Can Drive More Revenue.” For more information about Signal, visit www.sovrn.com/signal-inventory.

About Sovrn

Sovrn provides products and services to thousands of online publishers to help them understand, operate and grow their business. Sovrn is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, with offices in New York, London and San Diego. 

With thousands of customers deploying advertising, affiliate marketing, and data products across more than 80,000 websites, Sovrn reaches nearly 500 million active consumers across more than 30 billion page views every day. Sovrn has been a leader in online publisher technology since its founding and has been recognized by IAB, JICWEBS, and TAG for its role in combating fraud and promoting pro-transparency initiatives. Sovrn is dedicated to helping content creators do more of what they love, and less of what they don’t. www.sovrn.com

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Today’s ad buyers are in a difficult position. With the coming loss of third-party cookies, the IAB projects that advertisers stand to lose billions of dollars in annual revenue. Going beyond the monetary aspect, this fundamental shift means advertisers will have to rethink how they target, optimize, and measure ad performance. 

Think about it this way: without the robust third-party data they’ve relied upon for years, buyers are less confident about where to direct their ad spend. They’ve lost the ability to target audiences that deliver results. And they’re struggling to understand whether readers are seeing their ads. 

The good news is, there are steps you as a publisher can take to help buyers address these challenges — and help your own bottom line in the process. It all starts with one critical concept: audience attention.

Viewability doesn’t go far enough

For years, the digital ad industry has used viewability as a proxy for attention. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has defined viewability as “at least 50% of an ad is in view for a minimum of one second.” Yet this covers the absolute minimum — one second isn’t enough time to convey a message — when it comes to actual human engagement. It also doesn’t measure ad performance. By using viewability as their main metric, many advertisers still struggle to deliver the right ad, at the right time, to the right audience.

So what exactly is “attention”?

As a metric, attention is intended to convey whether an ad captures the reader’s interest at a given point in time, making it a valuable signal of their likelihood to take action. Judging from all the buzz around the so-called “Attention Economy” — in the media, at Cannes LIONS, in webinars and ebooks — it’s clear that advertisers are interested in the idea of tapping into audience attention. 

There’s just one problem: at the moment, there’s no single, unified definition of what “attention” actually is. And with no clear definition of attention (or way of measuring it), there’s no clear path to optimization for either buyers or publishers.  IAB UK’s Elizabeth Lane explains it like this:

“Advertisers are excited about using attention to measure effectiveness, but they’re confused by all the different definitions being used in the market. The risk is that this confusion will lead to them not using attention as a metric and not taking advantage of the insights it can offer.”

Clearly, the most valuable audience segments are those paying the most attention. And publishers who can deliver clear attention signals to buyers can command higher rates for high-value inventory. To help capture the information publishers and buyers need to identify and target engaged audience segments, Sovrn has devised a new measure of attention called “engaged time.” 

Capturing attention for better optimization

Every time a user visits your site, they emit “signals of intent” – including clicks, swipes, scrolls, mouse movements, and more. And every interaction tells you something about where the reader’s attention is focused — and their level of engagement. 

This idea is the basis for Sovrn’s engaged time metric, which combines viewability with more than 50 distinct on-page reader interactions. As a result, engaged time measures not only when an ad is in view, but also when a person is actively engaged with the content. This ability to analyze ad performance and turn attention into increased revenue is the foundation of our data product, Sovrn Signal. 

Signal gives publishers the ability to:

• Understand the metrics buyers use to value ad inventory
• Benchmark your own performance against the market and other sites like yours
• Generate incremental impressions from your most engaged users
• Identify, target, and price your most valuable ad inventory

Across the entire programmatic ad stack, Signal leverages attention metrics to pinpoint the most engaged — and most valuable — ad inventory. Publishers can then use this data to appropriately price and package their inventory. That same data informs advertisers which ad units are most valuable and what factors contribute to higher ad engagement. 

Today, Sovrn is working with publishers using Signal to predict the “attention score” for each impression and pass this information to advertisers in real time. And we’ve found that buyers are rewarding publishers with high-scoring inventory with up to two times higher CPMs.

As our own Peter Cunha said at the AdMonsters Ops conference earlier this year:

“There’s a huge value for publishers in plugging the gap made by the departure of third-party data in determining the value of an ad. The more publishers can provide reliable data and context at scale around an ad opportunity, the better off the entire ecosystem will be.”

Get started today

The world of online advertising has reached a pivotal moment, with a unique opportunity for advertisers and publishers to join forces and unlock new solutions that will benefit everyone involved. Sovrn Signal gives publishers a simple, scalable way to measure user attention, access deep audience insights, deliver the data buyers need to target high-value audience segments, and maximize inventory value. 

It’s easy to get started with Signal, and a single fee gives you access to all its features and dashboards. To learn more, visit the Signal page on our website or send an email to sales@sovrn.com. Our team would be happy to provide a demo, so you can see the power of Signal for yourself.

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The online advertising ecosystem is constantly evolving. As a result, it can be challenging for publishers to keep up with the pace of innovation — especially when it comes to technical aspects like automated auctions and the back-end bidding process. 

Today, the vast majority of publishers rely on some form of header bidding, which debuted in 2013 as an alternative to the slow and inefficient “waterfall” auction process. Early header bidding solutions were limited, due to a lack of industry standards, proprietary code, and little collaboration between providers. But that changed in 2015 with the introduction of Prebid — a free, flexible, open-source solution that streamlined and standardized header bidding. 

Prebid is currently the most widely used technology for header bidding. But because it’s an open-source solution, you’ll actually see different benefits when working in Prebid with different ad tech partners. In this blog post, we’ll explore a few things you should know about working with Sovrn in Prebid.

Sovrn Ad Exchange works best with Prebid

The Sovrn Ad Exchange is built to deliver outstanding performance on a variety of header bidding wrappers — like Google Open Bidding, Amazon TAM, and more. But working with us in Prebid unlocks features and opportunities that aren’t available anywhere else.  

• Connect with a broader set of buyers. Buyers are increasingly focused on placing ads through the most direct path possible — and in today’s world, that means Prebid. Some buyers are actually deprioritizing supply through Open Bidding and TAM, and instead moving their ad budget exclusively to Prebid. So when you work with Sovrn in Prebid, we can connect your supply with a much larger universe of demand partners, giving you more opportunities to match with the right bidder and earn the highest possible rates.
  
• Get access to exclusive, premium deals. The Sovrn Ad Exchange offers many always-on, premium CPM deals that are only available through Prebid. Buyers are required to pay premium rates for the premium supply in our always-on deals, so you’ll earn more on your most desirable ads when you work with Sovrn in Prebid.

Layer in Signal to supercharge Prebid performance

Prebid’s open-source code allows providers like Sovrn to layer on additional technical innovations, taking ad performance to the next level. Our Signal data tool is custom-built to amplify the value of Prebid.

• Collect more engagement data. Signal measures on-page attention, engagement, and other audience attributes so you can more effectively identify the most engaged segments of your audience, flag high value inventory, and broadcast granular deal data to buyers through the bid request. 
  
• Drive more ad revenue. Engagement data from Signal provides deep insights about what’s happening across your site. As a result, you can  target more of your supply to buyers through the Sovrn Ad Exchange’s always-on deals that yield higher rates. On average, publishers who add Signal in concert with a Prebid connection see deal revenue from Sovrn double, due to increased scale and performance from viewability, attention and ‘non-cookie based’ audience matching that the Signal technology delivers.

Simply put, adding Signal in Prebid lets you earn higher ad rates on a greater percentage of your inventory. 

Get started today

If you’re currently working with other ad tech providers in Prebid, now you’ve got some great reasons to add Sovrn as a partner. And if you’re already working with us in wrappers like Google Open Bidding and Amazon TAM, there’s never been a better time to add Sovrn in Prebid. Just email us at sales@sovrn.com and our team will be happy to get you started.

Once you’re set up with the Ad Exchange in Prebid, don’t forget to layer in Signal. Our innovative data solution leverages the power of audience engagement to create exclusive opportunities in Prebid that you just can’t get anywhere else. 

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But without a firm date on the horizon, it can be difficult to focus on preparing for life after third-party cookies. Publishers have countless priorities competing for their limited time and resources, and the task of implementing alternative data solutions to replace  third-party cookies can seem overwhelming. Some are taking a wait-and-see approach, while others suffer from “analysis paralysis” because the fear of making a bad decision — or missing out on the “best” solution — is keeping them from moving forward at all.

However, doing nothing is literally the worst thing you can do right now. Instead, view Google’s extended timeline as an opportunity for action. There are a number of deliberate steps you can take to strengthen your ad strategy today and position your business for success in a cookieless future.

Here are five ideas to get you started: 

1. Diversify your revenue.

With the eventual loss of third-party cookies, experts predict that ad revenues could drop by $10 billion across the industry. So if your monetization strategy relies heavily on advertising — like most publishers — it’s time to investigate new ways of making money.

The good news is, you have endless options for expanding your revenue mix. Affiliate marketing is one obvious area to explore, including tactics like curated shopping, price comparisons, product reviews, and other types of commerce content. While it’s difficult to predict which techniques will be successful at any given time, diversifying your revenue streams will help to smooth out the inevitable ebbs and flows across the industry.

2. Use data and insights to optimize ad performance.

Regardless of uncertainty in the ad ecosystem, you should be squeezing every bit of revenue out of your ad inventory. Effective optimization of your ad strategy requires access to the right data, along with the ability to evaluate ad quality, monitor trends, and recognize potential problems.

Sovrn Signal provides robust data and analytics capabilities that make it easy to track ad performance and benchmark your inventory against the market. With insights from the Signal dashboards, you can easily identify opportunities and take action to drive your business forward.

3. Start testing now.

It’s important to remember that traffic on Safari and Firefox — more than 40% of all online traffic — is already free of third-party cookies. That makes these browsers an ideal environment to experiment before the ad ecosystem goes entirely cookie-free.

Take this time to assess your cookieless traffic and set up tests to see what kind of results you can achieve without cookie data. Consider an investment in addressability within these environments to help drive higher CPMs. Engage with advertisers to demonstrate how they can effectively reach their target audience without third-party data. The work you do now can not only increase the current value of your inventory, but also set you up for success when cookies eventually go away.

4. Bolster your ad operations.

If 2024 were here today, would you have the right team in place? Digital advertising is a complex business, and getting the right support for ad operations can help to ensure you’re earning as much as possible on your ad inventory. Even if you’re already outsourcing your ad ops, it’s good business practice to re-evaluate your ad ops partner from time to time.

As a Google Certified Publishing Partner (GCPP), Sovrn Ad Management has access to exclusive tools and products to help maximize your income potential — as well as customized training and technical support from Google. Our experts leverage the most innovative advertising technologies, to optimize your advertising strategy and increase ad revenue.

5. Conduct a thorough assessment of your ad stack.

While you’re reviewing vendors, this is a great time to evaluate your ad stack from top to bottom, including your DSP, SSP, DMP, analytics, optimization, and retargeting tools (and so much more). The ad ecosystem is incredibly diverse, with a wide array of tools and solutions to build a successful ad strategy. Having the right ad tech in place — and the right partners — can help to ensure your ad program is ready for whatever the future brings.

Bonus tip: Leverage audience attention to drive ad higher revenue.

 Today’s ad ecosystem depends on cookie data for tracking user behavior, authenticating identity, and setting ad rates — but it doesn’t have to be that way. By tapping into audience engagement signals, publishers have a unique opportunity to identify, target, and sell highly desirable audience segments hosted on their own sites — and regain control of inventory pricing.

Solidify your monetization strategy with Sovrn

Now is the time to make sure you’re doing everything you can to optimize your monetization strategy — and Sovrn can help! We’re constantly investing in new products, services, and functionality to help publishers diversify their revenue and grow their business faster. 

• Advertising: The Sovrn Ad Exchange provides everything you need to connect with advertisers, set pricing for your valuable inventory, and maximize your ad revenue. 
• Commerce: Affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways to diversify your earning potential — and Sovrn Commerce proves all the tools you need to build and manage your affiliate program. 
• Engagement: Our Signal data tool lets you tap into the power of audience attention to measure, compare, and monetize your most engaged readers and drive higher ad revenue.
• Ad operations: Sovrn Ad Management takes the headache out of ad ops with advanced technology, expert support, and robust reporting to keep your ad program running at peak efficiency. 
• Data: We’re working to provide publishers with a standard and scalable way to transact their first-party-data and increase the value of their proprietary data through data enrichment. 

To learn more about all the ways Sovrn supports publishers, just email us at sales@sovrn.com. Our team will be happy to provide more information and get you started with any of our publisher tools.

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Sovrn Signal provides robust analytics capabilities that make it easy to track ad performance and benchmark your ad inventory performance against the market. We shared an overview of the Signal dashboards in a previous blog post, but today we’re going to take a deeper dive into how insights from Signal’s dashboards can help you identify opportunities and take action to drive your business forward.

Signal Insights dashboard

Effective optimization of your ad strategy requires the ability to evaluate ad quality, monitor trends, and recognize potential problems. The Insights dashboard puts key performance and audience attention data at your fingertips, so you can easily analyze your ad inventory performance and see how your ads stack up against industry KPIs. 

The Insights dashboard offers all the metrics that matter in one place, including viewability, impressions, engaged time, and click rate. This single, unified view makes it easy to understand your performance without manually aggregating data from multiple sources or building your own graphs. 

Here are a couple of ideas for leveraging the Insights dashboard:

Analyze inventory performance over time.

The Insights dashboard makes it easy to spot trends in your ad inventory and identify unexpected drops (or spikes) in performance. As you make changes to optimize your inventory — like adding new demand partners or adjusting ad placements — you can use the Insights dashboard to measure the impact those changes have on overall performance. 

Evaluate individual ad performance.

The Insights dashboard includes ad unit-level data, so you can ensure each individual ad is performing as expected. Evaluating discrete ad data makes it easy to identify top performing ads, so you can try to replicate them elsewhere on your site. Ad-level metrics also help to pinpoint ads with poor performance (like low viewability or click rates), so you can make adjustments as needed.

Signal Benchmarks dashboard

In order to understand the value of your inventory and price it appropriately, you need to know how your ads stack up against the competition. With the Signal Benchmarks dashboard, you can compare your own inventory against your industry peers or against the market as a whole, based on key performance metrics.

Here are a just a few of the many ways you can utilize data from the Benchmarks dashboard:

Improve ad value by comparing CPMs.

Understanding how your ad prices compare to other publishers in your space is the first step toward improving ad value. For example, the Benchmarks dashboard might show that your CPMs are lower than other publishers in your space. By analyzing other data in the Benchmarks dashboard, you might identify low viewability as a possible root cause. From there, you can start A/B testing things like ad placement and sizing to improve your viewability. You could also implement the Signal reload feature to increase viewable impressions. (More on that below.)

Capture higher prices by comparing attention metrics.

Audience attention is one of the main factors advertisers consider in evaluating your ad inventory. If the Benchmarks dashboard shows your viewability and engaged time are higher than your peers, you may be able to demand higher prices for your ad space. Of course, optimizing your price floor can be a challenge — and many publishers worry that pushing their rates too high will cost them bids. Sovrn is currently working on a tool to help automate floor pricing — you can help by completing this brief questionnaire and contacting us if you’re interested in helping us test this new functionality.

Improve CTR by optimizing website experience.

While clicks are a key metric for advertisers, publishers often don’t think much about CTR because they don’t control the ad creative. But there are plenty of ways to improve CTR — and drive more revenue — by improving your on-site experience. For example, if the Benchmarks dashboard shows that CTR is underperforming for certain ads, you could work to upgrade the content that surrounds those ads. You could also adjust ad placement, so ads are located near content with the highest engagement. 

The Benchmarks dashboard includes performance data for thousands of different publisher cohorts, and data is refreshed on a daily basis. You can filter data based on country, site category, site size, and more — to generate performance insights on a more granular level. 

For even more insights into ad performance across industries — and the factors that impact ad pricing — you can download our Advertising Performance Benchmark Report. This in-depth study analyzes more than six months’ worth of CPM data from thousands of independent publishers to provide accurate, current, and reliable ad performance benchmarks. 

Signal Reload dashboard

The Signal tool includes a reload feature that refreshes ad inventory after a period (e.g., 20 seconds) of engaged time. This allows publishers to generate incremental revenue by showing additional ads to their most engaged visitors. The Reload dashboard lets you see how much additional revenue you’re earning through reloads and which ad units are providing the most uplift. 

Here are some examples of how to use the Reload dashboard:

Validate your reload strategy.

The Reload dashboard provides a snapshot of ad performance both with and without reload, including key metrics like impressions, viewability, and revenue. This lets you see exactly how much uplift you’re getting, so you can confirm that your reload strategy is working as expected. Ad-level metrics also help to identify top ad units so you can replicate their performance.

Troubleshoot reload performance.

 The Reload dashboard may show that certain ad units are providing little to no uplift in revenue. With this insight, you can work to identify the cause of this performance lag. For example, you may discover that an ad has poor viewability or the reload feature wasn’t installed on a given page.

Get started with Signal today

All of these insights — and many more — are available with Signal, our easy-to-use data tool that lets you analyze user engagement and convert your engaged audience into ad revenue. With just a single line of code, you can measure user attention on every page and uncover insights to maximize the value of your ad inventory. 

To learn more, visit sovrn.com/signal. And when you’re ready to get started, just email us at sales@sovrn.com. Our team will be happy to demonstrate how Signal can work for you and get you started with a free trial.

The post Improve Ad Performance and Increase Your Revenue appeared first on Sovrn, Inc..

But evaluating your own program only tells one side of the story. In order to get a complete picture of ad performance, you need to know how your program stacks up against other publishers — both within your vertical and across the wider publishing industry.

Our latest report, Advertising Performance Benchmark Report, offers insights across current, accurate, and reliable benchmark data so you can compare your site(s) to industry averages, understand CPM impact, and adjust their advertising strategy. Using Sovrn Signal, we analyzed more than six months’ worth of CPM data from thousands of independent publishers in the Sovrn Data Collective, covering 136,000 ad units and nearly 2 billion impressions per day.

Top 5 Findings to Help Benchmark Your Ad Performance

Here’s a quick preview of some key takeaways from this report:

1. Ad spend was down in certain categories due to global uncertainty

News and business sites saw decreased ad spend in the first half of 2022, as advertisers were wary of appearing alongside negative stories like the war in Ukraine, economic declines, and the ongoing pandemic. Automotive publishers also saw a downward trend in CPMs as supply chain issues continued to plague the industry.

2. Audience attention yields higher CPM

Unless an ad can be seen, it can’t make an impact. Our research found that inventory with 80% viewability or more (meaning there’s at least an 80% likelihood of being seen) drove 3x higher CPMs versus market averages. And after 12 seconds of engagement, CPMs jump by 85%.

3. Site traffic has minimal effect on ad performance

It appears that traffic volume doesn’t matter as much to ad buyers as conventional wisdom might suggest. Our research found that CPMs increase only 9% as sites cross the 10 million monthly page view threshold, as compared to those with less than 10 million page views per month.

4. Scroll depth has a meaningful impact on ad rates

Scroll depth is a metric for evaluating how much of a given page is consumed by the reader. On average, users who view at least 80% of the available content (i.e., scroll depth of 80% or more) are worth twice the CPM of those with a lower scroll depth.

5. Third-party cookies are still the gold standard  for ad targeting

The end of third-party cookies is almost inevitable, but they are still the dominant method for granular ad targeting. Our research discovered that CPMs on Chrome (which still uses third-party cookies) are 71% higher than on Safari, where cookies have already been eliminated. And while Universal IDs (UIDs) are being explored as a possible cookie replacement, they currently capture only 10-25% of the value that third-party cookies deliver.

Looking for more?

These are just a few of the many insights, findings, and data points available in our new Advertising Performance Benchmark Report. Download your copy to find out how your site compares to industry averages, understand current performance trends, and identify the factors that can help to improve your overall ad strategy.

If you’re ready to uncover more granular data to evaluate your site performance and drive more revenue, our Signal data tool can help you measure, compare, and monetize your user engagement. Schedule a demo today to learn more!

The post H1 2022 Industry Report: Data & Insights to Analyze Ad Performance and Improve Your Strategy appeared first on Sovrn, Inc..

Today’s advertising ecosystem presents challenges for publishers and advertisers alike. Publishers who create high-quality, engaging content deserve to earn premium ad rates – and advertisers are willing to pay higher rates to reach an engaged and relevant reader base. 

But current industry metrics like viewability and viewable time make it difficult for either side to operate with confidence.

Advertisers have some ability to measure on-page ad performance and compare it across multiple sites, but there are limits to the data they can collect. Publishers have access to a broader range of ad performance data, but they have no ability to compare it with other sites. 

Without these deeper insights, publishers struggle to identify their most valuable ad inventory and set appropriate prices. Similarly, advertisers have difficulty optimizing their ad spend without a consistent, meaningful basis for bidding on ad inventory.

The problem with viewability

For years, viewability has been the industry standard for predicting ad performance. It is designed to measure the likelihood that an ad will be seen by users, based on its visibility on the page. The IAB defines a “viewable impression” as one where at least 50% of the ad’s area is displayed onscreen for at least one second.

Think about that for a moment. Viewability only measures whether the ad is visible – even if it’s only for just a second while a user scrolls down the page. It fails to consider whether there’s any interaction with the ad, or whether the reader even notices the ad. 

The need for a scalable measure of attention is clear, and industry leaders like IAB are focused on the attention debate in 2022 – and Sovrn is leading the way.  

Building a better metric

Every time a reader visits your site, they emit “signals of intent.” Every interaction – including clicks, scrolls, mouse movements, and more – tells you something about where that reader’s attention is focused and their level of engagement.

With this idea in mind, Sovrn devised a new measure of attention – called “engaged time” – that combines viewability with 45 distinct on-page reader interactions. As a result, engaged time can measure not only when an ad has the chance to be seen, but also when a person is actively engaged with the content.

In order to validate engaged time as a measure of attention, Sovrn conducted several studies comparing engaged time to traditional metrics like dwell time and viewable time. Study results showed that:

• Just 16% of dwell time met the standards for engaged time – meaning that during 84% of sessions traditionally counted as “dwell time,” visitors are not actually engaged.
• Engaged time captures 2.6x more attention and a 2.7x higher click-through rate compared to viewable time alone, as demonstrated by eye tracking technology and predictive modeling. 

Tuning in to the signal

Attention-focused metrics like engaged time let you move beyond basic viewability, to truly understand the attention visitors are paying to your content. This ability to analyze and act on user engagement is the foundation of our data product, Sovrn Signal. 

Signal is an easy-to-use data tool that lets you convert your engaged audience into ad revenue. With just a single line of code Signal gives you the ability to:

• Understand your ad performance. Understand how buyers judge your inventory so you can adapt your revenue strategy. 
• Benchmark ad performance. With Signal, you finally have access to the same metrics ad buyers use to evaluate your ad inventory. Benchmark your ad performance using metrics such as viewability, engagement, click-through rate and CPM – against both your peers and the market as a whole – and use these insights to inform your strategic decision-making. 
• Grow your ad revenue.  Unlock revenue by generating incremental impressions from your most engaged users. When done correctly, ad reloading allows publishers to maximize the attention their content captures. Signal technology lets us take a different approach to ad refreshing, because the tool only refreshes ad units with both current viewability and active user engagement. 
• Identify, target & price your most valuable ad inventory. Across your entire programmatic ad stack, Signal identifies your most valuable inventory based on engagement metrics which you can then use to price and package your inventory for advertisers, driving more revenue from engaged visitors.

Get started today!

Our Signal technology gives you a simple, scalable way to measure user attention on every page – and use those insights to maximize the value of your ad inventory. To learn more, visit sovrn.com/signal. 

And when you’re ready to get started, just email us at sales@sovrn.com. Our team will be happy to demonstrate how Signal can work for you. 

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