This time of year, you see a lot of articles predicting what the new year will bring.

Let’s look at what’s going on in the world and consider the impact big-picture trends may have. The biggest and most important variables often are things that (paraphrasing Ernest Hemingway), “happen gradually, then suddenly.”  For publishers, there are several macro factors that have the potential to shape the next 12 months:

1. The 2022 midterm elections here in the US will create a huge wave in advertising spend. This year is a bit unique, because social networks — which typically have carried the bulk of political advertising — are under intense scrutiny. Political advertisers will be looking for other options for their ad dollars to work. Independent publishers will have a choice to make: refuse political ads and miss out on potential revenue, or accept political ads that target readers but may conflict with a publisher’s personal outlook. The adjacency effect will be in play, where non-political advertisers will not want to “pay up” for ad spots and pressure their already thin ROI. This could well cause more spend in digital display while the political ads tend to soak up video. We can treat the midterms as a trial run because these issues will only be amplified in 2024.
   
2. The convergence of rising interest rates, increased inflation, and staffing shortages. The cost of doing business is going up, which puts pressure on companies to be more operationally efficient and intensely focused on the things that matter most. This is especially true in the media space where so many businesses already have thin profit margins. Layer in the difficulty of running a business while short-staffed and it becomes clear that improving operational efficiency will be critical in 2022.
   
3. For the past couple of years eCommerce has been on a tear. Consumers ditched the physical store experience and flocked to online purchases. This meant that eCommerce merchants either lowered or eliminated the affiliate commissions they paid to publishers. As we emerge from our homes and start getting back to “normal,” the eCommerce merchants will once again start paying publishers the commissions they deserve. For publishers whose content drives purchase behavior, 2022 will be a big year.

Here are a few areas where publishers can focus their attention to prepare for the challenges — and opportunities — that lie ahead.

• Simplify. No business ever has enough time, people, or money. Resource constraint is an opportunity for companies of every size, in every industry if they can become more focused on cutting through the noise and homing in on what truly matters. There’s going to be a real push toward solutions that make life easier — especially given the increased need for operational efficiency that I mentioned above.
  
  There’s a tendency in the media business to make things seem more complicated than they need to be. After all, more complex problems require more expensive solutions – look no further than the “advertising industrial complex”. Businesses have had it with solutions that are too complicated, too expensive, and that don’t work well together. Instead they’ll be looking for vendors who can simplify to offer better insights for smart decision-making. Those who figure this out will have the inside track to success.
  
• Connect the dots. Publishers are at an extreme disadvantage when it comes to truly understanding their visitors. This includes the differing levels of engagement with content. It’s really tough to make good decisions with incomplete information. Advertisers and data brokers collect and hoard data about visitors: behavior, demographics, and preferences. They use this to get the best (lowest) price for ad space. Those third parties aren’t sharing their knowledge anytime soon — and even if they did, how would you take action?
  
  In order to get a fair deal, it’s critical to have a clear and actionable understanding of your audience. Developing a view into site visitors is about more than just effective monetization; it will help to improve your editorial content, optimize your site layout, better manage your ad strategy, and enhance the overall visitor experience.

We can help.

• At Sovrn, we take a very straightforward approach to working with publishers. Everything we do is optimized for long-term relationships by putting your needs first. 
• Our aim is to solve important problems on your terms, not ours. 
• We offer easy to understand and simple to use solutions that don’t require long-term commitments or restrictive agreements.

Here are just a few things you can look forward to seeing from us in 2022:

Enhanced engagement data: As I mentioned above, understanding a visitor’s behavior — in-the-moment, during a session — is key to enhancing the overall experience. Our Signal product will pick up time, depth, and attention engagement signals during the session and feed them into your ad server to better optimize the reader experience in real time.

Complete ad management system: We know ad ops is a thankless job for publishers. Hours are spent just reconciling reports across dozens of vendors in search of a needle in the haystack. Our ad management solution makes your life easier by managing, optimizing, and, of course, unifying the reporting for every demand source across every channel. This year we will introduce updates with even greater flexibility, so you can run things entirely in-house, or have our Ad Management team do everything for you — or take a hybrid approach somewhere in between.

Unified affiliate link management: It’s stupidly tough to manage affiliate links across your website, social channels, and email. We’ve built a complete unified affiliate link management software to make it simple: every link, everywhere, and to every merchant – with unified reporting across all of it. Whether you link to merchants directly or access them through our relationship, every dollar of affiliate revenue remains 100% yours.

Our offerings work together.

They are simple to use, and easy-to-understand. And we’re working to connect every data element to help our customers build a complete, holistic view of their visitors. We help you better understand your business so you can make better decisions, be more operationally efficient, and keep more of the money you deserve.

Here’s to your continued growth and prosperity in the year to come!

The post A Look Ahead appeared first on Sovrn, Inc..

What is RPM?

To understand why that’s the case, you need to understand what RPM is. Put simply, RPM is defined as page revenue per thousand impressions. It’s calculated by dividing your earnings by the number of pageviews you received, then multiplying by 1000. However, that calculation changes depending on the technology you’re using on your page and the number of revenue sources you have.

For example, if you only use standard advertising on a web page (e.g. display, video, or native advertising), your RPM would be calculated by taking the total estimated earnings from all ad units on a page (using collective CPMs), dividing by the number of views that page receives, and then multiplying by one thousand. In other words, it’s a holistic measure of what you’re earning—a publisher-focused number, rather than an advertiser-focused one, such as CPM.

Here’s a more complex example: if you’re using Signal to create new inventory from your existing ad slots, it’s incredibly useful to compare RPM to CPM over time. That’s because each new impression you serve when that ad unit is reloaded adds to your RPM. As a result, while your CPMs may fluctuate, your RPM massively increases over time. And in this specific case, your RPM will continue to increase the longer your user is engaged with the page. More engaged users = higher RPM. Even so, the calculation for RPM—(revenue/pageviews)*1000—remains the same.

Now, let’s say you’re also using Commerce to monetize the links on your page, in addition to your advertising products. In other words, you’ve added a new revenue stream. At this point, calculating RPM becomes more complicated and more custom to your needs. The basic calculation holds up: we’re still dividing your total revenue for a page (which now includes Commerce and advertising revenue) by the number of pageviews. But because you’re now working with a holistic revenue strategy—one that involves multiple products that function in different ways—RPM is a better measure of overall website performance. That’s because CPM is just one metric: you’re no longer interested only in your display ad performance; you’re now also tracking your Commerce clicks and acquisitions, which contribute to your overall revenue.

Still with me?

A real-world example

Let’s say you’re a content publisher. And let’s say that market fluctuations—perhaps due to a global pandemic—have caused ad revenues to drop. Now, you’re looking for ways to increase your website revenue to make up for the dip in ad spend. Sound familiar? 

In this case, fixating on your CPMs tells you more about the state of the market than it does about your actual performance. When advertising budgets get slashed, CPMs fall. So, you diversify: you incorporate new ad products. You start focusing on commerce-driven content. You start a subscription program and renew your newsletter efforts. Suddenly, you have a host of revenue sources you care about. Each page needs to drive commerce clicks, newsletter sign-ups, and more reader engagement. 

In other words, as you continue to diversify your sources of revenue, RPM begins to matter more.

Why RPM matters

Okay, let’s talk about page RPM vs. average RPM. Page RPM, unsurprisingly, refers to RPM for a specific page on your website. Average RPM, like average CPM, refers to your total revenue per one thousand pageviews across your entire website. It’s worth understanding both. 

Page RPM can tell you more about what your audience enjoys: for example, if you have a page that sees high engagement through Signal and high clicks through Commerce, you can pursue more content of a similar nature—our Commerce dashboard already shows your product-specific RPM. In this case, your advertising CPM alone wouldn’t give you that information. You might even choose to reduce the number of ad units on that page or pages like it (especially when optimizing your ad strategy for mobile), in favor of adding more monetized links or more valuable ad units.

Similarly, your total RPM—the revenue you earn per 1000 pageviews across your entire site—informs how you’re performing relative to your revenue goals. When that number fluctuates, you know you need to focus on your overall strategy. Ultimately, you’ll want to track both RPM and CPM—and, ideally, increase both. But RPM will give you a more holistic measurement of success: when referring to ad products alone, it shows you aggregate performance across all your partners and all your ad units. When referring to multiple sources of revenue, it gives you a big-picture view of how your revenue strategy is performing.

Need help?

Digital publishing grows more complex every day. Our Gold team offers a full-service ad management system that will optimize your ad performance, save you money, and give you more time to focus on growing your audience, building your business, and producing great content. Schedule a free consultation and let us help you grow.

The post Understanding publisher RPM: what it is, and why it matters appeared first on Sovrn, Inc..

Kara Boeshaar, the manager of our Sovrn Services ad ops team, has put together a few of the most important ad ops tips and tweaks that publishers can use to lift ad revenue right now.

Revisit your price floors

Even though time spent online is going up, revenue has faltered as impressions lose their value to advertisers. Now is a great time to revisit your floors to make sure that you’re not missing out on potential revenue. 

There’s two ways to do this. First, look at your CPMs. If they’re close to your floors (say, $.15-$.25), there’s a good change you’re missing opportunities. Second, lower your floors for a 1-2 week test and compare your revenue. By lowering your price floors slightly to meet the moment, advertisers will get the chance to bid on more of your inventory.

Add new demand partners

More competition in your programmatic auctions increases the chances of higher bids winning, and having a robust demand stack helps those chances. As the market has become more saturated with demand partners and resellers, it’s hard to tell them apart. You can add both different and varied demand partners, and also types of demand—such as video and native. While the correct mix and number will vary between publishers, more competition leads to more revenue.

Ultimately, that’s one of the reasons we started Sovrn Services. Demand stack management can be difficult and time consuming. Our team gets you access to valuable demand sources by leveraging partnerships we’ve built over the years. We can help you get the most out of your ad stack while you focus on running your site and growing your business.

Rethink your ad layout

Programmatic CPMs are affected by a range of variables, including page content, number of ads on the page, and unique readers. One of the easiest changes to make to increase CPMs is to increase the viewability of your ads. 

Viewability starts with placement. Ads that are closer to the top of the page, or sticky ads that follow the reader as they scroll, are the easiest ways to increase viewability (especially on mobile). Vertical ads (such as 160×600 and 300×600 units) also remain in view for longer than more horizontal ad sizes, such as a 728×90. Adjusting your ad layout to focus on in-view units will help improve CPMs.

Publishers with high dwell times or highly-engaged audiences (such as news sites, gaming sites, and niche or passion publishers) should also look into using Signal, which creates new, viewable inventory on your page. Over time, showing more viewable ads raises your sitewide viewability, and increases both your demand-side viewability scores and your revenue.

Address ad blockers intelligently

As more and more readers have started using ad blockers, publishers have seen their main source of revenue decline. It’s not a COVID-specific trend, but right now it’s important to make sure you’re monetizing as much of your traffic as possible.

Traditionally, combatting ad blockers has been a kind of arms race between publisher and blocker, with publishers investing more and more time and money trying to work around blockers.

We’ve gone a different route. We’ve worked closely with Acceptable Ads to release //Unblock, a way for publishers to monetize readers who have implemented an ad blocker. //Unblock allows a publisher to serve ads to readers who have opted into AA through their ad blocker without disrupting the user experience. A number of vendors offer similar options, but ours is unique in that you don’t have to add new headers or adjust your layout to make it work. It’s delivered through your existing ad units. In addition, we leverage our high-performing managed demand services to make sure you’re monetizing effectively. 

Sovrn //Services connects you to valuable demand sources that bring competition to your ad auctions and improve your revenue. We’ve built the partnerships, and we’ll leverage them on your behalf. If you’re ready to earn more, let’s talk.

The post 4 ad ops tips to grow revenue during COVID-19 appeared first on Sovrn, Inc..

1. Review unified pricing floors
   
   • Google has moved to a first price auction model within GAM, which may affect how some of your line items are being prioritized. To make sure you’re getting the most out of your programmatic line items after this update, make the following adjustments:
     
     • Set target CPMs or floors that are in line with what you’re currently seeing deliver on page. If you set them too high, you could miss out on bids. If you set them too low, you could undervalue your inventory.
       
     • Start low and raise the target CPMs/floors incrementally to make sure you don’t set them too high. That way, you hit the sweet spot revenue.
       
2. Review your current blacklists
   
   • Look over the categories of advertisers that are permitted on your site and review any blocks you have in place. During this time of year especially, make sure retail is an allowed category. If it’s not, you’re missing out on easy money.
     
3. Make sure your domains are categorized correctly
   
   • Programmatic demand partners use this data to make sure relevant ads are served to your readers. This is an easy fix.
     
   • The more easily demand partners can identify the value of your site and readers, the higher CPMs you will see.
     
4. Opt into relevant ad technologies in DFP/AdX
   
   • Similar to reviewing categories on your advertiser blacklists, you should also take a look at the categories of ad technology allowed to run through programmatic. Audience management tech, ad fraud, and brand safety protections are some areas to look into allowing on your page to increase CPMs. 
     
5. Bonus tip: Test!
   
   • We say it all the time, but it’s always important to test. Make changes, see how they play out, and then adjust from there. It’s the only way to guarantee progress.

Of course, if you’re looking for more help with your ad operations, you can always reach out to Sovrn Services. We’re available for on-demand agnostic ad ops help, consulting, and training. Get in touch, and we’ll help you make all your revenue dreams come true.

The post 4 Q4 revenue tips that make the best of your existing ad strategy appeared first on Sovrn, Inc..

That said, some ad units almost always outperform others, often with dramatic results.

If you guessed leaderboard ads, you’d be wrong. It’s true that leaderboard (or header) ad units (almost) always receive impressions on page load, making them a dependable source of ad revenue, they typically see less reader engagement. Readers tend to scroll right past these units, particularly on sites sharing long-form content. Sidebar ads typically see more engagement, but all static ads, regardless of placement, suffer the same issue: once the initial auction processes and the impression serves, that’s it—there’s no more revenue.

Generally, publishers have relied on one of two imperfect solutions to this problem: incorporate more ad placements into their content, or get their readers to spend more time on their site and view more pages—hence serving more impressions. However, this ignores one reality of online behavior: while there is an unlimited amount of content available on the internet, readers will always have a finite amount of time available to view that content.

The solution: sticky overlay and whitespace ads, both of which are activated through our Signal technology. These are two of the most valuable ad units that Sovrn serves, and both give up to 5x the yield and 3x the fill of standard header bidding units. This is of course dependent on the publisher, but In the words of one of our Signal experts: “These units kill.”

This is due in part to the fact that they offer actual solutions for static ad placements and limited reader time, rather than a lengthy workaround. As the name ‘sticky’ suggests, these ads can be set to remain with readers as they scroll down the page. Therefore, they’re always in view of engaged readers. They’re also built to take advantage of reader engagement, and use it to maximize the value that publishers see from every unique reader.

In fact, these ads only load when they’re viewable. Demand sources are able to see that these ad units are always 100% viewable, and they bid more as a result. We’ve seen sticky overlay and whitespace ads bring incredible value to Sovrn publishers. Because these units are 100% additive, any revenue you receive is on top of what you’re already making.

In addition to drawing higher CPMs due to viewability, these ads have our Signal reload technology built in. Signal tracks 45 unique reader engagement metrics in order to identify when your readers are active, and after 20 seconds of engagement time it reloads viewable ad zones. This boosts your impressions, your viewability scores, and your revenue.

Let’s say that a page on your site contains 5 ad units. If they’re all static, they serve a single impression—at best—and then they lose their worth. However, let’s now assume that Signal reloads each of those units once, after 20 seconds of reader engagement time. Your initial auction proceeds unchanged, after which there’s an immediate 100% boost to revenue. If we then assume that two of those units are sticky overlay and whitespace ads, that doesn’t take into account the higher CPM that 100% viewable ads tend to receive from demand partners. The bottom line is that’s a lot of purely additive revenue for publishers with engaged audiences (think news, recipes, games, forums…the list goes on).

The best part of this is that these ad reloads don’t cause any latency. That’s because they’re delivered through Connect, which uses an intelligent coding, compression, and delivery system to target every ad zone on the site with a single JavaScript implementation, rather than requiring different code for every unit. That means you’re able to preserve user experience with a solution that simultaneously earns you more money.

The best results come from sites that are already well-optimized for engagement and viewability, but in some cases we’ve seen single Sticky Whitespace ad units become top producers within a week or less. There’s no catch: our Signal technology is free to use with Sovrn as an exclusive demand partner, or available for licensing if you’d prefer to leverage it across your full demand stack.

To take advantage of the two most valuable ad units that Sovrn offers and see an immediate boost to revenue, impressions, CPM, and viewability, just send us a message with a product implementation request and we’ll get you set up.

The post The 2 Most Valuable Ad Units to Boost CPM, Yield, and Fill appeared first on Sovrn, Inc..

Check for reserved inventory from paused or draft line items

We recommend regular audits of all of your paused, draft, or otherwise inactive guaranteed type line items (Sponsorship, Standard). Whether created in Ad Manager or pushed to Ad Manager via a third-party Sales Management platform, they will reserve inventory until you specifically perform the release inventory action in the line item menu.

Review your delivery settings and adjust as needed

Reviewing and adjusting your delivery settings is another effective way to ensure that your direct campaign line items are reaching their pacing goals. Below is a quick reference to what each delivery setting means.

• As fast as possible: A line item is never considered “on schedule,” and tries to make use of every impression it can get.
• Frontloaded: A line item begins by briefly serving to a goal that is as much as 40% higher than a goal without frontloading, and then gradually declines to serving 5% ahead of schedule as the campaign draws to its end. The sum of impressions during the first half of the campaign can be as much as 25% higher than without frontloading.
• Even delivery: The ad server delivers 5% more than the even goal, though the delivery indicator may be higher than 105% due to inventory forecast insights.

Ensure measured distribution of high-priority line items

It’s also important to make sure that you don’t have too many high priority line items targeting the same inventory, as that will not allow for effective optimization within your direct campaigns. For example, if you have four Sponsorship line items set to capture 100% of remaining impressions and targeting the same inventory the same way, each line item will receive 25% of the available remaining inventory as a result.

Use Check Inventory and forecasting reports

It may go without saying, but it’s crucial to use Ad Manager’s forecasting tools such as Check Inventory, or the Sell-Through system reports if your Ad Manager network has these, to provide accurate availability data.

Avoid too much targeting

As a general rule, just because you can add targeting to a line, doesn’t always mean you should. Targeting key-values, geography, devices, and other details can be great for a very specialized campaign, but the more targeting you add to each line item, the less inventory will be available. It’s best to use the broadest targeting available that still gets you to the readers you’re looking for.

Get help if you need it

It’s not always easy to catch every error, or to find the time to devote to proper optimization and strategy. Our Services team is always available to help with managed ad ops needs. If you need help with strategy, optimization, training, or management, please don’t hesitate to schedule a call with one of our ad ops professionals.

The post 6 Ways to Optimize Your Direct Campaigns appeared first on Sovrn, Inc..

1. More Isn’t Always More

You’ve heard it before, and we’ll say it again: cluttering your website with advertisements is a great way to annoy readers. Instead of increasing ad units to the point of distraction, focus on maximizing the value of those ad units. We recommend a maximum of five ad placements per page, but determining the optimal number of units is only the beginning. Furthermore, avoid unexpected redirects, which can lead to bounces and displeased readers; avoid disruptive or distracting ads (such as auto-play audio or video) as well, which can drive away otherwise interested audiences.

2. Use Smarter, Better Technology

One of the best ways to maximize the value of your existing ad inventory, and therefore the value of every unique visitor, is through Sovrn Signal. Signal is our proprietary, industry-leading reload technology that reloads ads based on a combination of viewability, user engagement, and time spent on a page. It creates more viewable inventory from your existing ad units, which does more than increase your revenue—because it only shows new, viewable ads, it increases your viewability score as well. It works with waterfall, header bidding, and exchange bidding, and when it’s licensed it can be leveraged across all of your demand partners. Ultimately, Sovrn Signal rewards you for engaged, passionate readers, while giving your audience a better ad experience.

Additionally, if you have long-scroll content, consider incorporating Whitespace ads into your site. This will automatically create and fill ad inventory below the fold, so that you’re still taking advantage of engaged readers—and it’s compatible with Signal, so you can maximize the value of your new inventory.

3. Avoid Cluttered Code

Cluttered or overly complex JavaScript can lead to long page load times, and if your site takes longer than 2-3 seconds to load, you’ll see readers abandon your page before they ever see the content that they came for. Streamline the number of third-party demand tags, ad selling methods (such as header bidding, custom native, or in-feed advertising), and other data-transmitting code you have on a page. The more Javascript you run, the longer your users have to wait for the content they want. This applies to mobile as well—if you’re overwhelming your readers with excess tracking codes, scripts, and ads, you’re probably driving users away. In that case, not only are you failing to maximize user value and reader retention, but you’re actively hurting your revenue potential.

One way to streamline your code is to enable Sovrn Connect. This is a single line of JavaScript that delivers three of our industry-leading products: Signal, Header Complete (our header bidding solution), and our Consent Management Platform. Well-designed scripts such as this result in faster load times and a better user experience. Connect also allows for easier updates to existing ad products and services, and it minimizes implementation headaches—a broken site means no revenue, after all. If you’d like to enable Connect on your site, just let us know.

4. Remember: Content is (Still) King

It sounds basic, but the best way to ensure a great reader experience is still based on giving your readers the content they want. While we can’t tell you how best to do that, make sure you’re not sacrificing quality content for the sake of more ad inventory.

5. Test, Test, Test

There’s no one solution for a perfect user experience. Remember that you can keep making changes to your ad operations, and that finding the ideal balance may take some time. In addition to testing ad placements, test page layouts and features, and make sure you’re keeping up to date.

One of the best ways to do this is through a robust analytics service. For example, Sovrn Header Bidding Analytics gives you a full picture of all of your header bidding data on a single, consolidated dashboard, which makes it easy to investigate revenue swings and make faster, more productive decisions.
 
If you’re struggling, don’t be afraid to ask for help. Consider working with the experts at Sovrn Services. Whether you want help managing your ad operations or tips for optimizing your Google Ad Manager server, our experienced professionals will work with you to give you the help you need.

The post 5 Keys to a Better Publisher Ad Experience for Readers appeared first on Sovrn, Inc..

Data gives you power. It guides your strategies, your decisions, and ultimately your revenue potential. Without a full picture of your header bidding data, it can be difficult to move quickly and confidently—and as we all know, in publishing, time is money. Many publishers find it difficult to see their data as a complete story: when you’re forced to access multiple dashboards across multiple partners, some of which may be reticent to show you analytics information, important decisions are sometimes delayed or ignored—or left unknown—instead of acted upon. If you have access to a consolidated analytics dashboard, such as the Sovrn Header Bidding Analytics dashboard, it’s easy to investigate revenue swings.

If you’re struggling to boost your earnings, here are four ways you can optimize your auctions and increase revenue based on your header bidding data:

Adjust the number of bidders to optimize CPMs

Ensure that you’re optimizing the number of bidders. Too few, and you won’t have enough competition to drive up CPM. Too high, and revenue can be impacted by too many redundant ad requests going out to the same demand via different channels.

• If the number of bidders is too low, increase it one at a time and use analytics to measure incremental revenue increases. Ideal number of bidders vary per site, but a good rule of thumb is no more than 7-8 max.
• If you have too many bidders, try decreasing the number one by one until better performance is seen in your analytics data, using 7-8 max as a rule—but again, the ideal number will be site specific.

Adjust your bidders-to-timeout ratio to improve yield

If your page has to wait too long for bids to return, your visitors could be leaving before bids have returned. If your highest CPM bidder experiences high latency, it can mean bad overall auction yield performance. Ways to address this include:

• Raising the overall timeout threshold to give all of your bids enough time (in milliseconds) to return. You’ll want to monitor page content load performance in testing.
• Using your analytics data to hone in on slow bidders and address specific timeout issues. Once you’ve identified the culprits, you can let them know that their slow response times may affect their standing in your header bidding setup.

Properly configure your header auctions to maximize revenue

When running a header auction on your site, it is important to make sure that all intended ad units that are called to the page are included in that page’s header auction configuration. If you’re excluding ad units or formats from your header auction that one of your bidders may have demand for, you could be missing out on revenue.
Once you’ve determined which ad units you want included in the header auction (ideally as many as possible), make sure that all of those ad units are mapped to all of the available bidders configured in your header auction.
Optimize your price granularity to improve impressions

If your price granularity configuration is too low (for example, 1.00 or .50), you may be impacting bid competition. Prebid-based header auctions allow for granular price settings based on publisher needs. The settings you choose should be determined by how many demand bidders you have in your auction versus the CPM price points where you sell most of your impressions. The prebid setting options are as follows:

• Low: uses 50-cent increments and is capped at $5 CPM
• Medium: uses 10-cent increments and is capped at $20 CPM
• High: uses 1-cent increments and is capped at $20
• Auto: applies a sliding scale to set different levels of granularity for different ranges of bids
• Dense: also applies a sliding scale but uses even more granular increments, especially at lower CPMs

With a better understanding of your auction performance, you’ll have more power to make strategic decisions. You’ll be able to move more quickly and more intelligently, and you’ll save time that can be spent instead growing your reach. Sovrn is the only SSP that offers a unified bidding analytics dashboard, and we’re dedicated to giving publishers more control over their own success. Joining our free Header Bidding Analytics beta is yet another method of achieving the independence that will help you thrive.

As is the case with all of our products, we’re constantly working on improving functionality and scope, and that includes building new features into our platform in the future. We’re also dedicated to including our publishers in our product development process: we value your opinions and your needs, and beta programs such as these make that happen. Give us your feedback—we want it. Not only will you be involved in making the tools we provide as useful as possible, you’ll have access to a platform that can you help you improve your performance metrics.
Join the free beta

The post 4 Ways to Optimize Your Auctions and Increase Revenue Based on Your Header Bidding Data appeared first on Sovrn, Inc..

An analysis by ServerBid of 700+ header bidding implementations in 2018, among publishers in Alexa.com’s top 5000 site list, shows between five and seven bidders as the consistent sweet spot for the number of bidders in a header wrapper.

By paring down their header partners, publishers are finding that it is possible to decrease latency and reduce buyer fatigue, which can, in turn, have a positive impact on user experience and overall performance. They are also discovering they have more flexibility to optimize their page for viewability and user engagement when they are able to do more with less.

Some partners can help drive more success than others, and it is often helpful to put yourself in the shoes of your customer (an advertiser in this case) when making decisions to improve performance. Publishers need to look at all ad tech partnerships through a new lens, not just one that is focused on technology. The business of programmatic is as much about the expertise and support that your partners bring as it is about the actual technology.

Here are six things we believe contribute to building great relationships that you should consider when reviewing your technology partners:

1. Customizable solutions
There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Your partners shouldn’t be forcing you to fit into the way they work. They should be able to customize their offering to fit how you work. This is going to be much more effective for both of you.
2. Easy to implement systems
As an extension of point one above, the last thing you need is a complex and drawn out implementation as this could ultimately end up damaging any potential revenue gains that might be made. Ensure implementation is easy, and check with other publishers using the same partner to make sure there aren’t any horror stories. Ideally, look for a single line of code that enables you to manage and configure your technical integration with a partner.
3. Access to real people
People build relationships with people not machines. You don’t want a partner that’s just interested in getting you on board and then leaving you to it. A good partner will not be a faceless one, they will be real people you can turn to when you need help and support, and they’ll work with you to ensure that you both get the most out of your relationship.
4. Opportunities for networking and support
All publishers are different but often face many of the same problems, even the best technology partners can’t understand everything about every publisher. Having a partner that gives you support and guidance on issues like ads.txt and GDPR, as well as providing you with a community of other publishers you can network with, is essential.
5. Setting standards
Look for partners who are adopting technologies, certifications and standards that support you as a publisher and enable you to build stronger relationships with buyers. Fraud, brand safety, and viewability are critical issues in today’s marketplace that your partners need to be able to address. Check for key certifications like Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), JicWebs, and the IAB Gold Standard.
6. Partners for life
Finally, a good partner is not someone who’s just interested in making money out of you. A real partner is someone who is invested in your business, in helping you to be the best you can be. Responsiveness, innovation, and transparent communication are just as valuable to a publisher’s business as any other KPI. The ability to grow with a trusted partner that is open to testing new ideas, or working within the context of specific business goals is a great compliment to consistent performance.

No matter what happens in the programmatic ecosystem, people will always look for good content to help them connect and stay informed.

Content is personal, so it makes absolute sense to build personal relationships with your partners that will support and add value to your business as a whole. By doing this, your relationships will stand the test of time and enable you to grow a sustainable advertising business.

The post 6 Considerations When Auditing Your AdTech Partners appeared first on Sovrn, Inc..

For the record, Sovrn believes in running a clean, safe auction where all partners operate on a level playing field.

Trust and transparency are of paramount importance to Sovrn and as such, we:

• Have never employed strategies such as bid caching to manipulate auction results and do not condone the use of this approach
• Do not condone bid manipulation of any kind
• Have undergone all of the leading 3rd party audits including IAB Gold Standard, TAG and JICWEBS for brand safety, anti-fraud and other compliances
• Fully support ads.txt and work relentlessly to encourage our publishers to adopt these positive initiatives
• Have implemented a free Consent Management Tool (or CMP) to help publishers to comply with GDPR
• Developed unique technology to help publishers solve viewability and deliver higher value ad units to buyers based on user engagement
• Never charge a buy-side fee

We will continue to invest in trust and transparency initiatives and look forward to sustaining a market that grows stronger through a unified view of these issues.

The post Sovrn’s View on Bid Caching appeared first on Sovrn, Inc..

First coined in 2012 by Alexis Madrigal in an article published by The Atlantic, the term, in fact, refers to the increasingly common practice of sharing links to articles and products via private messages rather than in public posts on social networks. Millions of people actively engage in this every day, sending high volumes of traffic to publishers. However, links shared privately lack referral tags, which means they are extremely difficult to track. When you look at your analytics platform, these Dark Social shares show up simply as ‘direct’ traffic.

Although Google states that ‘direct’ traffic happens when users type a URL directly into their browser or click on a bookmarked site, the reality is, it’s a fallback for any source of traffic without referral data. To highlight the scale of the issue, a study by RadiumOne found that “84% of consumers’ outbound sharing from publishers’ and marketers’ websites now takes place via private, Dark Social channels such as email and instant messaging.”

What can you do about it?
With figures like this, it’s important publishers get a handle on Dark Social. While you may not be able to fully track this traffic, here are three things you can do to help build a better picture of what is actually going on:

Step One—Define how much of your direct traffic is actually Dark Social  
A good starting point is to add a UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) code to links. This is essentially a URL with added tracking parameters (such as utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign), which allows you to capture reporting data about the referring campaign. Standard UTM parameters in a referral link are then used to track source attribution, enabling you to see what specific source and campaign triggered a customer action. Armed with this information, you can look at your direct traffic for these long links. If you find them, it’s fair to assume they were not typed in manually, and actually originate from Dark Social.

Step Two—Direct people where you want them to go
Another tactic to help you manage Dark Social is to include highly visible sharing buttons on content to encourage viewers to share things on specific channels such as email, WhatsApp, iPhone messenger and Facebook messenger (and, of course, add specific tracking codes for each). Also keep an eye on other social platforms’ performance in your analytics platform. A spike in your ‘direct’ traffic coinciding with a spike in a specific social platform can indicate where your Dark Social traffic is actually coming from.

Step three—Employ Dark Social tools to give you better visibility
From all your analysis, if you find that a lot of traffic to your site originates from Dark Social, you might want to investigate other options for more support. There are currently a number of tools on the market that you can use to track Dark Social traffic origins and analyze their outcomes, including:

1. Po.st
Po.st is owned and operated by RadiumOne and not only allows users to share content but also provides them with dark social analytics tools.

2. ShareThis
ShareThis offers a tool that enables people to share web content with friends via email, direct message, or text message, and can be customized to measure copy and shares of your URLs. This is an effective tactic to mitigate and actually track shares via dark social.

3. GetSocial.io  
GetSocial.io is a SaaS-based Dark Social media analytics platform that allows you to track dark social shares of your content across all devices by simply inserting a snippet of code on your site. This is your one-stop shop when looking to track, analyze and make strategic decisions based on sharing in the dark social space.

While Dark Social may seem perplexing, when tracked correctly private URL shares can provide publishers with invaluable insight into consumers’ real interests, allowing them to identify content that is sparking interest and the influencers that are actually generating conversions.

As dark social traffic continues to emerge as a powerful conversion tool, it will become increasingly important for publishers and brands alike to understand it and take advantage of everything it has to offer.

The post Uncovering the Mystery of Dark Social appeared first on Sovrn, Inc..

It’s a similar situation when you compare Google Ad Manager (DFP) to most other ad servers. Many ad serving solutions for publishers offer the core features of inventory setup, ad delivery and some type of reporting; however, with Google Ad Manager, you get all of that and more in a comprehensive and feature-rich platform that sets the standard for small-to-enterprise level publishers.

One of the First!
In the mid-1990’s, when internet advertising was in its infancy, a few small enterprises like Focalink/SmartBanner, AdConductor, and NetGravity launched their respective versions of the banner-ad delivery software. NetGravity’s ad serving platform was acquired by DoubleClick when they bought NetGravity in 1999 and rebranded as the Dynamic Advertising Reporting & Targeting or “DART Enterprise” platform. DART Enterprise was then acquired by Google when Google bought DoubleClick in March of 2008. At the time, DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) was already the standard-setting inventory management and ad delivery platform within the DART suite of solutions for digital marketers and web publishers.

Since Then
DFP has come a long way from its initial, basic banner ad delivery platform to the robust ad sales platform that it is today. In the premium and small business versions of DFP, its functionality and features include inventory management, ad delivery, reporting, forecasting, billing, audience data and sales operations. In addition to all of these features, larger publishers can seamlessly integrate the world’s largest, real-time-bidding (RTB) ad exchange—Google AdX—with their DFP to add more Open and Private Marketplace (PMP) ad selling capabilities to their website monetization efforts.

More Value, More Expertise Needed
As with flying a 747 (compared to a two-seater airplane), the level of expertise a publisher will need when moving from a basic ad serving platform like Google’s AdSense to DFP is significant. For this reason, it is in the publishers’ best interest to invest in using DFP to its maximum potential. The more expertise you have managing DFP, the more you will be able to get the most revenue from advertising on your website. This is where partnering with experienced and qualified Google Ad Manager experts—such as Sovrn’s Services team for training and/or management of your DFP network—can save you time and ensure that you’re not leaving money on the table.

Getting the most out of your website monetization with Google Ad Manager requires effective management of your website’s ad inventory, demand partnerships, and real-time selling strategies. To do these well, you need a responsive and thoughtful approach to the ever-changing dynamic of online advertising.

Whether it’s training, set-up, clean-up, help with day-to-day ad operations or all of the above, Sovrn Services is here to help! Contact us to learn more about our flexible DFP consulting and training packages that are customized to your unique needs. Here’s what Kevin Gentry, Product Manager at Ibotta, had to say about Ibotta’s DFP consulting and training experience:

“With their expert knowledge in the space, it was super helpful to get training and an in-depth tutorial on AdTech best practices and DFP. As a company that is making an effort to be in front of new trends and technologies in ad tech, Sovrn’s training efficiently brought the team up-to-speed and comfortable with using DFP. My team left Sovrn’s training session with a better understanding of the ad tech space and best practices in programmatic.”
 

The post Partner With a Google Ad Manager (DFP) Expert to Get Your Revenue Soaring! appeared first on Sovrn, Inc..

Below is a transcribed version of our live AMA.

Q: What’s the deal with Ads.txt?

A:  Ads.txt is a simple verification method used by DSPs/buy-side platforms to ensure that the SSPs/Exchanges and pubs on those platforms have permission from site owners to present their inventory for sale.

Q: How do I know that header bidding is a good idea for my site?

A: We have learned that having a stable setup that is working through DFP, that you understand & that is effective, is a win. Start with waterfall & then move towards header bidding. You want to make sure you have a few partners queued up prior to moving towards header bidding; one partner will not yield the best results.

Q: What are the benefits of using the Header Complete product Sovrn offers vs using other auction in the header options?

A: One of the biggest positives, is that it is all handled & manipulated in the Sovrn user interface. There is only one piece of code to place in the header. Any changes you make are handled. This helps with latency & we can collect more data to help you troubleshoot different aspects of your setup. The entire header complete solution is built off of prebid. The more implementations we do, the more we realize: the simpler the better. All inputs for server side config, have been tested to work, producing less room for error.  

Q: At what point do you find publishers having diminished returns (partner wise) in their wrapper? For a scaling publisher, how many demand sources would you recommend?

A: The prebid.js documentation recommends 1-5 demand partners. However, latency is the big question – how long are you willing to have the ad server wait for all of the bids to return from the header auction? Although, 1-5 is prebid’s recommendation, they also state you can have up to 10 partners depending on the balance between latency & revenue.  We recommend you add around 5, and experiment from there. Our most successful partners have between 6 & 8 partners. All publishers & partners are different. The prebid docs provide a great way to test for your optimal number of partners.  

Q: For scaling publishers, are you seeing a shift towards server side auctions or do you think client side will remain the most popular in the next year? Or Hybrid models?

A: We think server side will gain popularity in the next year, but client side might still be the norm. There are less connections to be made if S2S is done right. We would suggest hybrid models as you make a transition. Do some A/B testing & then you can move over to one or the other 100%. The important thing to note about hybrid, is some publishers may work better on either side. It is better to keep each partner on the side that they perform best.

Q: If you are a small ad network, Is it possible to set up multiple sites within one DFP account?

A: It is preferable to use one DFP account rather than multiple.  This will eliminate the complication excess and competing multiple line items. There is a lot you can do within DFP to fit specific needs.

Q: What would you say sets Sovrn apart from other ad tech vendors, exchanges, and ad networks?

A: First, we view our publishers as business partners as opposed to clients. Our main focus is publisher success, not just slinging ads. We have an online community where you can communicate with Sovrn employees as well as other industry experts & publishers. There are several resources in the Community to help keep up to date with industry trends. We are also working to build out solutions outside of just transactional ad tech, for example, heightened reporting capabilities, hashed email & Signal. We provide solutions that help publisher grow, even if it means Sovrn isn’t the main benefactor of what we implement.

Q: What is Sovrn’s view on publishers who use sovrn demand directly integrated through the header and also via tag-based 3rd party vendors who provide publishers with Sovrn re-seller Ads.txt entries? Does using both sovrn directly and as a reseller put the publishers direct seat at a disadvantage as the buy-side could potentially have access to the same impressions through a cheaper supply path via the re-seller?

A: This has become very common in the industry, therefore, it is impossible to answer generally. Re-sellers can oftentimes have very functional tech! Some of these vendors’ products are widgets or otherwise additive inventory that would not normally be monetized. Rule of thumb: if it is working, don’t fix it. If something is working well for you, makes sense to you, the page is loading, why go and try to fix it? Pick one or the other if you are not seeing success.

Q: Does the Ads.txt file actually do anything? Does it block unauthorized resellers from selling a publishers inventory? How will this impact fill rates?

A: Yes,  DSP’s adoption rates are steadily increasing, so it will be important for pubs to keep accurate Ads.txt files hosted on their sites because, as adoption rates by DSPs increase, fill for publishers not utilizing or incorrectly implementing Ads.txt files, will see a decrease.  And yes, for DSPs who are utilizing Ads.txt, it will block unauthorized sellers and resellers from selling on their platform.  Important to note that not all DSPs are currently using Ads.txt, and others have varying degrees of strictness.

Q: Are there any tips on how we should target Sovrn tags in DFP, specifically for Geo targeting, Device/Browser targeting & Frequency capping.  I don’t see a breakdown by geo, only by US and “Other”. Is there any data or report that I can pull to show performance by geo? I was thinking that if the CPM or fill rate differs significantly by region, then it would make sense to create separate line items by geo in DFP rather than than a blanket line item that covers everything. Same applies to browser or device.

A: Specifically for geo, through DFP, you can use their built in queries that are available in the reports section. The ‘network geography’ & ‘device & browser‘ reports are a good place to start. If you need more granularity, you can write your own custom query. Frequency capping can be used as a tool do some A/B testing to determine which partners are performing better. Breaking out tags by Geo may improve performance if you have a significant portion of international traffic.

Q: Should the Sovrn tags be frequency capped and if so, at what number? Is it more of test-and-see approach dependent on the site? If that is the case, what metric would be most helpful to determine a frequency cap? Fill rate or yield?

A: Frequency capping was originally intended for direct and guaranteed line items to ensure that guaranteed and repetitive creatives were being properly distributed across a site’s readership. With that said, playing around with frequency caps at the top of your stack can be a good way to grab at the highest possible CPM’s for your best and most unique traffic. The easiest metric that we would suggest focusing on is the eCPM and overall yield per partner and ad unit. These metrics will change depending on location within the stack and price floors but testing them against each other will help to get a better understanding of bid distribution. If you do decide to frequency cap at the top, we would suggest implementing secondary tags of the same partner further down the stack to test performance at that mid-quality inventory as well.

Q: Why (or why not) is it advantageous to run Sovrn (or any partner) on a client side wrapper and via a 3rd Party S2S (Google EB) simultaneously? Many publishers report seeing incremental lift from combined implementations. What is the reason for the lift? Is the Google EB auction being primed by the results of the client side auction?

A: The combined implementation is probably not the reason for the lift.  If you switch half your tags to EB, and that is working better for you, you will see a lift because one half is working better. The EB auction is not being primed by the results of the client side auction. We suggest you test to find out what works best for you. For EB especially, there are timeouts & issues – depending on where your traffic is coming from, this may add latency. We suggest combined implementations only to find what works best, and then move full to one or the other. Tech will vary significantly from site to site. We are here to help publishers with testing by providing reports & troubleshooting.

Q: Is it normal to see differing performance by geo?

A: Traffic will differ drastically by location & type of inventory. Sovrn has a demand team focused on increasing performance across all geos. The more data we have in this area, the better we can serve our publishers.

Q: In your opinion what is the site performance impact of using header bidding verse using standard Sovrn tags?

A: It depends on your site, the amount of traffic you are getting, whether or not you have an ad server, etc. There are a lot of considerations when moving towards header bidding. It depends on how exactly you are implementing the stand alone tags & header bidding.  

Q: How does win rate affect your header bidding algorithm? If bids are requested on a sizemapped or lazy-loaded unit that may never get sent to the adserver, does your algorithm penalize this behavior? What about bid caching?

A: We have observed that the sites with 1:1 ratio between ads requested & slots to fit into, perform better. Though we don’t know to what extent, demand does partially throttle requests from sites that send unfillable tags. Publisher bid caching can cause impression timeout issues. Sovrn does not engage in bid caching in our auction and we strongly discourage publishers from this practice, for that & other reasons. If the user takes too long to scroll down to that ad unit, there is a chance that the impression has timed out by then. Your ad server might record that as an impression because it went through the whole system, but it has timed out on the SSP side. This causes discrepancies. The impression timeout varies from 30-60 seconds. If utilizing lazy loading, use separate Prebid.js auctions for those units when they are actually on the page.

Q: In the header bidding and EB world, have optimizations now come to an end? Do publishers now simply have to focus on the best SSPs/demand partners or do CPM floors still help increase revenue?

A: This is something that is always changing. Buyers have their own algorithms for determining how much they want to spend on a site & it can change week to week. Setting floors is a big focus for us currently from a data perspective. Now that header bidding has become more widespread, we can start to dig in deeper into our transaction flow to ensure we are optimizing as best as possible. Whatever you have set as CPMs in DFP as direct deals or price priority waterfall will dictate what the floor needs to be to be effective.

Q: What are some of the biggest pitfalls that publishers experience when implementing header bidding?

A: The more straight forward your website is built, the easier it will be to implement header bidding. Simple is better. Sticking to what is in the spec & a wrapper that works, is very important. Competing line items in DFP (waterfall & wrapper) with inflated rates, can override one another and could end up serving a lower CPM than the header bidding line item. You have to be open to testing.

Q: From Sovrn’s point of view, what are the benefits and drawbacks of using DFP over other popular ad servers such as SMART ad server?

A: DFP has become so universal that there is so much documentation & references. On the other hand, it is hard to get ahold of someone at DFP. A few publishers have told us they are moving towards a different ad server for more support. DFP does have so many different options & overcomplicating your setup can mess with your performance.

Q: What are a few things successful publishers do to increase fill & yield.

A: Optimizing the bid request is important – making the right calls. On the other hand, serving a few different sizes into one placement can help achieve the highest CPM. A publisher that is willing to go with the spec & do things in a way that is cohesive with the wrapper is beneficial. We are currently looking for best practices that we can share with our publishers. Stay tuned!

Q: Do certain placements (higher up on the page) perform better than others?

A: Yes. Making sure to split out tags above the fold & below the fold, is really important. A leaderboard will perform better at the top of the page rather than at the bottom of the page. 728X90s, 300X250s, 160X600s & 320X50s will be some of your best performing sizes. Depending on your traffic, it is smart to split out by geo and device type as well.

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