Advertising New Publishing Tech
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“A doubling of ad deal revenue for participating publishers”: Sovrn Signal builds upon its early success

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Sovrn, the publisher technology platform, has announced that ad deal revenue doubled for publishers in the latest large-scale implementation of its Signal technology.

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.

Not only did ad deal revenue double for participating publishers, but advertising inventory enhanced by Signal was up to two times more likely to accurately predict how long a user would engage with any given ad.

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. 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.

Marc Boswell, Chief Revenue Officer of LoveToKnow Media

According to Sovrn, publishers using Signal are also able to 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.

Attention is the new black

It comes at a time when ‘attention‘ is rapidly superseding ‘viewability’ as a key measure, not least because viewability (as defined by the Interactive Advertising Bureau of “50% of an ad in view for a minimum of one second”) is considered a poor benchmark of advertising engagement.

The issue, however, is to date there has been no agreed-upon definition of what ‘attention’ actually means, and as a result, no clear path to optimization for either buyers or publishers.

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.

Elizabeth Lane, Head of Research & Measurement, IAB UK

Sovrn’s Signal addresses this issue head-on via its 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.

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. 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.

Walter Knapp, CEO, Sovrn

For more information about Signal, visit sovrn.com/signal-inventory


Disclosure: What’s New in Publishing is wholly owned by Sovrn Holdings, Inc.