Digital Publishing
2 mins read

Sovrn raises $25M to broaden its range of publisher solutions

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Sovrn, which offers products and services to more than 25,000 independent online publishers, has raised upwards of $25M to accelerate its move towards a more diverse range of publisher solutions – both through acquisition and internal investment.

The company, which was born out of Federated Media and renamed in 2014, is best known for its ad tech programmatic services for publishers, but since its inception has also expanded its set of publisher tools and services that now account for more than 40% of its business. These include financial services for publishers such as invoice discounting and factoring, outsourced ad ops, as well as publisher consulting services.

The funding round has been led by The Foundry Group, Archer/Lexington, and Oak Investment Partners, all existing investors in the business.

Speaking to WNIP, Andy Evans, CMO of Sovrn said, “Raising money in this difficult climate is a tremendous testament to the work that the Sovrn team has achieved. Our plan is to be a must-have business partner to publishers through building further tools and acquiring businesses that have built products and services that solve important problems for publishers.

“The primary business functions of a publisher include content creation, distribution, promotion, financial management, monetization, and operations.  We aim to help our clients in all these areas and are looking for businesses that have demonstrated success for publishers in one or more of these areas.”

Sovrn Publisher Stack

A key goal for the company is to wrap all its various publisher tools and services into a single platform and tie them together as a cohesive whole based on its existing payment infrastructure and data.

The payment infrastructure lets Sovrn account for publisher payments whilst its data collective lets publishers monitor their audience and revenues and to benchmark against their peers. Sovrn’s new publisher products and services, once they’re acquired, will plug into this infrastructure.

Evans adds, “We’ve shown the ability to identify, acquire, and build multiple products and services onto a single platform. The investment we’ve secured this week is to continue that work.”

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

Photo by Ash Edmonds on Unsplash