Sortable Review For Publishers

Sortable was founded by Christopher Reid as a web publishing company focused on helping consumers in comparing several competing products from each other. Sortable was formerly known as Snapsort Media. In 2014 they relaunched Sortable as an ad optimization company aimed at helping publishers in automating their ad operations. Here is MonetizePros’ Sortable review.

Introduction to Sortable

Sortable is a broad spectrum platform that helps publishers unify demand partners, data, and tools. It aims to simplify the highly complex processes of publishing while getting more ad revenues. Sortable uses machine learning to assist online publishers and content creators in automating ad operations.

Sortable highlights their agnostic approach to monetization and unified reporting as their top benefits. Aside from that, they consist of a large engineering team which promises fast implementation and powerful solutions.

Reporting and analytics have always been a challenge for online publishers as ad stacks start to become more complex. Sortable analytics provides unified reporting within a single dashboard where users can view key metrics to help them decide their yield strategy. It shows analytics performance from the partner and the site.

Sortable approaches monetization agnostically. They increase yield through dynamic price floors and timeouts, header bidding, partner discrepancy minimization and server-to-server connections. Sortable assists online publishers in creating an effective and competing ad stack.

With their highly extensive expertise in DoubleClick Ad Exchange and DoubleClick for Publishers, they have become a certified Google publishing partner.

Overall rating: 2.5 out of 5 

What we like most about Sortable:

• Automated reporting
• New reporting interface has a lot of stats
• Easy setup

What we liked least about Sortable:

• Very little transparency into what’s happening within ad inventory
• Requires you to run 100% of Sortable’s ad setup rather than your ad server
• Cannot run direct sales campaigns along with Sortable
• Aggressive sales team
• Ad RPM and Page RPM performance is quite low
• 90-day opt-out or withholds all ad revenues
• Sneaky $0.01 ad request CPM charge
• Sends too many spam emails

Publisher Requirements

Sortable accepts all publishers that have a minimum 5,000,000 monthly impressions.

Company Stats

• Location: Kitchener, Ontario, Canada
• Categories: Digital Media, Advertising
• Founded Date: 2014
• Founders: Alexander Black, Christopher Reid
• Operating Status: Active
• Funding Status: Seed
• Last Funding Type: Seed
• Number of Employees: 51-100
• Company Type: For-Profit

Contact and Support Information

• Phone Number: 1-888-491-4994
• Contact Email: [email protected]
• Mailing Address:
  Sortable
  160 King St E
  Kitchener, Ontario
  N2G 4E5
• Website: Sortable.com
• Facebook: View on Facebook
• LinkedIn: View on LinkedIn
• Twitter: View on Twitter

Tech Implementation Rating: 4 out of 5

Sortable features an optimistic interface which is user-friendly and easy to get used to. The set-up is amazingly easy. So far tech implementation is fine however you are required to run 100% of ad traffic on sortable and at the same time support isn’t very responsive.

Reporting Interface Rating: 4 out of 5

The newer interface is way better than the older version. You can choose multiple stats to view and monitor. The usability of the interface is decently effective. Overall, their new reporting interface looks promising, however, the most important header bid stats are not available and the necessary optimization toggles aren’t there.

Payment Rating: 4 out of 5

• Features wire transfer payouts
• Net20 payments
• Payment is not always on time
• Withholds all unpaid ad revenues if not running 100% of ad traffic through Sortable

Account Help Rating: 2 out of 5

The support isn’t as responsive as we would want them to be. After your account has been set up and running, Sortable’s support seems to really diminish. Their overly aggressive sales team makes it hard to work with them.

Performance Rating: 1 out of 5

Sortable seems promising at first, however, you won’t actually be getting what you expected. They over promise high ad revenues but actually underdeliver. This is kind of like getting promised shoes for Christmas but actually getting flipflops. The page RPMs and session RPMs are one of the lowest compared to other ad op partners.

Even after complaining about their low RPM performance, they will leverage their contract to keep you running their tags on 100% of your traffic (90-day opt-out). What makes things worse is the low RPM performance doesn’t seem to worry sales or support representatives.

Pros:

• The automated reporting is really nifty especially for analytics and statistics oriented publishers
• Their new and upgraded reporting interface has all the stats that you could possibly ever need
• Set-up is amazingly easy

Cons:

• Page RPM performance is low
• Ad RPM performance is low
• 90-day opt-out or withholds all ad revenues
• There is a Sneaky $0.01 ad request CPM charge
• You are sent too many spammy emails
• The overly aggressive sales team is hard to work with
• Very little transparency into what’s happening within ad inventory
• Instead of your own ad server. you are required to run 100% of Sortable’s ad setup
• Publishers are not able to run direct sales campaigns along with Sortable