Above the Fold: October 6, 2025

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Above the Fold: October 6, 2025

BY ROB BEELER

Please note that this information is confidential and intended for the internal use of our partners only.

The Stack

Today is the soft launch of The Stack. What is The Stack? It is our paid subscription product that consists of two juicy pieces:

Above the Fold: This will be sent out weekly, and it’s a weekly digest of what we see being discussed that impacts the publisher community. A lot of it draws from what happens here in this Slack, but it always has a bit more to it. This is the report from September 22nd.

Below the Fold: Content that’ll come out…when we think it’s ready to come out, but much more spicy. We’re going deeper into topics and trying to shake things up in the industry. Case in point are our two sample articles:

Future Below the Fold features will include my analysis of keyword block lists, the creative load analysis, and more.

 A quick FAQ:

  • Does this mean we have to pay to be a part of this community? No.
  • How much does it cost? First, we aren’t 100% ready to take anyone’s money so right now it’s a waiting list. However, pricing will vary based on a few factors:
    • If you are an In View client of Beeler.Tech, The Stack is included. 
    • If you are a publisher, The Stack is free for the remainder of this year. Your pricing will be significantly lower than that of others.
    • If you are an individual between things, we have a plan for you as well.
    • If you are someone who doesn’t fit into any of those categories, you’ll have some options.
  • Why are you doing this? Beeler.Tech is also a publisher, and we need to diversify our revenue as well. This will help us continue to do what we can for you. It will also be a vehicle to express what publishers actually care about and think. Like you, we think content creation should be funded. So we’re going to ask for money.
  • How do I get The Stack? Get on the waiting list. https://www.beeler.tech/the-stack/

Questions? Comments? Concerns? I wanna hear it all. We’re excited about where this can go. We hope you are as well!

Community Feed

I was having a conversation at an event about how publishers need to create or serve communities, and someone responded that they had tried adding comments to articles, but it didn’t go well. My response was that comments (like Facebook posts) are the lowest form of community. I think the same applies to content recommendations – treat everyone the same, and they will treat you the same way. And publishers can’t afford not to stand out.

Anyway, long-winded way of saying some aspects of this article resonated with me:

Journey Shaping in Publishing: Beyond Content Recommendations to Personalized Revenue Growth:
Journey Shaping is not a smarter content recommendation engine. It’s a dynamic, data-driven approach that treats every visitor as a unique person and delivers tailored experiences at the right moment in their journey. It goes beyond suggesting what to read next. It builds relationships. It turns casual visitors into known users, known users into subscribers, and subscribers into loyal advocates.

Events

Calling all adtech experts! Do you think you’ve got what it takes to champion your sector in front of a live audience? Then the Fired Up 2 event is the one for you… Earlier this summer, we kicked off your events season with a bang, introducing our first-ever Fired Up, where our experts took to the stage to debate what’s hot and what’s hotter in adtech right now, in front of an elite judging panel. Think you could win over the judges? Pitch your place today for a chance to be a part of the hottest event of the golden quarter… Submit your topic here – Save the date: Wednesday 26th November, 12-3 pm

AI Publisher Response

  • Does anyone have a more up-to-date version of this or a similar one? News Websites Blocking LLM Dataset Bots – Research Data
  • Good summary of the status quo looking into 2026: Google AI Overviews Impact On Publishers & How To Adapt Into 2026
  • An interesting and possibly relevant piece: How Wikipedia Can Save the Internet With Advertising | TechPolicy.Press 
  • How many of you are using AI or other services to translate your content into additional languages? Any lessons learned along the way?
    • We used ChatGPT to translate our site into Japanese, and then had a trusted human translator check. There was almost nothing to improve.
    • We are using Lingopals and may also try out TransPerfect
    • We translated most of our brands into DE, ES, and FR “editions” … Google Translate won out over other platforms both for readability and cost efficiency.
    • If you go down this road, just make sure to hreflang everything so the content doesn’t compete and search engines know which URL to surface based on browser language preference.
    • We are using machine translation (DeepL) to translate into other languages, but with editorial review.

AI Just Wouldn’t Understand: Human-Crafted Quick Summaries of this Week’s Discussions

(In other words, we manually compiled this list.)

  • We shared all the resources we could find on how to move to Google Ad Manager Interactive Reports. The majority of our publishers want to know more (68%), but also provided feedback on what’s needed with the reports:
    • When will all the same metrics and dimensions be available in interactive reports? The “Bids” metrics are not available in interactive reports. “Enhanced Key Values” are also missing.
    • There are nuances about how metrics and dimensions can be combined in filters and reports that are not well documented:
      • Placement vs Placement (all). Placement filtering requires the placement dimension also be selected in the report. “Placement all” will report on every placement the inventory is included in. I generally use Placement, filter, and target.
      • CPD revenue is included in the total and average dimensions, but can’t be combined with some dimensions. I always use Total and eCPM for CPM and eCPM revenue (excluding CPD). Essentially, disregard the actual total metrics and dimensions, as the CPD inclusions often present obstacles.
  • Media.Net was a big topic of discussion, with some people seeing some dramatic changes YOY, while others are seeing more steady numbers. Some concerns about whether they are moving away from their unique demand. 
  • Index Exchange is automatically activating dynamic take rates according to some publishers, effective October 8th. 
  • Direct Pay publishers are reporting clawbacks. On that topic, this question was asked: “Has anybody had any success removing sequential liability from SSP contracts or agreeing to split it 50/50 if advertisers or agencies fail to pay them?” 
  • Problem solved: A publisher reported issues with team members receiving different results from reports. It turns out that assigning teams to orders can impact what is reported. 
  • Does anyone have an order management system checklist they’re willing to share that they’ve used to help decide on which OMS vendor to use? We do! Here are our direct-sold workflow documents, which include an OMS requirements scorecard. Here is the link. It might be time for a refresh. 
  • Amazon has published inventory policies that may help people understand why they may no longer see demand. 
  • Got word that Simon Burgess (Assertive Yield, ex-Eyeo) was in a severe bike accident late last week. It looks like things are stabilizing but he has a long road ahead of him.

Too. Much. Transaction ID. Not. Enough. Trust.

  • Last week’s Jeff Green announcements sparked a ton of reaction. Too much for me to parse through with Base Camp starting in a couple of days. In View clients will get the download, but I’m sorry that everyone else has to wait. I am going to make two observations:
    • Per a source in our Slack, The Trade Desk was looking to hire engineers related to OpenAds months ago (not verified). Theory: The Trade Desk was already working on more publisher-facing features, and TIDs was going to be a part of that plan.  The original ask about TIDs has set things in motion and accelerated their plans. The Jeff Green posts don’t feel like the official rollout that I would expect. In other words, OpenAds is not a response to TIDs, but the timing of the announcements is. So, my only caution is to wait and hear more, and see it through the lens of their broader strategy.

Questions In Search of Answers/More Discussion

  • Does anyone perceive the start of quarter CPM softness as being caused by tariffs? What is the impact of political policies on advertising spend?
  • Does the content object as defined by the oRTB spec, necessarily imply a media ad request such as video and audio? Or is this also more broadly used with display banner media types?
  • Thoughts on gross and net bids in SSP responses? We get concerns all the time regarding SSPs not playing fair. Whether true or not would be a wild idea if someone were willing to do it. 
  • If a switch CMP switch is made on your site, are there any permissions that need to be adjusted in GAM? (The answer is no, but I think there is more to explore here)
  • Has anyone seen an increase in impression SOV for Demand Channel = “Header Bidding” starting 9/16? We see about 40% more impressions attributed to Header Bidding from that day onward. I wonder if this is related to any GAM product update regarding HB trafficking.
  • I was wondering if anyone else has experienced this with GAM’s Open Bidding: SSPs are showing higher earnings than GAM. 
  • Does anyone know if TAG certification is still a thing? My thought is no. Has anyone considered not renewing?