Above the Fold: November 3, 2025

by

Above the Fold: November 3, 2025

BY ROB BEELER

Please note that this information is confidential and intended for the internal use of our partners only. The Above the Fold Report is an amalgamation of the discussions taking place within the Beeler.Tech universe. Much of what is presented is based on conversations held behind closed doors within the last week. The topics will range from the existential threats to publishers down to questions about how to use a specific feature in an ad server. We believe that if you are a publisher or someone who works with publishers, all of these provide opportunities to help or learn. The format of the report changes as the conversations change.

Quotes of the week

  • It’s nice to have this community. Signing up to BeelerTech is always what I do on the first day at the new job.
  • Aren’t “outcomes” just a fancier word for CPA campaigns?

Community Feed

Events

Rough Q4 for Programmatic

  • We saw Q3 end pretty well, but are now seeing some unexpected softness across the board. Normally, we don’t see a quarter reset this sharp between Q3 and Q4.
  • We noticed a drastic pullback in spending from Meta and Alphabet, in addition to the drops from Temu and the US government. It looks like they are staying away from spending on the open web. 
  • We’re in-app and we see a big Google pullback.. Facebook is a little soft, but still OK. However, we also see softness in some of the traditional SSP partners.
  • From an advertiser perspective, Bytedance dropped a ton with the tariff announcements a couple of weeks back, then bounced back a bit, but not all the way. Temu is definitely way down, almost stopped (which is quite material for us).
  • The US Government is an interesting one for us. We saw spending drop drastically in early January (no shock there when it comes to government spending). So they haven’t really been a super material advertiser for us this year, but they did drop a lot shortly after the govt shutdown started (again, not unexpected). If they’re a big advertiser for a publisher, that could really hurt.
  • It’s not been the Q4 we expected, and now it’s not just the US slowing down, but across the board.
  • October has been a blood bath. Absolute disaster with YoY CPMs. I have theories:
    • tough YoY comp given the election last year
    • A large DSP is funneling the majority of its spend to its captive SSP instead of across 5 preferred SSPs
    • The economy is not good. (We’re not getting economic reports with the shutdown, but the Fed still chose to lower rates this week.)
    • One hope is that buyers are focusing more of their spending in a smaller Christmas window, so maybe things turn around in the next week or so.

What’s Hot, What’s Not?

(We asked publishers if the Pub Only Slack channels were relevant or needed a refresh)

  • Alternative IDs will become hot again if ID provenance scales, but the ETA of this is unknown.
  • Curation will become hot again when the IAB Tech Lab finalizes its standards/spec for curation; this should better signal curation activities to potential buyers and likely result in a measurable change in their revenues.
  • Perhaps there is enough discussion in the programmatic channel on TTD to warrant its own channel.
  • AdCP is maybe a bigger topic.
  • Agentic selling/workflow improvements is not a huge topic amongst publishers just yet, but may be worth creating a forum for this specifically, as it is its own thing.
    • I agree with you on that, and I confirmed it at Marketecture yesterday. Pubs can daydream about AdCP if they want, but it’s not yet in our focus. Companies (BOK+) are going to generate insane amounts of heat on the topic (and literally, carbon – lol Scope3), but imho pubs should stay heads down on: Signals, Curation and The Auction Layer
  • I think the agents will have killed mankind with clickbait ads long before I’d ever get some of the AdCP protocols through my InfoSec team.

Human-Hallucinations-Only Summary of This Week’s Topics

In other words, this is manually compiled because we believe you deserve more than “good enough.”

  • “Outcomes” is the new buzzword, and Permutive is calling out GAM for not being built for it. Good discussion on LinkedIn. The conversation in the community is a bit more cynical. The ad server needs the data feedback loop to optimize for outcomes. It’s the data, not the ad server.  
  • Safeframe pros/cons discussed. Many demand sources need them off to deliver, but that opens publishers up to bad players. 
  • Some pushback on the narrative that the walled gardens are quality. They are more click farms than quality content.
  • We’re watching Fall 2025 Public Comment Period Now Open for Global Privacy Protocol and Data Deletion Request Framework Updates – it looks like work for the CMP to manage. 
  • Amazon woes continue. Some discussion about people pulling them out of the stack.
  • Discussion around The Trade Desk PubDesk metrics. I see more of this emerging as publishers see how they are being measured.
  • IAB T&Cs v4 was brought up. Not ready for primetime, but is there any guidance on when to start using it? We’re looking into it.
  • From an ad quality discussion: “From what I’ve heard/seen, agencies will use rich media services like Celtra to create interstitials, expandable, etc, and then set up a campaign with a different size selected (ex: 300×250). They do this when they oversell and need to reach their target budget.”

Programmatic Projects Post Base Camp

Several discussions we are working on with publishers and soon with our partners:

  • What information do we want from demand partners broken out by each ads.txt line?
  • Is it time to update the ads.txt standard?
  • Revenue by Ads.txt line: Who provides this data already?
  • How often do you evaluate partners and cut someone out?
  • Why is using content recommendation engines considered cheap reach?
  • How do you know if a demand partner is bringing unique demand?
  • What questions do you ask of existing partners to see they are aligned with your roadmap?
  • What DSP/agency prebid adapters exist, and is working with them directly a good idea?
  • Who are existing traffic shaping partners that publishers can work with?

Anyone?

Hi, I’m looking to optimize my content distribution strategy across key aggregators, specifically Google News and MSN. As a publisher operating a subscription model (paywall), what are the best practices for content access? Should we limit the feed to purely ungated content? Is a ‘First-Click-Free’ or ‘Flexible Sampling’ approach (i.e., ungate only for traffic from these specific referrers) the recommended path? Or, from a purely platform positioning/SEO standpoint, is the gating status of the content irrelevant for ranking within these aggregators

How are you all handling Data Clean Room opportunities? Are you charging for collaboration even if there’s activation? You are spending time and effort in ingesting data, and that’s resources not used elsewhere.

Does anyone have any contacts that can help monetize pages that may have more sensitive keywords/content? 

Anyone using the IAS botlist to block IVT and care to chat offline about it?

We’re exploring an end-to-end ad self-serve platform to streamline direct ad buying and delivery for SMBs. Looking for recommendations.

Has anyone worked with Appsflyer to set up as a publisher in their portal? I’m trying to troubleshoot an issue.

Hey everyone, has anyone worked or working with Ezoic? 

Pangle, we are considering them due to their potential for unique in-app demand. Does anyone have any experience with them?

Seedtag – any sales channel conflict?