Above the Fold: May 26, 2026

by

Above the Fold: May 26, 2026

BY ROB BEELER

This information is confidential and 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 existential threats to publishers down to questions about how to use a specific feature in an ad server. If you are a publisher or someone who works with publishers, all of these provide opportunities to help or learn. The report’s format varies based on the conversations.

Events

If you attended Navigator NYC or AI Publisher Response, all slide presentations we have approval to share are now available for you to access. Please see the individual session docs, and there will be a link to the deck if it is available. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions.

The Pub Report Q2 Webinar | May 25 · Virtual from Beeler.Tech and Prebid.org: Second publisher-only quarterly webinar covering proof of origin and what C2PA content provenance means, solving the identity crisis with addressability, Prebid Server as the ad decision engine, and navigating life beyond Microsoft’s Prebid Cache. Publishers only, sponsored by Optable. RSVP

2026 State of Publisher Ad Revenue Report | June 11 · 1:00 PM EST · Virtual from Playwire: Jayson Dubin and Scott Schroeder walk through findings from 113 billion impressions and 8.8 billion sessions, plus the methodology behind the conclusions. They’ll show what top-quartile publishers are doing differently and answer questions live, without a script. Register

Congratulations to the recipients of the AMP UP 2026 Client Excellence Awards, including some from our community.

Community Feed

  • Ad ops gets seen. The Failing Fast in Ad Ops piece by an anonymous publisher and Liz Moorehead, a free preview of a Below the Fold feature from The Stack subscription, had ad ops managers fired up. One pub said their fellow Ad Ops Managers loved it and to keep them coming. Another said the articles are on fire this month and they’ve never felt as seen in AdOps, citing this piece alongside Ad Ops Is Where Other People’s Bad Decisions Become Emergencies.
  • Publicis-LiveRamp deal. Publicis is acquiring LiveRamp: good, bad, or indifferent, and what does it mean for publishers? Another person pointed to Ebbert’s framing of the deal as an “agentic agency stack”: Epsilon for identity and data, LiveRamp for interoperability and connectivity, agents and workflows as the operational AI layer, and services for monetization and execution.
  • Quality as infrastructure. CIMM released a paper advocating for clearer definitions and frameworks for media quality in buying and measurement. One pub’s read: it’s arguing quality needs to be infrastructure, not just something to optimize. Media Quality isn’t a single score but a spectrum, and the paper downplays brand safety as “just a signal” without offering a solution. The upside: it could push away from identity and toward quality, which publishers can control. Another pub said the move toward quality is always good, and the report was solid, but noted this isn’t coming from the buy side.
  • Two-track web. The Economist’s Josh Muncke told Digiday they’re building “agent-readable” versions of content, starting with marketing and B2B copy outside the paywall, prepping for “a world with two versions of the web.” A pub asked whether anyone is actually shipping structured Q&A surfaces for agents yet, or if everyone’s still stuck in the “should we even let them crawl” debate. TechCrunch reports Google Search is shifting from a list of links to AI-powered conversational answers, autonomous agents, and interactive interfaces, which could further cut publisher traffic. A publisher worried many pubs will “die” quietly once it goes live and asked how publishers can turn this to their advantage. Meanwhile, pubX launched the first end-to-end agentic advertising marketplace, where AI buying and selling agents negotiate deals that traditional programmatic can’t deliver.
  • Holistic publisher monetization. Relevant Yield’s Week 21 ad tech wrap is up. From their DanAds Summit Europe takeaways: if a visitor is likely to become a subscriber, should publishers really maximize short-term ad revenue at all costs? They argue that ad load, pricing, formats, and subscription potential shouldn’t be optimized separately, and that reducing ad pressure can create more long-term value. They also flag that as AI reshapes workflows, creativity, critical thinking, and business judgment matter more than ever. Full April recap.
  • AdOps tooling guides. ProOps Consulting dropped two publisher buyer’s guides: What Is an AdOps Efficiency Tool? and How to Choose the Best Google Ad Manager Monitoring Tool in 2026.
  • Brand safety and AI. Seedtag on how AI is redefining brand safety today, with an accompanying podcast.
  • AI anxiety, leveled. Navigator New York keynote Katie Drummond is on Crooked Media: How Anxious Should You Be About AI? with Timnit Gebru.

Top Topics Discussed This Week

Help shape in-app ad UX principles. Evan Thor uploaded a first draft of principles and opportunities to fix two UX issues with in-app ads: full-screen interstitials and SSP and ad network banners that use native templates and ignore display theme context. The goal is a document that publishers can agree on and sign, with demand partners signing on to indicate their support for the principles. Drop your comments in the doc.

Wiring AI into ad ops: Jordan Cauley told AdExchanger AI cuts his clients’ revenue-drop investigations from two weeks to three hours, but only when Claude or ChatGPT are wired directly into GAM, Prebid, GitHub, and SSP data. One pub said they’ve done this and find it even more useful for traffic investigations, arguing publishers should ingest data into a central store like Snowflake to reduce AI hallucination. Another pub: “I wish I had the size to do that.”

Sorting out agentic ad buying: A pub asked how Scope3, IAB, Index, and others stack up on agentic AI buying. Another publisher took a swing, using “Claude” as shorthand for the LLMs: Scope3’s AdCP is a framework for seller Claude and buyer Claude to talk, focused on reservations and booking line items in GAM, with Scope3 also running Claude themselves and taking a rip on transactions. Traditional SSPs like IX and PubMatic are trying to cut out the DSP, with the buyer, Claude, booking ORTB deal IDs directly. IAB’s role unclear. Skepticism ran high. One pub compared the moment to the mobile accelerometer hype that never took off, asking what’s actually being solved as traffic disappears. Another asked sincerely who wants this and what value it delivers, calling traditional SSPs the most compelling path. A pub working with Scope3 said they’re learning by building, but felt out of place in the AdCP Slack. One publisher pushed their sales agent live in March using Prebid’s code and is running deals via Scope3’s marketplace. Value: connecting the buyer directly to the ad server, reducing ops and billing overhead. Concerns: no agentic ads.txt, messy non-guaranteed, broken revisions. Net take: SSPs become the marketplace, sell the buyer agent, and collect a tax.

App ads hijacking scroll: A pub asked if anyone’s seeing in-app ads that block scrolling or trigger app store opens on a scroll, across multiple creatives and sources. Another publisher said they ran into this with InMobi and only fixed it by removing all their integrations and blocking the advertiser account in GAM. Blocking individual creatives, like Amazon Music, didn’t work because they’d reupload weeks later. They’ve seen the same with Adobe and Fanatics through InMobi.

Publishers compare partner notes. A few partner questions came up this week. One pub asked about adWMG. The reply: integrations and reporting were lacking, revenue was meh, not worth it. Another asked about issues with Colossus SSP. The reply: they never scaled, paused indefinitely. A third asked about Index’s Managed Demand fee. Index says it’s variably calculated with an internal ceiling but won’t share a fixed cap “because the actual fee is designed to operate below that threshold,” which one pub called “transparently not transparent.” A fourth asked about Kargo’s Spotlight ads. Responses: one pub runs them everywhere, and they perform well; another starts testing next week, and one pub pushed back on the default, adding a whole extra prebid. Their take: publishers should run a single exit-intent ad with publisher-defined logic that GAM, Wunderkind, and Kargo can bid into, rather than all three competing over when to fire the pop-up.

Identity without oversight. AdExchanger broke down how a publisher botched its UID2 setup, and The Trade Desk didn’t catch it. A pub said this is flying under the radar, but feels like a big deal. Their broader skepticism: adoption of ID solutions has been aggressive because the concept is sound, but accountability is missing. They’ve never heard anyone tie ID adoption to quantifiable revenue growth. Vendors grade their own homework and talk up the CPM lift. Also raises questions about whether LiveRamp is actually worth $2bn. The pub recommended the companion podcast for a deeper take.

Should publishers send schain? A pub asked how critical it is to send schain in bid requests to the buy side, and whether demand partners are blocking publishers without it. Another publisher said flatly: Don’t send it if you’re a publisher. They’d done it by mistake, and it was costly because DSPs started reading them as a reseller. Someone shared TTD documentation from Katie Black emphasizing that partners passing schain matters, not the publisher. A detailed take followed: SSPs are responsible for populating the schain object since it’s part of the ORTB spec. What’s set in Prebid isn’t necessarily what’s passed by the SSP. Publishers aren’t conducting auctions in the common case, so the SSP owns the responsibility. TTD wouldn’t need a separately declared schain for their own adapter, where they already own the publisher relationship and the path is direct. An audit of major pubs turned up only one supporting it, and that one also runs an audience extension business. Net: If the largest publishers aren’t getting this ask, why did your SSP single you out? Probably because that SSP isn’t passing schain properly. In a parallel thread, more context: TTD OpenPath is the only direct revenue channel a publisher enables that requires schain. OpenPath requires “publisher-as-seller” because TTD isn’t an SSP and doesn’t want to be seen as one. So TTD asks OpenPath pubs to set up sellers.json and schain as a pseudo SSP. Most publishers using this setup don’t implement the spec correctly, and OpenPath still works, even though TTD’s own inventory policies say it shouldn’t. Background: schain, ads.txt, and sellers.json are the three points of the “transparency triangle.” If anyone is compromised, inventory can be misrepresented. One pub said they’re building a suite of supply chain tools.

Developing Conversations

Has anyone worked with Yadda as a newsletter monetization partner?

We need SSP MCPs to exist now so our publisher agents can start requesting blocks for bad or broken ads that get reported. There’s something there for zero-party data in certain brands/direct-sold campaigns.

AdCP: We’re looking for some Buyer Agents for testing. If you know of anyone I can reach out to, please let me know!

Any recommendations for outstream video in-app? Who are the people working with, and what’s working well?

Anyone enabling Share Revenue in agency log files? Are you concerned that doing this gives the agency too much leverage? Could they use this data against pubs to squeeze our margins rather than helping us optimize? The shared files contain more metrics than just net revenue, according to this.

Looking for EU publisher experience: TTPA + political/public‑affairs ads + GAM