Above the Fold: December 1, 2025

by

Above the Fold: December 1, 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 report’s format changes as the conversations change.

Community Feed

News publishers who are beating social media networks at their own game: Fascinating story, what if there was another way for news publishers than working hand in glove with the likes of Meta and TikTok? Press Gazette spoke to two publishers who have successfully launched their own social media platforms: Spaces by Village Media in Canada and Daily Maverick Connect in South Africa. They are driven not by addictive algorithms but by providing a way for readers to build connections and share knowledge.

 

This Week’s Top Community Topics (Non-Agentic Advertising)

Sometimes AI-assisted to be more articulate, but definitely human-reviewed. 

Ad Quality: An Ad Quality issue was brought up the prior week. Confiant confirmed it. “Yes, it is D-Shortiez. The DSPs serving this are: Outbrain/Zemanta, Beeswax, Eskimi.” Confiant provided additional vectors to help triangulate for those who are still having issues. DM for details.

Spam Traffic Spikes: “We (publisher) are seeing a sudden jump in US pageviews (direct source) — user count stays stable, but some desktop “users” generate 50–150 pageviews per session with very short durations, so ads never render (fill rate decrease).” 

Microsoft Monetize: It’s reported that Microsoft Monetize (formerly Xandr) is canceling all existing publisher contracts and seeking new contracts with non-negotiable terms. From the discussion so far, opinions are mixed. Some publishers using the full ad server + SSP still see Monetize as competitive, depending on buyer demand. Others say Monetize no longer provides value and are hesitant to restart legal review. Curation strength may influence decisions, while some publishers previously dropped Monetize due to weak demand and are unsure whether it can rebound.

Sovrn Follow-up from last week: I asked Sovrn about their payment changes to Bill on View: “When DV360 changed its methodology, we observed a spike in discrepancies for our publishers, so we tested multiple options to minimize this issue. We found that Bill on View most closely matched Google’s reporting. Ultimately, our goal in this change has been to provide publishers with a methodology that:

  1. Minimizes the potential for discrepancies.
  2. Allows us to provide reporting that aligns with the payment they can expect to receive at the end of the billing cycle.
  3. Allows us to provide an open and transparent view into the methodology (1 pixel for any amount of time).

We will continue to closely monitor the impact of the change, but thus far, we’ve seen vast improvement in discrepancies.

Thank you to Sovrn for responding.

EX.CO Follow-up from last week: This is a summary of what was shared in the Publisher Only Slack. A few clarifications: EX.CO‘s demand is not acting as backfill. It competes in the auction like any other demand source. Since EX.CO‘s demand is classified as a reseller, it will not receive the same rating as publisher direct seats by our ML. From all tests to date, adding EX.CO demand, which is optional, increases overall monthly revenue by ~10% to ~30%. Our roadmap includes some updates that will significantly increase yield capabilities. Contact tom@ex.co (Tom Pachys, Co-founder and CEO) or Shachar@ex.co (Shachar Orren, Co-founder and CRO) with questions.

Thank you to EX.CO for responding. Publishers who work or are considering working with EX.CO can get some additional details upon request. 

What’s in the INMA Report? Quick Summary:

  • Part 1 of the report identifies the critical factors driving this crisis, beginning with the mechanics of brand safety technology.
  • Part 2 of the report provides pragmatic solutions for a path forward, including next-generation AI tools that can understand context.

The brand safety crisis is not an existential threat; it’s a solvable market failure. With AI tools, robust data, and strategic innovation, news companies can reclaim lost revenue and reshape the narrative. The future belongs to those who act decisively, build coalitions, and prove their value beyond the confines of outdated verification systems.

As Stagwell CEO Mark Penn put it: “The idea that brands should avoid news is outdated and wrong. Advertising in trusted outlets isn’t just safe, but it’s one of the smartest moves you can make to drive performance and earn consumer trust.“

Taking Action

Working with Prebid: Prebid task forces are forming and will draft charters to organize work across the following areas: Commerce/Retail, LLM Monetization, and Agentic. Once drafted, these charters will be shared here in the Beeler Publishers Slack channel. Anyone from Beeler Tech can provide feedback, and we’ll consolidate it to relay back to Prebid. As use cases or product ideas emerge, they’ll be shared here for group feedback. Anything beyond this level of engagement will require Prebid membership.

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.”

  • Question: Does operating third-party inventory impact the perception of demand partners? One response so far: Some SSPs require legal authorization, but they saw significant improvements in performance and revenue. It hasn’t negatively impacted demand partner perceptions. 
  • Google’s call with Beeler.Tech to discuss Google Ad Manager Interactive Reports was a hit. What’s next? Suggestions so far: Direct Buying and Audience Extension. Separately but related is Custom Delivery Curves.  “The documentation isn’t so clear on this one.”

Troubleshooting

Has anyone dealt with spam traffic spikes and found effective ways to handle them? We (publisher) are seeing a sudden jump in US pageviews (direct source) — user count stays stable, but some desktop “users” generate 50–150 pageviews per session with very short durations, so ads never render (fill rate decreases). We’ve tried WAF Bot control (CAPTCHA), IP reputation lists, and manual IP blocking, but nothing has helped. The spam imitates real user behavior: opening the site and constantly refreshing, so we’re running out of ideas that wouldn’t hurt real users. Would appreciate any recommendations or tools that worked for you.

  • From James Strang: “One thought is that Microsoft Outlook Safelink detonation can cause this. Did the publisher recently start sending out some large email blasts? (Especially relevant with more business-focused lists) Outlook typically scans every URL when an email is received and when a user clicks a link before the page loads. My other thought is that this is some sort of AI scraping. Cloudflare has pretty good systems to limit this. They use behavioral analysis in addition to standard IP lists. Fou Analytics can also help with this, and they are either free or very affordable. It’s an information layer rather than a blocking system. It uses behavioral and device analysis to score traffic based on its level of suspicion. It can be combined with custom parameters, so you can measure other things that aren’t built in. You can also report on ASN and IP address from this platform and then use it to inform blocking rules on the CDN.”
  • Response: It wasn’t email. We’ll review the Cloudflare options and Fou Analytics with the team – hopefully it gives us more clarity or insight into what’s happening. If you know any strong blocking systems for this “human-like” behavior, that would be great to hear as well!

For those who use AWS bot traffic control: Has anyone implemented AWS bot traffic control and seen it hurt their programmatic performance? We are getting reports that partners can’t access our ads.txt to crawl it or approve the domain. We implemented the bot control on one of four sites, and that one site, the review failed for ads.txt. Amazon itself couldn’t verify the site.

  • Resolution: We whitelisted the ads.txt URL from the bot control, and Amazon was able to verify the site now.

Sellers.Json and MCM connections: “Sellers.json QQ – Do we need to update sellers.json line only with MCM MA connection/s or combined MA and MI connection/s?”

  • Resolution: New update, according to Google, you need to set the correct parameters and also update both ads.txt and the Google Ad Manager mappings. All placements need to use the same seller ID associated with the name you provided, and sellers.json must be activated. To ensure proper configuration, each unique seller ID you generate must be identical across the three required locations:
  1. Child Publisher’s ads.txt: Include the seller ID in both of these lines:
    1. ◦ name, <seller-ID>, DIRECT
    2. google.com, <your-publisher-ID>, RESELLER, f08c47fec0942fa0
  2. Google Ad Manager: The seller ID must be entered under MCM → Child publishers → Child seller ID.
  3. Your sellers.json: This setup is already complete.

Anyone?

Questions asked in the community that went unanswered or deserve more attention.

Do AdBlock solutions make it harder to troubleshoot bad ads? Do all AdBlock solutions make it hard, or is there a difference?

Does anyone have experience integrating Facebook as a demand source in an application? And how is it working nowadays? (I know when they turned off Instant Articles, earnings dropped.)

Unless you can run interstitials (some with delayed close); then it’s not worth it (this is the bulk of their demand).

Nov 22: Is anyone else seeing a large increase in video errors yesterday? It’s across partners (including those with their own demand), across countries, and across bid caches.