Above the Fold: January 26, 2026

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. 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

Signals that surface anomalies and revenue shifts instantly – inside the workflow. Maxwell Kalfus from Conde talks with Laura Boodram and Ju-kay Kwek about why dashboards fall short, and what’s replacing them. Link to video (PII Required)

EX.CO published a new blog post about how publishers and CTV media owners can turn the Super Bowl into more revenue-generating opportunities: The Big Game Is No Longer Just a TV Moment — It’s a Multiscreen Audience Engine. What business strategies are you putting into action around the big game?

Ad Tech Trends in 2026: What Publishers Need to Know

2026 Ad Tech Trends to Watch For:
- Flight to Quality at the Request Level
- AI Experimentation Becomes Muscle Memory
- Data Intelligence Over Data Volume
- Quality Media + Outcome Metrics Win

“How advertising will unlock ubiquitous AI – and how to make that future one we want to live in” Sponsored Intelligence and the Trillion Dollar Sentence

This article about the long-tail retail media networks is of interest, in part because I’m not an RMN, but we do have commerce. Are there ways to bring our intent data and inventory to market at a very small scale and still see value?

Call for Case Studies: INMA Advertising Measurement & Effectiveness Master Class: The International News Media Association (INMA) is putting together the speaker lineup for our upcoming Advertising Measurement & Effectiveness Master Class (March 19, 24, and 26 — virtual) The master class is a three-module program (3-4 presenters per module) designed to help news publishers evolve beyond simple reach and digital metrics reporting. Email gabriel.dorosz@inma.org.

Events

Relevant Yield Webinar: How Enterprise Publishers Can Manage Header Bidding Without Losing Control: Join our 45-minute webinar on Wednesday, 28 January at 3 PM GMT, where teams from Relevant Digital and Skyscanner will share how global publishers can scale header bidding without losing control. Register here

Join Burt on Jan 28 at 01:00 PM ET for a webinar on 2025 Programmatic Insights. They’ll have a special guest, Antonio Torres, Co-founder & CTO of DeepSee. Register here.

Beeler.Tech will be at IAB ALM. Please reach out.

Amazon Publisher Services – Prebid Adapter Webinar Feb 9 at 9:00 AM ET

Key Value Payload

Some research sparked by the question, “Is having too many key-values in a bid request to GAM hurt response rates because GAM becomes slower or unable to handle the request?” It was noted (though no source was given) that a long query string could cause a GAM request to fail. Someone conducted some experiments in a controlled environment and concluded that the KV payload size doesn’t make GAM responses materially slower, but the number of line items that match the KV targeting does. More testing to be conducted, including looking at batched requests.

AI Publisher Response

Some points made by attendees during the recording of AI Publisher Response Live. The next recording will be on February 6th.

1. The Impact of AI on Trust and Quality
- The Trust Paradox: It was argued that AI will accelerate trust-building due to rapid improvements in the tech. However, someone pushed back, noting a “double standard”: users blindly trust AI platforms without scrutiny while increasingly mistrusting individual publishers.
- Cost vs. Authenticity: It was questioned if AI is lowering content costs at the detriment of voice, authenticity, and quality.
- Utility Trumps Trust: It was argued that trust is only an issue for “untrustworthy entities.” Users are already sharing deep personal secrets with OpenAI because it provides utility. “Provide the utility, and they will come.”
2. AI and the Future of Shopping
- Agentic Shopping Skepticism: A “hot take” that agentic shopping (AI agents shopping for you) won’t be as massive as Silicon Valley expects because people genuinely enjoy the activity of browse-shopping.
- The “Temu” Effect: It was noted that AI shopping indexes aggressively toward international drop-shipping (AliExpress/Temu). There is a risk that AI-generated images of products that don’t exist yet will be “fast-manufactured” only after engagement is detected.
- Monetization of Influence: Someone warned that if AI successfully helps users find exactly what they want without influence, the model will break; it will eventually be monetized by the highest bidder to tell you what to think you want.
3. Publisher Strategy: Defense and Offense
- Leverage through Blocking: Someone emphasized that publishers have no model for being paid without leverage, and that “there is no leverage without blocking” AI crawlers immediately.
- Collective Defense: It was suggested a “collective defense” strategy (detect, access control, value exchange) combined with “offense” (deepening relationships and tone).
- On-Site Experience: One argued for building on-site AI chat experiences to build direct relationships. However, one pub countered that publishers “burned that trust” with invasive ad products (“stop creeping on me”).
- The Licensing Play: HSW (HowStuffWorks) was. used as an example of a site crushed by AI overviews, but which has excellent citation scores, suggesting their future value is in content licensing rather than traffic.
4. Search Traffic and User Behavior
- Zero-Click Future: There was a consensus that ChatGPT ads and citations will not drive significant referral traffic to websites. Users are likely to “prompt on” rather than click links.
- The “Easy Button” Demographic: We were reminded that the group not to view AI through the lens of “elite, early adopters.” The broader population will hit the “easy button” for utility and entertainment without thinking twice about the mechanics behind it.
- Carriage: One pub pointed to Seth Godin’s concept of “Carriage”—understanding what brings value to the customer is critical for business survival.
5. Corporate Adoption
- Upskilling: One pub compared the AI shift to the move from Data Centers to the Cloud. It requires leveling up skills (e.g., programmers becoming system admins, or writers becoming editors/prompters).
- Mandates: One person mentioned her organization has a mandate to use AI, describing it not as disruptive, but as a “force multiplier.”

Additional Insights on the AI Publisher Response:

I’m interested in understanding if there are players we can explore who recover revenue from content reference/training. I’ve heard it touted, but I don’t know if it’s a real service or an idea being tossed around.
Hope this is helpful: I have had 25 publisher conversations in the last 2.5 weeks: Over 60, including end of Q4:
- Every single publisher is interested in how agentic can potentially help create efficiencies or actually keep business stable due to cuts
- Industry mantra is do more with less
- Pubs are struggling to figure out what is real vs vapor
- Figure out how agentic would operate in their orgs
- Very concerned with trading manual tasks for new tasks with agents
- How real is this? How much manual work is still involved?
  - Depending on what you are using agents for, you can automate much of the manual process
  - For example, you can use AI for 15 of the 20 steps to build a plan
  - For example, you can use AI to handle 10 of the 13 steps
  - AI can be used to collect, process, map, build, execute, monitor, and report
  - Most pubs are in evaluation of who to use, what to use, and for IT
  - The clients I have built automations for expand usage into different areas and teams at almost 100%
  - Tactical use cases are real. Overall, business changes out of the gate are not always real.
- What do the first business outcomes look like? Scaling possible, see 10x potential volume increase, up to 3 to 5 percent increase in margins <faster turnaround, Error reduction, and ability to take on more deals>
- Redeployment potential: Helped a client redeploy 150 fte of a 200-plus team by using AI to automate trafficking
- What does it mean for the industry at large from their perspective? What’s the time frame?
  - I think this is going to be one of the most impactful changes to the industry, affecting how and what is published, as well as how monetization occurs, hitting both sides simultaneously.
- This year, we are going to see pubs redefining what their teams are and do because of AI.

Developing Discussions

Looking for an outsourced development company that can help evaluate a publisher’s CMS, optimize or migrate, and then provide dev support year-round.

Has anyone ever had an issue with GAM not tracking clicks for Facebook in-app browser traffic?

Does anybody else see a huge increase in activity from IAS bots and/or CriteoBot?

Has anyone worked with Receptiv?

Does blocking bots prevent partners from reading ads.txt?

IAB Europe, within the Addressability & Measurement Working Group, is progressing the development of an ID and ID-less Solutions Mapping. We have recently finalised and shared the Addressability & Measurement Solutions Report, and we are now building on that foundation, hence this outreach. As outlined in this doc, we are currently seeking input for the ID-based solutions matrix. You can find the official announcement here.

How are publishers paying taxes? Do they pay taxes for each state where revenue is generated? Is this by IP addresses of the users or by where the SSP partners’ headquarters are located? My finance team just asked me to break down revenue by the state each user is in, so we can pay each state’s tax.