A,e,I,o,u… and always y

by

A,e,I,o,u… and always y (September 8, 2026)

BY ROB BEELER

AI. We spend plenty of time on A and I. Maybe it’s time publishers paid more attention to the other vowels.

E = Experience. If information is becoming easier to summarize, synthesize, and reproduce, then publishers need to give people reasons to show up that go beyond simply reading an article. Events. Personalities. Tools. Games. Newsletters. Access. Things where the information matters, but the experience around it matters too.

Experience also applies to the type of content we create. AI won’t ever scale Angel’s Landing in Zion National Park or cook a family recipe. Human experiences are best told by… humans.

O = Originality. In a world of distractions, nothing is worthy of attention – until it is. Bet on the fact that people will reward those who take the risk to try something no one else would try. Sure, AI could do it. It’s not the same. Original content comes from originators, and they will get paid… eventually.

U = Utility. Perhaps it’s not enough to just create content. Facilitate the conversation. Create community. Connect the dots until it leads to action. Make something happen for others and you’ll find you’ve got a successful business.

Y = You. AI can copy, but it can’t be you. So be more you and you’ll find a path forward. Since that path is yours, it’ll be much more rewarding than being a cog in a machine. 

Here’s what you need to know this week… 

  • With only a month to go to Base.Camp La Jolla, there are only a handful of spots left if you want to join us. We already have your peers from Golf.com, News Corp, Weatherbug, Hearst, People Inc, Cox Automotive, Yahoo, WebMD, The Globe and Mail, PlayOn Sports, PGA TOUR, New York Post, MyFitnessPal, EverydayHealth Group, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Blitz, and Dextero. So if you’ve been on the fence raising your hand, now is the time to let us know while we still have space. 

  • Then, this November, Base.Camp is heading to Madrid! Timing is of the essence for your planning, however, as there is an NFL game now scheduled for Sunday. That means once our hotel rooms are booked, we will have no more to offer. Currently, leaders from Vice, Xbox Media, Bloomberg, Sky Media, DP World Tour, Time and Date AS, PGA TOUR, Bauer Media, The Washington Post, Skyscanner, Dow Jones, Live Nation, Schibsted Media, and The Independent will be there. If you would like to join us, please let us know.

  • Join us this Thursday (September 10) at 11 am ET for Camp.Fire: Hologram ads.txt Auditing Solution! Hologram by James Strang is a supply chain auditing system that scans and verifies crawlability and completeness. Get alerts about supply chain issues before they affect bidder performance, and manage ads.txt and sellers.json files with verification at every step. This is a publisher- and In View-only event.

  • Also this Thursday (September 10) at 2 pm ET, Camp.Fire: Prebid on Mobile: Does It Hold Up? Jared Siegal, Founder and CEO of Aditude, breaks down how Prebid fits into the mobile stack today, why some publishers are moving away from traditional mediation, and what questions you should be asking before you make the switch. This is a publisher- and In View-only event.

  • And finally, on September 17 at 1 p.m, Camp.Fire: Business Insider’s Ad Telemetry System! Business Insider has an internal Ad Telemetry dashboard and they are going to share what they have built. This is a publisher- and In View-only event.

Want to get caught up on everything we’ve published? Start here.

Here’s the latest…  

  • Publishers have a content provenance problem, but C2PA is only part of the conversation (by Liz Moorehead)
    Publishers are watching the economic scales of their content tip even more out of their favor. AI “solutions” can ingest, summarize, excerpt, repackage and serve information without ever sending people back to the publishers who created it in the first place. So now we’re all trying to figure out (with admittedly varying degrees of interest) how to tell what came from where, who owns what, and which players are trying to skirt attribution entirely without anyone noticing.

  • Start ’em, sit ’em: The publisher priorities that deserve attention in H2 2026 (with Craig Leshen of adops.com) 
    Publishers are making decisions in a market that feels less predictable than it did a few years ago. Search traffic is under pressure, buyer expectations are sharper, and more of the audience journey is happening inside platforms. For example, Reuters reported that social media and video networks are now go-to news sources for 54% of respondents globally, ahead of news organizations’ own websites and apps at 51%.

  • Programmatic risk: Why elevated exposure is now the baseline (with Confiant’s Danielle Koffler)
    While programmatic has delivered unprecedented scale for publishers over the years, it’s also handed them a supply chain they cannot fully see. Malicious and low-quality ads travel through the same trusted pipes as legitimate demand, and when something harmful reaches a user, it lands under the publisher’s brand, on the publisher’s page.

A full list of our 2026 events we’re involved in, all in one nice little package:

Melissa and Jeff were in Chicago last week for the Chicago AdTech Happy Hour, organized by none other than Sarah Wagner, with a big thank you to adops.com for sponsoring.

The best part of nights like this is that the community and the friends are the same people.

More of this, please!

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