Wrong conclusions will be drawn

by

Wrong conclusions will be drawn (October 5, 2026)

BY ROB BEELER

First of all, apologies to those who read the subject line of last week, “Trust Issues,” and thought you were in trouble. A few people reacted that way. Whaddayallupto that you’d think I would call you out?

Speaking of wrong conclusions, I actually expect quite a few to be made here in La Jolla at Base.Camp. Let me explain why that’s the best potential outcome of a conference this fall.

Over the next few days, we’re going to have an amazing group of publishers and their partners to work the problems. From start to finish, it will be about what each person can bring back to their organization that will have a meaningful impact. That means we can’t just commiserate about the future of publishing; we can explore every angle for moving forward. 

Along the way, I expect everyone will, at some point, come to the conclusion that nothing can be done. 

The odds are too great, and it’s all for naught. 

I know this will happen, because it happens to me all the time. When people start questioning if a publisher should have a website, you know there is no clear picture of what lies ahead.

But here’s what I’m going to tell everyone at Base.Camp La Jolla and at Base.Camp Madrid: acknowledge the thought and then remind yourself that human-created content will always have value. Business models will support it. Anyone who creates content or runs any type of business will want people who can help them figure out the future, to work the problem. 

The opportunity is that they are part of a community that is also working the problem.

No one has to do this alone. 

So yeah, open and honest discussion will bring some disheartening realities to light. This week, we won’t ignore them. We’ll work to deal with them. In other words, it’s the wrong conclusion to think we aren’t going to make a difference.

Here’s what you need to know this week… 

  • We’re 5 weeks from Base.Camp Madrid, and we have less than 10 unallocated tickets left! We already have leaders from BBC, RDG, London South East, Cairorcs Media, Bauer Media, Reach PLC, Telegraph Media Group, Sky Media, The Independent, Live Nation, Schibsted Media, Vice, Xbox Media, Bloomberg, Better Collective, The Washington Post, and Dow Jones joining us. Will you be next? Now is the time to check out the agenda for Base.Camp Madrid and let us know if you’re interested in attending. Base.Camp La Jolla sold out quicker than past events, and it’s looking as if Base.Camp Madrid will do the same.

  • Save the date: The Prebid Summit is happening on October 13 in New York City! Prebid Summit brings together the programmatic advertising community for a full day of thought-provoking sessions, technical insights, and meaningful networking with the industry’s leading publishers, ad tech companies, agencies, and innovators. Learn more and register here.

  • And then, on October 14, the DanAds Summit is also coming to the Big Apple! It’s an exclusive one-day summit gathering 170+ industry leaders to tackle our fragmented ecosystem head-on. And it will be moderated by our very own Rob Beeler. Learn more and request your ticket here.

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

Here’s the latest…  

  • Rebuilding the backbone of publisher ad sales with DanAds’ Johan Liljelund
    Ahead of DanAds Summit 26 on October 14 in New York, Rob sat down with Johan Liljelund, CIO and Executive VP at DanAds, to explore how publishers should take the lead on agentic buying, the legacy processes frustrating buyers, and how to automate without losing the human touch. Plus, who deserves a seat on stage, and the one decision Johan hopes attendees leave ready to make.

  • From dashboards to decisions: rethinking publisher revenue with Burt’s Shay Brog
    In this Q&A, Rob Beeler joins Shay Brog, CEO of Burt Intelligence, to discuss why decisions get harder when teams work from separate views, why retrospective reporting sometimes falls short, and what publishers need to see across the business. Shay also explains what needs to be true before AI takes a more active role in revenue decisions, where direct revenue can benefit from programmatic-style discipline, and what he’d tell a publisher rebuilding for 2027.

  • Webinar recap: Diagnose before you optimise (key takeaways for publishers)
    In its latest webinar, Opti Digital brought together Olly Aulakh, Chief Revenue Officer at Opti Digital, and Rob Beeler, Founder & CEO of Beeler.Tech, to explore how publishers can move from seeing a change in revenue to understanding what is actually driving it, and deciding what action is worth taking. The discussion also showed how Opti Digital’s Insights Hub connects signals across revenue and operations, direct sales, audience and content, and UX and performance to help publishers build a more complete picture of what is happening.

  • Building a video strategy publishers can own, with Minute’s Kyle Orr
    AI overviews and zero-click search have, in many cases, pulled the floor out from under publisher referral traffic, and the display revenue tied to it. Video has sat on the priority list for years, but the economics and the execution have both gotten harder. Rob spoke to Kyle Orr, SVP of Business Development at Minute about where video economics break down, the categories opening up beyond sports, how publishers should split what they build from what they hand to a partner, which formats belong where, and where first-party data does the most for yield.

  • How The Trade Desk measures publishers: in discussion with Mike O’Sullivan (Camp.Fire replay)
    How does The Trade Desk actually measure your site once an ad is served? That question came out of a discussion in the Beeler.Tech publisher community, so for our latest Camp.Fire, Rob invited Mike O’Sullivan, co-founder of Sincera (now part of The Trade Desk), to explain. The session covered how Sincera’s synthetic user gathers data, what can get in the way of accurate measurement, which signals have the most impact on value, and why PubDesk access is rolling out in stages. This conversation is for our exclusive publisher-only community. Please ask in the community for the password to watch this video.

  • Winning the war on dark traffic with Ad-Shield (webinar replay)
    Our latest webinar, hosted by Rob Beeler, Ad-Shield’s Dustin Cha, and Yahoo’s Eric Espinoza, examined “dark traffic,” and how publishers can recover ad revenue from these missing visitors. Dark traffic describes visitors who consume content, but leave little usable data or revenue behind. Ad-Shield’s latest report estimates that they represent an average 18% of web traffic. What’s more, they found that 57% didn’t even choose to block ads, so remaining unseen isn’t necessarily a deliberate user choice. This conversation is for our exclusive publisher-only community. Please ask in the community for the password to watch this video.

  • 9 years of ads.txt and still no confidence it’s correct (Camp.Fire replay)
    When ads.txt arrived in 2017, publishers were handed a file format and told to get on with it. Sellers.json followed in 2019, SChain shortly after. Nine years on, very few publishers can say with any confidence that their setup is correct. James Strang of JS.Consulting opened our latest Camp.Fire by acknowledging this, and he has implemented sellers.json for five separate companies from day one. Part of the problem is that the same SSP will give you different answers about how its own lines should be handled, depending on who you happen to ask. This conversation is for our exclusive publisher-only community. Please ask in the community for the password to watch this video.

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


Last week, Rob, alongside Burt Intelligence, hosted a Dinner & Discussion for Operational Intelligence in the Age of AI. A great night, with great food and discussion!

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