Liz 
Programmatic still runs as a buyer’s market: buyers hold the classification power, buyers make the go or no-go call on your site, and often you’re being judged without knowing it’s happening.
Why is it that whenever I talk with people about what this ocean holds for the next generation, the consensus is that they’re screwed? (And let’s be honest, “screwed” is not the word people use.)
For years, publishers have been stuck with the same uncomfortable trade-off: grow ad revenue, or protect the reading experience. Adding placements has always felt like borrowing against the future, since more ads can mean a diluted property, distracted audiences and advertisers who quietly drift away.
Is this me bitching about the always-in-my-face AI play right now? Yes. Am I aware of AI’s possibilities? Also, yes. But sometimes I just don’t want the AI version of the world, even if I helped design it specifically for me.
For the last few years, digital publishers have been playing a defensive game. The foundation that powered publisher growth for more than a decade is rapidly changing. Search engines are moving toward AI-driven, answer-first experiences that increasingly satisfy user intent without requiring a click.
I had this term pop into my head this week: “Dopamine Industrial Complex” and prayed that somehow I would be first. Nope. Ah well. It did send me down the rabbit hole of people who have used the term, and I came to a realization that all of you have had, but I refuse to accept: there’s no way out.
Agentic AI is one of the most talked-about topics in advertising right now, and one of the least understood. An LLM can happily draft an RFP response in seconds, but turning buyer demand into repeatable, revenue-generating campaign orders is a much bigger job. The gap between those two things is where most publishers currently sit.
I was asked to pull together my thoughts on publisher strategy, and I wrote this one line: “Rethink the website to work in a future where we win.” I’ll keep this short(ish) and sweet(ish) on why I like this line, and then what it gets wrong.
Google isn’t wrong that users want better answers. They do. AI search can be genuinely useful, especially for complex queries and comparisons. But it still needs to be supported by people doing the original work. Without them, the search machine becomes useless.
Lots of discussion this week in the publisher community about measurement companies. It was sparked by someone pointing out that they felt they had been judged poorly and there was little recourse.