Above the Fold: October 6, 2025

My response was that comments (like Facebook posts) are the lowest form of community. I think the same applies to content recommendations – treat everyone the same, and they will treat you the same way. And publishers can’t afford not to stand out.

Publishers, chasing revenue at all costs is costing you

When we tell our programmatic teams to “Just get more revenue, I don’t need to know how,” we’re poisoning our own well as publishers. You flood the market, you train buyers to pay less, you chase every possible dollar, you strip away your own leverage, and (at some point) you dig yourself a hole so deep you can’t dig your way out.

Fixing the flaw in data collaboration

Fixing the flaw in data collaboration BY B.TECH TEAM, ROB BEELER + JOE ROOT, CEO AND CO-FOUNDER OF PERMUTIVE With third-party cookies disappearing, user authentication rates remaining low, and legacy tools failing to deliver on their promises, it’s fair to say publishers are at a crossroads. Hot on the heels of their latest whitepaper, Rob … Read more

What publishers should really ask when choosing an OVP

What publishers should really ask when choosing an OVP Publishers are under growing pressure to choose video technology partners that not only maximize yield, but also balance user experience, editorial integrity, and long-term growth. To help make sense of this complex decision-making process, EX.CO recently released a guide to evaluating online video platforms (OVPs). Building … Read more

Agents at work: Harnessing AI for intelligent post-sales ops with Boostr’s Patrick O’Leary

Agents at work: Harnessing AI for intelligent post-sales ops with Boostr’s Patrick O’Leary AI agents aren’t science fiction anymore. They’re showing up in the real workflows where publishers lose the most time: plan ingestion, IO revisions, trafficking, pacing, and optimization. The trick isn’t “add a chatbot.” It’s embedding intelligence at the exact moment and place … Read more

Bots, brains and bottom lines: How publishers can harness both automation and AI

July’s Camp.Fire drilled into two of the industry’s hottest, but often conflated, topics: automation versus AI. Guest expert Dennis Colón, who has spent two decades inside adops teams and now builds RPA (Robotic Process Automation) apps at JIFFY.ai, joined Rob to separate the buzz from the business impact.

Ad ops guide to outsourcing

Ad ops guide to outsourcing BY MELISSA CHAPMAN Originally published in AdMonsters on May 27, 2021, updated September 7, 2024 It never fails. At nearly every PubForum event, either IRL or virtual, the topic of outsourcing is something the AdMonsters Community wants to talk about. The topic gets added to the agenda as either a … Read more

Camp.Fire: The Lifecycle of a Bid Request

Camp.Fire: Bid request lifecycle Like salmon, a bid request starts a one-way journey upstream, hoping to spawn an actual bid. It faces many challenges and potential changes from publisher to SSP and then SSP to DSP. It’s time we understood what happens to a bid request along the way. Our Camp.Fire will start with Mike … Read more