For most adops and revenue teams, ad security still sits in the “deal with it when it breaks” pile, treated as a hygiene issue rather than a structural feature of how programmatic now works. In this interview, Danielle Koffler, Staff Product Manager at Confiant, explains why that framing leaves publishers a step behind.
Start ’em, sit ’em is back, with Craig Leshen, President of adops.com, once again in the interview chair. It’s time to drill down into which aspects of adtech deserve real focus in H2 2026, and which ones should stay on the bench until the plan, or the market, is ready.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In an industry still heavily dependent on pageviews and programmatic CPMs, that churn is baked into the model. Publishers chase the spike, monetize the impression, and start again. But as third-party cookies continue their long goodbye and advertisers push harder for addressable, consent-based audiences, that cycle is becoming harder to justify.
The 2026 World Cup is a useful pressure point because the spike in audience, spend, and operational risk arrives at once – and publishers that prepare early can turn demand into revenue, rather than watch value leak through a stack built for quieter days. We’re right in the thick of it now. How can publishers make the most of this moment?
This year’s Navigator London agenda was built with publishers firmly in mind, including inspiring keynotes. But true to form, some of the sharpest insights came to light away from the stage, in the many breakout sessions, over lunch, and likely in the local pub afterwards.
