CTV has long been positioned as the crown jewel of digital media – brand-safe, high-attention, living room inventory that commands premium budgets. Yet behind the promise of premium CPMs, many media owners are discovering a tougher reality.
This isn’t an article about AI. This is an article about viewing publishers as more than just owned and operated traffic and views. Instead, we should view publishers as brands that reach audiences. Not just any audience or individual on your website and/or app, but your audience all across the internet.
Hazel Broadley speaks with Travis Ayer, Director of Business Development at adops.com, to find out how Elsevier approached consolidation, made email advertising workable within existing tools, and created flexible support for peak workloads – without adding headcount.
Programmatic has expanded reach and revenue, but has also increased exposure to malicious, policy-violating ads that move faster than traditional controls can keep up with.
If AI systems and AI-driven products keep pulling from publisher work, what’s the path to durable, repeatable revenue that doesn’t rely on hope, headlines, or one-off deals?
In this Camp.Fire, Rob Beeler frames the conversation around a collective publisher response to an AI-influenced world – less doomsday, more problem-solving.
Chris Kane provided a rare, data-driven overview of how publishers and supply-side platforms are perceived by the buy side and, crucially, how those perceptions translate directly into spend.
The big question for the first half of 2026 is: how do publishers protect, productize, and scale what they already have in a world shaped by AI, automation, and fewer traditional clicks? Let’s dig in.
As third-party cookies decline, browser restrictions increase, and page performance becomes ever more closely tied to revenue outcomes, publishers are under pressure to make decisions that balance monetization, user experience, and operational stability. And often without clear, comparable data to hand.
Nothing in our industry is evolving slowly, and Ad Ops is squarely in the center of that shift. Media, technology, creativity, data workflows, compliance, and automation are all colliding. And somehow, we’re still the ones stitching together the revenue engine with a mix of expertise, stubbornness, and well-timed Google Sheets magic.