🌯 LA Times Woes Signal It’s Time to Reinvent the Newsroom

The news business is on the ropes in general, but what’s been happening lately at The Los Angeles Times is particularly grim. How are publishers responding to all of this instability and disruption?

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🌯 Did Publishers Waste Time Playing in the Privacy Sandbox?

Now that Google hit pause on its grand plan to kill third-party cookies in Chrome, publishers can breathe a sigh of relief (for now). But was the time spent testing the Privacy Sandbox worth it?

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🌯 Ad Dollars and Google Antitrust Drama: 2024’s Banner Year, 2025’s Bumpy Ride

Digital ad revenue in the U.S. hit an all-time high of $259 billion in 2024—a 15% year-over-year surge and the fastest pace of growth since 2021. But was is the outlook for 2025?

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🌯 Tariff Timeout: Can Publishers Make the Most of the 90-Day Reprieve?

Trump's tariffs caused economic chaos, even after the 90 days pause, but working through change and economic uncertainty is nothing new for publishers.

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🌯 Can the EU Rein in Big Tech While Avoiding a Trade War?

The European Commission is set to issue fines against Apple and Meta for violating the DMA—its first levies under the law.

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Doing More With Small Teams: A Q&A With The Economist’s Sergei Bachtin

Sometimes, when you look behind the scenes at a big-name premium publisher, you find vitally important and complex tasks handled by a shockingly small group of people. Small ops teams aren't only the domain of fledgling young media companies--although they are certainly a hallmark of those businesses, too. Being part…

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The Native Chronicles: Creative Revival

This is the first article in the Native Chronicles series, brought to you with the support of TripleLift. Read the second article on flexibility and A/B testing and the third on the future of mobile.   The first banner ad is both a thing of legend and of infamy. The latter because it launched a revolution of…

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Weekly News Roundup: Google Delivers Insights to Pubs, Rupert Murdoch’s Duopoly-Fighting Precedent, More

Google Delivers Insights Engine to Pubs Google announced it’s releasing a suite of tools to give its DoubleClick publisher clients audience and performance insights. It’s called the Insights Engine Project, and it’s angled to give publishers a view of performance similar to what the company gives advertisers when they target…

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What Is Ads.txt?

Ads.txt is an initiative the IAB Tech Lab launched earlier this year to ensure greater transparency in the programmatic marketplace by creating a record of who is authorized to sell or re-sell ad inventory. The top aim of Ads.txt is to crack down on domain spoofing, a widespread, wily and…

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Watch Out for the Glare of Shiny Objects: Change and Consistency in Ops

It’s been 14 years since Craig Leshen founded OAO. In digital media years, that would be… what, like 40? What we’re trying to say is, Craig has seen a heck of a lot in that time. In his role leading up OAO’s efforts to provide ad ops support to a…

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