AdButler’s Robert Janes lays out the case for owning your audience, launching your own media network, and finally reclaiming control from middlemen who’ve had their hand in your pocket for too long.
For a long time, digital advertising was a pretty sweet deal. Brands gave their money to Google or Facebook (fine, I’ll call them Meta), they sprinkled some algorithmic magic over it, and poof, customers showed up at your proverbial door.
You didn’t have to think too hard. You didn’t have to build much. You just paid the toll, let the platforms do the work, and coasted on a wave of third-party targeting, cookies, and sketchy-but-effective tracking. Magic.
It worked, right up until it didn’t.
Now those same platforms are bleeding you dry. Ad prices have ballooned to absurd levels. The targeting you once bragged about in pitch decks is suddenly mushy and vague.
And the rules? They keep changing like someone’s messing with the Monopoly board mid-game. You’re paying more, getting less, and somehow being told it’s your fault.
Meanwhile, privacy laws are knocking on every digital door. Cookies are being tossed out like expired milk, or at least they’re being threatened every few months, and mobile tracking is getting kneecapped by Apple and Google themselves. And the “data advantage” you thought you had? It’s evaporating faster than your ROAS.
So here’s the million-dollar question: why are you still renting your audience from someone else?
You have customers. You have traffic. You have content. You have touchpoints. You already own the relationship. All you’re missing is the mindset.
The mindset that says, “Hey, maybe instead of paying a tech giant to show ads to my customers, I’ll let advertisers pay me to show ads to my customers.”
And just like that, you’re no longer the client. You’re the platform.
Third-Parties Are Dumpster Fires with Good Branding, and You Keep Paying the Cleanup Bill
There was a time when third-party advertising was effective. You gave the platforms your inventory. They served the ads. You got a check. Not a big check (or cheque for you fellow Canadians), and certainly not a transparent one, but it arrived on time and didn’t bounce. You figured, hey, better than nothing.
But here’s the part no one likes to say out loud: the old model wasn’t just inefficient. It trained publishers to surrender control. It taught you to hand over your most valuable asset, your audience, to a machine you didn’t build and had very little control over. If you’re using Google, you still don’t.
You never really asked how Google filled your ad slots; you just saw the check clear and figured, “Hey, must be working.” And the brave souls who did question it? The ones who dared to poke the bear, test other platforms, or swap out the ad tech? Most of them got slapped. Hard.
Google’s demand vanished, fill rates tanked, and they were suddenly standing at the edge of a cliff, wondering if it was worth jumping for possibly better revenue.
So they stayed. They said things like, “Well, it’s steady…” and “Maybe I’m leaving a few hundred grand on the table, hell, maybe a few million, but at least I’m getting paid.”
And, of course, getting paid is great. However, being squeezed while someone else eats your lunch isn’t a viable business model. It’s a hostage situation.
It turns out that the Department of Justice agreed. And now we’ve got a remedy plan on the table that could finally force a Google breakup. Because when one company controls the ad stack and the auction and the buyer and the seller and punishes you for looking elsewhere, that’s not innovation. That’s racketeering with a UX team.
Interestingly, retailers are currently undergoing a similar existential crisis with another platform that has them by the short and curlies. I’m allowed to say that in 2025, right? Different name, same playbook. Turns out when you build your empire on someone else’s turf, you don’t get to complain when they change the rules and raise the rent.
But times have changed.
Third-party data is crumbling. Targeting has gone soft. Performance is down. And platform policies are changing so fast, you need a legal team just to understand your monetization strategy.
Meanwhile, those same platforms are using your data to grow their revenue. You’re doing the work, creating the content, engaging the users, building the trust, and they’re skimming off the top like it’s a mob-run casino.
Even worse, they control the rules.
That’s why publishers and retailers, everywhere, are finally waking up and asking the question they should’ve asked years ago: why are we giving away the crown jewels for a cut-rate return?
You own the audience. You built the brand. You run the platform. So, why are you still letting someone else monetize it, as if they’re doing you a favour?
Owned Media Networks, Retail Media Networks. Commerce Media. Call it whatever you want. They flip that script. They put you back in charge. They let you invite advertisers into your environment on your terms. And they turn your channels, the ones you already operate, into high-margin, direct-revenue machines.
You don’t need to abandon programmatic entirely. You just need to stop making it your only plan. Because if you’re still depending on third-party pipes to grow your ad revenue, you’re playing a game that was rigged against you from the start.
Hey Media Buyers, Maybe You Should Work Directly With Publishers. You’ll Thank Yourself Later.
Let’s talk to the other side of the table for a second.
Media buyers. Agency folks. Programmatic ninjas and digital strategists. You’re smart. You know this ecosystem better than most. So let’s cut to it.
Yes, working with third-party platforms is easy. Yes, it’s scalable. Yes, there are dashboards, automation, and endless reporting bells and whistles that make you feel like you’re doing something incredibly advanced.
But what’s really happening?
You’re overpaying to hit the same recycled inventory. You’re targeting off scraps of data that barely function in a privacy-first world. You’re relying on black-box systems that prioritize their margins over your performance. A
nd your clients are asking why costs keep increasing while results seem to plateau. Right? You can’t disagree with me on this one.
Now here’s the good news.
There’s a better way. It’s not always the easiest way, but it’s the right one. Let me say that again, a bit louder for the people in the back. IT’S THE RIGHT ONE. The one that delivers results you can actually show off in your end-of-quarter review.
Work directly with publishers. Oh snap. I went there. Let’s unpack it before you jump to conclusions.
When you partner with a publisher’s owned media network, you’re not guessing about placement. You’re not guessing about context. You’re not bidding against half the internet in a blind auction. You’re putting your brand in front of real audiences in known environments, with transparent pricing and better performance.
Yes, it’s a bit more overhead. Yes, it does require a bit of relationship-building. However, you receive custom packages, actual targeting based on first-party data and hopefully the publisher or retailer is tech savvy enough to have implemented their self-service model, allowing you to self-manage campaigns, optimize your bidding strategy and focus on conversions, sales, clicks, and impressions in real time without paying the middleman tax. You know the one, that mystery percentage that vanishes into the ether and somehow shows up on nobody’s invoice.
Working directly with publishers means your budget goes further, your campaigns run more efficiently, and your attribution is more accurate. It’s better for your clients. It’s better for the publishers. And frankly, it’s better for your reputation.
So go build those relationships. Lock in those deals. Work with the publishers who have real reach, real audiences, and real data. Stop throwing your budget into the algorithmic void and hoping it comes back with results.
You’ll wonder why you didn’t do it sooner.
You Don’t Need Reinvented Tech. You Need to Stop Letting Platforms Own Your Future
There’s a growing narrative, conveniently pushed by companies that own both the buy side and the sell side, that publishers, retailers, and other businesses need entirely different technologies to monetize their audiences. That somehow, because a retailer has a checkout button and a publisher has a headline, their entire monetization strategy should be built on separate planets.
Let’s put that to bed. This might feel like I’m talking specifically to retailers, but bear with me, I promise it’s only a short rant.
Retailers and publishers may have different goals, but they’re facing the exact same challenge: how to monetize first-party data and owned attention without giving up control to a platform that promises simplicity but quietly takes ownership of everything in the process.
This is not a technology problem. The technology already exists. Ad servers, auction frameworks, reporting tools, yield strategies, and optimization engines, the whole stack is already here. Publishers have been using it for years. Successfully.
They’ve been running unified auctions, blending direct and programmatic demand, and using real-time data to drive yield across their owned and operated properties. “Retailers want to optimize based on merchandise sales and other factors.”
Of course, e-commerce platforms have been doing that for 20 years, with ad servers. This isn’t new. And they’ve been doing it in an open environment that doesn’t lock them into a single bidder’s ecosystem or force them to trade revenue for convenience.
So when someone shows up with a shiny new “your-vertical-here solution” (looking at you, retail media ad-tech companies), what they’re often selling is a black box that benefits the platform more than it benefits you.
If you’re a publisher and you’re not already treating your first-party audience as the foundation of your media network, now is the time. If you’re a retailer being told that your use case is “too unique” for standard ad tech, question the motive. Because what’s being pitched isn’t innovation, it’s consolidation. And consolidation always comes at the cost of control.
Start Now. Not Later. Not Next Year. Now.
This isn’t a someday project.
This isn’t a “we’ll revisit in Q4” conversation.
This is the move you’ll either act on today, or wish you had when your competitor closes a seven-figure deal on ad inventory you didn’t even realize you had.
You’ve got the audience. You’ve got the channels. You’ve got the attention.
Now it’s time to own the outcome.
So go build your media network. Claim your revenue. Control your customer experience. And maybe stop handing money to platforms that treat you like a number on a spreadsheet.
You’ve hosted the party all along. It’s time to start charging at the door.