In 2025, AdMonsters transformed our Publisher Forum into the Sell Side Summit. But we still covered the highs and lows of the digital publishing business. Here’s a recap of the lessons we learned that every publisher can benefit from.
The publishers who presented at this year’s Sell Side Summits zeroed in on three overlapping imperatives: weathering turbulence in the programmatic ad market, embracing AI across the ad stack, and re‑imagining how to engage and retain your audience.
At Sell Side Summit Nashville, we went “Beyond the Browser” to frame the existential challenge facing publishers: shifting user behavior and fractured demand across different media channels and the growing need to reach audiences outside of your own website.
Then, at Sell Side Summit Austin, we convened under the banner of “The Connected Future” and talked cross‑platform engagement and how AI tools are building sustainable, diversified revenue models with publisher first-party data as the fuel.
Across both events, we learned that the publishers who are best positioned to thrive lean into community-first monetization strategies and treat change as ongoing rather than episodic..
Now, let’s dig into the most impactful insights publishers shared at this year’s events.
Creating Consistency In A Changing Marketplace
One Band, One Sound — In Nashville, Terry Guyton-Bradley, Head of Retail Media at Tata Consultancy Services, reminded publishers that long-term programmatic success is as much about teamwork as technology. Ad ops, rev ops, and content teams must align to drive efficiency and maximize yield.
When a first-time AdMonsters event attendee asked for practical advice on how smaller pubs can build a foundation for collaboration from the start, rather than letting separations between teams become entrenched, the publisher community had plenty of suggestions. They highlighted examples of cross-departmental collaboration that reduced page loading times and improved programmatic bid performance, illustrating that organizational cohesion can be just as impactful as sophisticated ad tech tools.
Singing The AI Scraping Blues— Also in Nashville, Anthony Katsur, CEO of the IAB Tech Lab, warned that AI scraping is an “extinction-level event” for publishers if left unchecked.
To ensure publishers are compensated when AI lifts their content, and to create a structured, trackable way for LLMs to access and pay for publisher data, the IAB Tech Lab launched its AI Content Monetization Protocols (CoMP) Working Group. “Access to content should reflect a business agreement between LLMs and content providers,” Katsur said.
Stephanie Layser, global head of publisher ad tech solutions at Amazon Web Services, also highlighted the threat of declining referral traffic from AI-powered zero-click experiences. But she urged publishers to focus on high-quality content and community building in order to distinguish themselves from impersonal algorithms.
“We need to go back to focusing on the consumer,” she said, stressing that brand loyalty and advocacy drive real audience value.
Putting Audiences First
Change Comes Eventually. Will Media Owners Lead It? — Focusing on the consumer means leaning into shifting consumer habits rather than resisting them.
The web browser isn’t the center of the internet anymore. Which means media owners must shift from chasing pageviews to tracking real signals — attention, engagement, and first-party data — wherever audiences live.
Content discovery is moving to generative AI search feeds and chatbots, creator platforms, CTV, social commerce, and non-web communities. As Megan Jones, Chief Media Officer at Digitas, put it, “Everyone’s fighting for a flicker of attention,” and in a “scroll culture,” simply showing up isn’t enough. Publishers must package and price attention differently.
Success now will come from publishers treating media as a journey across screens and touchpoints. That means bundling video and commerce experiences and building real community beyond the web.
And, although publishers have long struggled with getting the most out of their first-party data, they are best positioned to track user behavior across these different touchpoints and to surface the audience insights marketers need to drive their campaigns. So, while activating it isn’t easy, first-party data really is key to cross-platform play.
How Publishers Tune Into the Connected Future — With discovery moving to social streams, AI feeds, and apps rather than the browser, publishers need to to navigate that shift with intention.
Amanda Martin, CRO at publisher network Mediavine, laid out how publishers can stay in control and remain profitable amid worsening media fragmentation.
Remember: Audiences may increasingly be turning to alternative media channels, but they are also increasingly wary of the ways these channels monetize their engagement. So publishers can win back trust by treating audiences with consideration, rather than treating them as commodities.
Martin stressed that “premium isn’t about your content. It’s about ad experience and performance.” Fewer, well-optimized ads can deliver the same revenue while keeping audiences engaged and performance-minded advertisers satisfied, she said.
Martin also encouraged publishers to selectively control AI access to their inventory. That way, they get the most return on their data as a high-value asset that can help marketers curate their campaign targeting.
How AI Can Help, Not Hurt, Publishers
The Publisher’s Rough Road to Programmatic Resilience — While publishers had plenty to say about how the rise of generative AI has harmed their businesses, they also shared how they’re using AI tools to their advantage at Sell Side Summit Austin.
James Deaker, AKA “The Yield Doctor,” drew a line between AI evolution and AI revolution. He noted that today’s AI tools fall mostly under the “evolution” umbrella because they make audience segmentation and campaign delivery more efficient, but don’t fundamentally change how publishers or advertisers work. However, he added that emerging protocols like AdCP, which is designed to help AI make sense of advertising data, feel more revolutionary and could fundamentally reshape ad workflows.
For an example of how AI workflow tools are already paying off for publishers, Stephanie Mazzamaro, Head of Programmatic, Addressability & Ops at The Arena Group, showed how her company’s Encore platform tailors the on-page ad experience for different users. For new visitors, the platform finds ways to maximize revenue per session without driving users away with too many ads. Meanwhile, it also prioritizes pushing loyal readers toward subscriptions and newsletters, and it’s already yielding 50,000 daily signups across the company’s portfolio of sites.
Finally, Politico’s Walt Houseknecht and Axel Springer’s Carlos Bracho offered a real-world example of AI-driven tech stack diversification. They detailed how Politico shifted away from a Google Ad Manager-centric setup by adopting AdLib, its parent company Axel Springer’s ad management and optimization platform. The move increased Politico’s programmatic eCPMs and reduced dependency on Google’s demand.
Across this mix of presenters the message was consistent: Publishers can’t wait for stability. They have to engineer it themselves by building monetization strategies and tech tools that hold up no matter where audiences discover their content.