Trust Is the New Publisher Playbook — And the 2026 Advantage

From AI-driven discovery to revenue that flows across channels, Mediavine CRO Amanda Martin shares why trust and adaptability will set resilient publishers apart in 2026.

As we head into 2026, there’s some turbulent motion underfoot. It’s time for publishers to rethink their playbooks for the open web.

Some of these shifts aren’t surprising. Discovery may come more from AI agents than search. Platforms might stop routing traffic your way. Attribution will get slippier as measurement keeps rewriting itself midstream.

But the good news? Demand for strong voices and meaningful content isn’t going anywhere. 

Owned channels are becoming the real center of gravity again. Publishers thinking ahead are already diversifying where and how audiences find them. They’re investing in audience relationships and positioning themselves to win—with their communities, advertisers, and even within AI-mediated ecosystems.

In this not-so-distant future, trust is less a virtue and more a business advantage. As content gets easier to replicate and harder to authenticate, publishers who build loyalty and credibility hold the edge.

To dig into what this looks like in practice, we spoke with Amanda Martin, CRO at Mediavine, who spends her days listening to thousands of independent publishers and creators as they adapt in real time. 

Here’s what she told us about AI agents, revenue that travels across channels, and why trust may prove to be the most valuable asset of 2026.

The Great Channel Strategy Reset

Lynne d Johnson: You talk to thousands of independent creators and publishers every year. What’s one thing they’re seeing or doing that the rest of the industry still hasn’t caught onto yet?

Amanda Martin: The most strategic operators aren’t sitting around waiting for platforms to send them traffic anymore.

They’re treating every channel: search, social, newsletters, apps, communities, even in-person events as an on-ramp back to the one place they fully control: their own site. That’s still where monetization is the most efficient, sustainable, and predictable.

Demand for great content hasn’t disappeared, but the paths people take to find it have changed dramatically with Google’s shifts and the rise of AI. So the savviest teams are getting extremely practical: show up everywhere, pull audiences back to your owned channel, and make that destination worth returning to.

The Open Web, Redefined

LdJ: If agents (instead of people) increasingly handle content discovery, recommendations, and transactions, how does that reshape the definition of the open web for publishers? Should publishers rethink what it means to have a website in 2026?

AM: The open web used to run on a straightforward exchange: someone clicked a link, landed on your site, and that visit powered your business. As AI agents start handling more of the discovery, recommendations, and even transactions, that loop changes. An agent can read your work, summarize it, surface it, and drive an action without the user ever visiting your site.

That means ‘open’ can’t just mean your content is publicly accessible. It has to mean your work is used accurately, credited properly, and tied to real compensation when agents rely on it.

Publishers should view their sites as both a high-trust destination people want to visit and a structured, machine-readable source that agents can access on terms they control.

Publishers should view their sites as both a high-trust destination people want to visit and a structured, machine-readable source that agents can access on terms they control. As agents build experiences on top of your work, that relationship needs guardrails, attribution, and a business model behind it.

Making the Money Move

LdJ: What’s one unconventional capability, partnership, or structure you’d urge mid-sized publishers and creators to invest in now to future-proof their monetization—especially if traditional ad formats and open web measurement go away by 2027?

AM: If you’re trying to future-proof monetization right now, the mindset shift is straightforward: stop anchoring your business to any single channel or any single buyer.

Traditional ad formats and open web measurement aren’t disappearing, but they are changing—fast. And in a landscape this fluid, the publishers who stay resilient are the ones building revenue that travels with them, not revenue dictated by one platform’s decisions.

The savviest publishers want stronger first-party signals, access to premium demand, and an optimized ad experience advertisers trust.

Trust: The Trend No One Is Talking About

LdJ:  If there’s one issue, opportunity, or overlooked trend you think publishers aren’t talking about enough for 2026—what would you highlight, and why?

AM: The issue I think publishers are still underestimating for 2026 is how quickly trust is becoming the entire game. With AI generating content everywhere, the web already feels significantly noisier.

In that environment, people don’t just look for information; they seek sources they can trust. And advertisers are going to care a lot more about that, too.

The advantage shifts to publishers with a clear voice, real expertise, and an audience relationship that feels genuinely earned. That’s what will influence who gets surfaced in AI-driven results, who retains loyalty when traditional discovery becomes tighter, and who can command stronger ad dollars because their audience’s attention actually carries weight.