Before a deal ever reaches order management, it moves through pricing validation, proposal construction, revisions, and internal approvals. That process shapes how quickly deals close, how accurate they are, and how well they hold up in execution.

In many media organizations, this stage is still managed through manual coordination across systems and teams. Unfortunately, this can make pre-sales a structural tax on revenue capacity rather than a marginal annoyance.

Our survey of 500 media professionals revealed that teams pour significant effort into pricing validation, proposal revisions, and approvals. 77% of respondents reported recurring pricing or deadline errors and 44% say those mistakes derail work entirely. However, deals still close, which makes the system feel like it works.

The work no one sees: advertising pre-sales

It’s the normalization of that friction, where 92% describe themselves as satisfied with their tools despite the risk, tells a different story. Friction that doesn’t show up in one place, it’s built into the day-to-day work of advertising pre-sales.

It shows up as repeated, low-value work across the process. Teams check pricing across multiple systems that don’t fully align. They rebuild proposals as inputs change or feedback comes in. Approvals move through email threads where context is incomplete or buried. Details are re-entered or reformatted as work passes between teams.

In interviews with media leaders, teams consistently described working across CRM platforms, shared drives, spreadsheets, and email to assemble deals. Information is fragmented, and finding the right version is often part of the effort itself. As one leader put it, “email is my CRM.”

Taken together, this creates a system where progress depends on continuous coordination rather than a defined, structured flow of work.

Why it feels like existing processes work

If this level of effort is built into presales, why hasn’t this been addressed?

The answer is simple. The system still produces results.

Deals move forward. Revenue comes in. From the outside, the system appears to work.
But what’s hidden is the level of effort required to sustain that performance. Over time, that effort becomes part of the operating rhythm. It’s expected, absorbed, and rarely measured directly.

This is where perception starts to diverge from reality. Organizations report high levels of satisfaction with their current tools, even as manual errors and rework remain common.

Success is measured by whether revenue comes in, not by the cost or effort it takes to produce it. As long as deals continue to move forward, the underlying inefficiency remains largely invisible.

Where ad deals actually slow down

That gap in perception also shapes how delays are understood.When deals lose momentum in pre-sales, the instinct is often to attribute it to sales execution or responsiveness. In practice, the causes are overwhelmingly operational.

The data reinforces this. Survey data revealed that 32% of respondents cited client input delays, while 22% pointed to data and system issues and 21% to stakeholder coordination.

Each step depends on inputs from other systems and teams. When those inputs fall out of sync, progress stops and work must be rebuilt to reflect the latest information. Because that reconciliation is constant, delays tend to repeat rather than resolve, directly affecting time-to-revenue and the predictability of pipeline conversion.

Where scale starts to break

This model holds at lower volumes but becomes difficult to sustain as deal flow increases. More deals introduce more revisions, dependencies, and coordination across teams, and the workload grows with that complexity instead of being absorbed by the system.

As volume rises, inconsistencies become harder to contain, delays increase, and execution risk rises. At that point, the constraint is no longer demand, it is the organization’s ability to convert that demand into revenue efficiently.

Why this is an operating model problem

Advertising pre-sales is not managed as a system. It operates as a series of disconnected tasks. Information moves across email, spreadsheets, and multiple platforms, where it is gathered, reconciled, and updated by hand. There is no mechanism to keep pricing, proposals, and approvals aligned as deals evolve.

When inputs change, work has to be rebuilt. When approvals stall, teams compensate. The process holds together through effort rather than design, which makes revenue capacity a function of how much coordination teams can absorb.

Some organizations are starting to restructure this as an orchestrated workflow, where pricing, proposals, and approvals remain synchronized as deals change, reducing the need to rebuild work at each step.

What changes when pre-sales doesn’t break

When pre-sales is structured as a connected, orchestrated workflow, the nature of the work shifts. Instead of being rebuilt at each step, work progresses with continuity. Changes stay aligned as deals evolve, rather than triggering rework across systems and teams.

Coordination doesn’t disappear, but it becomes part of the process rather than something teams have to manage manually. Dependencies are handled within the workflow, not across disconnected tools and handoffs.

As deal volume increases, that difference shows up in how revenue moves. Deals progress with fewer interruptions, timelines become more predictable, and execution holds more consistently against what was sold.

Because advertising pre-sales defines the terms of the deal, it ultimately defines the quality of the revenue itself—how quickly it converts, how reliably it delivers, and how much effort is required to sustain it. When the process depends on coordination, growth requires more effort to keep pace. When the system maintains alignment, revenue grows, and with far less friction.

The post Why pre-sales determines how well revenue will scale appeared first on Digital Content Next.

Content classification approaches that are accurate, consistent, policy-driven and well-aligned with the expectations of advertisers and the broader industry are the foundation on which trust and confidence are built between advertisers and publishers. But as the industry evolves, a new set of unproven brand suitability vendors may be complicating advertisers’ ability to invest confidently in news. 

Evidence suggests these new tools and solutions do not adequately consider advertisers’ perspectives on risk and suitability, and they classify news content in ways that are not aligned with buyers’ needs and expectations. This misalignment risks damaging news publishers’ relationships with advertisers and weakening long-term revenue.

Data backs this up. A recent DoubleVerify (DV) survey collected feedback from 25+ advertisers across different industry verticals on content classified as “low risk” by new and unproven tools across three major news publishers’ sites. Although a tiny portion of marketers – just 1% – view all types of news content as unsuitable for their advertising, respondents to the survey said in 92% of cases that they considered this “low risk” content (as classified by these new tools) to be unsuitable and would actively wish to avoid it.

Consumer sentiment shows a similar trend. A DV survey of 295 U.S. consumers found that 26%, on average, would think less of a brand or respect it less if it appeared alongside the content categorized as “low risk” by these new vendors.

Maintaining advertiser trust

It’s tempting to believe that classifying large portions of news content as “low risk” might open up advertiser spending and drive additional revenue for publishers. However, in practice, the inverse is likely true. Classifications that do not reflect advertisers’ views could damage their ability to invest confidently in news or alienate them from news publishers entirely.

Many publishers understand that accurate and consistent classifications that meet advertisers’ expectations ultimately help them build trust and confidence with their partners. Brands in some verticals are particularly sensitive, publishers say, such as those selling luxury goods or operating in regulated industries.

Reliable, flexible and customizable tools therefore are critical for maximizing revenue for news publishers by enabling advertisers to avoid only content they deem unsuitable for their brands and campaign strategies. This approach is validated and supported by the advertiser community, including Wayne Blodwell, Global SVP Programmatic at Assembly Global.

Blodwell said that, “Trustworthy and accurate content classification is critical for enabling our clients to invest their budgets confidently — particularly in news environments. Reliable and consistent classification technology enables us to maximize our investment with news publishers while ensuring our clients’ varied suitability needs and preferences are met.”

Growing advertiser investment in news

Research continues to show that investing in news is smart business for advertisers, and that those avoiding it altogether are missing out on powerful opportunities to engage with valuable, high-performing audiences.

DV’s News Accelerator initiative has seen first hand that advertisers feel most confident investing in news environments when they have transparency, flexibility and control over the specific types of news content they align with. DV data also reveals that advertising on news content now drives 16% more engagement than non-news content, and advertising alongside news content typically outperforms other digital channels, according to marketers.

Ensuring content classification is accurate, reliable and scalable requires continued alignment across advertisers, publishers and technology providers. Without it, confidence in news environments will erode, along with the investment that depends on it.

About the author

Jack Marshall is the Head of News for DV. With nearly two decades of experience in digital media journalism and publishing, Jack leads DV’s efforts in the news sector, including DV’s News Accelerator initiative. The DV News Accelerator aims to align DV’s product innovation with the needs of the news industry, and encourage advertiser spending on news and journalism. 

The post Trusted content classification fuels advertiser spend on news appeared first on Digital Content Next.

Ad tech firms argue that behavioral tracking improves efficiency across the ecosystem. They maintain that it delivers more relevant ads, reduces wasted spending, and increases publisher revenue. The concern, however, is not simply whether tracking improves performance. It is whether, in a concentrated market, tracking reinforces the firms that control the infrastructure rather than delivering broad gains for advertisers, publishers, and consumers. 

New research puts that debate to the test. 

Economic Rationales for Regulating Behavioral Ads, by Pegah Moradi, Cristobal Cheyre, and Alessandro Acquisti, reviews economic evidence on behavioral advertising. The authors evaluate whether tracking delivers the efficiency gains intermediaries claim. They find that when a small number of firms control key parts of the system, behavioral advertising often strengthens those firms rather than delivering broad gains across advertisers, publishers, and consumers. 

A federal judge reached a similar conclusion about market structure in United States v. Google LLC. The court ruled that Google unlawfully maintains monopoly power in key segments of the ad tech market. It found that Google’s control over both the publisher ad server and the ad exchange enabled it to entrench its dominance across multiple layers of the stack, restrict alternatives, and distort competition. The case now moves into a remedies phase that will determine whether structural or behavioral changes are required. 

Together, the research and the ruling point to the same issue: control over infrastructure shapes outcomes in digital advertising. 

Intermediaries capture a large share of revenue 

The research examines how digital ad auctions allocate value as advertiser competition increases. As more advertisers bid to reach the same users, bidding pressure rises. The intermediaries operating those auctions capture a significant share of that incremental spending. Studies cited in the report show that dominant ad tech firms can take 30 percent or more of each advertising dollar that flows through the system. 

The authors do not argue that advertising lacks value. They argue that who controls the trading systems strongly influences how that value is divided. 

In the Google case, the court examines how control over publisher ad servers and exchanges affects competition. By maintaining dominance across multiple layers of the ad tech stack, Google gains the ability to influence pricing, auction mechanics, and access to demand. The court concludes that this structure harms competition. The ruling supports the conclusion that control over ad tech infrastructure plays a central role in shaping market outcomes. 

Behavioral targeting and market adjustment 

The report explains how behavioral targeting allows firms to group users based on data and earn more from certain audiences. It then examines whether this practice expands total value in the market or mainly shifts revenue among advertisers, publishers, intermediaries, and consumers. The authors find limited evidence that tracking consistently produces substantial new gains across the ecosystem. 

This finding shapes the debate over privacy regulation. Critics argue that limiting tracking would damage innovation and eliminate free digital content. After reviewing evidence from GDPR and Apple’s App Tracking Transparency framework, the paper finds little support for predictions of market collapse. Digital advertising continues, firms adjust their strategies and markets adapt. 

The report finds that when tracking declines, companies adapt. Competition shifts, but digital advertising and content remain in place. 

Ad infrastructure determines outcomes 

The debate over behavioral advertising comes down to two competing explanations. One holds that tracking improves ad performance and increases revenue across the ecosystem. The research challenges that claim. It shows that when a few firms control the data and auction systems, tracking often strengthens their market power rather than delivering broad gains. 

The court’s ruling in United States v. Google LLC reflects the same concern. Its findings about monopoly power and harmful tying focus on how control over key ad tech systems can distort competition. 

For premium publishers, this is not an abstract policy question. The rules of the system and who controls them shape outcomes. The federal ruling signals that the structure of digital advertising markets warrants continued scrutiny. As the remedies phase proceeds, changes could alter how value flows among advertisers, intermediaries, and publishers.  

Market structure determines who sets the terms of pricing, how bids clear, and whether investment in trusted content is rewarded through open competition. Sustainable digital markets require competition, transparency, and balanced bargaining power. Strong markets reward content creation and innovation rather than control over infrastructure and data extraction. The research and the courts have made one thing clear: digital advertising has reached an important inflection point. 

The post Ad tech dominance defines market power and pricing appeared first on Digital Content Next.

Based on what we’re seeing across the market, and reinforced by data shared in MediaRadar’s State of the Industry: 2026 Advertising Predictions webinar, let’s dive into three trends we’re predicting will shape how buyers allocate budgets in 2026 and how publishers must evolve to capture share.

1. Buyers are planning around outcomes, not environments

In 2026, advertisers are entering the market with fewer experimental dollars and clearer performance mandates. According to EMarketer data, U.S. media spend is projected to grow from $622B in 2025 to more than $838B by 2028. But that growth is flowing disproportionately to channels and partners that can demonstrate impact.

At the same time, open web display advertising continues to lose ground. MediaRadar data shows open web display spend flattening and declining year-over-year through 2024 and 2025, as budgets move toward higher-impact video and direct, curated buys.

Buyers are now planning backward from outcomes (awareness lift, site traffic, and performance signals). They are also asking sellers to prove how inventory, formats, and creative directly contribute to those goals.

• Budgets are consolidating with fewer partners as buyers look to simplify execution and measurement. 
• Packages need to align to use cases (launches, seasonal moments, competitive conquesting, etc.) rather than impressions alone. 
• Performance benchmarks and historical proof points are increasingly required in RFPs.

Publishers that can clearly connect their offerings to outcomes, and support that story with data, are earning larger, more strategic commitments.

2. Creative is becoming the primary lever for differentiation

As addressability narrows, creative has emerged as the primary driver of performance. There’s a clear shift in where attention, and budgets, are going. Programmatic video ad spend alone is expected to approach $150B by 2027, according to EMarketer data, and CTV is no longer treated as  an incremental reach-only channel.

Across industries, CTV ad spend is growing aggressively. For example, according to EMarketer and MediaRadar data, automotive CTV spend is projected to grow from $3.1B in 2025 to $5.2B by 2028, while CPG is expected to nearly double from $2.6B to $4.9B over the same period. 

These gains are being driven not just by audience reach, but by creative formats that move people. Simply put, message-level performance is shaping buying decisions. Celebrity-led advertising increased 42% year-over-year, rising from 9.8% of total ad spend in 2024 to 13.9% in 2025 — a signal that advertisers are leaning into creative that builds trust and emotional connection.

The implications are clear:

• Creative effectiveness is increasingly used as a proxy for media effectiveness.
• Category-level creative insights (tone, format, spokesperson strategy)  strengthen both upfront and scatter conversations. 
• High-impact and custom units perform best when informed by performance data, not intuition.

The most effective sellers in 2026 aren’t just selling space. They’re helping advertisers tell engaging stories and make smarter creative decisions before campaigns go live.

3. First-party data needs to be activated, not just collected

Nearly every publisher has invested in first-party data, but one point is clear: possession is no longer enough. Activation is what buyers value.

As programmatic buying shifts away from the open exchange, control is consolidating. Today, according to data from ANA via Marketing Drive, 59% of programmatic ad spend flows through private marketplaces versus 41% through the open marketplace. And, when CTV is included, that split widens to 66% private versus 34% open.

At the same time, discovery behavior is changing. According to EMarketer, AI-driven search is projected to grow from just 1% of total search ad spend today to 13.6% by 2029, compressing the path from intent to action and reducing the role of the traditional click altogether. In this environment, vague audience claims quickly lose credibility.

• Audience segments must be clearly defined, transparent, and tied to real outcomes.
• First-party data should support planning, creative strategy, and optimization, not live in isolation. 
• Context, creative, and data must work together to drive measurable performance.

Publishers that can explain how their data enhances effectiveness—rather than simply replacing targeting—will stand out in an increasingly competitive market.

What media sellers need to do now

The opportunity in 2026 is real, but so is the competition. To protect and grow share, media sellers should focus on three priorities:

• Lead with outcomes, supported by proof
• Use creative intelligence to guide advertiser strategy
• Turn first-party data into a clear, buyer-friendly value story

2026 is not about chasing the next new thing. It’s about execution. Media sellers who adapt their approach now won’t just keep pace with buyers, they’ll help define how the market moves next.

MediaRadar will continue exploring these shifts in our State of the Industry webinar series. Our next session, Video Everywhere—Winning in the New Era of CTV, takes place on March 19. It will dive deeper into how streaming, CTV, and digital video are converging — and what that means for media sellers navigating a rapidly evolving video landscape.

About the author

Fan Shi Blackwell is the VP of Strategic Partnerships at MediaRadar, where she focuses on building high-impact alliances across AdTech, programmatic, retail media, data, and e-commerce. With over 15 years of experience, she helps platforms, brands, and agencies turn marketing intelligence into measurable growth, profitability, and ROI through omni-channel strategy, data-driven decisioning, and performance optimization.

The post Media sellers face a performance reset in 2026 appeared first on Digital Content Next.

However, the longstanding trade-off between ad density and revenue is shifting as improved buyer-side signals enable the market to distinguish—and reward—higher-performing publisher environments. As outcome-based buying becomes more prevalent, programmatic markets are getting better at recognizing performance and pricing publisher quality accordingly. 

For years, more ads often meant more money, but also slower page load times, diminished user experience, and growing tension with other revenue drivers. Publishers understood the tradeoff, but lacked the tools to measure its long-term impact or determine whether the market would ever reward restraint rather than sheer volume.

Advertising only works well when it functions for all sides of the market:

• For readers, ads must not overwhelm or degrade the experience.
• For advertisers, ads must appear in trusted environments where they are seen and effective.
• For publishers, ads must generate predictable, sustainable revenue without eroding audience perceptions.

Aligning those incentives hasn’t been easy. 

New analysis suggests that this dynamic is finally beginning to change. As buyer-side signals improve and outcome-based buying becomes more prevalent, the market is increasingly able to distinguish low-performing, high-density environments from cleaner, higher-performing ones—and price them differently over time.

This is important for publishers making strategic decisions about their user experience, and ultimately, long-term business health. 

Why the market didn’t reward quality before

For much of programmatic’s evolution, ad buyers lacked the inputs needed to consistently pay more for better environments.

Signals tied to outcomes were limited, and viewability and brand safety focused on avoiding the worst placements rather than rewarding the best ones. Attention and engagement metrics were either unavailable or unevenly applied.

Publishers faced their own constraints. Reducing ad density almost always produced short-term revenue declines, reinforcing a bias toward volume even when long-term performance might improve.

The result was widespread commoditization.

What long-term testing reveals

At Raptive, we’ve spent the past year evaluating ad density changes using longer-term, site-level cohort testing. With this testing, a different pattern emerges. You can observe how pricing evolves once you have sufficient performance data. The critical variable is time. Short-term tests often obscure these effects; only extended observation allows pricing signals to fully adjust.

Across multiple publisher cohorts, cleaner pages demonstrate notable CPM resilience. These effects appear across both mobile and desktop environments. The key takeaway is not that fewer ads automatically mean more revenue in the short term.  It is that the market is increasingly able to recognize environments where ads are more likely to perform, and then price those impressions accordingly.

The shift in the broader ad market

Several broader programmatic advertising market developments help explain why this is happening now:

1. Buyer-side data has improved. 
2. Attention and engagement signals are more widely integrated into buying decisions.
3. Outcome-based buying models continue to gain traction.

Together, these changes reduce noise in the system and increase the market’s confidence in performance signals tied to cleaner environments. Also, cleaner pages reduce noise. They improve load times. They increase the likelihood that ads are seen and engaged with. All of these signals compound, and a healthier feedback loop begins to form between publishers and buyers.

This evolution reframes how ad density should be evaluated. Density is no longer just a tactical response to increasing revenue. It is a strategic decision that influences how the market perceives and values inventory over time.

Publishers also train the market through their choices. High-density environments teach buyers to expect commoditized performance, and high-quality environments teach buyers to bid accordingly.

Cleaner publisher ad layouts are the future

We’re just beginning to see what the future could look like, and a long way off from this becoming the standard. But the good news is that programmatic markets are slowly moving beyond pure scale economics. Page experience and outcomes are finally becoming meaningful inputs into pricing decisions.

For premium publishers, this creates an opportunity to reclaim value lost during years of commoditization, but only through deliberate, strategic choices. Cleaner environments are not just a user-experience improvement; they actively shape how the market learns to value inventory.

Programmatic markets are not automatically fair, but they are increasingly teachable. Publishers that prioritize performance-oriented environments train buyers to recognize—and bid for—quality. For an industry that has long argued quality matters, the market is finally beginning to respond.

The post From scale to signal: Why cleaner publisher environments gain value appeared first on Digital Content Next.

That calculation no longer balances.

As the industry approaches 2026, the era of accepting opaque infrastructure has ended. For premium publishers, the definition of a modern media stack is shifting from broad connectivity to radical directness. Revenue durability now depends on ruthlessly rationalizing the supply path. Control, data, and economics must remain with the content creators.

The high cost of intermediary bloat

The systemic critique of the current programmatic environment is well-documented, yet the inefficiencies persist. Despite years of discourse regarding Supply Path Optimization (SPO), the chain remains cluttered with intermediaries. Many of these vendors function primarily through arbitrage rather than value addition.

For media executives, the issue extends beyond fees. It centers on the misalignment of incentives. When a supply chain involves multiple hops, reselling, and bid duplication, technology partners often optimize for their own volume and take rates. They rarely prioritize the publisher’s yield or the advertiser’s working media.

This complexity acts as a shield. It obscures where value leaks and complicates the auditing of revenue streams. In 2026, transparency serves as an architectural requirement rather than a sales talking point. If a publisher cannot trace a dollar from the DSP to their bank account without losing 30 to 50 percent to friction, the infrastructure has failed.

Redefining modern media infrastructure

Publishers must demand directness from the ad supply chain in the coming year. Moving toward a direct-to-publisher model represents a strategic reclamation of economic power rather than a simple technical adjustment. A direct infrastructure removes the cost of unnecessary middlemen. This ensures a higher percentage of advertiser spend reaches working media. When the path clears, yield increases naturally because the friction costs disappear.

Directness also maps to control. When publishers rely heavily on third-party legacy tech stacks, they become beholden to product roadmaps that do not prioritize their specific needs. By demanding infrastructure that allows for direct connections, media executives regain crucial operational capabilities.

• Dictating terms. Executives can structure distinct commercial agreements that remain undiluted by third-party revenue shares. This clarity allows for more accurate forecasting and P&L management.
• Protecting data. Direct paths limit the leakage of first-party data signals to unauthorized resellers. This security becomes paramount as privacy regulations tighten globally.
• Accelerating innovation. Publishers can deploy new ad formats or privacy-preserving technologies immediately. They no longer need to wait for a massive intermediary to update legacy code.

The sustainability and efficiency imperative

A secondary argument for direct infrastructure has emerged as a critical business driver: Sustainability. The digital advertising industry generates a massive carbon footprint. This is driven largely by the sheer computing power required to process billions of bid requests, many of which are duplicative. In a convoluted supply chain, a single impression opportunity might generate dozens of calls to different servers. This consumes energy at every hop, only to result in a single ad serving.

This is the very definition of waste.

Brands and agencies now face pressure to report on Scope 3 emissions. Consequently, they are scrutinizing the carbon cost of their media buys. A direct connection offers an inherently greener alternative. It reduces Hello the computational load significantly by eliminating reselling and secondary auctions.

For the publisher, this presents a dual advantage. A streamlined, direct supply chain generates higher profitability by capturing more working media. Simultaneously, it appeals to the growing number of eco-conscious buy-side partners. Efficiency serves as both a responsibility and a competitive differentiator.

The cooperative path forward

The shift away from opaque intermediaries toward transparent, direct connections is already underway. Industry bodies and specialized cooperatives are re-platforming to prioritize these direct specifications. However, the technology only functions as well as the demand for it.

Media executives must stop viewing the tech tax as a fixed cost of doing business. It is a solvable inefficiency. The goal for 2026 involves building a supply chain where value derives from the quality of the audience and the content. It should not depend on the complexity of the pipe used to reach them.

We must close the gap between the advertiser’s dollar and the publisher’s pocket. The technology to do so exists. The imperative now relies on the will to implement it.

The post The high cost of ad tech friction: Why publishers must go direct appeared first on Digital Content Next.

Together, these forces are changing what competitive advantage looks like. No longer seeking scale for its own sake, publishers are focused on proof, predictability, and performance.  

To gain a high-level view of the industry, DCN gathered perspectives from companies that work with publishers every day across measurement, monetization, infrastructure, workflow, and operations. Their proximity to daily decision-making across media companies of all sizes and types provides insight into the competencies publishers are actively strengthening as they adapt to discovery volatility, evolving advertiser expectations, and the operational realities of AI.

Several capabilities stand out as especially relevant for publishing priorities in 2026.

Authenticated audiences anchor revenue growth

The media industry’s shift from quantity to quality has accelerated. Advertisers are increasingly focused on confidence in who they are reaching, how audiences engage, and what outcomes media delivers.

Rich Murphy, CEO, president, and managing director of Alliance for Audited Media, points out that buying continues to move away from pageviews and impressions toward outcomes. In that environment, independent, third-party verification is foundational. Publishers able to demonstrate authenticated reach and engagement across channels are better aligned with how advertising investment decisions are being made this year.

This change is reshaping how growth is defined. Audience scale still matters, but only when it is identifiable, engaged, and repeatable. Audiences must be respected as business assets rather than traffic streams—assets that need to be cultivated, measured, and maintained over time.

That redefinition is already influencing advertiser behavior. Jack Marshall, head of news at DoubleVerify, points to engagement data showing that trusted news environments outperform non-news content. For advertisers prioritizing attention and impact, proof and performance are increasingly intertwined.

Cross-platform adaptation reflects audience discovery

As search and social referrals become less reliable, publishers are rethinking how content travels and how value is captured beyond owned-and-operated environments.

John Nardone, CEO of JWX, says publishers are strengthening their ability to adapt content across platforms rather than rely on a destination-first model. With referral dependency declining, publishers can no longer wait for audiences to arrive. Instead, they need systems that allow high-integrity journalism to meet audiences in the formats each platform favors—whether vertical video, audio, or short-form social expressions—while still reinforcing the core brand.

That shift turns content operations into an adaptive engine. The goal is not simply wider distribution, but more relevant, context-aware presentation of journalism across platforms. This enables audiences to experience content in ways that feel native to where and how they are engaging.

From the demand side, Sean Dean, vice president of media owner development at Criteo, notes that clearer signals around context and engagement make it easier for adapted content to be understood, valued, and discovered as it moves across platforms.

And from an audience perspective, Naomi Owusu, CEO and co-founder of Tickaroo, emphasizes that relevance is built through formats that invite participation and transparency. When audiences feel content is timely, understandable, and connected to their needs, cross-platform presence reinforces trust and habitual return behavior rather than fragmenting it.

In 2026, brand presence across platforms is increasingly tied to audience loyalty and repeat engagement, not just reach.

Modern media infrastructure is about signal quality and orchestration

In 2026, modern media infrastructure is less about adding tools and more about connecting systems that have historically been siloed.

From the demand side, infrastructure quality shows up as signal quality. Dean at Criteo says accurate, complete bidstream and bid-response data allow buyers to understand context, pricing, and performance with greater clarity. When those fundamentals are in place, innovation and premium demand tend to follow.

In premium video and streaming environments, infrastructure also needs to support consistency and accountability across screens. Nicolas Mignot, vice president of publisher sales and strategy at FreeWheel, emphasizes that modern infrastructure increasingly connects ad exposure to business outcomes such as sales and conversions. As advertisers expect video to behave more like digital channels, infrastructure becomes a growth enabler rather than background plumbing.

From the content side, JWX’s Nardone describes modern infrastructure as an orchestration layer, which collapses the divide between the newsroom and the ad tech stack. When a single piece of content can be automatically optimized for reach, engagement, and yield across platforms, publishers are better positioned to monetize attention wherever it occurs.

Engagement becomes the key to unlock monetization

As reach fragments and acquisition costs rise, sustainable monetization in 2026 depends less on volume and more on depth of engagement. It’s also critical to understand how clearly that engagement translates into advertiser value.

Ginny Hunter, vice president of publisher client development at DoubleVerify, says one persistent inefficiency is treating performance, media quality, and revenue as separate conversations. Publishers that unify these signals can proactively package and price premium opportunities around advertiser-favored KPIs, shortening the path to investment and strengthening trust.

In video environments, engagement is also reshaping how inventory is valued. Nicolas Mignot, vice president of publisher sales and strategy at FreeWheel, notes that advertisers increasingly look beyond content metadata to signals such as attention and ad interaction. These indicators help distinguish passive viewing from moments when ads are more likely to resonate and perform.

This year, monetization strategies that treat engagement as a secondary outcome face growing pressure. Approaches that design for engagement as a core input to pricing, packaging, and measurement are proving more resilient.

Trust and inclusion support long-term audience value

In a market saturated with automated and commoditized content, differentiation increasingly hinges on whether publishers can deliver journalism that audiences perceive as credible, relevant, and trustworthy.

Tickaroo’s Owusu believes that inclusive, audience-first journalism is closely tied to trust. Audiences no longer grant publishers the benefit of the doubt; they want to see their communities and lived experiences reflected authentically in coverage. That requires more than hiring practices. It depends on editorial, technical, and product systems that allow a broader range of voices to shape storytelling.

Trust also depends on accountability beyond the newsroom. Marshall from DoubleVerify points to engagement data showing that trusted news environments consistently outperform other content categories, reinforcing that credibility is not just a values issue—it is measurable and meaningful for advertisers. When trust is supported by transparent signals and outcomes, it becomes a durable source of audience and revenue value.

Owusu emphasizes that transparency is of particular importance as publishers adopt new tools. In the context of AI, audiences want clarity about what is human-led, what is assisted, and where accountability sits. Trust, once lost, is difficult to regain. And in 2026, it is increasingly visible in retention, engagement, and willingness to pay.

AI becomes operational infrastructure, with limits

This year, AI has moved beyond the experimental phase for many publishers. As media companies increasingly work with AI, it has started to function as infrastructure, shaping how inventory is forecast, priced, packaged, and sold.

Unni Kurup, director of client consulting and strategy at Theorem, describes AI’s real impact as emerging in commercial and operational decision systems—forecasting demand, optimizing yield, planning inventory, and coordinating decisions across teams. In volatile markets, AI can be used to forecast demand more accurately and align decisions across sales, pricing, and operations, reducing costly missteps.

At the same time, leaders are clear that not every application is appropriate. Murphy from Alliance for Audited Media emphasizes that, as AI becomes more deeply embedded in media operations, strong governance is essential. Without transparency, human oversight, and clear data-privacy protections, AI can introduce bias and opacity in the push for efficiency.

In 2026, effective AI adoption is less about speed and more about judgment: applying automation where it sharpens decisions and operational clarity, and restraint where trust and accountability are at stake.

Looking ahead: partnerships, execution, and what matters now

As publishers navigate 2026, decision-making has become more deliberate. An environment defined by uncertainty has sharpened the consequences of choices about audiences, investments, and partnerships. That execution depends not just on internal capabilities, but on the partners publishers choose to work with and the standards those relationships reinforce.

From a business perspective, performance, flexibility, and transparency have become baseline expectations. Tina Pautz, chief business officer at Raptive, says publishers have less tolerance for partners who underdeliver or fail to evolve alongside changing business models. Sustainable growth depends on alignment, clarity around tradeoffs, and a shared focus on long-term outcomes rather than short-term gains.

Supply-chain integrity is also receiving greater scrutiny this year. Bill Wheaton, CEO and co-founder of Symitri, believes that complexity and opacity (particularly the spread The of MFA inventory) are diluting value for both publishers and advertisers. Direct connectivity, clearer supply paths, and reduced waste are increasingly part of how publishers demonstrate accountability and rebuild confidence in the digital marketplace.

Taken together, these perspectives point to a broader shift. Publishing partnerships and priorities in 2026 are less about maximizing scale at any cost and more about reducing uncertainty, protecting trust, and enabling consistent performance over time.

The publishers in the strongest position this year aren’t trying to do everything. There’s less appetite for new-for-new’s-sake, and more focus on capabilities that actually move the business forward. That means understanding and authenticating audiences, adapting content strategy to the new rules of discovery, improving signal quality, and tying monetization more directly to engagement.

The post Trends shaping publishing priorities in 2026 appeared first on Digital Content Next.

Sports, social video, and AI-driven targeting are rewriting the rules of engagement. For executives, the opportunity is clear: act now to secure share, or risk losing ground to platforms and competitors who move faster.

Sports and streaming: a new business lever

Live sports remain the most valuable premium video inventory, commanding CPMs north of $14, according to MediaRadar 1H 2025 estimates. Yet the structure of rights is rapidly shifting. In the 2025–26 NFL season, MediaRadar projects:

• 46% of games will be simulcast across linear and streaming
• 46% will be linear-only.
• 8% of games (20 total) will stream exclusively.

This fragmentation isn’t chaos. It’s leverage. Publishers are using it to their advantage by bundling across platforms and segmenting audiences more precisely, tapping into the 11% year-over-year growth in digital channels and the projected $220 billion in video ad spend by 2028, according to MediaRadar analysis.  With Amazon, YouTube, and Netflix expanding coverage, publishers positioned across both linear and streaming can bundle inventory, maximize yield, and deliver addressable audiences at scale.

Case in Point: In 2024, live sports streaming alone neared $6 billion in ad spend according to MediaRadar analysis. Platforms like Amazon and Peacock benefited most. However, publishers who can sell across channels stand to capture premium demand.

Social and user-generated video: the budget shift

Scripted content once accounted for 70% of U.S. viewing; today, it’s closer to 30%. User-generated content (UGC) now represents nearly half of all viewing according to MediaRadar 1H 2025 estimates. While CPMs average just $4, the scale is undeniable – and advertisers and media executives alike are chasing it.

Automotive, finance, and CPG brands are redirecting budgets from scripted into YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. For publishers, the strategic question is no longer whether to invest in these ecosystems, but how – via influencer collaborations, branded content, and social partnerships that extend reach and diversify revenue.

AI: from wild card to margin engine

AI is often positioned as experimental, but for publishers it’s becoming a margin mandate. According to MediaRadar’s analysis, AI is reshaping three critical areas:

• Search & discovery: AI helps audiences cut through fragmentation to find premium content — and helps publishers surface it more efficiently, compressing the cost of audience acquisition while expanding the yield from discovery.
• Information management: By automating insights and replacing armies of analysts with real-time optimization, AI dramatically compresses operational costs and expands yield through faster, smarter decisioning.
• Content generation: In creative and bidding workflows, AI streamlines production and media planning, compressing content development costs and expanding yield by scaling personalization and campaign throughput.

For media executives, the implication is simple: AI compresses cost and expands yield. Integrating AI into targeting and personalization is no longer optional; it’s the difference between competing on price versus competing on value.

What publishers need to do now

The next 24 months will determine market leaders. Here’s how to protect and grow share:

• Align with sports: Premium live events still command the highest CPMs. NFL streaming rights on Amazon, YouTube, and Netflix open fresh monetization channels.
• Leverage social and UGC: Nearly half of viewing happens here. Automotive and finance brands are already investing heavily in YouTube and Instagram. Publishers need to meet them where spend is flowing.
• Invest in AI-driven targeting: Precision targeting turns fragmented inventory into measurable, ROI-driven campaigns. Dynamic ad personalization increases yield.
• Double down on data: First-party insights are pricing power. Even in a soft ad market, MediaRadar analysis found digital channels grew 11% YoY in H1 2025.

Looking ahead

The path forward is clear: streaming, sports, and AI will define the next era of video advertising. Together, they represent the pillars of a new video economy—one where reach, relevance, and rights management will determine who thrives and who fades.  

As we said in our recent webinar from the State of the Industry Series: “In times of change, data is your greatest advantage.” Executives who act now—before platforms consolidate power again—will set the pace for the industry.

About the Author

Matt Krepsik, CEO of MediaRadar, is an experienced media executive with a demonstrated history of working across the media and information technology industries. Skilled in big data, artificial intelligence, technology, marketing, and market research, he is a seasoned business development professional with global leadership experience.

The post The streaming shift in media strategy appeared first on Digital Content Next.

Often an overlooked part of the Order-to-Cash (OTC) process, pre-sales is a critical phase that shapes pricing, product fit, feasibility, and advertiser expectations, which influence revenue outcomes long before an IO is signed. But it’s also where RFPs, media plans, contracts, and approvals are still handled through manual, disconnected workflows that hinder campaign performance.

That’s beginning to change. Ad Operations teams are rethinking the day-to-day workflows in pre-sales. They’re replacing manual effort with automation that delivers consistency, accuracy, and momentum. This shift is building healthier pipelines, stronger margins, and a clearer link between operations and profit.

For media industry revenue leaders, this is more than a workflow issue. The tangible benefits highlight the upside of change. However, they also underscore why pre-sales can’t remain manual. Left untouched, it drags on margins, delays responses, and weakens advertiser trust.

Why pre-sales can’t stay manual

Despite its critical role, advertising pre-sales is still weighed down by outdated processes. RFPs bounce between inboxes, media plans are rebuilt in multiple spreadsheets, and contracts move only when someone manually follows up. Each step slows the deal cycle and multiplies the risk of errors.

The result isn’t just wasted time. It’s missed opportunities, inconsistent pricing, and proposals that reach advertisers too late. Proposals are often prolonged and require repeated rework. And in some cases, deals are lost outright when responses arrive too late. Errors slip in, deals drag out, and the credibility of the entire sales process takes a hit.

For revenue leaders, that’s more than an operational nuisance. Manual pre-sales creates revenue leakage: slow responses mean lost deals, mismatched proposals squeeze margins, and rework inflates delivery costs. In a marketplace where speed and accuracy are decisive, manual workflows put growth goals at risk before a single campaign even launches.

When pre-sales shifts away from manual effort, it doesn’t just remove inefficiencies – it highlights just how much revenue is left on the table until automation takes hold.

The revenue upside of fixing pre-sales

Automation in pre-sales does more than streamline workflows – it creates a stronger engine for revenue. Automated intake, planning, and approvals move proposals to advertisers faster and with greater accuracy. Connected systems eliminate duplicate entry, giving sales and ops teams a single source of truth from the very first step.

Yet tools alone are not enough. Inconsistent use of CRMs and planning systems often leaves downstream teams working from incomplete or inaccurate information.

Structured automation closes those gaps by ensuring proposals are built on reliable inputs and aligned across functions from the start.

Instead of delays and rework, sales teams see deals advance with fewer obstacles and greater predictability. Advertisers receive timely proposals aligned to inventory and pricing, reducing the risk of mismatched expectations. For advertisers, this translates into faster, more accurate proposals that align with their objectives and build trust from the first interaction. Internally, ad ops teams spend less energy on corrections and more time on activities that drive growth – from refining strategy to deepening client relationships.

For revenue leaders, these improvements are operational wins that translate into measurable outcomes: higher proposal acceptance rates, healthier pipelines, stronger margins, and a clearer connection between operational execution and financial performance.

And those gains don’t stop once the IO is signed. The strength of pre-sales sets the tone for everything that follows – from campaign delivery to long-term client relationships.

Pre-sales as the foundation for long-term success

The value of optimizing pre-sales sets the tone for the entire OTC process. Campaign teams inherit cleaner plans, delivery starts with fewer corrections, and client service teams avoid the frustration of resetting advertiser expectations.

Without that consistency, delivery teams often find themselves having to resell deals internally. That means that must translate proposals into what can realistically be executed. Over time, these inefficiencies compound, which inflates delivery costs and weakens advertiser confidence. Renewal opportunities are lost when campaigns fail to meet objectives, and long-term revenue suffers.

By contrast, when proposals are execution-ready from the start, disputes are minimized, renewals are stronger, and organizations can scale without proportional increases in headcount. That’s because growth is built on reliable, repeatable processes rather than manual workarounds.

For revenue leaders in the media industry, the takeaway is simple: pre-sales is more than process. It’s the foundation for stronger margins, lasting client loyalty, and a business built to scale.

The post Unlocking growth through pre-sales in ad ops appeared first on Digital Content Next.

This matters for media owners. Confusion around definitions and measurement can distort investment decisions, complicate yield strategies, and cloud how some publishers position their ad inventory in a rapidly evolving market. Understanding where programmatic fits, and where it doesn’t, is essential for anyone making decisions about CTV monetization.

The latest FreeWheel Video Marketplace Report (VMR) found that over 70% of streaming ad views are still delivered directly, outside of programmatic channels. At the same time, some industry forecasts suggest that over 80% of CTV spend is already programmatic. The gap between these figures highlights a deeper problem: the industry still lacks a shared way of defining and measuring programmatic in CTV.

Why the disconnect exists

Programmatic, at its simplest, is about automation. Yet in everyday use, the term has stretched so far that it now covers almost everything. This can include everything from open exchange bidding and private marketplaces to programmatic guaranteed deals, and even digitized versions of old-style insertion orders.

This broad application muddies the waters. For example, guaranteed CTV buys executed through programmatic channels may be classified as programmatic, even though they behave more like direct transactions. At the same time, some forecasts group together very different formats, such as in-stream, outstream, and social video. all under the CTV umbrella. The result is an inflated picture of programmatic’s footprint in premium CTV environments, which has resulted in a narrative that does not always reflect the actual transactions taking place.

For media owners, the problem isn’t just about definitions. It directly affects how buyers perceive value, how inventory is packaged, and how technology investments are prioritised. When “programmatic” can have four or five different meanings, publishers risk being evaluated against expectations that do not align with the real economics of their supply.

CTV is not display, and not linear

Part of the challenge is that CTV doesn’t fit neatly into existing categories. It isn’t digital display, and it isn’t traditional TV. Instead, it combines TV living-room style viewing with digital-style automation.

That in-between status has consequences. Budgets often get split between TV and digital teams, leading to competing KPIs and conflicting expectations. Agencies with more established brand clients may prioritize guaranteed premium placements, while performance-led advertisers may lean towards real-time optimization. Both want automation, but they mean very different things when they use the word “programmatic.”

And then there are publisher realities. Premium inventory is finite. Direct deals remain the backbone when it comes to revenue and they allow tighter control over both supply and the viewing experience. Adding programmatic layers can introduce extra costs and unnecessary operational complexity. Not to mention ongoing issues with signal loss, fraud, lack of transparency, and inventory duplication which all make it harder to trust the open exchange. The idea of pushing all CTV into this model simply doesn’t reflect how premium video is bought and sold today.

The impact of language and alignment

A serious stumbling block for the industry is not the technology but the terminology. “programmatic” is being used to describe multiple, fundamentally different transaction models. Without clearer definitions, buyers and sellers risk building toward different futures. That leaves publishers in a difficult position. Do they double down on auction-based infrastructure, channel resources into tools that support direct guarantees, or try to straddle both? Without greater industry alignment, even the most carefully designed strategies can end up misfiring.

Buyers, too, grow wary when CTV is labelled as “programmatic” but still depends on direct negotiation. The result is a disconnect between expectation and reality. That, in turn, can hold back spend, despite CTV’s growing share of consumer attention. The confusion makes it harder for publishers to position their inventory correctly, and for buyers to evaluate its true value.

A more grounded future

A large share of premium CTV deals still happen within closed publisher ecosystems, using formats and configurations that escape conventional measurement tools. The real challenge isn’t just automation – with the risk of mirroring the display advertising model – it’s figuring out how to make programmatic truly fit CTV without reinforcing the fragmentation that already limits transparency and scale.

This will mean new models that reflect the economics of television, rather than forcing CTV into frameworks designed for other channels. It will also mean new tools that allow publishers to maintain supply control while offering buyers efficiency, better transparency, and the ability to tailor how they transact.

For media owners, progress requires pressing for greater alignment on terminology, more transparency in measurement, and continued investment in infrastructure that supports both efficiency and control. The challenges are real. But so are the opportunities.

The post Programmatic confusion is holding CTV back – can we fix it? appeared first on Digital Content Next.