The AdTech Therapy™ Resource Center
Over a decade of our past work — articles, interviews, podcasts, and industry coverage authored by or featuring your practitioners. Browse a section to see how we think, or filter by theme to find the reading most relevant to your symptoms.
The Future of Ad Tech: AI, Curation & New Architectures
11 entriesCNN builds in-house agent infrastructure as it prepares for AI-driven media trading↗
Scott provides a grounding sell-side perspective on agentic media trading — predicting that early agent-to-agent transactions will rely on guaranteed deal structures rather than open auction dynamics. His read: the sell side isn't yet ready for fully autonomous agentic trading, and publishers who invest in clean, machine-readable supply chain signals will be best positioned when the market does arrive.
Media Briefing: Turning Scraped Content Into Paid Assets – Amazon and Microsoft Build AI Marketplaces↗
Scott assesses Amazon's entry into AI content marketplace competition as a meaningful escalation — bringing infrastructure credibility and platform scale that can compel LLMs to pay for content rather than scrape it. His key observation: if AWS language eventually prohibits hosting AI systems trained on stolen content, the enforcement mechanism changes entirely for the content licensing market.
Media Briefing: A Bitter Pill – ChatGPT Ads Are Coming. Where Do Publishers Fit?↗
Scott contextualizes ChatGPT's ad launch for publishers: in the short term, it's experimental budget, not a meaningful threat to the $400 billion ad ecosystem. But his longer-term concern — that Google's incentive to pack ads into AI Overviews is more dangerous than OpenAI's ad product — gives publishers the right frame for prioritizing their defensive strategies.
The case for and against publisher content marketplaces↗
Scott makes the economic case for publisher content marketplaces with a Napster analogy: Spotify doesn't exist before Napster forces the music industry to create legitimate channels. AI content marketplaces are the industry's best chance to convert uncompensated scraping into recurring revenue — but only if publishers engage collectively and set the terms of access.
Cloudflare's Human-Native Acquisition Signals a New Content Economy for Publishers↗
Scott welcomes the Cloudflare/Human Native deal as a signal that infrastructure-level players are beginning to build the pipes for ethical, paid AI content transactions. His sell-side framing: the market needs legitimate channels for LLMs to buy content, because the current alternative — blocking, suing, or watching black-market scrapers profit — serves no one in the publisher community.
Bridging the Unknowns of Content Licensing↗
Scott maps the rapidly shifting AI content licensing terrain — identifying the key unknowns publishers must resolve before they can negotiate effectively with LLMs: usage transparency, pricing mechanisms, enforcement, and the role of marketplace intermediaries. A practical framework for publisher leaders trying to navigate a landscape that is moving faster than any consensus standards.
Stop Debating and Start Acting: A Unified Front Against AI Is Publishers' Only Hope↗
Scott calls for publishers to move from reactive hand-wringing about AI to coordinated action — drawing lessons from the music industry's Napster moment and arguing that fragmented individual publisher responses give LLMs exactly the leverage they need to continue taking content without compensation. A galvanizing call to collective action that becomes one of his most-shared pieces.
Curation: The Spark in the Programmatic Forest↗
Scott and co-presenter Gareth Glaser capture the curation moment precisely: it's a spark in the programmatic forest because it's small enough that many publishers are dismissing it, but hot enough to fundamentally reshape which entities control campaign decisioning at scale. His forest-fire analogy makes the stakes viscerally clear for publishers still sitting on the sidelines.
Publishers Don't Fear Curation Fees – They're Just the Same Old Ad Tech Tax↗
Scott offers a characteristically pragmatic take on curation fees: they're not a new problem, they're a familiar ad tech tax in a new wrapper. His more important observation — that nearly three-quarters of the bid stream is now curated deals — reframes curation from a niche trend to the new normal of programmatic trading, with profound implications for how publishers negotiate supply chain value.
Curation and the Media Decisioning Power Dynamic↗
Scott introduces the 'Media Decisioning Power Dynamic' framework — arguing that curation is fundamentally about reclaiming campaign decisioning authority that DSPs have monopolized for a decade. By moving the decision layer closer to the publisher, curation gives sellers more control over yield and audience packaging. A conceptual cornerstone of Scott's ongoing programmatic analysis.
The Rise of the Curation House↗
Scott introduces the 'curation house' concept to a mainstream industry audience — arguing that these new intermediaries are fundamentally different from ad networks because they require publisher cooperation and bring genuine demand generation, not just inventory packaging. A foundational piece that helps define the curation category before it becomes an industry buzzword.
Publisher Strategy, Operations & Leadership
21 entriesMedia In 2026: From Managed Decline To Ruthless Independence↗
Scott opens 2026 with his most assertive publisher manifesto yet — declaring that managed decline is a choice, not a destiny. His prescription for 'ruthless independence': publishers must stop accommodating platform dependencies and start building the commercial relationships, data infrastructure, and technical capabilities needed to operate on their own terms. A defining statement of the AdTech Therapy POV.
Marketecture Media Seed Round Announcement↗
Scott's investment in Marketecture Media's seed round reflects his commitment to building the institutional knowledge infrastructure for the ad tech industry. His involvement signals a broader thesis: the industry needs better-informed operators, and investing in the media that educates them is a strategic bet on the ecosystem's long-term health.
Down But Not Out: Publishers and Ad Tech Punch Back in 2025↗
Scott's 2025 annual outlook delivers a rallying message: despite years of disruption, publishers and sell-side ad tech still have meaningful levers to pull. His themes — supply-side curation, vertical video, IAB Tech Lab engagement, and yield thinking over ROAS — give operators a concrete agenda for the year. A characteristic blend of strategic vision and operational pragmatism.
The Precipice of Peril: Publishers And Ad Tech Face A Harsh 2024↗
Scott's 2024 annual outlook coins the 'precipice of peril' framing — capturing the convergence of cookie deprecation, macro headwinds, AI disruption, and SPO pressure bearing down simultaneously on publishers. A sobering but strategically useful read that helps publishers prioritize where to invest their limited operational bandwidth in a challenging year.
Publishers' Privacy Trip to DC↗
Scott documents the publisher community's direct lobbying effort in Washington — making the case to legislators that the ADPPA as drafted would disproportionately harm ad-supported publishers without meaningfully protecting consumers. A rare piece of publisher political engagement, and a strong signal of how high the stakes of federal privacy legislation have become.
A Mission to Help Publishers Adapt and Thrive: Q&A with Jana Meron↗
Jana shares her operating philosophy as a publisher leader in a wide-ranging Q&A — covering how she approaches revenue diversification, technology evaluation, and team building in an environment where the rules keep changing. A rare long-form window into the strategic thinking behind her publisher advocacy work.
10 Things We Learned at CES 2023↗
Scott's CES 2023 takeaways offer a sell-side lens on the broader tech and media trends emerging at the conference — translating consumer and platform innovations into implications for publisher monetization strategy. His perspective helps frame CES as more than a consumer gadget show: it's a signal-reading exercise for anyone in the digital advertising ecosystem.
2023 Publishing & AdTech↗
Scott's 2023 outlook arrives at one of the most turbulent inflection points in digital media — capturing the collision of macro headwinds, cookie uncertainty, and the first wave of generative AI disruption. His prescient identification of Deal Curation as a Service (DCaaS) and bid enrichment as key trends helps publishers anticipate the programmatic shifts that define the year.
Publishers Are Reexamining Their Reliance On Google After Google Ad Manager Goes Dark↗
Scott uses the GAM outage moment to make a structural argument: publisher revenue concentration in a single ad server is an existential risk. When GAM goes dark, publishers go dark. His commentary pushes the industry to ask harder questions about redundancy, diversification, and the dangers of single-point infrastructure dependencies.
Media Briefing: The Top Trends In Publishers' Businesses Since The Start Of 2022↗
Scott provides mid-year perspective on 2022's most significant publisher business shifts — noting the rebalancing between programmatic and direct sales as macroeconomic uncertainty grows. His read: publishers who maintain direct sales infrastructure prove more resilient than those with fully programmatic-native revenue stacks.
Media Briefing: How publishers are working to improve their abilities to convert readers into subscribers↗
Jana contributes publisher-operator insight on the mechanics of converting advertising-dependent readers into paying subscribers. Her perspective: subscription and advertising are not mutually exclusive if publishers build the right data and user experience infrastructure to serve both revenue streams effectively.
Google's New Publisher Group Shows A Willingness To Collaborate↗
Scott offers a cautiously optimistic but clear-eyed take on Google's publisher engagement group — welcoming the dialogue while noting that structural power imbalances don't dissolve through advisory forums. His participation positions Leaf Group as an engaged sell-side voice rather than a passive observer of industry negotiations.
Publishers Use Advertising Downturn To Perform Programmatic Housekeeping↗
Scott reframes the 2020 advertising recession as a strategic opportunity: when revenue pressure is highest, publishers have the most compelling internal case for ad stack rationalization. His approach at Leaf Group — using the downturn to eliminate tech debt and tighten supply paths — becomes a model for operational resilience.
Take Apart, Clean, Rebuild: North Dakota Winters & AdTech Today↗
Drawing on a North Dakota farm machinery analogy, Scott argues that publishers must periodically strip their ad stacks down to first principles — removing redundant tech, clarifying supply paths, and rebuilding with intentionality. A call for operational discipline that resonates especially in periods of industry disruption.
Zoom Happy Hours Are Taking Over Advertising↗
Scott is among the first advertising leaders to lean into virtual relationship-building during COVID lockdowns, deploying Zoom pranks and themed happy hours to maintain team culture at Leaf Group. It speaks to his broader operating philosophy — human connection drives business performance, especially in difficult markets.
2020 Publishing & AdTech↗
Scott's 2020 outlook arrives at the cusp of a transformative year — capturing the identity inflection point, the programmatic supply chain reckoning, and the looming cookie deprecation. A prescient read that underscores his long-running ability to anticipate structural shifts before they reach mainstream industry awareness.
2019 AdTech & Publishing↗
Scott's annual outlook for 2019 identifies the key forces publishers need to navigate: the rise of contextual as a privacy-safe targeting option, the need for cleaner data collaboration frameworks, and the growing importance of first-party audience strategy as signal loss accelerates. A foundational piece of his ongoing market commentary tradition.
Meet The Drum DTA USA 2018 judges↗
Jana's selection as a DTA USA judge recognizes her standing as a top-tier programmatic practitioner and publisher leader. Serving as an industry evaluator reflects the broader credibility she builds in driving revenue strategy and operational excellence at Business Insider.
No Silver Bullet: Publishers Shifting To Consumer Revenue Mull New Vendor Problem↗
Scott cautions that publishers diversifying into subscriptions and commerce are simply trading one set of vendor headaches for another. His argument: revenue diversification is necessary but must be paired with operational discipline, or publishers risk inflating cost structures without proportionate revenue gains.
Business Insider's Jana Meron on getting salespeople to love programmatic↗
Jana tackles one of the most persistent internal friction points in publisher monetization: getting direct salespeople to embrace programmatic as an ally, not a threat. Her strategies for aligning incentives and reframing programmatic as a sales amplification tool remain highly relevant as publishers navigate an increasingly automated media landscape.
Why publishers are enlisting programmatic ad chiefs↗
Jana is featured as an early example of the emerging 'programmatic ad chief' role at publishers — a senior operator who bridges data, technology, and revenue strategy. This piece reflects a pivotal moment when publishers realize that programmatic expertise needs to live at the executive level, not just in ad ops.
Identity, Privacy & The Post-Cookie Era
24 entriesAt industry conference, Google tries to salvage the Privacy Sandbox after cookie U-turn↗
Jana shares a publisher practitioner's reaction to Google's attempts to reframe the Privacy Sandbox after the cookie reversal — skeptical but engaged. Her sell-side position: publishers should participate in Sandbox discussions to protect their interests, but not stake their identity strategies on Google's evolving technical roadmap.
Publishers Have One Year to Test and Raise Red Flags on Google's Privacy Sandbox↗
Scott's message is clear and urgent: publishers have one year to engage with the Privacy Sandbox seriously — not as passive observers, but as active testers who can surface real-world yield data and influence how the final spec is shaped. A rallying call for sell-side participation in a process dominated by buy-side voices.
Google issues mandate requiring publishers to work with approved consent vendors↗
Jana weighs in on Google's move to require approved CMPs — raising the sell-side concern that mandating specific consent technology creates lock-in, limits publisher flexibility, and hands Google another lever of control over the publisher monetization stack. Her perspective highlights the fine line between privacy standardization and platform overreach.
What Publishers Need To Know About Implementing The MSPA↗
Scott cuts through the legal complexity of the MSPA to give publishers practical implementation guidance — including the revenue implications of choosing national versus state-by-state compliance approaches. His sell-side framing: compliance isn't just a legal checkbox; it directly affects how much addressable inventory publishers can monetize across different jurisdictions.
The pragmatic publisher's case for privacy-first ads↗
Jana makes a principled but commercially grounded argument: privacy-first advertising is not just ethically right but economically defensible for publishers. By building on consent, context, and authenticated audiences rather than surveillance-based targeting, publishers can create more durable, trust-based monetization models.
News Corp And Insider On Life After Cookies: What Works, What Doesn't, What's Next↗
Jana joins a high-profile publisher panel to give an honest account of what is working and what isn't in the post-cookie transition — avoiding vendor hype to focus on real yield outcomes. Her co-presentation with News Corp gives the conversation added weight as a dialogue between two major premium publishers sharing hard-won experience.
2022 Will Be A Year Of Unintended Consequences From The Pivot To Privacy↗
Scott predicts that 2022 will bring a wave of unintended consequences from well-intentioned privacy changes — including revenue cliffs for publishers caught between GDPR, CCPA, browser restrictions, and half-baked identity solutions. His outlook proves prescient: the combination of regulatory fragmentation and cookie uncertainty creates exactly the turbulence he describes.
12 ad leaders planning for the cookieless future↗
Jana is selected as one of 12 industry leaders shaping post-cookie strategy — reflecting her established credibility as a publisher practitioner who has built real cookieless infrastructure at Insider. Her inclusion in this cohort validates the Insider model as a reference point for the broader industry's identity transition.
The Great Privacy Reset↗
Jana joins a panel of publisher leaders to examine the privacy reset as both threat and opportunity for sell-side operators. Her perspective: publishers who have built strong first-party data relationships with their audiences are in a fundamentally stronger position than those who rely on third-party tracking infrastructure — making the privacy transition a competitive sorting mechanism.
Media Briefing: Why Universal ID Maintenance Is Becoming A Big Consideration Among Publishers↗
Scott names the hidden cost that most publishers aren't accounting for: the ongoing engineering and ad ops burden of maintaining a growing roster of Universal IDs. His argument — that ID integrations have a real ongoing cost beyond initial implementation — helps shift the conversation from 'how many IDs should we support?' to 'which IDs actually deliver incremental yield?'
Quantcast Reveals Cookieless Innovations for the Quantcast Platform↗
Scott provides a concrete publisher endorsement of Quantcast's cookieless platform — grounding the product announcement in real sell-side outcomes at Leaf Group. His willingness to publicly validate vendor solutions based on yield data, rather than marketing promises, reflects the AdTech Therapy standard of evidence-based publisher advocacy.
Poof: When Google Extended The Cookie Deadline, Urgency Behind Testing Subsided↗
Scott delivers a candid sell-side diagnosis: the moment Google pushes back the cookie deadline, advertiser urgency to test publisher first-party solutions evaporates. His insight — that publishers need intrinsic commercial motivation for cookieless solutions rather than relying on external forcing functions — remains one of the most practically useful observations in the identity debate.
The Insider perspective on post-cookie advertising↗
Jana articulates Insider's deliberate, first-party-forward approach to the post-cookie transition — investing in authenticated users, contextual signals, and direct advertiser partnerships rather than chasing every new ID solution. A model for how premium publishers can turn the identity crisis into a competitive differentiation opportunity.
Media Briefing: Google's extension puts publishers at ease to continue cookieless plans↗
Jana captures the nuanced publisher reaction to another Google cookie deadline extension: relief at having more runway, frustration at continued uncertainty, but firm commitment to continuing cookieless investment. Her perspective reflects the sell-side reality that smart publishers don't plan around Google's timeline — they plan around their audience.
Industry Reaction To Google's Third-Party Cookie Delay Depends How You Feel About Purgatory↗
Scott's 'purgatory' framing becomes one of the most-quoted characterizations of the Google cookie delay — capturing the frustration of publishers who invest in cookieless solutions only to see the deadline pushed again. He argues the delay doesn't remove the imperative; it just extends the pain of running parallel systems.
Publishers See Risks In Ad Targeting Cookie Replacements↗
Scott articulates the underappreciated risks in hashed email ID solutions — the gap between theoretical match rates and real-world scale, privacy exposure concerns, and the operational overhead of maintaining multiple ID integrations. A sober counterpoint to the industry's enthusiasm for email-based identity.
IPG Commits to More Inclusive Bidding / Brave Browser Blocks FLoC↗
Scott's perspective is included in an industry roundup covering two simultaneous developments: IPG's move toward more inclusive bidding (positive for publishers) and Brave's blocking of FLoC (revealing the contested landscape of browser-level identity). A moment illustrating how identity battles are being fought on multiple fronts simultaneously.
Media Briefing: Gimme data control, say publishers to identity tech firms↗
Jana voices a growing publisher frustration: identity tech vendors are asking for access to first-party data without giving publishers meaningful insight into how it is being used or monetized. Her position reflects a core AdTech Therapy principle — publishers should never cede data control without clear reciprocal value and transparency.
The New York Times says it won't use identity tech like Unified ID 2.0↗
Jana provides context on the NYT's decision to reject UID 2.0 — framing it not as an anti-industry stance but as a strategic bet on their own authenticated audience. Her commentary pushes the industry to consider whether universal ID solutions truly serve publishers or primarily benefit intermediaries.
Unified ID 2.0 Is Facing Roadblocks (And Not Just To Do With Google)↗
Scott offers a grounded take on UID 2.0's challenges — going beyond the Google narrative to identify publisher-side implementation friction, consumer consent hurdles, and the structural issue of building identity on hashed emails when many users don't log in. A sober sell-side assessment of an identity solution the industry is over-indexing on.
2020 Was All About Digital Identity, and Expect the Same in 2021↗
Scott contributes to AdExchanger's year-end identity outlook, predicting that 2021 will deepen — not resolve — the industry's identity crisis. His sell-side perspective: publishers who invest in first-party data and direct ID solutions in 2020 are meaningfully ahead of those who wait for a universal industry answer.
How Publishers Can Regain Control In A Post-Cookie World↗
Scott lays out a practical playbook for publishers to turn cookie deprecation into a competitive advantage — investing in first-party data infrastructure, rebuilding direct advertiser relationships, and using privacy as a differentiator. One of his most cited pieces in the identity transition debate.
Digiday Guide: Everything You Need To Know About The End Of The Third-Party Cookie↗
Scott serves as a go-to expert for Digiday's comprehensive guide on third-party cookie deprecation — providing sell-side context on what the transition means for publisher revenue, identity solutions, and data strategy. His inclusion reflects his established role as a trusted voice on the operational realities publishers face in the post-cookie world.
Publishers Want Tighter Relationships With Advertisers Post-Cookie↗
Scott makes the case that cookie deprecation represents an opportunity for publishers to rebuild direct commercial relationships with advertisers. As third-party signals disappear, the value of a publisher's first-party data and direct sales infrastructure rises — a thesis that becomes central to the AdTech Therapy POV.
Supply Path, Yield & Monetization
18 entriesPublishers see double-digit growth from The Trade Desk's OpenPath, but volatility remains↗
Scott offers nuanced sell-side commentary on OpenPath's double-digit revenue lift for some publishers — acknowledging the genuine yield improvement while flagging the volatility and dependency risks of concentrating spend through a single buyer's direct path. His message: OpenPath is a useful demand source, not a strategy replacement for a diversified supply chain.
My Prediction on Prebid, SSPs, OpenAds, and DSPs↗
Scott's prediction post generates significant industry discussion: that Prebid will evolve to primarily serve SSPs doing sell-side curation, while OpenAds becomes the dominant DSP-facing auction mechanism — creating a formal bifurcation in auction infrastructure. His framework for thinking about the SSP vs. DSP power dynamic proves highly influential in the months that follow.
With GAM Going Direct To Buyers, SPO Is The New Normal↗
Jana analyzes what Google's push to connect GAM directly to DSPs means for the broader SPO landscape — noting that when the dominant ad server starts behaving like an SSP, the entire supply chain topology shifts. Her sell-side read: SPO is no longer a buyer optimization exercise; it's becoming the permanent operating architecture of programmatic, and publishers must engage with it proactively.
Media Briefing: Publishers air pain points at the Prebid Summit↗
Jana surfaces the frustrations publishers are voicing at the Prebid Summit — from governance concerns to the technical complexity of keeping up with wrapper updates. Her sell-side perspective: Prebid is essential infrastructure for publisher independence, but it requires more meaningful publisher input to remain truly open and publisher-aligned.
How The Trade Desk's new sub-floor bidding tactic will affect SSPs, publishers↗
Both Scott and Jana weigh in on The Trade Desk's aggressive move to establish direct-to-publisher bidding via OpenPath — analyzing the implications for SSP relevance, publisher floor pricing power, and the balance of leverage in the supply chain. A defining moment that foreshadows the DSP-vs-SSP power struggle that intensifies through 2024 and 2025.
Musings on the Bloated Supply Chain↗
Jana takes a practitioner's view of supply chain bloat — calling out the layers of intermediaries that add latency, cost, and opacity without delivering commensurate value to publishers. Her argument: publishers who actively manage their supply path — auditing SSP partners, enforcing ads.txt, and demanding transparency — recover meaningful revenue that would otherwise leak downstream.
How GroupM's inclusion list decides which publishers it sells programmatically↗
Jana offers a publisher's perspective on being evaluated by buyer inclusion lists — explaining what publishers must actually do to meet the transparency, brand safety, and audience quality standards that major agency holding companies use to gate programmatic access. Essential reading for any publisher trying to understand why their inventory is or isn't reaching premium buyers.
Instream vs. Outstream Video Advertising↗
Scott provides a yield-focused breakdown of instream versus outstream video — moving beyond the format debate to the monetization implications. His key message for publishers: outstream scales more easily but instream commands premium CPMs, and the right answer depends entirely on your content type, audience behavior, and direct sales strategy.
Publisher Ad Monetization 2022↗
Scott is featured in eMarketer's comprehensive Publisher Ad Monetization 2022 report — contributing sell-side strategy perspective on yield optimization, supply path management, and diversification approaches. His inclusion in a tier-one research publication reflects his positioning as a reference authority on publisher monetization strategy.
Media Briefing: Publishers' Programmatic Ad Businesses Have Rebounded to Pre-Pandemic Levels↗
Scott provides sell-side color on the programmatic recovery — noting that publishers who clean up their supply chains and invest in direct demand relationships during the downturn recover faster and at higher CPMs. A validation of the 'housekeeping' thesis he champions throughout the pandemic period.
Demand Path Optimization↗
Scott provides authoritative commentary on Demand Path Optimization — the buyer-side counterpart to SPO — explaining how publishers can use DPO insights to understand which demand sources are genuinely incremental versus redundant. A practical sell-side framing of a topic often discussed exclusively from the buy-side perspective.
The Future of Media Trading: Make It Possible↗
Scott's recap of the Permutive summit captures a moment when the industry is genuinely grappling with what media trading looks like without cookies. His key insight: the answer isn't a technical fix — it's a recalibration of trust and cooperation across the supply chain, with publishers needing to claim a stronger seat at the negotiating table.
SPO, DPO, PADs with Scott Messer↗
Scott joins Erik Requidan's podcast to break down Supply Path Optimization, Demand Path Optimization, and Publisher Auction Dynamics — explaining how SPO is simultaneously a buyer efficiency tool and a publisher risk, depending on how clean your supply chain is. A nuanced conversation that challenges the narrative that SPO is uniformly good for quality publishers.
How Ops 2018 Added Nuance to Demand Partner Evaluation↗
Jana joins a panel at AdMonsters Ops 2018 to discuss how publishers are becoming more assertive about holding demand partners accountable — cutting ties with those who deliver low yield or poor ad quality. A critical sell-side perspective: as header bidding increases transparency, publishers gain real leverage to enforce standards and demand true partnership, not just fill.
The advertising industry needs to balance out its programmatic transparency quest↗
Jana raises a critical counter-narrative: that the transparency push, while necessary, is creating its own inefficiencies. Demanding complete disclosure at every level of the supply chain can paradoxically undermine the scale and speed that make programmatic valuable — a tension publishers must actively manage.
Publishers see a slow shift, not rush, to first-price programmatic ad auctions↗
Jana helps frame the publisher's careful approach to first-price auction adoption — resisting the rush to flip auction mechanics without understanding the downstream effects on yield floors and DSP behavior. A nuanced sell-side perspective on a structural change with lasting revenue implications.
Video Advertising Gets Subtle↗
Scott provides early sell-side perspective on the rise of cinemagraph ad formats at Demand Media, citing a 25% engagement lift over static units. A forward-looking take on how publishers can monetize attention through lighter, more native-feeling formats without sacrificing yield.
Demand360TT: How to cut through the third-party murk to find the right tech partner↗
Scott walks through a publisher-first framework for evaluating third-party ad tech vendors — cutting through vendor promises to focus on measurable yield contribution and supply chain transparency. Essential guidance for any publisher trying to rationalize an overcrowded tech stack.
Data, Audiences & Contextual Strategy
16 entriesPublishers Call Out Ad-Tech Firms' Sale of Contextual Data as IP Theft↗
Jana is among the publisher voices calling out ad tech vendors who harvest contextual signals from publisher pages and resell them without publisher consent or revenue share. Her framing: this is IP theft disguised as a service, and publishers must demand contractual protections and transparency clauses from any vendor touching their content.
The Royal Rumble Is On For Who Wins Contextual Advertising↗
Scott frames the contextual advertising competition as genuinely open — rejecting the assumption that big ad tech platforms will automatically win. Publishers with rich, well-structured content and the right contextual infrastructure can capture more value from their own pages than they have in years, if they stop outsourcing contextual intelligence to third parties.
Publishers Aren't Sweating The Migration From Universal Analytics To Google Analytics 4↗
Scott reframes the GA4 migration as a net positive for publishers who engage proactively — the transition forces a rethinking of audience measurement metrics that most publishers have failed to update for years. His key insight: the sooner you start collecting GA4 data, the more useful your historical comparisons will be post-transition.
Publishers Want To Test Seller-Defined Audiences But Buyers Aren't Interested While Third-Party Cookies Are Still In Play↗
Scott diagnoses the SDA adoption gap with precision: publishers are enthusiastic about Seller-Defined Audiences, but buyers have no incentive to adopt them while cookies remain available. His framing — that the industry needs a forcing function, not just a better spec — remains accurate until cookie deprecation finally begins in earnest.
From millions to tens of millions: How Insider's first-party data offering grew in 2021↗
Jana documents Insider's dramatic first-party data growth — from millions to tens of millions of addressable users — demonstrating that authenticated audience strategies can achieve programmatic-competitive scale when executed with discipline. A concrete proof point for the sell-side argument that premium publishers don't need third-party cookies to thrive.
Putting Contextual In Context: Can Standardized Definitions And Taxonomies Lead To Scale?↗
Scott makes the infrastructure argument for contextual scale: without shared taxonomy standards, contextual advertising remains a bespoke offering rather than a programmatic-scale alternative to behavioral targeting. His call for standardization anticipates the IAB's eventual push for unified contextual classification frameworks.
Is Contextual Ready For Post-Cookie Prime Time?↗
Scott helps assess whether contextual technology has matured enough to serve as a genuine cookie replacement. His answer: it depends entirely on the publisher's content infrastructure. Publishers with rich, well-classified content are positioned to win; those relying on generic keyword matching are not.
Publishers Caught In Crossfire Over Contextual Targeting↗
Scott articulates the publisher's dilemma as contextual targeting resurges: buyers are demanding contextual precision that publishers aren't yet set up to deliver at scale. His commentary highlights the gap between contextual's promise and its operational reality — and what publishers need to invest in to close that gap.
Who Owns Contextual?↗
Scott authors a landmark Sell Sider column challenging publishers to assert ownership over their contextual signals — rather than ceding that value to third-party vendors who harvest page-level data and resell it. A foundational piece of the AdTech Therapy POV: publishers sit on a goldmine of contextual intelligence that they consistently undermonetize.
'Contextual on steroids': How Insider is tracking and scaling audience behavior using first-party data↗
Jana details how Insider is building a first-party data infrastructure that goes far beyond standard contextual targeting — using behavioral signals at scale to create audience intelligence that rivals third-party data. A blueprint for how premium publishers can monetize their unique user relationships in a cookie-free world.
GumGum Grows Leadership Team As Industry Focuses On Contextual Ad Tech↗
Scott articulates a key challenge for search-reliant publishers: contextual targeting must evolve with page content, not just rely on static keyword classification. His point that publishers with millions of articles need machine-scale content understanding to make contextual work highlights the operational complexity often overlooked in the contextual enthusiasm.
Salesforce Opens Second-Party Data Marketplace↗
Scott is an early advocate for Salesforce's Data Studio model — allowing Leaf Group to share curated first-party audience segments directly with brand advertisers, bypassing opaque third-party data brokers. He argues this direct, consent-based data sharing ultimately yields better pricing and stronger advertiser relationships.
Salesforce's Offering for First-Party Data↗
Scott offers commentary on how CRM-grade platforms like Salesforce can give publishers a more structured path to monetizing first-party data — bridging the gap between audience intelligence and direct advertiser relationships. Relevant as publishers seek credible alternatives to third-party data marketplaces.
Krux Builds Header Bidding Designed for Data Transactions↗
Scott champions a novel approach: combining data and media in a single header bidding transaction to eliminate cookie loss, reduce middleman fees, and improve signal fidelity. Early evidence of his conviction that the supply chain works best when data flows directly from publisher to buyer without unnecessary intermediaries.
Demand Media Chooses Krux as Its Data Management Platform↗
Scott speaks to the strategic rationale behind Demand Media's selection of Krux as its DMP — specifically the ability to build and activate custom audience segments for branded content campaigns. This reflects the early conviction that first-party data infrastructure is a competitive advantage, not just a compliance checkbox.
Demand360TT: Indiana Jones and the Transitioning of a DMP↗
Scott uses the metaphor of a perilous adventure to describe the DMP migration process — a topic many publishers are quietly struggling with. The piece underscores the sell-side reality that data infrastructure decisions are high-stakes, irreversible, and often underestimated in complexity.
Ecosystem Integrity: Brand Safety, Fraud & Transparency
9 entriesRedefining Media Quality↗
Scott introduces a seven-signal framework for evaluating media quality in the offsite context — moving beyond simplistic brand safety checklists to a more nuanced, publisher-operator view of what constitutes clean, high-value inventory. A practical guide for publishers trying to maintain quality standards as offsite media supply chains become increasingly complex.
Rethinking Brand Safety: Lessons from Jana Meron on News Advertising in 2024↗
Jana delivers a comprehensive rethink of brand safety for AdMonsters — arguing that the industry's reflexive blocking of news content is both commercially irrational and dangerous for the information ecosystem. Her framework: brand safety should be context-specific and evidence-based, not a blanket avoidance of journalism that serves critical social functions.
What Pubs and Ad Tech Really Think of Google's Project Bernanke↗
Scott's reaction to Project Bernanke is measured but pointed: this confirms the structural problem of trusting a single entity to operate both the auction and the bidder. His sell-side framing — who bears the actual loss when auction mechanics are manipulated — remains the sharpest question for publishers to ask.
Publishers complain about media buyers blacklisting coronavirus content↗
Jana challenges the reflexive brand safety blacklisting of coronavirus coverage — making the sell-side case that blanket keyword blocking during a crisis punishes credible news publishers while leaving MFA sites unaffected. A defining moment in the ongoing brand safety vs. news publisher debate.
Ad fraud & brand safety remain the biggest programmatic issues↗
Jana shares her perspective as a DTA judge on why fraud and brand safety continue to top publisher and advertiser agendas. Her sell-side framing: these are not just buyer concerns — they are existential issues for publishers whose inventory quality is directly devalued by bad actors in the ecosystem.
Google study warns of widespread video ad fraud, encourages wider ads.txt takeup↗
Jana weighs in as ads.txt is gaining momentum — voicing publisher support for the IAB's specification as a meaningful check on video ad fraud. Her early endorsement helps normalize ads.txt adoption as a sell-side responsibility, not just a technical recommendation.
We Need A Collective Push To End Site Spoofing↗
Jana writes one of the most direct calls to action on domain spoofing in the AdExchanger Sell Sider column — arguing that technical solutions alone are insufficient and that the industry needs collective enforcement standards, not just individual publisher defenses. A defining moment in her advocacy for supply chain integrity and publisher rights.
Domain Spoofing Costs Business Insider 10M Fake Impressions↗
Jana offers a frontline publisher's account of domain spoofing's real cost — 10 million fake impressions stolen from Business Insider. This piece helps put a concrete number on an abstract threat, and Jana's candor makes the case that fraud isn't just a buyer problem: it directly erodes publisher revenue and brand credibility.
Fraud: A View From the Frontlines↗
Jana shares a practitioner's view of fighting ad fraud from the publisher side — moving beyond awareness to active defense strategies. Her perspective reinforces that premium publishers must be active participants in the integrity of the supply chain, not just victims waiting for buy-side solutions.