Insights & Updates

IAB Tech Lab's AAMP 3.0 introduces OpenProposal, a standard way for buyer and seller agents to exchange briefs and proposals. What it means for publishers who sell directly.

The fourth quarter is when ad budgets peak and mistakes cost the most. A practical checklist for code freezes, floors, supply chain hygiene, direct deals and monitoring before October 1.

Starting September 15, Cloudflare's defaults block mixed-use AI crawlers from pages that host ads. What that means for recipe and lifestyle publishers, and the settings worth reviewing.

Judge Brinkema rejected a forced sale of AdX and ordered behavioral remedies instead. What the September 2 ruling changes for publishers, and what to do before it takes effect.

Amazon DSP self-service buyers can now run Google Ad Manager programmatic guaranteed deals with creatives hosted by the publisher. Here is how to package and traffic those deals before Q4.

Germany's competition authority has made Apple redesign the App Tracking Transparency prompt and let apps combine it with their own consent request. Here is what app publishers should prepare.

Connecticut, Arkansas and Virginia changes took effect July 1, and IAB Tech Lab just proposed GPP updates. What health, finance and other sensitive-content publishers should check.

Since August 3, Google uses IP addresses for ad measurement and personalization in the EEA, UK and Switzerland. Publishers need their consent setup to disclose it correctly.

IAB Tech Lab finalized OpenRTB and VAST signaling for six CTV formats, including pause and menu ads. Here is what changes for streaming publishers and how to get inventory ready.

Alphabet's second quarter showed double-digit growth almost everywhere except Google Network, the line tied to publisher sites and apps. Here is how to read it and what to do.

Chrome 150 is now rejecting Protected Audience calls as Google retires most Privacy Sandbox APIs. Here is what to remove from your ad stack and what stays the same.

IAS's latest Media Quality Report puts 71.9% of made-for-advertising impressions on mobile web display. Entertainment sites with dense mobile layouts should check how they look to buyers' filters.

IAB Europe published a guide to curation on July 2. Curated marketplaces can widen demand for your inventory or quietly take a cut of it. The questions to ask before you opt in.

IAB Tech Lab's SupplyChain v1.1 proposal, released June 23, adds systems that handle a bid request to the schain, not just those in the payment flow. What it means for publishers.

On July 1, Connecticut's amended privacy law and Arkansas's children's and teens' privacy law take effect, both restricting targeted ads to minors. What publishers should change first.

The World Cup kicked off June 11 with 104 matches across North America through July 19. How sports publishers can handle match-day traffic spikes without leaving money behind.

On June 3 the CMA required Google to let publishers keep content out of AI search features without leaving search. What the rule covers, and how to decide whether to opt out.

Gaming guides, wikis and browser games hold readers for long sessions, which makes refresh tempting. How to declare it in Ad Manager, choose triggers and test it without eroding CPMs.

Memorial Day opens peak trip-planning season. How travel publishers can set seasonal floors, package reader intent into deals and prepare for the late-summer demand dip.

IAB's new video spend report shows targeting overtaking content quality as buyers' top criterion. Finance publishers can answer with seller-defined audiences they already have the data for.

IAB Tech Lab proposed OpenRTB attributes that describe how live a stream is, with comments open until May 28. Sports and CTV sellers should check how they label live inventory today.

Alphabet's Q1 filing shows Google Network ad revenue down about 4% year over year while Search grew 19%. For open-web publishers, that gap is a traffic story worth acting on.

IAB Tech Lab launched a Programmatic Governance Council on April 21, with buyers, sellers and platforms at one table. Here is what publishers should prepare while it writes the rules.

IAB Tech Lab took over Amazon Ads' Dynamic Traffic Engine on April 15. It lets DSPs tell SSPs which requests they want. Here is what that means for publisher bid rates.

The free Prebid Cache at prebid.adnxs.com goes dark on April 30. If your video bids still point there, winning ads will stop rendering. Here is how to check and what to switch to.

Maryland began enforcing its Online Data Privacy Act on April 1. Its minimization rules and bans on selling sensitive and minors' data reach deep into ad stacks, especially for health sites.

Prebid.js 11.0 shipped March 12 with PAAPI and adpod removed, stricter mediaType checks and strict storage enforcement. Here is what to audit before you upgrade.

Finance content commands premium bids, which makes it a target for spoofing and a magnet for messy supply paths. A practical audit of ads.txt, sellers.json and supply chain signals before April traffic peaks.

IAB Tech Lab's Content Monetization Protocol is out for comment until April 9. What it does, what it assumes you already have in place, and why B2B and specialist publishers should get ready now.

Gaming wikis, guides and news sites get long, fast-scrolling sessions that punish slow auctions. How to set Prebid timeouts from data, cut bidders that don't earn their latency, and prove it with a test.

Live events are the most valuable CTV inventory and the hardest to plan. IAB Tech Lab's proposed LEAP Forecasting API would let content owners publish schedules, ad breaks and audience forecasts to buyers in advance.

IAB Tech Lab finalized its Deals API on February 6 to standardize how deals move from SSPs to DSPs and to name the curators in between. What it fixes, what it does not, and how to debug deals today.

The CMA has proposed rules giving publishers control over how Google uses their content in AI Overviews. How news and local publishers should weigh an opt-out before it arrives.

Microsoft's DSP goes dark at the end of the month and its buyers are moving to Amazon DSP and elsewhere. What B2B and other publishers should check so deals and demand survive the move.

The Winter Olympics open February 6 and Super Bowl LX kicks off February 8. How sports publishers can handle live blogs, refresh, floors and page stability when traffic arrives all at once.

Chrome has begun deprecating the Privacy Sandbox APIs and third-party cookies are staying. That does not make identity simple again. A cleanup and identity plan for publishers.

OpenAI will test ads under ChatGPT answers for free and Go users in the US. The answer engine that competes for your readers is now competing for your advertisers too.

The Trade Desk named nine publishers backing OpenAds. Behind it sits a fight over Prebid transaction IDs. Here is what changed, what to check in your own setup and how to evaluate any wrapper move.

Brussels wants one-click refusal, a six-month pause on re-asking, and binding browser consent signals. What the Digital Omnibus proposal could do to consent rates, and how travel and other EU-heavy sites should prepare.

Indiana, Kentucky and Rhode Island privacy laws take effect January 1, alongside new CCPA risk assessment rules. What changes for ad-supported sites, with extra care for health publishers.

Holiday traffic peaks just as ad budgets run out. A week-by-week plan for floors, refresh and direct deals so recipe and lifestyle publishers don't give away January.

Closing arguments are done in the US ad tech case and Google has sent Brussels a no-breakup proposal. Here is how publishers can prepare for either outcome without waiting on a ruling.

IAB Tech Lab released a Deals API for public comment to standardize how deals move from SSPs to DSPs and to name curators in the chain. Here is why it matters and how to clean up deals now.

Post-holiday January is the best time to test wrapper changes, but only if the test is designed well. Here is how to run header bidding experiments that produce answers you can trust.

Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday is the highest-stakes stretch of the year for programmatic revenue. Here is how to monitor, what to alert on, and when to touch nothing.

IAB Tech Lab's Agentic RTB Framework and the Ad Context Protocol both arrived this fall. Here is what each one does, how they differ, and what publishers should prepare.

Local news sites run many ad slots on long pages, which makes layout shift and slow interactions common. Here is how to lazy load ads and keep Core Web Vitals healthy without losing revenue.

IAB Tech Lab added device attestation to the Open Measurement SDK to fight device spoofing, starting with Apple devices and Fire TV. Here is what it does and what app and CTV sellers should do.

OpenAI's ChatGPT Atlas and Perplexity's now-free Comet put an AI assistant between readers and your pages. Here is what changes for traffic, measurement and ad quality.

Google is retiring Topics, Protected Audience and most other Privacy Sandbox APIs. Third-party cookies stay in Chrome. Here is how publishers should rethink addressability.

California now requires browsers to offer a built-in opt-out preference signal starting in 2027. Here is what AB 566 does, how it relates to Global Privacy Control, and what publishers should do now.

Floors are the one Q4 lever publishers fully control. Set them too low and you give away value; too high and you lose fill. Here is how finance and insurance sites should approach them.

The remedies phase of the DOJ's ad tech case against Google opened September 22. Both sides propose opening AdX demand to rival tools. Here is what each wants and what to do now.

Football season brings long live-score sessions, and with them the temptation to refresh ads aggressively. Here is how to refresh in a way buyers accept and Google's policies allow.

A new licensing standard for AI crawlers and the first major U.S. publisher lawsuit over AI Overviews landed in the same week. Here is what publishers can control today.

The European Commission fined Google €2.95 billion over self-preferencing in adtech and floated divestment. Here is what was decided, what was not, and what publishers should do while it plays out.

PubMatic says a top DSP buyer's platform change hit its Q3 outlook. The same risk sits in every publisher's revenue. Here is how to measure buyer concentration, spot repricing early and spread the risk.

College football kicked off August 23 and the NFL opens September 4. Here is how sports publishers can handle game-day spikes with live pages, smart refresh, video and category controls.

The fourth quarter is where most publishers make their year, and the work that decides it happens now. A practical checklist covering deals, floors, page speed, supply chain, consent and change freezes.

Floors work differently when buyers shade bids in first-price auctions. How B2B and niche publishers with small, valuable audiences should set, test and maintain floors across Prebid and Ad Manager.

Buyers use ads.txt, sellers.json and schain to decide which paths to your inventory are worth bidding on. A step-by-step audit local news and community publishers can run in an afternoon.

Pew Research found Google users clicked a result link on 8% of visits with an AI summary versus 15% without. News publishers should plan for a smaller search funnel and higher-value sessions.

Tennessee's privacy law took effect July 1 and Minnesota's takes effect July 31. Both give residents the right to opt out of targeted ads. Here is what publishers, especially in finance and health, should check.

Prebid.js 10.0 shipped July 1 with removed modules, changed APIs, new defaults and schain moving to first-party data. Here is what to check before you upgrade your wrapper.

Cloudflare now blocks AI crawlers by default for new domains and is piloting Pay Per Crawl. With IAB Tech Lab and Google also moving, here is how publishers should set an AI access policy.

IAB Europe released TCF v2.3 on June 19, making the disclosedVendors segment mandatory. Strings without it will be non-compliant after February 28, 2026. Here is the publisher checklist.

Amazon Ads and Roku are linking identity across 80 million US CTV households through Amazon DSP. Here is what logged-in scale means for everyone else selling video and CTV inventory.

Apple's Safari 26 beta blocks known fingerprinting scripts from device APIs, long-lived storage and referrer data. Here is which parts of a publisher stack it touches and what to test before fall.

The Nintendo Switch 2 launched June 5. For gaming publishers, launch weeks bring huge traffic and fragile yield. Here is how to prepare floors, refresh, lazy loading and demand.

Google began rolling out AI Mode to all US users and is expanding ads in AI Overviews and AI Mode. Recipe and lifestyle publishers should plan for fewer, higher-value search visits.

Microsoft will stop supporting buying through Invest, the former Xandr and AppNexus DSP, on February 28, 2026. Here is how to measure your exposure and protect the demand it carries today.

Video buyers now read a standard signal that separates true instream from outstream. Here is how to label every player honestly, stay inside Google's video policy and price each placement type on its own.

The Justice Department wants AdX sold and Google's auction logic opened up; Google offers interoperability and an end to Unified Pricing Rules. What each plan would mean for publishers.

Prebid.org's new free dashboard shows which versions, adapters and modules the ecosystem runs. Here is how to use it as a benchmark for a practical audit of your own setup.

Google says Chrome will not roll out a standalone cookie prompt, leaving third-party cookies in place. That ends one uncertainty, not the need for a cookieless plan.

A federal judge found Google monopolized publisher ad servers and ad exchanges and unlawfully tied the two. Nothing changes in your Ad Manager account yet. Here is what does change.

France's competition authority fined Apple 150 million euros over how it implemented App Tracking Transparency. ATT stays, but the ruling is a useful lens on in-app monetization.

New U.S. tariffs, the end of duty-free small parcels from China and a two-day market plunge landed in one week. What that can mean for ad demand, and what publishers can control.

Long recipe and lifestyle pages carry many ad slots, and every one can push content around. How to combine lazy loading and reserved space so ads earn more and pages stay stable.

Cloudflare's new AI Labyrinth targets bots that ignore no-crawl rules. For publishers, crawler traffic is also an ad quality issue: inflated page views, wasted auctions and IVT risk.

Refresh can lift revenue on long sessions, from gaming guides to live scores. Done carelessly, it inflates impressions buyers don't value and breaks ad server policy. Here is how to do it right.

Too short and you drop bids; too long and you lose impressions and viewability. A data-first method for setting Prebid timeouts by device, page type and bidder.

Chegg's antitrust suit claims AI Overviews keep readers from ever reaching its site. Whatever the outcome, publishers need a plan for search traffic that answers more and clicks less.

A class action filed Feb. 10 is the first under Washington's My Health My Data Act, and New York just passed a stricter bill. Here is what health and wellness publishers should review.

Tubi drew a 13.6 million average minute audience for a free, login-free Super Bowl stream. The bigger story for publishers is what live events demand from CTV ad operations.

Google's revised ads platform policies take effect this Sunday and no longer prohibit fingerprinting. Regulators are not impressed. Here is what it means for publisher risk and CTV.

Delaware, Iowa, Nebraska, New Hampshire and New Jersey switched on in January. Here is how to check that every opt-out actually reaches every partner in your auction.

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Even experienced publishers make these header bidding mistakes. Learn what they are and how to fix them to unlock your full revenue potential.

Header bidding continues to evolve rapidly. From server-side auctions to AI-powered optimization, discover the key trends shaping the future of programmatic advertising.

Balancing ad revenue with user experience is one of the biggest challenges publishers face. Learn proven strategies to optimize both simultaneously.

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