When Jasper Liu, senior programmatic yield analyst at Daily Mail, tells friends what he does for a living, he’s used to getting a few blank stares.
“I can’t just say I do programmatic,” he said. “So I tell them, ‘Whenever you see an ad on a webpage, I’m like a trader behind the scenes.’”
It’s an unexpectedly cool analogy that instantly clicks—instead of stocks, Liu helps orchestrate a high-speed auction of digital ads, with thousands of bidders vying for a spot on a page. “I’m the trader of the ads,” he said. “That usually gets a ‘Whoa, that’s actually kind of cool.’”
Liu didn’t know he’d end up in ad tech. After earning a master’s degree in marketing analytics from the University of Maryland in 2021, he hunted for roles that lived at the intersection of data, strategy and media.
That path led him to an entry-level analyst position at the Daily Mail in 2022—and in just a few years, he’s leveled up to a senior analyst role, now mentoring junior teammates and playing a key part in shaping the publisher’s programmatic strategy.
What he loves most about his role is the constant variety. Some days, Jasper is deep in cross-team collaboration, translating product goals into technical specs for developers. Other days, he’s fine-tuning yield optimization strategies or spearheading addressability initiatives.
With his first experience training a new hire under his belt, he’s thinking more than ever about how to communicate complex ideas clearly, a skill just as valuable as any line of code or data point.
For Liu, working in ad tech is more than just optimization and operations; it’s about understanding the big picture of user experience, revenue and innovation—and knowing how to connect the dots in a way that drives results.
Andrew Byrd: You work on yield, which involves balancing revenue with user experience. How do you approach that balance, and how does the Daily Mail team handle it overall? 
Jasper Liu: Yield optimization is a big part of my role at the Daily Mail, and it involves coordination across multiple teams. We run A/B tests for new product features to ensure they’re effective before scaling. That means we need reliable reporting, and we rely on people who understand the feature well to interpret the results accurately.
We’ve also built internal tools, including a custom A/B testing system, and use platforms like Prebid for analytics. The key is ensuring everything is validated and optimized before rolling it out to users.
AB: You mentioned using tools like Prebid Analytics. Can you walk us through how you’re using them to measure yield? What success metrics or KPIs do you focus on?
JL: Prebid Analytics is a powerful reporting infrastructure that gives us real-time data, down to the minute or even the second. Our dev team works directly with it to extract the data points most relevant to our business. We’ve built custom real-time dashboards and alerts off the back of it to track key metrics like win rate, crash rate and bidder performance.
Beyond Prebid, we also use an internal platform to monitor site performance and user experience. A big focus for us is integrating data from both platforms so we get a comprehensive view, not just on the programmatic side but also on how it affects the overall user journey.
AB: Brand safety has been a big concern—especially for news publishers, where some advertisers avoid content just because it’s considered controversial. Is that something you think about from a yield perspective?
JL: Definitely. It’s a real challenge for news publishers. We’ve seen cases where brand safety filters automatically block our content at the site level just because a single element triggers a flag. It’s frustrating because it often doesn’t reflect the actual risk of the content. That said, the conversation is starting to shift. There’s growing recognition in the industry that brand safety and brand suitability are not the same. Just because content is news doesn’t mean it’s unsafe.
At Daily Mail, we work closely with leading brand safety partners to ensure our content is properly categorized. It’s crucial that publishers, buyers and measurement companies are aligned so we can have more nuanced conversations and better transparency. Education plays a big role here, helping advertisers understand that news isn’t something to avoid.
And from a traffic perspective, news drives the majority of our audience; about 70% to 80% of our new traffic comes from news stories. So if advertisers want to reach engaged readers at scale, they have to rethink how they navigate brand safety. Instead of defaulting to blocks, the industry needs better tools and conversations to ensure all sides—publishers, advertisers and users—benefit.
AB: Most people know Daily Mail for its news. How are people finding your content? And you mentioned how much traffic that brings in—what other verticals are seeing strong traffic?
JL: We’ve worked hard to build a diversified, organic traffic strategy. Around 99% of our traffic is organic; we don’t pay for it. We’ve focused on SEO, breaking news and timely content that naturally boosts search and social referrals.
We’re also not just relying on platforms like Google, especially with recent algorithm changes favoring their own content. To broaden our reach, we’ve expanded into platforms like YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok, investing in long-form video, short-form content and even podcasts to engage audiences beyond our core site.
AB: As we wrap up, are there any ad tech trends you’re watching closely—whether they’re exciting, concerning or a bit of both?
JL: Two big ones I’m focused on are supply-path optimization (SPO) and post-cookie solutions. SPO is gaining traction as buyers try to reduce inefficiencies and bring more transparency into the programmatic ecosystem. We’re seeing major DSPs building direct relationships with publishers, which cuts out unnecessary intermediaries and improves value flow. That’s a win for both sides.
On the post-cookie front, it’s not just a technical shift; it fundamentally changes identity, attribution and targeting. We’re not panicking, but we’re proactively testing identity solutions, refining our first-party data strategy and supporting our direct sales team with better data packages. We’re also staying close to demand partners to keep pace with what’s next.
AB: I’ve heard from publishers that SSPs and DSPs are starting to blur together as publishers test SPO tools like The Trade Desk’s Open Path. Have you tested any SPO tools or strategies at Daily Mail?
JL: Yes, we’ve been testing several SPO approaches. One is bid throttling, which lets us control bid activity at the page level based on past auction data to reduce unnecessary queries and improve efficiency.
We’re also working directly with select DSPs to streamline the supply chain, cutting out some intermediaries to improve transparency and ensure value flows more directly. While we can’t name partners yet, we’re seeing promising results and plan to share more soon.
AB: On the post-cookie front, have any solutions stood out as particularly effective for Daily Mail?
JL: We’ve leaned heavily into first-party data, and it’s been key to our post-cookie strategy. We’ve developed dmg ID, our proprietary ID solution, which has been in the market for about two years and is driving strong results in our direct-sold business. In the US, we’ve also ramped up our newsletter strategy, helping us build deeper relationships with high-value audiences.
Internally, we call this “premiumization”—not just boosting page value but increasing user value through consented, meaningful engagement. Like many others, we’re actively testing identity partners and refining packaging strategies to stay ahead of the changes driven by Chrome’s deprecation timeline.