Publishers at AdMonsters’ Sell Side Summit in Nashville tackled AI scraping, shrinking referral traffic, and the future of mobile, with a clear message: protect content, build communities, and turn ads into real audience value.
Nashville is the center of country music, that American genre known for singing about the good and trying times we’ve been through. And there was plenty to croon about for all of us who gathered this week at the AdMonsters’ Sell Side Summit Nashville.
“To the left, to the left
All you humans get to the left,
In the cloud, y’all, that’s my stuff,
My ideas, please don’t touch!”
Those lyrics, a cover of Beyoncé’s “Irreplaceable” centered around the theme of AI-driven automation, clinched the victory for our ad tech battle of the bands. Congrats to the winning girl group of event attendees, Salt + Pepper.
In addition to the ad ops covers of some of my favorite artists, there were plenty of takeaways for publishers looking to get a better handle on how buyers value their ad inventory.
Dow Jones executive director of ad ops Jennifer Castillo dished on the importance of attention metrics and how offering buyers minimum attention score guarantees can open up bigger budgets. And Scott Messer, our guest host for the event and founder of sell-side consultancy Messer Media, led a tactical deep-dive that quizzed publishers on how well they track inventory quality signals like ad-to-content ratio.
The theme of the event, “Beyond the Browser,” also resonated with publisher concerns around AI-powered, zero-click answer engines and the need to meet audiences outside of their own websites, which are receiving less referral traffic from search and social.
Generative AI was the biggest topic of discussion at the event, especially after Anthony Katsur, CEO of the IAB Tech Lab, presented his session “Techs and Specs to Protect Ya Publisher Checks,” in which he called out AI and LLM companies for stealing publishers’ content without fair compensation.
Katsur’s session on Monday was followed by the Tuesday launch of the IAB Tech Lab’s AI Content Monetization Protocols (CoMP) Working Group. The group will work to make sure that publishers, brands, and AI companies all have a say in how AI is regulated and how publishers are paid when AI uses their data.
Turning Up the Volume Against AI Scrapers
Katsur didn’t mince words about the importance of publishers in the ad tech ecosystem: “If publishers go away, we have a serious fucking problem,” he said. “That is an extinction-level event for us.”
With operating systems stripping signals like cookies and device IDs, and LLMs lifting content without credit or compensation, publishers are feeling the pressure from multiple sides. Through CoMP, the IAB Tech Lab is working on open-source APIs that would force LLMs to access content through structured, trackable, and paid channels.
“Access to content should reflect a business agreement between LLMs and content providers,” said Katsur.
That message landed with Andy Kucserik, head of global partnerships at The Times of India, who admitted he hadn’t realized the full scope of the Tech Lab’s support for pubs until Katsur’s session.
“We have to protect journalism,” he told AdMonsters. “It’s different when one or two publishers push back. But when you have an organization grouping everyone, that’s when real change happens.”
Kucserik was also quick to point out that publishers want to continue testing AI. Still, the exchange with AI companies must be fair, he said.
For example, many publishers are already experimenting with AI in both reader experiences and ad products. However, the bigger challenge lies in ensuring that publishers’ embrace of AI doesn’t devalue or commoditize their content..
“We’re not fearful of AI; we embrace it,” Kucserik said. “But we want a future where what we’re producing as a publisher is protected, and we get paid for our content, instead of it just being scraped.”
Katsur also shed some light into how the Tech Lab plans to lobby government officials to pass laws protecting publishers from unauthorized AI scraping. Hopefully, lobbying will bring AI companies like OpenAI, Perplexity, and Anthropic to the negotiating table, because Katsur shared that these companies have not answered the IAB Tech Lab’s call to collaborate. However, Google and Meta have so far embraced the Tech Lab’s CoMP initiative.
Striking Community Chords
In addition to scraping, AI is also cutting into publisher search traffic by keeping audiences from clicking through to sites.
But, in her Tuesday morning keynote, Stephanie Layser, global head of publisher ad tech solutions at Amazon Web Services, argued publishers shouldn’t panic about traffic losses. They should go back to basics by creating engaging, high-quality content that builds community and advocacy.
“We need to go back to focusing on the consumer,” Layser said, noting that building communities has become the most important metric for success. She outlined a ladder of engagement: expansion, initial interactions, seeking out more content, and ultimately, community advocacy. And she added that fostering brand loyalty is the difference between drawing casual readers and true fans.
Technology, including AI, can help personalize experiences and create interactive touchpoints that move audiences from passive consumption to active participation such as sharing, commenting, even donating, she said.
The bottom line: Publishers need to look beyond pageviews and focus on lifetime value and community impact. As Layser put it, the essential questions are: “Who are you as a brand? What is your relationship with consumers?”
Mobile Takes Center Stage
Given the event’s “Beyond the Browser” theme, publishers also discussed how to engage audiences beyond their websites, specifically on mobile devices and in apps.
In the session “Rethinking Mobile Monetization for the Swipe Generation,” Adam Sadur, VP of app monetization at People Inc., asserted that mobile is where audience attention resides, especially with 70% of Gen Z now being app-first.
His co-panelist, Felix Zeng, SVP of programmatic at The Weather Company, said that his team is pushing that boundary with hyper-targeted ad modules that function more like services than interruptions. They’re testing location-based cold and flu alerts or allergy forecasts that provide users with real-time, useful information.
“We’re not only working with data for advertisers,” Zeng said, “but transforming the creative itself to drive higher performance and monetization.”
That kind of context-aware innovation is effective, but it runs up against the messy reality of app advertising, according to Sadur. As he discussed in the Wrapper two weeks ago, the mobile supply chain is highly convoluted.
“Multi-hop requests happen three times more often in apps than on the web, adding friction to an already complex supply chain,” said Sadur. “Streamlining that ecosystem is the next big opportunity.”
The takeaway: As mobile continues to dominate, the real play is turning ads into personalized, contextual experiences that feel less like promotions and more like value for the audience.