Learning from the past to succeed in the future was the subject of a joint discussion between our COO Danny Spears and ad tech leader Julia Shullam at Navigator NYC – Beeler.Tech’s flagship conference in the US – in early May.

With digital display revenues for premium publishers growing by just 3% since 2017, compared to 19% for the overall market, their influence in an ad tech-dominated market and relevance to global marketers is shrinking. Readdressing the balance requires industry-level coordination, the two agreed.

To map out a way forward, Danny and Julia explored some of the disruptive events that have impacted publishers, including DoubleClick’s acquisition of Abacus Direct, Apple News and GDPR. While disparate, the common outcome of each has ‘unbundled’ publisher data from inventory and ‘decoupled’ publisher content, with audiences consuming it on other platforms.

Together, this unbundling and decoupling is a fundamental cause of value leakage as publisher assets are repackaged by others elsewhere. It’s they who capture the value, not the publisher, making it a key strategic risk. With that in mind, Danny and Julia moved the conversation to how publishers can prepare to move away from a third-party web dominated by ad tech, towards a first-party web built around publishers as primary actors.

Circling back to the view that industry-level action is needed, Danny and Julia agreed that publishers must act together to put themselves back at the heart of the industry – it a generational moment to seize back control. The protection of IP, control of distribution, vendor scope management and a greater focus on trust as a criteria for partner selection are key – as is preparing now for how AI-powered buying technologies will no doubt disrupt the market.