Publisher insights from Lisbon 2025 - the adtech edition

Our Base.Camp events have become known for rolling up sleeves, tackling daily publisher ops challenges, and creating a community to solve them together. Lisbon was no exception.

Here are just some of the many highlights.

Protocols up to our ears (but we’re ok with it)

Hot on the heels of the launch of AdCP, and representing the Scope3-led consortium, Alex Oakden joined us to provide more color on the protocol - a clear milestone in the evolution of agentic advertising. And then, in case you didn’t already have the sense that context protocols were proliferating at speed, on Day 2 the IAB Tech Lab announced their shiny new UCP (User Context Protocol).

Promising enhanced transparency, efficiency and consistency for the buy side and the sell side, the flurry of industry-backed context protocols bodes well - but of course there are also questions around measurement, fraud prevention and human oversight to work through. You can read lots more about both protocols here.

More from the IAB Tech Lab on protecting the publisher

While we’re on the topic of AI (when are we not…?), we also heard from Shailley Singh about some of their other initiatives: Content Monetization Policy (CoMP), Trusted Server, LLM APIs, Containerization, and CAPI.

All of these efforts aim to bring AI consciously into publisher workflows, protecting IP and revenue, with the IAB Tech Lab acting as a complementary but well-controlled partner.

As LLMs and AI agents increasingly dominate search, interfere with brand messaging, and surface valuable content for free - and with 80% of today’s revenue shared by the top 10 publishing giants - the need for such initiatives is clear.

Addressing declining traffic: the power of direct-sold

Traffic loss is real, and it’s getting worse, with publishers experiencing significant but uneven drops (often 30–40%+). The core business challenge is protecting direct-sold revenue and brand value in an environment where traffic is unstable, algorithms are opaque, platforms control distribution, identity signals are fading, sales teams lag new models, and social monetization doesn’t pay the bills.

In his breakout session, Rob shared what ops teams are focusing on in response:

• Maintaining deliverability despite shrinking pageviews
• Shifting impressions to owned channels (podcasts, social, etc)
• Packaging brand-safe, relationship-driven deals to differentiate from performance-led platforms
• Repricing or rethinking ‘cost-per-day’ takeovers that now deliver fewer impressions

He also highlighted that audience extension, CTV, DOOH, and off-site distribution are necessary survival strategies, but sales teams resist them because they require buying someone else’s inventory (lower margins) and are complex to package/demonstrate the value.

What does this all mean for publishers? Ultimately, continued success will rely on recognizing that not all traffic is equal: loyal users are core assets, and apps, subscriptions, community platforms, and differentiated experiences may matter more than SEO-driven article volume. Who’s ready for the challenge ahead?

What’s ahead for Prebid.org in 2026

Prebid CEO Mike Racic ran through their roadmap for the coming year, centering on three pillars: Commerce, Agentic AI, and LLM monetization. Anybody sensing a theme here?

When it comes to agentic, Predbid intends to take a pretty bullish approach to testing, both from the sell-side perspective, and perhaps less obviously, from a data recognition perspective. Publishers were also urged to pressure-test partners on standards adoption (OpenRTB updates, CTV podding, identity decisions) and avoid vendors who cannot articulate positions on emerging specs - or fail to support them.

The main takeaway? Prebid’s product roadmap philosophy to retain focus on publisher-defined needs and fast-to-monetize building blocks rather than speculative ‘shiny’ features. Mike was keen to underscore their continued, unwavering neutrality, avoiding any move that might advantage individual publishers - a stance always welcomed by the supply-side community.

Real-time data activation for publishers

Yuriy Yarovoy showcased how real-time data can transform decision-making, particularly for gaming publishers. By partnering with Aditiude to leverage signals from hardware, game libraries, gameplay behavior, and spending patterns, Medal achieves audience precision few can match.

The case study highlighted two pillars of real-time monetization: observability and intelligence. The former enables faster troubleshooting, clearer partner management, and more efficient paths to direct deals. The latter allows immediate revenue optimization by adjusting bidders, layouts, and targeting within minutes to respond to gameplay spikes, product launches, or partner performance.

It was a compelling narrative. Their combination of speed and depth (not just scale) of data resulted in 10x better decisions - which directly translated to increased revenue. This approach highlights that publishers who integrate product-level analytics with real-time insights can unlock hidden opportunities, streamline operations, and act with agility in an increasingly competitive digital ecosystem.

CTV publishers reclaiming their ad stack

This second case study session unpacked the messy reality of CTV monetization and why many publishers are turning to white-label or owned adtech layers to regain control. Katya Shkolnik described an all-too-familiar CTV setup: multiple ad servers, SSPs, mediation layers, kids-app proxies, inconsistent reporting, and wildly different auction logic - all producing fragmentation, opacity, and operational drag.

The case for a unified tech layer centered on three pillars:

1. Workflow efficiency: aggregating demand, normalizing data, and automating manual ops across channels
2. Transparency and control: owning log-level data unlocks insights into bidding behavior, win/loss reasons, and pricing levers - letting publishers set their own strategy instead of relying on SSP defaults
3. Adaptive algorithms: controlling traffic shaping and dynamic pricing enables ongoing optimization, smarter KPI management, and safer experimentation, especially at CTV’s scale.

Katya highlighted a revenue lift of ~75% from their template-based header bidding setup,  and praised the flexibility of a nimble partner like TeqBlaze. The overarching message: publishers should retain ownership of core tech and data, migrate gradually, and use that control to stabilize yield, reduce chaos, and future-proof their CTV stack.

So there you have it. In three days, powered by fado, great food and wine, and one of Melissa's infamous group runs, we attempted to solve the world’s problems as we saw them. Or the industry’s at any rate. How did we do?