April 13 2026 Newsletter: A Major To-Do is now a To-Done

Pub Date
April 13, 2026
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I’m all packed up ready to head to Toronto for this week’s Digital Day Camp and excited to see so many great people. That’s one to-do to-done. The Navigator New York and AI Publisher Response agendas have had a lot of progress, but those aren’t to-done yet. But the big to-done from this past week is the release of the Above the Fold: Q1 2026 Report (here’s a sample if you aren’t already a Stack subscriber). What I did was look through all the conversations we’ve had in the community over the past 3 months, found some of the major themes and assembled some of the nuance that only happens in a community like ours. I then outlined some action steps that publishers, their partners and the industry should take. It clocks in at 44 pages of insights on the world of publishers so far in 2026.

Here’s some math: this is the kind of report that costs hundreds of dollars, but I’ll make you a deal. If you are a non-publisher, subscribe to the Stack and use this code: 3MONTH149NONPUB, your price drops to $149/month. If you’re a publisher, use 3MONTH29PUB (case sensitive) and your price drops to $29/month. If you’re a non-publisher and you sign up as a publisher, you’re a jerk (and we’ll charge you the difference). This way you’ll get the report you know you want, you’ll get the weekly Above the Fold reports and the juicy Below the Fold articles you’ve been dying to check out. All that, but no bag of chips. That was a 90’s thing. Oh! If you’re an In View client, you’ll find this quarterly report in your inbox this morning.

Sign up today and celebrate all the to-doning you are doing. (my editors hate me)

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We’re mere WEEKS away from Navigator NYC (May 5), and you need to see the agenda:

  • Karla Ovalle (Boston Globe) and Rachel Friedman (FatTail) will show us what it takes to sustain a healthy relationship between editorial and ops teams. Because with editorial chasing engagement and loyalty, and ops chasing CPMs and yield, there can be challenges when there’s conflict in those metrics.
  • James Strang (JS Consulting) will help us see how we don’t need to be engineers or engage in six-week implementation tracks to start seeing value from AI in your ad ops workflows right now. He’ll show us the tools we should be looking at, and how to feel confident using them, even if you don’t have a technical background.
  • Mort Greenberg (digitalCORE, Inc.) will show us what the best direct sellers do differently, why presence and trust convert when everything else is commoditized, and how to build the kind of buyer relationships that don’t disappear when the next RFP hits.
  • Rob Beeler will announce the first-ever winners of The Navigator Award! The Navigator Award is for publisher-nominated brands and agencies that support journalism through thoughtful decisions around brand safety and sustainability. Nominations are still open!

And that’s only the beginning of what will be a packed day of powerful conversations.

👉 We need you at Navigator. Now is the time to look at the full Navigator NYC agenda and raise your hand to join us.

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Big AI Publisher Response news: Teams from People Inc., Business Insider, Dow Jones, Mirror Digital, Hearst, Time Inc, WebMD, Archetype Media, Graham Media, New York Post, The Weather Company, WeatherBug, Thomson Reuters, Cox Automotive, and The New York Times joining us… now, we need you and your people there.

But this event isn’t just for ad ops. Because the conversations we need to have about how publishers respond to AI requires cross-team collaboration.

So, bring your people from leadership, content, editorial, marketing, product, and legal.

This agenda is built for all of you, including:

  • Ovetta Samspon will argue that the only ground left worth standing on is truth: not as a mission statement, but as a genuine business model.
  • Jodie Ginsberg will discuss the human cost of telling the truth, grounding the industry’s future in the lived reality of the journalists who report under risk.
  • Daniel Rosenzweig will help us unpack AI governance failures, because those losses are both operational and financial.
  • Christine DiGangi, who runs AI operations for one of the largest digital publishers in the world (People, Inc.) will walk through how to build an AI-enabled editorial operation without crossing the line.
  • Jacob Ward will sit down with Rob Beeler to discuss how AI systems are shaping what gets surfaced, what gets read, and what counts as authoritative, and why publishers may be the last institution positioned to defend plural human thought.
  • Dr. Cecilia Dones will discuss whether AI is creating new alignment between brands and publishers, including what brands are actually doing with AI and what publishers need to understand about how buying decisions are changing.

These are the discussions we need you to be a part of.

👉 If you’re ready to learn more, check out AI Publisher Response, and then raise your hand to join us now.

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Here’s the latest:

  • NEW: 44-Page Above the Fold Q1 2026 Report (Subscribers only) Teams are dealing with immediate revenue pressure, unstable traffic patterns, shifting buyer behavior, AI-fueled disruption, and growing demands on already strained operations. That tension is shaping decisions everywhere; in yield strategy, in staffing, in workflows, in audience development, and in the ongoing question of where publishers can still build durable leverage. By Rob Beeler of Beeler.Tech.
  • Below the Fold: The trust famine inside publishing is a business problem, not a disposable moral argument (Free preview) We know trust matters. We can feel what its absence does to a culture, a business, a public, an audience. We know what it costs when nobody believes anybody. Yet we keep clinging to the same systems that profit from distrust, confusion, exhaustion, and dependency, because they’re familiar, and familiarity has a way of convincing us that it’s safety, even as it’s luring us over a cliff’s edge to our own demise. By Liz Moorehead of Beeler.Tech.
  • Below the Fold: What ‘intent’ means in 2026, and why the machines won’t wait for your product to catch up (Subscribers only) The open web is where discovery and comparison happen. It’s where early-stage public intent lives. If you let the market define intent as only the last mile, then you can’t take credit for what happens before that point. Worse, you’re handing the walled gardens the high ground by default. By Hazel Broadley of Beeler.Tech.

Want to get caught up on everything we’ve published? Start here.

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Here’s what you need to know this week…

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A full list of all 2026 events we’re involved in, all in one nice little package:

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Cannes 2026 Calendar

Each year The Digital Voice creates a robust Cannes calendar. For those attending, worth a review.

Get the Cannes calendar here!

Join the Community!

Thousands of professionals, of all ages, worldwide turn to Beeler.Tech as their meeting place for all things publisher revenue operations. Join the Beeler.Tech Community here! Your teams and colleagues are welcome, too.

Looking for your next opportunity? Know someone else that is?

Check out our job board. Also - sign up for our Jobs Newsletter (delivered every Thursday). Subscribe here.

Join the Women’s Space

Our Women’s Space continues to grow, and we’re developing a Code of Conduct for all Beeler.Tech events: something every attendee will agree to, and something we hope the wider industry adopts. The goal is simple: raise the bar on respect and professionalism for everyone.

We have a Slack channel and a WhatsApp group. The WhatsApp chat is more active, but you’re welcome in either (or both) if you want to be part of the conversation. Please reach out to Melissa if you would like to join one or both.

Team.Beeler Out