April 20, 2026 Newsletter: Your Boss’s Boss’s Problem Problem

Pub Date
April 20, 2026
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In case you’re thinking that’s a typo, it’s not. You’ve got problems. Your boss has problems. Your boss’s boss has problems. That’s a problem.

Now the question is:

Is there something you can do about it?

I say you better try. I’ve got an idea for you.

Your boss’s boss (and if your organization is big enough, your boss’s boss’s boss) has the same problem you have:

How do I solve for today while trying to solve for tomorrow?

She doesn’t need more data. She wants to connect the dots. She wants to reframe the problem so it can be acted upon. Being told daily that traffic loss is real and going to continue isn’t helpful information on its own. The alarm bells have already gone off. What’s next?

It was many, many years ago that I faced the dilemma of needing tools to get a better handle on hundreds of individual campaigns across many sites. We needed our data in one place, and there was no budget to get what I wanted.

After several failed attempts, I settled on an approach: I created a weekly report and, based on what happened that week, connected the dots on how my proposed solution would help. At first, it was ignored, but I noticed that when I stopped talking about how this solution would help me and instead focused on helping my boss, I got a reaction.

Better yet is when it helped my boss’s boss. That’s when the real conversations happened.

No matter your role, you have a unique perspective.

You’re a unique data point. Tell that story. Start connecting that story to your department's story, and then to the organization. True, results will vary, and it’s possible that other people or departments might be more of an obstacle than you would hope. Here’s the thing: your boss’s boss’s problem can no longer afford internal inefficiencies, period. Be her solution.

P.S. Last week, I published my 44-page Above the Fold Quarterly Report.

It pulls together three months of candid conversations from our community and turns them into something you can actually use: a tactical read on where publishers are feeling pressure, what they’re trying to solve, and where the industry still has real work to do across revenue, operations, product, AI, and market strategy. (Here’s a free sample of the report.)

You need to be a subscriber of The Stack to access it, but here’s the deal:

  • Publishers: Use code 3MONTH29PUB to drop your price to $29/month (usually $49/month) for three months.
  • Everyone else: Use code 3MONTH149NONPUB to drop your price to $149/month (usually $249/month) for three months.

Those promo codes are case sensitive.

If you’re an In View client, check your inbox. I sent it to you last week when it was released.

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We’re TWO WEEKS from Navigator NYC (May 5), we’ve got some big agenda news to tell you about:

  • NEW KEYNOTE ALERT: When Katie Drummond took over as WIRED's Global Editorial Director in 2023, the easier path was obvious – cut, consolidate, optimize for what the algorithms rewarded. She didn't take it. Instead, WIRED made a series of deliberate editorial and operational choices: what to cover, how to cover it, what not to automate, where to invest when everyone else was pulling back. The result was a publication that broke major news, restored profitability, and earned recognition as one of the few bright spots in a brutal two-year stretch for media. Let's learn from Katie the tradeoffs, the bets, and the logic behind the decisions that turned out to matter.

Plus:

  • Lindsay Horrigan (Hearst) will school us on how to tell a better audience story with data. She’ll walk us through how transparent sourcing, third-party-validated methods, and clear documentation can transform your audience slides from ‘claims’ into proof points that build confidence with agencies and brands.
  • Zip Nguyen (BBC Studios) will talk to us about the future of our workforce, because Gen Z practitioners are already inside publisher and ad tech organizations. They’re solving problems, building workflows, and using tools in ways that don’t look like anything in the playbook. So, what do they need from us to succeed?
  • Our own Melissa Chapman (Beeler.Tech’s Head of Community) and Raef Godwin (Beeler.Tech’s Program Director) will lead a conversation about the importance of forming industry connections, and how to get it right. Because that’s how we accelerate career growth, improve skillsets, and boost confidence.
  • 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!

👉 We need you at Navigator NYC.

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

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Have you heard the news? Teams from Ziff Davis, NASCAR, Tripadvisor, TextNow, Better Collective, TeamSnap, Stack Overflow, Advance, People Inc., Business Insider, Dow Jones, Hearst, Time Inc, WebMD, Graham Media, New York Post, The Thomson Reuters, Cox Automotive, and The New York Times are joining us… now, we need you and your people there.

AI Publisher Response is built for cross-functional publisher teams. Yes, if you’re in ad ops, we want you there. But this is also the time to bring your other colleagues in content, legal, leadership, product, innovation, and marketing. Because if publishers want to respond well to AI, everyone needs to be on the same page.

That’s why the AI Publisher Response agenda touches so many different angles of the AI conversation:

  • Jacob Ward will join Rob Beeler for a fireside conversation on 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.
  • 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.
  • Charlotte Seagers will walk through how Ozone has instrumented a powerful publisher-to-LLM workflow, so publishers can measure how their content actually performs in an AI-driven world.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Grant Whitmore will cover the full range of what AI makes findable: from content produced years ago to audiences you never thought to reach to models you couldn’t have built without it.
  • 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.

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:

  • ICYMI: What the bots are telling you, with Gavin King, founder of Known Agents (AI Publisher Response Live replay)If you’re a publisher trying to figure out what AI is already doing to your business, this conversation gets into one of the more immediate parts of that reality: bots are hitting your site at meaningful scale, and most teams still don’t have a clear picture of which ones matter, which ones are useful, and which ones are just taking. In this episode, Rob Beeler and Gavin King (founder of Known Agents) talk about why that visibility gap matters more than ever now that AI crawlers, scrapers, and assistants are becoming part of the operating environment.
  • 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 our 2026 events we’re involved in, all in one nice little package:

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Chicago AdTech Happy Hour

📅 April 30, 5:00 - 7:00 pm CT

📍 Raised, the rooftop bar at 1 W Wacker D

The next Chicago AdTech happy hour will be April 30, 5:00-7:00 pm at Raised, the rooftop bar at 1 W Wacker Dr. It is sponsored by Clipcentric and Assertive Yield! If you want to join, please register here!

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