I am really looking forward to next week’s Digital Day Camp and the new two-day format. True, the majority of my time right now is spent on Navigator New York, AI Publisher Response, and Navigator London, but there are a couple of conversations next week that I’m particularly excited about. I’ll be speaking with people who see that change is necessary and are making bold moves.
I knew Matt McGowan, now SVP Business Solutions at Bell Media, before the David U.K. era of my life began, and Matt has always been an innovator. He’s going to join Urania Agas, Chief Operating Officer, WPP Media, and me for a conversation about moving the market forward by bringing fresh thinking to measuring success.
This past week, on a DDC prep call, I got to meet Louise Clements, President and CEO, The Hive, Swarm-AI, and that was a real treat. She’s a kindred spirit and affirmed some of the things I’ve been trying to articulate, but so much better. “When everyone runs the same engine, every brand sounds the same,” is the trap that I feel that many of us are racing into – especially publishers.
Conversations create connections, not only with people but with new ideas and concepts. If you’re trying to figure out where to go from here, start with a conversation, and things will start to fall into place. Join us next week and for the rest of the Beeler.Tech H1 events.
We’re one month away from Navigator NYC, and here’s what we’ve added to the agenda:
- Ben Hovaness (OMD Worldwide) and Scott Both (Hearst Magazines) will have a joint discussion on the realities of where we are with programmatic right now, and how it actually gets fixed so we have the market we deserve.
- Mark Howard and Monica Wood (TIME) will lead the unbrand-safe conversation we need to have about brand safety, so we can all benefit from amazing advertising-supported content.
- Huda Kazi (Warner Brothers, Discovery) will talk about how we’ve been watching CTV and linear “converge” for years… but even with infrastructure and intent on both sides, it hasn’t happened. So, it’s time to say the quiet part out loud.
- Steve Irenski (Trusted Media Brands) will join us for a conversation about Ads.txt, the little text file we have a tendency to just set and forget. He’ll cover what ads.txt actually controls, what happens when it goes wrong, and what publishers should be auditing right now.
- Mike Racic (Prebid.org) will show publishers how to use tools like Prebid to manage and enhance signal quality, protect pricing, and stay competitive in the evolving programmatic landscape.
And if you haven’t taken a look at the full Navigator NYC agenda, you need to. It’s expanding every day, and the time to raise your hand to join us is running out.
Finally, publishers! Don’t forget, nominations are now open for The Navigator Award. The Navigator Award is for publisher-nominated brands and agencies that support journalism through thoughtful decisions around brand safety and sustainability.
AI Publisher Response isn’t just for ad ops.
It’s for all of your teams: yes, ad ops, but also leadership, content, editorial, marketing, product, legal, and more.
And we already have teams from People Inc., Business Insider, Dow Jones, Mirror Digital, Hearst, Time Inc, 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.
So, if you haven’t seen the agenda, you need to fix that:
- 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.
- 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.
- Lindsay Van Kirk will share People Inc.’s real-world experience blocking bots, including what worked, what broke, and what the data showed once blocking went live.
- 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.
- Susan Kantor will discuss trust in human-created content and what that opportunity could mean for publishers as confidence in digital content gets harder to maintain.
- John Shehata will lay out 11 specific actions publishers should be taking right now, from optimizing for AI citation to building direct audience relationships and negotiating from a stronger position.
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.
Also, as we prepare for May, don’t forget to join us on April 10 for AI Publisher Response Live: What the Bots are Telling You! In today's publisher world, more bots than real people might be visiting your site. In this episode, Rob will be joined by Gavin King, Founder of Known Agents, to discuss this reality and help you understand what these bots are doing, what they are looking for, and what you should do next.
Here’s the latest:
- New from 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.
- New from 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.
- Stop firefighting, start fixing: ProOps Consulting’s Chris Quinn on why GAM workflows are broken, and what to do about it To explore how publishers can move from reactive chaos to proactive control, Rob sits down with Chris Quinn, Co-Founder, ProOps Consulting, a firm that has spent years embedded in both the sell-side and buy-side realities of ad ops. Together, they dig into why manual campaign monitoring has become so normalized, where workflows break down under pressure, and how emerging tools are giving lean adops teams the visibility and automation they need to protect revenue, reclaim hours, and finally get ahead of the curve.
- NEW from Below the Fold: Ad ops is where other people’s bad decisions become emergencies (Free preview) Ad ops gets treated like the crawl space of the business. Most people barely think about it unless something goes wrong. They keep running new wires through it, keep shoving more into it, keep assuming it can hold whatever the rest of the house needs it to hold. Then something shorts out, something leaks, something starts sagging, and suddenly everyone wants to know why it’s such a mess down there. Anonymous publisher with Liz Moorehead of Beeler.Tech.
Want to get caught up on everything we’ve published? Start here.
Here’s what you need to know this week…
- You already know about AI Publisher Response Live, the biweekly(ish) live show leading up to AI Publisher Response on May 6, 2026. Now, you can catch up on all the episodes you’ve missed on YouTube.
- You can also subscribe to AI Publisher Response Live on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Soundcloud.
- And don’t forget to join us for the next AI Publisher Response Live episode on April 10, with special guest Gavin King (Founder of Known Agents) for a conversation about bots… what they are, what they’re actually doing, and what you need to know.
- We’re proud to be a sponsor of The Women in Programmatic Network (TWIPN) Leadership Breakfast at POSSIBLE 2026 on Monday, April 27! In a week full of back-to-back meetings, this is a moment to step into a more intentional room — one where conversations are deeper, relationships are built with purpose, and perspectives are shared openly among peers.
- We also want to share that the Anything's POSSIBLE Lunch w/ Advance Women & New Digital Age Digital Women is happening on Monday, April 27, as part of a greater event series happening at POSSIBLE. Please note, this lunch is invitation only.
A full list of all 2026 events we’re involved in, all in one nice little package:
- Digital Day Camp: Spring - April 15 & 16, 2026 - next week!
- Navigator NYC - May 5, 2026
- AI Publisher Response Event - May 6, 2026
- Navigator London - June 9, 2026
- Base.Camp La Jolla - October 4-7, 2026
- Digital Day Camp: Fall - October 21 & 22, 2026
- Base.Camp Madrid - November 8-11, 2026
Cannes 2026 Calendar
Each year The Digital Voice creates a robust Cannes calendar. For those attending, worth a review.
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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.
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