The Weekly Bulletin | January 13, 2026

Catch up on your members' content, check out the community buzz, and browse through job opportunities

Author

Vahe Arabian
January 13, 2026

Hi SODP community,

Let's recap on what's been happening, the new content, industry updates, tips, and more.

.TIP OF THE WEEK.

In 2026, the AdTech landscape is shifting, driven by privacy-first approaches, AI-powered automation, and intelligent frameworks focused on building trust-based monetisation strategies.

Here's what publishers and advertisers should keep an eye on to stay ahead:

  1. Privacy-First Monetisation: Consent as a Revenue Driver

    Your consent strategy isn't just a compliance issue; it's directly tied to your monetisation strategy. Granular consent tracking will unlock higher CPMs and better monetisation results.

    👉Actionable Tip: Bring consent management into revenue operations.

  2. Multi-ID Strategy Is Essential

    As we move past third-party cookies, a multi-ID strategy will be critical. Publishers will need to select identity frameworks that suit their needs.

    👉Actionable Tip: Evaluate the right identity solution based on your publisher type and focus on addressability.

  3. AI Automation Takes Over Optimisation and Creative

    By 2026, expect AI-powered tools to handle end-to-end programmatic operations, freeing up human resources for higher-level strategy.

    👉Actionable Tip: Embrace AI tools to automate creative development and campaign optimisations.

  4. Contextual Targeting Becomes a Privacy-First Alternative

    AI-powered contextual engines will enable precise targeting based on content rather than user data, allowing advertisers to deliver relevant ads without compromising privacy.

    👉Actionable Tip: Invest in contextual targeting technologies that leverage AI.

  5. Connected TV (CTV) Maturity and Programmatic Expansion

    By 2026, CTV will reach new heights in programmatic sophistication, evolving beyond simple audience targeting to embrace data-driven creative optimisation.

    👉Actionable Tip: Integrate CTV into omnichannel strategies for a unified ad experience.

  6. Trust as a Core Asset

    Transparency in how data is collected and used will become a competitive advantage for publishers.

    👉Actionable Tip: Focus on building trust through clear data practices and proper consent management.

Publishers who succeed in 2026 will be those who:

  • Optimise their consent strategies to drive revenue.

  • Adopt multi-ID solutions for better addressability.

  • Leverage AI for creative and campaign automation.

  • Adopt contextual targeting to respect privacy while delivering precision ads.

  • Integrate CTV into their omnichannel advertising strategies.

The key to thriving in 2026 is adaptability and strategic foresight. Those who embrace privacy-respecting, AI-driven frameworks will lead the charge.

.NEWS OF THE WEEK.

➡️ Global publisher Google traffic dropped by a third in 2025. Google search traffic to publishers declined globally by a third in the year to November, according to new Chartbeat data. In addition, referrals to more than 2,500 publisher websites from Google Discover, a feed served to users on Google’s native mobile apps and within its Android operating system, were down 21% year on year. The new Chartbeat data was published in the Journalism and Technology Trends and Predictions 2026 report published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

➡️2026 looks ominous for media, from Hollywood to journalism. The worst thing about today's media environment is that — bad as it is — it is easy to imagine how things might get worse in 2026. Traditional journalism outlets buffeted on all sides by misinformation, weak-kneed ownership and a hostile White House will struggle to earn back public trust even as the need for fair, accurate reporting grows. Smaller groups of wealthy businesspeople control larger swaths of the country's information ecosystem, pitting their overall corporate interests against the public's desire for accurate journalism challenging powerful institutions in society.

➡️ CES 2026 Signals a Shift to Physical AI. At CES 2026 (January 6-9), Nvidia officially launched its Rubin platform to replace Blackwell. The new architecture comes with a suite of six new chips including the Vera CPU and Rubin GPU engineered to reduce AI infrastructure costs, achieving a 10x reduction in inference token costs and requiring 4x fewer GPUs to train Mixture-of-Experts models than its Blackwell predecessor. Major cloud providers including Microsoft, AWS, and Google have committed to deploying Rubin-based superfactories in the second half of 2026. CES 2026 marked a decisive shift from digital AI tools to physical AI embedded in hardware, robotics, and autonomous systems.

➡️ Google’s AI Inbox could be a glimpse of Gmail’s future. This week, Google announced a new AI Inbox view for Gmail that replaces the traditional list of emails with an AI-generated list of to-dos and topics to track based on what’s in your inbox. It’s not widely available yet, but I have access, and in the few hours I’ve spent messing around with it, I can see how AI Inbox could be a helpful or even transformational way to manage your inbox. But right now, it’s not going to change the way I manage my email, and I’m not sure it ever will.

➡️ SEO Is No Longer a Single Discipline. Most people have a favorite coffee mug. You reach for it without thinking. It fits your hand. It does its job. For a long time, SEO felt like that mug. A defined craft, a repeatable routine, a discipline you could explain in a sentence. Crawl the site. Optimize the pages. Earn visibility. Somewhere along the way, that single mug turned into a cabinet full of cups. Each one different. Each one required - none of them optional anymore. That shift did not happen because SEO got bloated or unfocused. It happened because discovery changed shape.

.SODP POSTS.

9 Best CRM Solutions for Publishers in 2026

Digital publishers are in a fight for survival, striving to capture audience share from established rivals while fending off challenges from new entrants to fuel their business growth . It’s more important than ever before that publishers cultivate their audience relationships if they hope to drive revenue and maximize engagement.

Audience churn is a real problem for publishers, with some research finding that the media and entertainment industry’s average customer retention rate is just 25%. Little wonder then that more and more publishers are turning to customer relationship management (CRM) systems to help build and retain their audience.

CRM platforms have emerged as powerful tools that enable publishers to streamline their operations, enhance communication and improve customer relationships.

What Is CRM? Customer relationship management (CRM) is the practice of collecting and interpreting customer data to build personalized marketing or sales campaigns and strengthen relationships between a brand/publisher and its customers/audience.

.EXCLUSIVE OFFER.

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.JOB BOARD.

➡️ The Conversation (U.S.) is seeking a Senior Editor, Economy and Business who will cover a wide range of topics – from the Federal Reserve’s rate hikes and unemployment to consumer trends and economic inequality – by commissioning and editing articles from scholars in a variety of fields to help them inform their broad general audience. (U.S., Remote).

➡️ The Examination (U.S.) is seeking an experienced reporter with a track record of producing impactful stories to join their growing food team. They’re looking for someone with a collaborative mindset who is passionate about investigating an industry whose products are among the leading causes of preventable disease and early deaths worldwide. (U.S., Remote)

➡️ The Telegraph & Argus (UK) is looking for a top-class reporter for the Bradford area who is passionate about digital storytelling, hard-working, full of ideas and has the drive to come up with innovative ways of presenting stories across various platforms. (UK).

.SOCIAL MEDIA.

➡️ Jack Pauley on LinkedIn:

I can usually tell if a “great publisher prospect” will waste an SSP’s month in 10 minutes.

Not because of traffic. Because of friction.

BD teams still run on volume. Then Ad Ops and Engineering inherit the chaos.

So we started using a simple mental model. I call it the Publisher Discovery Pyramid.

âś… Tier 1: Fast-win supply (high value, low drama)

  • ads.txt exists AND our seller line matches a real sellers.json entry

  • we see live ad tags / Prebid activity (not just a pretty Similarweb chart)

  • the ads.txt file looks maintained (not 200 lines of history)

⚠️ Tier 2: Worth it, but plan the work

  • big upside, but missing pieces (app-ads.txt missing, sellers.json doesn’t resolve, wrapper mess)

  • CTV/app endpoints where SDK and platform work will slow you down

❌ Tier 3: The long tail that quietly drains teams

  • no tag evidence, no authorization hygiene, unclear ownership

  • or “looks premium” but every path screams duplicate/resold supply

These are the highlights for the last week.

Until next!

Vahe Arabian and the editorial team at SODP