Breakfast + Registration

Welcome Remarks

With Rob Beeler

Rob sets the agenda for our day.

Opening Keynote: Deshitifying Media and Advertising

With Jeff Jarvis

Publishers have long walked into almost every trap or chased every shiny object for quick revenue returns and are now paying dearly for this lack of long-term thinking. To survive, radical thinking on both the editorial and business sides of publishing will be required. Let’s start the conversation today.

Auditorium: 1st-party data strategies need 1st-party revenue strategies; the future is direct!

With Laura Boodram and Michael Stoeckel

For every headline reinforcing the revenue risk publishers face in light of recent shifts in regulator, technology, and competitive landscapes, there’s a headline promoting the need to develop a first party data strategy. But what about 1st party revenue strategies? 

Tomorrow’s leading publishers need direct advertising business models that pair the scale and ease of programmatic with the transparency and control of direct advertising.

In this session you will hear from Laura Boodram and Michael Stoeckel, both of whom have spent much of their careers on the supply side. They will provide an analysis of the market and highlight opportunities for innovation within the direct advertising space, as well as bring important agency and demand side perspectives to the conversation.

Breakout room 1: AdTech Economic Forum Recap

With Tom Triscari

Tom Triscari will provide an overview of what was discussed at the AdTech Economic Forum and expand the conversation at Navigator. Each part of the digital advertising ecosystem is impacted differently by investment strategies. Understanding how can help define strategy at an operational level.

Breakout room 2: Keynote Continued: Jeff Jarvis

You didn’t think a conversation about reinventing media could be contained to a single keynote speaking slot, did you? Let’s come together to work the problem as a group.

Breakout room 3: How the Future of Social Impact Will Affect Media Buying

With Kristofer Doerfler and Jonathan Joseph

As the economic model behind the Attention Economy is evolving to better reflect human dignity, privacy, and diversity, we see a profound impact on what brands expect from their media campaigns. To meet this demand, publishers will need to focus on improving the digital content and ad experience, prioritizing ethical data practices and recognizing that business growth will increasingly come from inclusive marketing practices that intentionally consider and plan against a more expansive range of social groups, populations, ethnicities, abilities and identities. Join this important discussion and learn how to operationalize these emergent principles for business impact.

Breakout room 5: Addressability Meets Audience Intention

With Lindsay Van Kirk

While some signals in the ad tech ecosystem are getting weaker, others are stronger. The key is addressability at the moment of intent, when people are making decisions. When publishers can provide both, marketers will shift budgets. How do we get there? Lindsay Van Kirk, SVP and GM of D/Cipher, has been putting the pieces together and will share Dotdash Meredith’s approach to helping marketers reach their goals.

Auditorium: How to save democracy and ad-funded journalism

With Dominic Ponsford and Rich Caccappolo

Publishers must work together to tackle the looming advertising revenue crisis and discuss survival in a world without search traffic. The Daily Mail will share how it transformed from a legacy print giant to a start-up-style digital innovator.

Breakout room 1: Checking in on Privacy Sandbox Testing

With Danielle Smyth, Tyler Romasco, Alex Cone, and Amanda Dean

Hear from the various constituents on Privacy Sandbox testing. What the publisher role is and how to get started. Feedback from an SSP about what they are building for publishers. And finally, feedback from a publisher on how to jump in and what they have found so far.

Breakout room 2: Impressions on Impressions

With Angelina Eng

As a group, we are going to workshop how to elevate publishers in the eyes of advertisers and rectify buyers’ misconceptions about overlooked inventories. Through a deep dive into the evaluative processes of buyers, we’ll explore strategies to highlight quality inventory, fostering an enriched digital advertising ecosystem. Let’s work to bridge the gap between publishers and buyers, advocating for meaningful collaborations and spotlighting exceptional content platforms.

Breakout room 3: The Pivot To Video, Redux

With Andrew Rosenman

The first pivot to video was promoted by walled gardens and platforms to encourage publishers to invest in what turned out to be fools gold. This time around, publishers and rights owners have better control over their revenue destiny, but must contend with a new generation of gatekeepers to reach audiences at scale. In this session we will discuss the lower barriers of entry to reach the largest screen in the home, the television, via CTV streaming apps and FAST channels, and how publishers can reasonably assess the true costs, revenues, and operational demands that the second streaming revolution offers.

Breakout room 5: Optimizing Beyond the Open Marketplace

With Ryan Maynard

Direct-sold campaigns (IO and programmatic) have a different set of optimization levers than the open marketplace. Let’s discuss all the tips and tricks to make sure your direct-sold clients meet their KPIs.

Lunch

Keynote: Hitting the reset button

With Arielle Garica

As third-party cookie deprecation looms and AI accelerates, alongside a frenetic regulatory environment, we find ourselves at an inflection point. Will we try replicating the past, or will we seize the chance to chart a better path forward? There is an opportunity to align business models with consumers in mind and grow the industry in the process. Let’s explore how to shift market dynamics and move towards a sustainable long-term approach to data.

Auditorium: Maximizing Future Success

With Danny Spears and Julia Shullman

How do publishers avoid playing defense and shape their future? Current shifts started years ago. Historical defining moments and decisions can’t be undone. However, understanding historical shifts and how they could have been different can help publishers more strategically guide and mold their future. Join us for a discussion on why publishers missed historical signals, what signals are on the horizon now, and what you can do to strategically navigate and mold the future to benefit publishers.

Breakout room 1: The State Of Floor Price Optimization

With Chris Kane

In this session, Jounce Media’s Chris Kane will provide a detailed analysis of the current state of floor prices. Based on an analysis of over 40 billion RTB bid requests across a diversity of publishers, Jounce’s research identifies ways in which publishers, wrappers, and SSPs modify the floor prices that are declared to DSP buyers and explains the business benefits are risks of dynamic floor price optimization. Chris will provide his perspective on best practices for publishers, SSPs, and DSPs and will field questions about the second-order effects of dynamic flooring.

Breakout room 2: A Different Kind of Data Discussion

With Julianne Jennings

Yes, we need to talk about specific first-party data strategies, but it may be just as important to discuss your role in making your company a more data-driven organization. This roundtable discussion will focus on how to follow the data and, in the process, expand your career options.

Breakout room 3: Niche Publishers: What Success Looks Like

With Justin Barton

In an industry built to reward scale over scarcity, publishers that build sites for specific audiences find that the ad tech ecosystem doesn’t work for them. But with the disruption ahead, perhaps there is a way to succeed based on their relationship with their users.

Breakout room 4: Keynote Continued: Arielle Garcia

Breakout room 5: Agency Update on 2024

With Sam Polandick and Celia Jaggi

Investment leaders at GroupM will rank for us the top trends they are following in 2024 to this point and what they expect the second half of the year to look like. As a group, we’ll discuss how those rankings line up with the publisher perspective.

Auditorium: The Modern Publisher Addressability Stack

With Bosko Milekic and Paul Bannister

It’s time to sort through the options and know how we make publishers true data powerhouses.

Breakout room 1: Why we can’t have nice things

With Lila Hunt

Programmatic makes it easy to buy digital advertising. Buying the right digital advertising? Not so much. Let’s talk about some of the fundamental issues that prevent advertising from being as efficient as possible and rewarding publishers who deliver performance.

Breakout room 2: Adapting to brand transformation

With Rich Sobel

Brands’ relationships with customers & prospects are evolving. From social media & influencers to increased use of 1st party data, from customer-centric storytelling to integrated media approaches, these changes are definitive and yet also are very much a work-in-progress. For better and for worse, publishers being media vendors is no longer enough to support lasting relationships. Rich Sobel is helping brands rethink their customer engagement strategies and can share where, why, and how publishers fit in the mix to retain (and grow) their partnerships with brands.

Breakout room 3: Living a Values-Driven Life

With Christine Short

Often overlooked, core values provide a personalized roadmap for intentional living and work. Identifying these values offers actionable insights that can help you confidently navigate whatever comes your way. Join this session to learn about the benefits of living a values-driven life and participate in an exercise to uncover your guiding principles.

Breakout room 5: Strategies for an Ever-Changing Privacy Landscape

With Jared Moscow

Join us for a session designed specifically for publishers and operations professionals seeking practical strategies to navigate the intricacies of global privacy compliance. We’ll delve into the foundational principles of the Global Privacy Platform (GPP) and its direct impact on publishers, dissecting the differences between the National and State approaches to privacy compliance in the United States. Additionally, we’ll provide a comprehensive overview of the global privacy landscapes. Our conversation will thoroughly evaluate various compliance strategies, equipping publishers with the essential questions and considerations necessary to make informed decisions aligned with their revenue objectives.

keynote: The Last Transformation: How AI’s Transition from Curation to Generation Will Change Everything

With Shelly Palmer

How will your business leverage generative AI, human/AI coworker teams, synthetic media, intelligent networks, and the explosion of automated workflows and processes to create deeper customer experiences and drive growth? Shelly Palmer, Professor of Advanced Media in Residence at the Newhouse School of Public Communications and CEO of The Palmer Group, will help you navigate what’s new, what’s next, and what it means for your business.

cocktail reception