CPMs rose +1.7% MoM (+24.8% YoY) across our network, but headline pricing doesn't tell the full story without looking at impression volume. Traffic pulled back across the board, sessions fell 4.9% and page views dropped 5.9%, so the specific channel & inventory mix matters far more than overall price gains right now.

Full picture, Display CPMs gained +0.8% MoM while Video bounced back +4.2% (though still -20.1% YoY). Mobile (1.64)andDesktop(1.66) sit at near-parity, while CTV eased -5.0% MoM to $6.07 as streaming supply outpaces demand.

The inventory split is key. App was the only inventory type to grow Q3 revenue YoY, pushing its share to ~35% as CPMs climbed from $1.22 to $1.65. Web share dropped from 71% to 61%, dragged down by a ~40% drop in search referrals to top-earning sites.

Partner side, supply is concentrating. Ad Exchange (59%) and Amazon (20%) now control nearly 80% of display volume. Prebid leads integrations at 40% share (1.92CPM),whileAdXfellto36%(1.27 CPM), down -15.9% YoY on CPM as the only integration path in annual decline. TAM CPM jumped +81.2% YoY to $2.12, though 94% of that volume remains tied to Amazon.

What this means for Q4: October's CPM gains were driven by studio and entertainment buyers ramping up for fall programming, offsetting a temporary drop in retail spend after back-to-school. Because vertical-level budget shifts are moving faster than overall market spend, publishers should adjust floor rates based on active advertiser categories rather than expecting a broad baseline lift across all inventory.

Anyone feel like you’re the smartest person on the team and everyone else is dead weight? Have a team of 5 and considering just reducing it to 2 or 1 extra person.

No one retains information, and do the bare minimum. I honestly, don’t want to coach these kids as nothing sticks. It’s insane to me the work ethics of age 22-29 year olds. When I explain topics I do it slowly and in a no judgement environment and they just think I’m some kind of wizard with all this knowledge.

Curious to hear if anyone started media buying via AI agents and what’s been your experience so far.

The direct ads.txt entries went negative for the first time this month since we started tracking.

Full picture- 397k ads.txt lines were added, 462.1k got remove leading to a net -65.2k.For the first time in the series, Publishers are not only trimming resellers but letting the direct partners go too. Resellers made up about 3 quarters of it at -47.8K, direct slipped to -17.4K. Every SSP is being asked to justify its slot now,not just the ones which are sitting behind an intermediary.

Now a caveat upfront before reading too much into the direction- We can’t cleanly separate partner cuts from housekeeping. If a publisher consolidates inventory-sharing declarations under a partner domain, one entry can replace a long list of individually declared sellers. That shows up as removals even though nothing changed commercially Some share of the 65.2K is probably just that which is why we won't rely on the “publishers are dropping direct partners” claim too strongly even though that’s what the headline number says.

Tier breakdown was unremarkable, all three negative, low-traffic took the worst of it at -44.3k, high-traffic barely moved at -462.The long tail that drove growth in recent months is now leading the decline.

SSP side, top gainer was Amperwave at 922 lines. Next four within 270 of that. Usually somebody pulls away in a given month & nobody did here. Top gain of under a 1k against a market shedding 65k is the part worth sitting with, because it means this wasn’t supply reallocating between SSPs.

The bit which is actually useful is the duplication split, as it doesn’t line up with the story the top-line numbers tell. Direct-only share went up a bit in every tier and reseller-only came down, which is what you’d expect if publishers are cutting reseller paths. Fine. But direct plus reseller, which is the bucket where the same SSP sits on a domain through both a direct deal and a reseller path and can end up bidding against itself, didn’t move. Tier 1 still 46% duplicated, tier 2 at 39%, same as last month. So the supply chain is shorter & exactly as it was. Makes sense when you think about which lines are easiest to pull, nobody’s going to start with the ones that require actually auditing their overlap, they’re going to start with the obvious reseller entries. But it does mean “we cleaned up our supply chain” and “we have fewer partners” are not the same claim.

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Hi, I'm new to advertising, so if anyone has a lot of experience with Viant DSP, please help me out.

I recently set up a few PMP deals, but I'm seeing an extremely low bid rate. I made sure targeting is broad, viewability is low, budget is good, CPM is high above the floor price and Geo is national. I mainly keep things really open.

Anyone knows if there are anything in the DSP that might limit my spend that I'm not aware of? Thanks!

Everyone has one. The decimal in the wrong place, the campaign that ran on the wrong dates, the floor price nobody updated.

What's yours? And would an AI agent have saved you, or would it have done the same thing faster?

Hello everyone, located in Canada and I was part of the big Omnicom/IPG layoffs. I have pretty strong network so I thought, but can’t seem to find a gig. I’ve probably done over 100+ interviews, and here reaching to see if there is anyone that can help. Happy to share my resume and more details via DM or linked.

Thanks in advance.

Trying to use Instant Deals for skippable 15 second video. Tried to attach categories just any to be honest like technology but CPM is like $32. I was expecting that high for non-skip.

Are there any settings that get the CPM down a lot lower?

I’m relatively new to advertising and trying to understand Epsilon’s (ideally UK) data proposition.

Publicis is heavily invested in Epsilon, both for its capabilities (…and the wider commercial relationship). It’s clearly a major part of the ecosystem, so I’m keen to understand what it genuinely delivers.

A few questions for anyone with hands-on experience:

What data does it actually have? How much comes from real purchase transactions, such as loyalty card data, versus browsing behaviour, third-party data etc.

How does it identify purchase intent? If building an audience for a high value car like an Alfa Romeo, for example, could it identify affluent consumers from spending data and then determine who is actually in-market for a car? What signals would it use?

How strong is its browsing data? Can it identify people actively researching products, including anonymous browsers, or is the proposition more about identity resolution and predictive modelling?

Where does it fall down? Are there gaps in data coverage, recency, anonymous browsing or the ability to distinguish someone who fits a profile from someone genuinely ready to buy.

Interested in real-world experiences from agency, client or activation-side people, including where the proposition is genuinely strong and where the marketing might overstate things.

About to launch some CTV campaigns and I'm on the creative side. What spy tool do people use to follow competitors as I'd like to get a good idea of the common structures at the moment.

Anyone here run “flight” ads on SA360 or DV360 for USA market ?
And does it work or not ?

Or are you using sophisticated spreadsheets for all planning work? Looking for research insight here

Curious to hear from people working with smaller agencies.

If you're running programmatic campaigns occasionally, hiring a full-time trader can be expensive. But outsourcing also comes with trade-offs around quality, communication, and control.

At what point does it make more sense to hire in-house rather than outsource campaign execution?

Is it mainly campaign volume, monthly spend, platform access, or the need for better control?

Would love to hear how agencies actually make this decision!

With all the news about fees, cheating, monopoly and now this. Why are any buyers not just walking away. I mean google delivering spyware.

Opti Digital we recently had a webinar with Olly Aulakh, CRO, and Rob Beeler, CEO & founder of Beeler.Tech, about how publishers can better understand what is driving revenue changes before jumping into optimization.

They got into something I think a lot of publisher teams deal with: revenue moves, everyone starts looking for a quick fix, but the reason is not always obvious.

Sometimes it is demand. Sometimes traffic mix, content, UX or user behaviour are part of it too. The useful bit was seeing how those signals can be looked at together, so you can understand what is actually changing before making a call.

They also talked about spotting those shifts earlier, using AI to speed up the investigation, and testing changes rather than assuming that adding more ads or tweaking one lever will solve the problem.

In case anyone here finds this interesting, leaving the replay here: https://lp.optidigital.com/diagnose-before-you-optimize-publisher-revenue

😄

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We run a walled garden ad network that reaches 400,000 real estate agents inside the software they must use to transact homes. I have about 5M ad impressions a month that are unsold and we've had a couple of national advertisers run banners and get really strong results.

All of my ad sales team is focused on local advertisers and I'm trying to figure out how reach more national B2B brands who would be interested in our inventory. It's 100% above the fold, no bots, validated identity ad inventory. Would appreciate any advice.

I have heard the programmatic is not that much accepted in market so reseller (of agency who owns DSP) use the word affiliate to market it. Is it right?

I’m running ads for a client on taboola , but we’re searching for other platforms that have the same traffic as taboola or better . Geo USA . Vertical : finance

When we swap out creative for our clients, we see a high increase in sessions for that day which is most likely a result of platform /SSP QA. Is there anyway to mitigate this so it does not skew data in analytics?

I'm getting deeper into the performance UA and programmatic space sale side, and I'm trying to understand how agencies here actually find clients.

Would love to hear from anyone who's run this side of the business.

Where do most of your clients come from: inbound, outbound, partnerships, or referrals?

If you outsource outbound (cold email, LinkedIn), what does it cost? Per booked call, monthly retainer, or per lead? Rough ranges are fine.

What benchmarks have you seen in practice? Reply rate on cold outreach, reply-to-meeting, meeting-to-closed deal?

No names or exact figures needed, ranges and gut feel are great.

If there is any requirement of a Full-Time Programmatic Campaign Manager, Kindly DM.