Publisher Perspectives: What's Next?
About this Event
Event Entrance: 71 Whitfield Street, London, W1T 4DE
Agenda
🕑: 09:00 AM - 09:30 AM
Registration & Breakfast
🕑: 09:30 AM - 09:45 AM
Welcome Remarks - Publisher Perspectives
Info: “What are we actually here to fix?” - Why Publisher Perspectives exists: to move past recycled industry talking points and get into the commercial, operational, and existential issues shaping publishing now. Set up the day around agents, audio, AI traffic disruption, bot activity, retail media, data collaboration, and what publishers need to do to protect their revenue and value.
🕑: 09:45 AM - 10:30 AM
Buyer / Seller Agents: Real Shift or 2026 Hype Cycle?
Info: Buyer agents, seller agents, and agentic media buying are quickly becoming the industry’s favorite new phrase but What is real, What is theater, and What should publishers actually prepare for? This session asks whether agent-driven buying will improve efficiency and quality, or simply create another commercial layer between publishers and buyers. Topics include seller agents, buyer-side automation, standards, trust signals, deal negotiation, data exposure, and whether publisher value can survive machine-led buying.
🕑: 10:30 AM - 11:00 AM
Audio Is Not a Side Channel Anymore.
Info: Audio has trust, attention, and habit so why is it still treated like bonus inventory? Audio has moved beyond “nice-to-have” media. Podcasts, streaming audio, radio extensions, and publisher-led audio products are becoming stronger channels for trust, habit, attention, and brand storytelling. This panel explores what publishers can realistically build, what buyers need from audio measurement, how audio fits into premium media plans, and whether audio can become a meaningful commercial growth channel rather than a bolt-on.
🕑: 11:00 AM - 11:30 AM
Networking Break
Info: What are we pretending is working? A mid-morning break designed to keep the conversation moving across publishers, buyers, agencies, trade bodies, and partners.
🕑: 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM
AI Search Broke the Publisher Bargain. Now What?
Info: What happens when the answer appears before the click?
AI search, answer engines, summaries, and chat interfaces are rewriting the old value exchange between publishers, platforms, and audiences. For years, publishers tolerated search dependency because visibility produced traffic, and traffic produced revenue. But as answers appear before the click, that bargain is starting to break. This panel looks at the commercial consequences: referral decline, zero-click consumption, reduced ad supply, content licensing, search dependency, audience ownership, brand safety, and whether publishers can negotiate new value or are being pushed into another platform-defined relationship.
🕑: 12:30 PM - 01:30 PM
Lunch
🕑: 01:30 PM - 02:00 PM
When Machines Become the Audience: How Much Publisher Value Is Disappearing?
Info: When machines consume the content, who captures the value? Publishers are facing a new non-human traffic problem: bots that distort monetisation, AI crawlers that extract content value, scrapers that ignore publisher controls, and measurement systems that still struggle to separate human attention from machine activity. This session looks at what machine traffic is doing to publisher economics, buyer trust, content protection, audience reporting, infrastructure cost, and revenue quality. It will also ask what publishers can control, what buyers should demand, and whether the next phase of the open web needs stronger rules around access, compensation, and accountability.
🕑: 02:00 PM - 02:30 PM
Retail Media Is Coming for Everyone’s Budget.
Info: Is retail media a partner channel, a competitor, or just another walled garden?
Retail and commerce media are colliding with search, programmatic, CTV, and off-site activation. As retailers gain stronger data, closed-loop measurement, and direct brand budgets, where does that leave publishers? This session explores whether publishers can become high-quality off-site environments for retail and commerce investment, or whether even more open-web spend will be absorbed into retail-controlled ecosystems.
🕑: 02:30 PM - 03:00 PM
Networking Break
Info: What should publishers stop pretending? A final networking break before the afternoon turns toward data collaboration and the closing debate.
🕑: 03:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Data Collaboration Without the Theater
Info: Are clean rooms solving the problem or selling the dream? First-party data, clean rooms, contextual signals, IDs, consent frameworks, cohorts, and privacy-safe collaboration all promise better outcomes. But what is actually useful for publishers and buyers, and what is expensive complexity? This panel separates practical data collaboration from theater, with a focus on commercial value, operational usability, data leakage, consent, and who actually benefits.
🕑: 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Closing Debate: What Should Publishers Stop Doing Immediately?
Info: No Slides. No Prepared Speeches just Spicy Takes. A fast, opinionated closing debate designed to leave the room with useful tension, not safe consensus. Suggested provocations: stop calling everything premium; stop accepting bad measurement; stop letting platforms define value; stop building products buyers cannot buy; stop giving AI systems content without a strategy; stop treating audio as too small to matter; stop chasing every shiny channel; and stop mistaking complexity for progress.
🕑: 04:30 PM - 07:30 PM
Event Close & Networking Drinks
Info: Closing Recap: “What did we actually agree on?" "Where do we go from here?" and "What's Next?" ....And then on the pub.
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
GBP 54.88
