Mediavine

Publishers deserve direct access to the people making decisions about the platform their businesses rely on, but that access isn’t always easy to find. Mediavine runs that access monthly. Live, with Eric Hochberger, Mediavine’s Co-Founder and CEO, and Amanda Martin, CRO, covering where the industry is headed, what we're seeing across the network, and an open Q&A with no filter. Publishers bring the questions and leadership actually answers. It's a deliberate choice in how a monetization partner should operate. Not just reporting results, but standing behind them, in real time, in front of the people they affect most. If you're a Mediavine publisher, this is your invitation. Join us this Wednesday at 1pm with your questions. Check the link in your email to register. 

With Mediavine's Annual Investment Summit coming up, I've been thinking about how much programmatic is evolving. For years, people made the decisions behind the scenes. Increasingly, AI and machines are making them. I've spent my career across business development, ad verification, ad tech, and now the supply side, and every shift in this industry comes down to one question: what does the buyer actually trust? Agentic AI is answering that question without a human in the room. A brand's AI agent interprets a campaign brief and evaluates inventory in real time, contextual fit, audience quality, signal clarity, brand suitability, no meeting required. Decisions that used to take days now happen at the impression level, in milliseconds. What agents optimize for hasn't changed: signal clarity over noise. Publishers with engaged audiences, strong first-party data, and original content still win, because that's exactly what agentic systems are built to reward. Mediavine is already positioned for this. Our partnership with Scope3, a founding member of AdCP, puts our publishers directly in the evaluation layer agentic buyers use, before a bid is ever placed. The rules for how inventory gets discovered have just changed. The publishers who can prove trust and quality are the ones agentic systems will choose.

Zero-click search is up roughly 20%, but the impact on publishers isn't consistent. Some sites have lost as much as 70% of their traffic, where others are still growing. The difference is the audience behind it. Bots don't monetize. Mediavine’s CRO, Amanda Martin, joined Tina (Borelli) Iannacchino of #ThePubWay podcast to dig into what's actually happening beneath those numbers and why, despite all the disruption, Mediavine inventory is trading at higher rates than it has over the past two years. The conversation also gets into curation and how buyers can find quality publisher inventory as AI changes both sides of the ecosystem. Amanda's advice to publishers is to stop protecting today's yield so carefully that you're afraid to try something new. Search is changing, and waiting for the old model to return could cost more than experimenting now. Listen to the full conversation: https://lnkd.in/eUwWfHGM

I joined #ThePubWay podcast to talk about how AI, changing search behavior, and curation are reshaping the economics of the open web. Zero-click search is up roughly 20%, and the impact on publishers is anything but consistent. Some sites have lost as much as 70% of their traffic, while others keep growing. The difference isn’t just how much traffic you have. It’s the quality of the audience behind it. You can’t monetize a bot. But there’s another side to the story: even with all of this disruption, Mediavine inventory is trading at higher rates than it has over the past two years. Quality content, engaged audiences, and the open web still have real value. We also talked about curation and the opportunity to create a more direct connection between buyers and quality publisher inventory, particularly as AI changes how both sides of the ecosystem operate. My advice to publishers is pretty simple: don’t protect today’s yield so carefully that you’re afraid to try something new. Search is changing. The way buyers transact is changing. Waiting for the old model to come back could cost you more than experimenting with what comes next. Listen to the full conversation: https://lnkd.in/gZiKmPAM

Every WordPress site collects layers over time: plugins, themes, updates, and integrations. Most of them make perfect sense when you first add them. The trouble starts when all of those pieces have to work together and traffic actually tests it. Mediavine is partnering with Andrew Wilder of NerdPress for This Old (WordPress) House, a Mediavine-exclusive live session on what can go wrong behind the scenes of a WordPress site and what’s worth checking before peak traffic hits in Q4. If you’re thinking about your site’s technical debt, or just wondering what might be lurking under the hood, this one’s definitely worth attending. Mediavine publishers, mark your calendars for Wednesday, August 26th from 2-3pm ET and check your email for the registration link.

Meet Max Karr, Mediavine's Director of Buyer Development 👋 Max builds strong relationships with advertising agencies and brands looking to connect with audiences across Mediavine’s network of more than 20,000 publishers. He takes a consultative approach to every partnership, first understanding each client’s goals and then identifying the right publisher mix to create successful, mutually beneficial campaigns. When buyers ask him what makes Mediavine different, he shows them our premium publishers, first-party data, and hands-on partnership approach that gives a campaign room to succeed, rather than just more inventory to sort through. What Max finds most rewarding is seeing a new client start with a single test campaign, achieve strong results and continue investing because they’ve built trust in both the Mediavine team and its publishers. For him, fostering long-term partnerships is always more meaningful than simply closing a deal. What buyers don't usually see is that most of the real work happens before a campaign ever goes live. Educating, troubleshooting, gathering feedback, and advocating for publishers, all of it strengthens demand for the network, which creates more opportunities for publishers to earn. Max believes curation will only become more important as agentic buying and AI continue to transform the advertising industry. While automation is making media buying faster and more efficient, it also raises the bar for what truly qualifies as well-curated, high-quality inventory. That’s where premium publishers with trusted audiences and authentic engagement have a distinct advantage. As the industry evolves, he sees the future belonging to partners who prioritize quality, transparency and long-term value over scale alone. If a buyer only remembers one thing from talking to him, he wants it to that Mediavine truly cares about the long haul, not just the single deal. When buyers win, publishers win too, and that's the whole point! We hit the jackpot having Max here, and so did every buyer, and every publisher, on the other end of the partnerships he builds. He's part of how we deliver on our mission to build the future of monetization for digital businesses, one publisher at a time.

Mediavine now powers monetization for 20,000 independent publisher sites. For advertisers and demand partners, that number represents something specific. A single point of access to one of the largest, most concentrated pools of premium, brand-safe inventory on the independent web. 114 million monthly unique visitors, consistent editorial quality, and a supply chain built for performance and transparency. Scale at this level changes what's possible on the demand side. Richer data signals drive smarter optimization. Broader reach across high-quality, contextually relevant environments drives stronger campaign outcomes. And a network this size gives demand partners the confidence to invest at volume. The independent publisher ecosystem is a significant market. Mediavine operates at its center.

Mediavine is heading to Lake Tahoe. Adele Pellicane and Max Karr of Mediavine's Buyer Development team will be on the ground at MediaPost's Data & Programmatic Insider Summit from August 16-19, connecting with partners and meeting the people shaping where programmatic is headed next. If you're attending, reach out to Adele and Max. They'd love to connect! #mediapostinsidersummits

Publishers have always been at the center of how Mediavine builds products, approaches partnerships, and sets strategy. Now, we’re solidifying that commitment with a new role dedicated to making sure the publisher perspective has a direct line into those decisions. And who better to advocate for publishers than a publisher herself? Cyd Converse is stepping into the newly created role of Director of Publisher Advocacy & Partnerships. Cyd has been with Mediavine for more than six years, serving in multiple roles across the company. And before joining us, she spent nearly two decades building and running her own publishing business, The Sweetest Occasion. That combination matters. Cyd understands the publisher experience firsthand, and she also knows Mediavine from the inside. She knows what platform decisions mean for publishers and their businesses, and she’ll bring that perspective into the conversations and decisions that impact publisher revenue. For us, advocacy has to translate into outcomes. That’s the standard for this role and why Cyd is the right person for it. Read the full announcement to learn more about Cyd’s new role and what it means for publishers: https://lnkd.in/gqtmyPhC

Google Search page views fell 34% for publishers last year. Google Discover fell 15%. The publishing landscape is shifting faster than most platforms are built to respond to. Mediavine's answer is to bring publisher experience to the table by giving a deeply respected publisher with years in the trenches a seat in the strategy room. We're announcing the appointment of Cyd Converse as Director of Publisher Advocacy & Partnerships, a newly created role that connects publisher insight directly into Mediavine's product, programs, and business strategy. Cyd has lived the challenges publishers face. She built and ran The Sweetest Occasion for nearly two decades, and she's spent the last six years at Mediavine translating that experience into programs that move the needle for publishers across the network. In this role, she'll ensure publisher needs shape what Mediavine builds, the partnerships it pursues, and how quickly new tools reach the people who need them. She's already doing that work through Mediavine Labs. As Cyd put it: "Advocacy that doesn't change outcomes isn't advocacy. That's the standard I'm holding this role to." The role couldn't be in better hands. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gePvcgn8