A chat with Jess Davies
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The “open web” for premium media companies should never have existed
“The open web is shrinking”. “The open web is dying”. “The open web is valuable”. “Save the open web!” The “open web” as the advertising industry uses it is an ad tech creation. The programmatic open marketplace took the name to clean up its image following all sorts of scandals
AI is not media companies’ biggest challenge
Were media owners thriving before generative AI went mainstream? Were they self-sustainable before GDPR came into force? Were they making the most of their advertising revenue with this or that ID solution? Will agentic AI in advertising solve their monetisation problems? The list of questions could continue. Each of
The Funnel Is Dead. Build A Trust Loop Or Lose Your Audience To AI | Adexchanger
Premium media owners have one commercial asset that generative AI cannot reproduce at scale: the trust audiences place in their brands. Every other historical advantage publishers once had with audiences – voice, expertise, production quality – is being flattened by AI systems that churn out good-enough output in seconds. Zero-click
Everyone said AI. The 2026 Cannes Lions meant humanity.
Every conversation at Cannes this year was about AI. The message between the lines confirmed the opposite: the future of monetisation lies in humanity. Neil Vogel, CEO of People Inc., provocatively defined the 2026 Cannes Lions as “the first post-ad tech, post-open web Cannes” on Brian Morrissey’s