Join us Dec. 1-3 in New Orleans for the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit
Challenge board: Publishers speak out during the Digiday Publishing Summit
This article is part of Digiday’s coverage of its Digiday Publishing Summit. More from the series →
A highlight of Digiday’s summit events is the challenge board, to which attendees post the top obstacles their businesses face at the moment. During this spring’s Digiday Publishing Summit in Vail, Colorado, publishers filled the challenge board with a whole host of issues that ranged from traffic troubles to AI anxiety.
“There’s a lot of unknowns. You’ve got generative AI and the impact that’s going to have to all of us. Cookie deprecation, of course; it’s been going on for a while, but it’s finally happening. And I would also say algorithm changes in Google,” said Sharon Milz, chief information officer at Time.
In the video below, a handful of publishing executives from Bustle Digital Group, Dotdash Meredith, Hearst Magazines, Semafor, Time and Yahoo Finance explain the biggest challenges they see confronting the industry and how their companies are going about contending with those challenges.
“Lowering the dependency on traffic sources, no matter where they are, is an important lesson we’ve learned over the last 10 years,” said Sheel Shah, svp of growth, enthusiast and wellness at Hearst Magazines.
More in Media
Marketers move to bring transparency to creator and influencer fees
What was once a direct handoff now threads through a growing constellation of agencies, platforms, networks, ad tech vendors and assorted brokers, each taking something before the creator gets paid.
Inside The Atlantic’s AI bot blocking strategy
The Atlantic’s CEO explains how it evaluates AI crawlers to block those that bring no traffic or subscribers, and to provide deal leverage.
Media Briefing: Tough market, but Q4 lifts publishers’ hopes for 2026
Publishers report stronger-than-expected Q4 ad spending, with many seeing year-over-year gains.