Media Briefing: Tough market, but Q4 lifts publishers’ hopes for 2026

Q4 (and 2026) are looking good for ad revenue

After a steadier-than-expected start to the fourth quarter, publishers are heading into 2026 feeling… well, less bad.

So far, Q4 ad spend is pacing ahead compared to the same quarter last year. For others, it’s tracking flat year-over-year with rises expected to come via pending PMP deals and increased premiums on new video products, leading them to expect single-digit year-over-year bumps by the end of 2026.

Despite talks of a softer ad market and an uncertain economy, the end of the year isn’t looking so bad. And one or two publishers are even buoyant about 2026 prospects. 

Five out of the eight publishers Digiday spoke to said they were bringing in more ad revenue in Q4 2025 compared to the previous quarter, and compared to Q4 2024. 

“Programmatic RPMs even ahead of Thanksgiving, [Black Friday and Cyber Monday] — are way up over last year,” said Riva Syrop, president of Apartment Therapy.

However, direct sales were down. “Some of our normal big Q4 direct advertisers ended up not running large-scale, non-programmatic campaigns anywhere this quarter. Interestingly, we’re in talks with most of them about [first half of] 2026 programs, but Q4 2025 felt like a much more conservative direct sales period,” they added.

Another publishing exec at a global publisher said that while Q4 and year-over-year growth are looking good (they’re several million dollars up), it is also struggling with marketers already moving their strategy to 2026, which can delay production or make it difficult generally to get complex content-led deals secured for the remainder of the year. The budgets are there, but they’re being shifted into Q1 2026, the exec said.

But that’s not the case for Axios, where the publisher is on track “to post the largest Q4 in Axios history,” said Jacquelyn L. Cameron, Axios’ CRO. This growth comes from its live events business, its creative marketing business and its local newsletter arm. “Together, those products have positioned us to close 2025 at our strongest point yet, with notable year-over-year growth,” she said.

Time’s chief operating officer Mark Howard said video advertising is what’s driving the publisher’s ad business forward into 2026. Ad revenue is “significantly” higher in 2025 compared to last year, though he declined to share by how much. 

“In totality, video and video sales is going to be the biggest growth driver [for 2026], both from having significantly more supply to be able to sell into and also meeting the market,” Howard said. “Shockingly, mid-November, [ad spend is] actually still continuing to inch up even slightly higher. We’re seeing some last-minute orders come in and still running through the final bell here.”

Uncertainty still the name of the game

Publishers didn’t come into this year expecting to feel anything close to OK about 2026. AI summaries and Google AI Overviews were supposed to chew through open-web traffic and programmatic revenue, just as a murky global economy kept brand budgets on a short leash. 

Naturally, AI summaries have had an impact. People Inc. said its programmatic ad revenue fell in Q3 directly because of Google’s AI Overviews, while Reach blamed the feature for a programmatic dip in the same quarter due to a 1 percent drop in page views. But so far, the drop-offs haven’t quite come close to matching the industry’s worst fears.

But publishers aren’t counting any chickens. Especially given Google’s Gemini 3, unveiled on Nov. 18, is expected to provide even more accurate reasoning and interactive elements than its previous version, when users type in prompts, making zero-click searches even more embedded.

“I do think that the AI overviews are going to impact ad inventory for both direct and programmatic,” said a head of digital at a multicultural publisher. “I’ve heard from others in the industry who work in a more programmatic-first environment that they are seeing a decrease in programmatic CPMs. I don’t know if it’s tied to less valuable inventory being available due to the loss of search traffic… or other market conditions.”

Despite some positive signals, publishing execs said they were still feeling the effects of economic uncertainty. The U.K. ad market is in limbo as it awaits the fall fiscal budget, due to be released on Nov. 26., while the Trump administration’s trade and tax uncertainties continue to ripple through markets.

“I am hearing of situations in which some advertisers are responding to market conditions by lowering their ad budgets or not committing dollars up front,” said the multicultural publisher’s head of digital.

A head of sales at a large publisher said uncertainty in the economic market is leading to more last-minute, in-quarter briefs.

“Brands are looking for short-term, performance-based programs. We’re well-positioned given the endemic and high-intent nature of our properties,” they added.

Meanwhile, an SSP exec said they had heard anecdotally that some buyers have held back on spending for Cyber Weekend and Black Friday, betting on a moment that reliably delivers performance at a time when everything else feels uncertain. Another publisher said they had seen some pullback from consumer goods, electronics, and financial services clients. 

Publishers are responding to that by being mindful of advertisers needing to make last-minute decisions.

Syrop said Apartment Therapy had launched an ad product for the website, social and email that could go live within 10 days of a campaign sign-off. It has expanded the product across its food site The Kitchn this year. 

Meanwhile, Danish tabloid Ekstra Bladet has been trying to move past the old video autoplay crutch, shifting its focus to more premium video products, that don’t ambush users mid article. So far, this click-to-play, always audio-on video with no ad clutter, is seeing three-digit growth, said Thomas Lue Lytzen, ad tech sales director at the publisher. “Q4 is somewhat strange for us, programmatic is slowing down, but we’ve seen a surge in IOs. I think we’ll get pretty close to 2026, driven by video. Overall, display is still declining, and publishers need to focus on new sources of revenue,” he said. 

2026 is looking clear, and it’s looking good

Four publishing execs said Q1 of next year is already off to a good start.

“We have greater 2026 visibility than I think we’ve had going into a year since I joined [this company,]” Syrop said. “I think after the start, stop, start, stop of this past year, companies are eager to lock in multi-quarter or full-year campaigns early that will give them ownership of our strongest product and content offerings.”

The head of ad sales said so far, January is pacing better than previous years at this time.

Meanwhile, Axios traditionally pre-books a significant percentage of its annual revenue, according to Cameron. “Based on our current trajectory, we’re pacing toward achieving the 2026 pre-book targets we put in front of the company in July,” she said.

Most publishers still expect display programmatic to slide, but steady growth in premium video, a stronger mix of direct and PMP deals and a push into less traffic-dependent revenue streams means 2026 may not be as bleak as many had assumed. 

“I am very, very optimistic about the coming year,” Syrop said.

What we’ve heard

“Publishers can’t be the only ones who can’t do marketing, and we’ve been handcuffed in a way [because] using paid is frowned upon, and it just causes issues.”

– A head of digital at a multicultural title on publishers turning to paid audience acquisition tactics to drive traffic.

Numbers to know

1%: The percentage of website traffic from AI platforms, most of which comes from ChatGPT.

$10 million: The amount Bustle Digital Group and music festival firm Breakaway are projected to make from live events in the first year of a new deal. 

$6: The monthly fee for a new Patreon membership offering from Vox for ad-free and exclusive videos.

$36 million: The amount the Corporation for Public Broadcasting agreed to pay in a multi-year contract with NPR, after pulling back due to pressure from the White House.

What we’ve covered

WTF are synthetic audiences?

• What if you could test a new product idea and get your audience’s reaction before launching, without bothering real people? Now you can, with synthetic audiences. 
• The process involves taking a publisher or brand’s audience dataset and using AI to create a copy of those audience behavior patterns to use for market research. 

Read more about how publishers are using synthetic audiences here.

The combining roles of CMO and CCO

• The longstanding divide between marketing and communications is eroding. What used to be two distinct tracks — one focused on brand storytelling, the other on message discipline – is increasingly a shared lane. 
• In some companies, the shift is formal, with a single exec handling both brand campaigns and crisis comms.

Read more here.

Forbes launches dynamic AI paywall

• Forbes has launched an AI-powered dynamic paywall as it looks to make subscriptions a larger slice of its revenue pie.
• The move is part of Forbes’ broader push to diversify its commercial revenue for a post-search media era.

Read more about Forbes’ paywall strategy here.

Creators embrace Beehiiv’s push beyond newsletters

• With its latest slew of updates, Beehiiv is pushing beyond a newsletter hosting platform and positioning itself as a place where creators can build full websites, sell digital products, integrate podcasts and YouTube feeds and research audience analytics.
• Creators have largely welcomed the new set of business tools, saying the tools will help Beehiiv diversify beyond their original email newsletter product in a market that’s getting increasingly crowded.

Read more here.

What we’re reading

Win for news publishers against AI startup Cohere

A federal judge rejected Cohere’s attempt to dismiss a copyright lawsuit from 14 publishers, saying they showed the AI startup copied their articles nearly verbatim, allowing the case to move forward, Press Gazette reported.

Financial Times launches Substack newsletter to reach younger readers

The Financial Times has launched its first free newsletters on Substack, focused on markets and finance, in a bid to reach younger readers, Press Gazette reported.

Google releases latest AI model Gemini 3 

Google released Gemini 3 to power its AI search experience AI Mode, but the AI model will become more integrated in Google’s larger search ecosystem, Digital Trends reported. How this impacts publishers and their search referral traffic remains to be seen.

Fox News hires AI software company to create newsroom tools

Fox News has been working with Palantir to build a suite of AI newsroom tools – without licensing its content to the AI company, according to Axios.

BBC struggles with impartiality under pressure 

Following the resignations of its top leadership, the BBC must redefine what “impartiality” means in an era of polarized politics, fragmented audiences and contested truths, Nieman Lab reported.