{"id":694555,"date":"2026-07-16T09:32:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T09:32:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/694555\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T09:32:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T09:32:20","slug":"publisher-ad-supply-fell-by-up-to-40-in-q2-as-ai-search-choked-the-open-web","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/694555\/","title":{"rendered":"Publisher ad supply fell by up to 40% in Q2 as AI search choked the open web"},"content":{"rendered":"

Publisher ad supply fell by up to 40% in Q2 of 2026 as AI era, zero\u2011click search choked the flow of traffic to news and other open\u2011web sites, according to new U.S. and U.K. benchmarking data from Ozone, shared exclusively with Digiday.<\/p>\n

Despite that steep decline in display ad requests coming from publisher pages, spend hasn\u2019t collapsed at the same rate, with rising eCPMs \u2014 particularly in the U.K. \u2014 doing most of the work to plug the gap left by disappearing volume.<\/p>\n

The data, which tracked approximately 20 billion impressions, revealed that between April and June 2026, publisher ad request volumes were down by roughly 32% to 37% YoY in the U.S and 39% to 41% YoY in the U.K. The data was pulled from the software Ozone runs for a group of premium publisher members \u2014 not its own ad sales \u2014 tracking how many ad opportunities those sites see and what they sell for. Ozone\u2019s publisher network includes the Guardian, News UK, and Dow Jones\u2019 Wall Street Journal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Across the first half of 2026, combined programmatic spend in Ozone\u2019s U.S. and U.K. publisher cohort was down by 30.6% YoY, in line with the inventory loss, (spend fell 14.3% in U.K. as higher yields bridged the gap, and fell 44% in U.S. due to a smaller yield bump.)<\/p>\n

Gabe Dorosz, advertising initiative lead for INMA,\u00a0said the underlying shape of the U.S. market helps explain that gap. \u201cThe U.S. open web is bigger and messier, with a long tail of commodity supply still diluting yields, so the repricing is naturally showing up more slowly but my prediction is it will accelerate,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The double-digit drops in ad supply are essentially the economic footprint of declining referral traffic: as search and social platforms send fewer clicks out to publisher sites, there are simply fewer pageviews and therefore fewer ad calls to sell against. \u201cThere\u2019s a series of fundamental changes in terms of how consumers behave around websites, where they go to source their information,\u201d said Danny Spears, chief operating officer at Ozone. \u201cPlatforms, particularly Google, are intervening in the user journey and providing content in situ rather than redirecting to the underlying website as they used to with classic search.\u201d<\/p>\n

A less appreciated \u2014 and arguably more interesting \u2014 dynamic is that some of the supply shrinkage is deliberate, as publishers respond to demand for higher-quality inventory rather than just passively absorbing traffic declines, noted Dorosz. \u201cSome publishers are also deliberately shaping supply, cutting ad load and low-value bid requests to protect or increase attention and price,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Despite the steep contraction in supply, prices have been moving in the opposite direction. In June, average eCPMs were about 30% higher YoY in the U.K., and 7% YoY higher in the U.S., a sign that buyers are willing to pay more for the remaining inventory.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that eCPM is increasing is actually a healthy sign of the market because it means that we have scarce resource and people are willing to pay more for it,\u201d said Liza Simonova, senior customer success and GTM manager for Ozone. \u201cBut because we have less ingredients to monetize, ultimately the spend is down.\u201d<\/p>\n

That pricing pressure isn\u2019t new. Across the first half of 2025, average eCPMs were already up around 42% in the U.S. and 36% in the U.K., even as supply was starting to fall, indicating both markets had become effectively yield-led before this year\u2019s deeper supply shock.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That raises the question of how far publishers can lean on yield before buyers start to walk away. Luke Stillman, md of Madison and Wall argued the ceiling is hard to call, pointing to TV as a precedent. \u201cPeople were highlighting the risk of a yield\u2011led market in TV for more than a decade, and yet marketers who prioritize TV are willing to pay multiples of what they used to for the same inventory, despite smaller audiences,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s very difficult to say when \u2018enough is enough\u2019 in terms of pricing that actually spurs channel shifts.\u201d In his view most of the shift from the open web into walled gardens will happen for other reasons, like \u201cdata availability, measurement credibility and convenience,\u201d rather than because prices get too high on publisher inventory.<\/p>\n

Several executives stressed that the problem isn\u2019t a sudden loss of appetite for publisher content, but the way people now find it. And that\u2019s not just in relation to AI search, but on what platforms younger eyeballs are consuming their news<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ozone\u2019s own data shows fewer monetizable pageviews and higher prices on what\u2019s left. That\u2019s a pattern that lines up with discovery moving deeper into walled gardens rather than across the open web. \u201cThe open web is becoming smaller not because demand for content has fallen, but because discovery has moved,\u201d said Matt Barash, CCO of Nova Studio. \u201cMore discovery happens inside social feeds, where every minute spent scrolling is a minute not generating open\u2011web inventory.\u201d<\/p>\n

The center of gravity is shifting, he noted. \u201cSearch created pageviews. Social creates engagement. As consumers spend less time navigating the open web, premium display inventory becomes scarcer and more valuable,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That dynamic is already pushing more publishers to double down on logged\u2011in, high\u2011attention environments, from subscription products to apps and newsletters, where they have more control over both discovery and pricing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Stillman argued the change is already structural: publishers should take AI licensing money while it\u2019s available, assume their open\u2011web ad business will keep deteriorating, and lean harder into subscription and event\u2011based models to support the rest of the P&L.<\/p>\n

For Dorosz, the logic behind that pivot lies in how the ad market itself has been engineered. \u201cWhat you\u2019re seeing is publishers realizing that buying into the 15-year programmatic strategy of \u2018infinite supply\u2019 has effectively just steadily driven CPMs down, and AI-driven traffic declines have now killed the idea that there actually is infinite supply and this is without doubt a race to the bottom,\u201d said Dorosz.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That shift flips the supply-demand equation, but only for sellers who can prove they\u2019re different. The opportunity sits with publishers that can surface meaningful signals:\u00a0\u201cthrough first-party, contextual, attention or other data\u201d to show that their impressions meet the quality thresholds the buy side is now actively seeking, he stressed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In June, apps were the only channel to grow YoY, with spend up about 23% and eCPMs up roughly 42% in the U.S. Web inventory followed the wider market pattern: spend rebounded 11% MoM but remained around 38.5% below the same period last year.<\/p>\n

Within this largely display-led dataset, the recovery is being driven by display spend, which is about 12% MoM. Instream and Outstream video were a much smaller slice of the sample, but showed in-stream pricing was broadly flat YoY while out-stream video continues to shrink, with spend down roughly 76% YoY in June.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Iran-U.S. conflict\u2019s effect on programmatic spend\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Iran-U.S. conflict shows up very clearly in Ozone\u2019s U.S. programmatic data as a break from the norm. In both 2024 and 2025, all\u2011market U.S. spend dipped in February but was back to, or well above, its January baseline by May. In 2026, once the conflict began on Feb. 28, U.S. spend (excluding Xandr) went the other way: it slid month by month from January through April and, crucially, never recovered to its own January level by May.<\/p>\n

Over that period, U.S. spend ended up around 18% below its pre\u2011conflict baseline, while the U.K. was about 10% above:\u00a0a clear geo\u2011specific divergence that looks more like a U.S. confidence shock than a broad programmatic downturn, per the report.<\/p>\n

Category\u2011level patterns reinforce that story. In the U.S., B2B technology and betting and gaming pulled back hardest, even as those same categories grew strongly in the U.K. over the same window, the clearest signal that certain U.S.\u2011exposed budgets were being reined in.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the same time, more domestically driven categories like FMCG and retail fashion continued to grow in the U.S., suggesting that macro\u2011sensitive or globally exposed spend was paused or cut, while day\u2011to\u2011day consumer demand held up.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The peace talks in mid\u2011May appear to have triggered only a partial recovery. Some DSPs like Yahoo DSP, The Trade Desk and Beeswax started to bounce back into the peace\u2011talks window, but the two biggest pipes, DV360 and Amazon DSP, continued to decline, per the Ozone data, which analyzed daily DSP-level spend.<\/p>\n

As a result, from June 1 to 18, U.S. spend had lifted off its May trough but was still sitting below its January baseline, whereas the U.K. was comfortably above January and tracking close to its June 2024 levels. In practical terms: there are early signs of stabilization in the U.S., but until DV360 and Amazon turn, any aggregate recovery in programmatic spend will remain muted, per the report.<\/p>\n

Taken together, the conflict\u2011driven wobble in U.S. budgets and the longer\u2011running erosion of referral traffic point to a market that may not snap back to its old normal. Spears argues publishers should treat that as a structural reset rather than a blip. \u201cThe open web is shrinking,\u201d he said. \u201cPublishers with subscription businesses and apps look a lot more resilient in the face of supply decline. This feels like a market in recovery, but it\u2019s a very volatile one \u2014 and those who are best armed with data and intelligence are in the best possible position to react.\u201d<\/p>\n

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