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We recap of what went down behind closed door sessions last week at the Digiday Publishing Summit in Key Biscayne, Fla.
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Media Briefing: Publishers say a cookie-less future remains murky, overheard at the Digiday Publishing Summit

By Kayleigh Barber

Another iteration of the Digiday Publishing Summit happened in Key Biscayne, Fla last week and publishers were eager to discuss all things advertising — from what comes after Chrome removes third-party cookies in 2024 (supposedly) to how The Trade Desk’s recent sub-floor bidding strategy is bound to upset publishers’ floor prices.

During town halls and round table discussions, publishers were granted anonymity under Chatham House rules to candidly discuss what was on their minds and what challenges they were currently facing at the end of 2023.

Below are snippets of those conversations, which have been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

State of ad spend

“I’m optimistic, not necessarily because things are better in terms of revenue, but because there are things that we learned when things get really bad.”

“I think we’re learning from all the shit that sucked over the last couple of years starting with COVID and then having the huge ramp-up of ad spend and then … realizing it was overspending as everything came back down. Finding solutions to make sure that doesn’t happen again is what I’m optimistic about.”

The end of the third-party cookie?

“I don’t think there’s going to be a cookiepocalypse for us.”

“I think we’re all going to take a haircut as the cookie [gets removed].”

“We’re all trying to figure out how this is gonna play out but it’s unfortunately [on] the buy-side. There’s an infinite amount of inventory on Chrome so they don’t have to try Safari. They’re not really seeing the issue yet. They’re not feeling the pain.”

“What I hear are a lot of rumblings about people wanting to push back on the [Privacy] Sandbox and I just don’t know if they’re going to stand up or not.”