How News Publishers Can Fight Back Against Big Tech’s Advertising Stranglehold
Publishers are breaking free from platform dependency with direct sales, retail media, and alternative strategies
Google, Meta, and Amazon now control 60-70% of global digital advertising spend. Search traffic is projected to reach nearly zero within two years. For news publishers, this isn’t a future threat—it’s happening now.
In a 2025 INMA survey, 52% said maintaining or growing advertising revenue was their biggest challenge for the year, outranking AI implementation and revenue diversification. INMA CEO Earl Wilkinson has a name for what’s coming: the “post-traffic era.”
It’s a stark diagnosis, but not a death sentence.
A 30-year media and advertising veteran, Gabriel Dorosz spent seven years leading advertising strategy & insights at The New York Times before joining INMA last May to launch its revamped Advertising Initiative. He’s seen the problem from the inside; now he’s helping the entire industry fight back.
His diagnosis is blunt, but his solutions are practical.
Where the Money Actually Goes
Advertising is worth roughly $1 trillion globally, with 75% of that now digital. News publishers capture just 5% of it, despite serving the audiences advertisers claim to want: engaged, educated, high-intent readers.
The real kicker? When publishers sell inventory programmatically, they receive just 41 cents of every dollar spent, according to the ANA. The rest gets swallowed by adtech middlemen, platforms, exchanges, and data vendors, all taking their cut.
“The challenge is convincing brands to spend with publishers instead of walled gardens,” Dorosz says. “Publishers need to better justify their value.”
That means proving ROI in ways advertisers actually care about, not just traffic numbers that platforms can deliver more cheaply.
Ways Publishers Can Win
Over the course of 2025, Dorosz conducted research and interviewed executives from major publishers across six continents to identify key areas where publishers can actually compete.
1. Go All-In on Video
“The future is video, video, and more video,” Dorosz says, and the data backs him up. By 2028, four of the top seven ad channels will be digital video, with 70% of display spend flowing to video formats.
The format is specific: six to ten seconds, vertical, designed for mobile. “Publishers all over the world are landing on this conclusion,” he says. It’s showing up everywhere—newsletters, desktop, in-app. Static display is declining; short-form vertical video is becoming the new opportunity.
2. Automate the Boring Stuff
AI’s immediate value isn’t flashy—it’s in automating grunt work. Start with areas like make-goods or data insights, Dorosz suggests. In the near future, he expects fully automated campaigns to become standard: self-service portals generating creative, trafficking ads, optimising performance, and delivering reports without human intervention. Meanwhile, publishers should be preparing for and closely watching the emerging “agentic marketplace,” which will enable direct buyer-seller transactions.
“We should be looking at ways to use AI and automation to solve low-hanging fruit while preparing for the ‘agentic future,’” he says.
3. Diversify Beyond Display Ads
Events now contribute up to 25% of revenue for some publishers. Branded content studios, audio and affiliate commerce are growing. Condé Nast drove $600 million in product sales through editorial content alone.
“Events and branded content represent key growth opportunities,” Dorosz says. The goal: stop relying on a single revenue stream that platforms and traffic are steadily eroding.
4. Actually Use Your First-Party Data
Here’s the paradox: 86% of publishers say first-party data is their most valuable asset for ad revenue. Most still can’t monetise it properly.
“The variance is striking,” Dorosz says. “Publishers like Schibsted and The New York Times have built sophisticated logged-in ecosystems, whilst others are just beginning.”
INMA’s offering: practical strategies for data collection, identity resolution, audience insights, and advertiser partnerships that actually protect premium CPMs rather than erode them.
5. Cut Out the Middlemen
Publishers need to rethink how they sell. Step one: reduce adtech intermediaries. Step two: migrate inventory from open marketplaces into private deals.
“If you can do more direct deals, great. Direct programmatic and private marketplace deals are effective strategies that apply to every publisher transacting programmatically,” he explains.
6. Engage with Advanced Measurement
“Nobody’s happy with measurement,” Dorosz says. Reach and impressions are increasingly dead metrics. Advertisers want outcomes—not necessarily sales, but proof that their money did something.
“Outcomes can mean things like brand preference,” he adds.
He isn’t pushing a single solution, but thinks publishers should be exploring Attention, Brand Lift, Incrementally and even MMM to prove impact and demonstrate ROI in ways advertisers actually trust. He’ll be exploring this through a Measurement & Effectiveness Master Class in March, featuring case studies from a dozen or so publishers.
What INMA Actually Does
Like INMA’s other Initiative Leads, Dorosz runs a newsletter, meets regularly with INMA members worldwide, and curates webinars, masterclasses, and live events. At INMA’s World Congress of News Media taking place in Berlin this May, he’ll appear on the main stage and curate a seminar.
His biggest news for 2026? INMA is launching its first-ever Media Advertising Week, December 7-10, 2026, in NYC.
“INMA Media Advertising Week aims to be the primary forum where the industry converges to showcase news media advertising’s unique value and collaborate in defining its future,” Dorosz says.
He plans to bring together the full ecosystem of global news media advertising teams, along with brand and agency buyers and key partners. Registration will open in March.
“We’re living through arguably the most transformative moment in media, advertising and technology in the history of the world. No one knows exactly what the future holds, so the only strategy is to identify where you can win in the near to midterm—and iterate forward.”
Gabriel Dorosz, Global Advertising Initiative Lead, INMA
Can Publishers Actually Win?
In other words, try things, measure what works, and adapt fast.
His playbook is practical rather than revolutionary. None of it guarantees survival, but doing nothing guarantees failure. “Publishers can win if they embrace new strategies and adapt them to their unique strengths,” he says. “Change is the only certainty.”
For news organisations looking for a roadmap through the post-traffic era, INMA’s offering is straightforward: here’s what’s working, here’s what’s coming, and here’s a community of publishers figuring it out together. Whether that’s enough to counter Big Tech’s dominance remains an open question—but at least publishers won’t be fighting alone.
INMA members can subscribe to Dorosz’s bi-weekly newsletter at inma.org/newsletters. The Advertising Measurement & Effectiveness Master Class runs online from 19-26 March 2026. Learn more about INMA, the Advertising Initiative or INMA membership here.
