AI is cratering publisher traffic from humans, and deluging them with traffic from AI bots scraping their content to feed their models.
At the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting in Palm Desert, California, IAB CEO David Cohen declared this issue a crisis, and demanded that AI companies be legally required to pay publishers.
On this week’s episode, we delve into this headline-level concerns about publisher traffic at the conference. And we also share what else publishers are prioritizing in 2026. AdMonsters vet and Programmatic.ai content director Lynne D Johnson shares information from her conversations had with publishers this year, including at the event.
We also talk about how the definition of content creators has been expanding to include not just publishers, but also the growing creator community. And we note one topic we didn’t hear come up much at the conference, but is a priority for publishers: supply chain transparency.
