Is programmatic advertising in terminal decline?

For the better part of two decades, programmatic advertising promised efficiency, scale, and automation. It allowed publishers to monetise content at volume, filled inventory that would otherwise go unsold, and connected them to a global advertising marketplace that rewarded reach and traffic. For many digital media businesses—especially those built on open web traffic—programmatic kept the lights on.

But the model has always come with caveats: opaque value chains, data leakage, brand safety risks, and the uneasy feeling that the publisher was not in control of their own monetisation. Now, those caveats are no longer background noise—they are the main event.

As third-party cookies disappear, privacy regulations tighten, and platforms shift focus to walled gardens, programmatic advertising faces its most serious structural test yet. The question is no longer whether it can be optimised. It’s whether it can survive in its current form.

The data that fed it is disappearing

Programmatic advertising has always relied on granular user tracking—third-party cookies, device IDs, behavioural tags—to fuel its targeting engines. But this infrastructure is crumbling. Apple’s iOS privacy changes have sharply limited tracking on mobile. Google’s long-delayed deprecation of third-party cookies in Chrome is finally underway. Regulators in Europe and beyond are scrutinising how data is collected, stored, and monetised.

Without this data, programmatic becomes far less effective. CPMs fall. Targeting weakens. Advertisers shift budgets to safer, more attributable channels.

Publishers once feared missing out if they didn’t integrate every data partner in the ecosystem. Increasingly, the fear is reversed: What exactly are we giving away—and to whom—for such modest returns?

Brand safety and the flight to context

Advertisers are also becoming more selective. After years of programmatic placement scandals—ads next to hate speech, disinformation, or unsafe user-generated content—brands have grown cautious. Many are shifting budgets toward known environments: premium publisher networks, curated marketplaces, or direct sponsorships with clear content controls.

This shift reflects a deeper change: a move from audience-based buying to contextual relevance and brand alignment. It’s less about who the reader is, and more about where they are and what they’re reading.

For publishers, this is both a risk and a reset. Open-exchange inventory is increasingly commoditised. But brand-safe, high-quality environments—especially with first-party data and clear editorial positioning—can now command more attention and higher prices through direct deals or private marketplaces.

Yields are flatlining—and so is trust

The financial reality for many publishers is stark. Despite significant inventory, programmatic CPMs remain stubbornly low. Middlemen—DSPs, SSPs, ad tech vendors—take a disproportionate share of the revenue. The “tech tax” can eat up over half of the advertiser’s spend before a penny reaches the publisher.

Worse, many publishers don’t even know what they’re earning—or why. The supply chain remains deeply opaque. Attempts to introduce transparency, like ads.txt and supply path optimisation, have made some difference—but the overall system still tilts away from the content creator and toward the intermediary.

The result is a growing disillusionment. Programmatic promised automation. What it delivered, in many cases, was dependency.

Who still benefits—and who doesn’t

To be clear, programmatic is not dead. For large publishers with high traffic, sophisticated ad ops teams, and strong tech stacks, it still contributes meaningful revenue. For niche publishers with loyal audiences, private marketplace deals can outperform open exchange placements. And for global media groups, data clean rooms and advanced targeting may offer a path forward.

But for mid-tier outlets with undifferentiated audiences and limited resources, the economics are deteriorating. They’re often at the mercy of black-box systems they can’t influence, working harder each year to maintain the same returns.

For many, the question is no longer “how do we improve our programmatic yield?” but “how do we reduce our dependence on this system entirely?”

What replaces programmatic?

As programmatic declines in influence, several alternative monetisation models are gaining ground:

• Direct-sold advertising with contextual alignment, content integration, or sponsorship features

• Branded content and native formats, which offer higher margins and closer advertiser collaboration

• Affiliate and commerce revenue, especially for service journalism and review-based content

• Subscriptions, memberships, and reader revenue, which decouple editorial strategy from ad performance

• First-party data partnerships, where publishers leverage their logged-in user base to offer insight without compromising privacy

None of these are simple plug-ins. They require editorial alignment, product investment, and brand repositioning. But they offer publishers something programmatic often doesn’t: control.

A necessary reckoning

Programmatic advertising has been a cornerstone of digital publishing—but its foundations are eroding. The market is shifting from blind reach to trusted relevance. Privacy is no longer a negotiable variable. And publishers are finally asking whether the trade-offs still make sense.

This doesn’t mean abandoning advertising. It means reassessing the logic of how it works—and who it ultimately serves.

The real question is not whether programmatic is dying. It’s whether publishers are ready to build something stronger in its place.