Author: Jessica Davies

After years of waiting for the DOJ to finally curb Google’s ad tech power, publishers are finding that the devil in these new remedies — from opening AdX to rival ad servers to banning “first look” advantages —is very much in the details.

Some of the remedies, as several ad tech experts framed it, look far better on paper than they’re likely to in practice. Others, they argued, amount to tweaks Google claims it has already made, or symbolic gestures that won’t move the revenue needle. 

Seven senior executives from publisher revenue teams and sell-side ad tech vendors participated in the scorecard. They were asked to rate each remedy on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 meant “cosmetic or largely symbolic” and 10 meant “materially changes how publishers can compete and make money,” and explain the thinking behind their scores. 

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Brand marketing is undergoing a profound shift, spurred by conversational chatbots and LLM-based interfaces reshaping the way people search for information and discover brands. In this new era, traditional digital visibility such as clicks, keyword rankings and website traffic is no longer sufficient on its own for brands to thrive.

As search behavior changes, brands are having to communicate more clearly, credibly and consistently across a wider range of channels and sources. Paid reach remains an important part of the mix, while organic visibility, editorial authority and trusted third-party mentions are gaining new relevance in AI-driven discovery. As consumers increasingly experiment with AI-supported search and recommendations, brands need to think about trust, reputation and word-of-mouth alongside traditional search visibility.

“Chatbots may shape what people discover, but word of mouth still shapes a brand’s reputation,” said Verena Gründel, host and director of brand and communications at DMEXCO. “The more trusted and consistently recommended a brand is across real conversations and public sources, the more likely it is to remain part of the consideration set.”

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