DMEXCO 2025: What Publishers Need To Know
What this year’s DMEXCO reveals about the next chapter for publishers, platforms, and programmatic.
Held in Cologne each year, DMEXCO remains one of Europe’s leading advertising and tech events, continuing to host meaningful conversations about trends that matter to global publishers and advertisers, despite becoming more of a Euro-centric hub in recent years.
Falling at a time when most media planners are in the midst of hammering out their final quarter budgets, the event offers an invaluable window into where buyers think the greatest opportunities lie and which issues they fear might curb their ROI.
This year, AI unsurprisingly held its position as the hot topic of conversation. In quiet corners, however, serious discussions were focused on more familiar issues such as secure data sharing and reliable measurement, and the growing scope for retail media to optimise advertising reach while delivering greater gains for platform owners.
Here are the top themes that emerged from this year’s event:
Theme #1: Boosting transparency requires tighter control
“DMEXCO made it clear that publishers face ever-greater pressure,” says Helene Bouteille, VP Global Partnerships at LoopMe. “Not just to deliver for their own audiences, but to ensure better transparency and viewability signals that can flow through intermediaries and the exchange ecosystem to meet demand-side requirements too. At the same time, accurate measurement capabilities have become non-negotiable across the funnel.”
However, others stressed this pressure is also pushing the industry towards smarter ways of trading. Marko Johns, UK Managing Director and Head of Agency International, Seedtag comments: “Publishers are entering a new era of control in premium marketplaces. The conversations highlighted how these environments are being reshaped to give publishers greater ownership over their first-party data, targeting, and transparency.
“The shift is focusing more on smarter and curated programmatic setups that prioritise quality, trust, and brand safety, signalling that the future of premium supply is now about value-driven, smarter, transparent exchanges where publishers and advertisers both win.”
Theme #2: The AI-augmented future of media is here
While control and transparency was recognised as fundamental, just as important was the acknowledgement that it is only part of the equation. Publishers also need tools that can actively lighten the load and at DMEXCO, this meant turning the spotlight on the matter of the moment: AI.
Johns adds: “Equally prominent was the spotlight on AI’s role in streamlining publishing workflows, enhancing content personalisation, sharpening ad targeting, and boosting operational efficiency. Publishers and supply partners are increasingly adopting scalable, tested AI tools.”
Building on this, Sergii Denysenko, CEO, MGID, stresses that: “AI has moved from the tomorrow to the today of digital advertising. Hands-on product and platform demos, showcased AI-powered media planners that automate comprehensive campaign strategies, next-gen audience builders, and creative engines that rapidly generate and test tailored ads, and more.
“There’s clear progress visible in shifting from experimental tactics to scalable, practical solutions that revolutionise growth for brands and publishers.”
Theme #3: The tango with walled gardens remains tense
However, even as AI dominated conversations with the promise of new efficiencies, the status quo of the digital ecosystem remained stubbornly familiar. Nowhere was this clearer than in some of the discussions around the walled gardens.
Jan Heumüller, MD, Central Europe, Ogury, discussed the structural challenges facing the industry: “Publisher revenue has been hit hard by zero-click search, and while Google will now be prohibited from entering into or maintaining exclusive contracts for distributing Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, and the Gemini app, these remedies may feel insignificant compared to the scale of the challenge facing advertisers and publishers.
“One thing is clear: the DOJ’s challenge to Google signals a pivotal shift in the advertising landscape; an open call to rethink the dominance of walled gardens.”
This frustration was echoed by Nick Henthorn, SVP Sales, Europe, InfoSum, who argued that unless media owners collaborate, this dominance will remain: “A key takeaway from DMEXCO for media owners is that clients need to leverage first-party data but aren’t willing to hand it over to multiple media owners. The reality is that walled gardens will continue to dominate unless local media owners step up and embrace decentralised approaches that enable proper data collaboration without requiring anyone to share their data.
“If media owners don’t adapt these data practices, they’ll find themselves increasingly sidelined as advertisers stick with platforms that already deliver scale without the data security headaches.”
Theme #4: Retail media drives new growth opportunities
Yet while publishers wrestle with the constraints of closed ecosystems, new frontiers are cause for hope. Chief among them: the booming retail media space.
Sarah Lawson Johnston, Managing Director, EMEA, Vudoo drew a sharp contrast between streaming’s stagnation and retail’s momentum saying: “Streaming had the biggest stands and the biggest budgets, but the innovation was thin. Unless platforms start layering in interactivity, commerce or second-screen experiences, it risks becoming just ‘TV slightly reinvented’. In contrast, retail and commerce media has well and truly arrived. It’s gone from ‘emerging’ to a multi-billion-dollar force, with double-digit growth even in a sluggish ad market.
“The real test now is integration – connecting in-store, owned digital, offsite and data into one outcome-driven funnel that brands can rely on.”
This observation was complemented by Bouteille, who adds: “Retail media and digital out-of-home remain significant growth opportunities for publishers willing to evolve with their audiences, and the ongoing consolidation we’re seeing, with moves like Verve’s recent acquisitions, shows how competitive the market has become. Publishers – in the face of radical change – need to be supported with the right tools and partnerships to navigate these shifts.”
As they strive to maintain the tricky balance between meeting audience and advertiser needs, this year’s DMEXCO shows that publishers are facing a mix of well-worn and emerging challenges. Exploring programmatic trading methods that provide greater control is just as important as ever to deliver the precise targeting and measurement buy-side players want, without impacting individual privacy.
Yet, as AI becomes an actionable innovation and the retail media ecosystem rapidly expands, there is also fast-growing scope to unlock greater revenue by streamlining ad operations and making smarter use of valuable data assets.