As publishers continue to navigate pressure on display CPMs, the UK market tells a more complex story. According to IAB UK, digital ad spend grew by 10% in 2025, with investment increasingly flowing into formats such as video. Yet display has not kept pace. While it’s tempting to attribute this shift solely to AI-driven changes in search and referral traffic, the reality is more nuanced, with shifting demand, increasing supply, and format fragmentation all playing a role.
Over the past year, values continually swerved against a backdrop of transformation in search, with generative AI tools taking up position as the first, and sometimes the only, port of call for audiences seeking online information. And it quickly became clear that publisher concerns about how they were going to keep the display advertising lights on were justified, with widespread reports of traffic declines.
The advertising ecosystem, however, has always been far too complex to conform to one narrative. While referrals from sources such as Google experienced global dips, analysis across our network shows that traffic volumes maintained 95% stability, suggesting many publishers were still attracting the same numbers of audience eyeballs that would, in theory, maintain solid CPMs and healthy ad spend.
Indeed, according to data from the UK’s Association for Online Publishers (AOP), recent display performance proved especially strong, with AOP members enjoying the highest ad revenue increase in three years and even seeing income outpace subscriptions, indicating that some are enjoying a good balance of ad-based yield and paying-user support.
When added to the broader picture of ongoing trade uncertainty and stubborn inflation across markets, this trend clearly shows that a key element of the display CPM problem is supply and demand. Just as CTV slots are losing value through easier availability, plentiful display supply and static demand have created the perfect conditions for prices to slump, particularly in the UK, where there was no change in overall marketing budgets at the end of 2025.
So how can publishers ensure display remains a key revenue driver, enabling continued investment in high-quality, independent journalism?
Simple steps to maximise the commercial value of display ads
CPMs are tied to inventory value, which is determined by media and audience quality. Aside from AI, the biggest programmatic buzzword in 2025 was curation, where DSPs and SSPs alike sought to trim the fat from available supply to steer the programmatic market towards quality over quantity. To make it onto these curated lists, publishers must ensure they are adhering to advertising best practices.
Most importantly, for an advert to be effective it has to be seen. Viewability and attention are key metrics, and can be boosted by tweaks to page design and the placement of ad slots. Something as simple as a smaller font size, for example, can slow down the speed at which the user scrolls, keeping their gaze fixed for longer. Having ad slots that occupy a fixed position on the page rather than moving out of sight as the user browses increases viewability, while limiting the number of ads on a page means display units are not being pitted against each other for attention.
Keeping ad load in check boosts site performance and improves the user experience, increasing the likelihood that viewers will stay on the page and visit again. While it can be tempting to counter declining display CPMs by increasing ad volume, there is only so far this can be pushed before ad fatigue sets in, resulting in the opposite intended effect. Excessive ad load is also a red flag under Core Web Vitals, Google’s set of user experience metrics that determine whether a page ranks in its search results and Discover feed.
Along with good ad hygiene, publishers must be able to segment their users into targetable audiences and pass them along the bidstream to buyers. Contextual solutions can create targetable audiences through page-level data, while identity solutions allow richer behavioural profiles to be built on a per-user basis by connecting to off-site activity. While exact regulatory requirements vary by region, targeting advertising depends on cookie consent while subtle adjustments to the wording, placement, and timing of consent walls can have a significant impact on whether users accept or reject.
Incentivising account creation, newsletter sign-ups, and polls and surveys provide further avenues for first-party data collection for audience enrichment. This data can also be leveraged for mutually beneficial data collaboration with other publishers, media organisations, retailers, and brands, forming the basis for further enrichment, improved attribution, and commercial partnerships.
Diversify revenues to reduce exposure to display disruption
Display ads are far from the only format available to publishers. Diversifying into rich media, native, and video spreads the risk of CPM decline in any one format, and opens publishers to a wider array of demand sources.
Publishers with a unique value proposition are increasingly deploying subscription models, with AOP members alone making £55 million from paid users last year. Very few publishers with such programs eschew advertising entirely and instead leverage their core, loyal segment of paying customers (who are typically more willing to share insights) to enrich their targetable audience segments. While operational load increases when balancing two revenue strategies, one can be used to uplift the other, and reducing reliance on advertising allows a “less is more” approach to be applied.
Diversifying programmatic auction dynamics can also reduce vulnerability to shocks in the open market. Private marketplaces (PMPs) can be one of publishers’ most powerful levers for controlling programmatic CPMs, however it’s not just a case of ‘flipping a switch’ to reap the benefits. PMPs should be confined to a limited selection of high performing formats or content to prevent the cannibalisation of open programmatic sales.
Publishers without the internal expertise and resources to successfully manage PMP strategy should seek external support from their ad tech partners, with the understanding that this is a shared journey towards quality, rather than a product feature that can be easily turned on.
In 2026, display, when treated as one pillar of a balanced commercial strategy, can continue to be the load bearer for open web monetisation without cracking under the pressure of carrying the entire weight of publisher profitability.
Paula Mora Barrera, Director of Publishers & AdTech Partnerships Growth, Refinery89
About Refinery89
Refinery89 is a leading AdTech platform and the #1 partner for publishers across Europe and LATAM. Bridging the gap between premium supply and global demand through a powerhouse combination of proprietary technology and human expertise.
For publishers, the “Single Tag” and “Monetize APP SDK” provide a seamless, transparent gateway to maximize ad revenue at scale. As a Google Certified Publishing Partner and an active IAB member, Refinery89 is committed to a transparent, scalable, and high-performance digital ecosystem. Refining the future of digital success for partners worldwide.