Advertising is not dead — it is being reborn.

That was the unmistakable message from INMA’s Media Innovation Week in Dublin, where Europe’s publishers gathered to assess how their businesses can survive in a post-cookie, AI-driven, attention-fragmented world.

What emerged was not nostalgia for banners or programmatic revenue, but a blueprint for reinvention: smaller, smarter, transparent, data-led, and deeply embedded in audience trust. 

Advertising + subscriptions

Subscriptions and advertising are not rivals but complements — two wallets of the same super user.  

INMA’s Gabriel Dorosz, lead of the Advertising Initiative, and Greg Piechota, lead of the Readers First Initiative, presented evidence that, for most news brands, a small share of highly engaged users delivers disproportionate value: They read more, view more ads, subscribe more readily, and spend more across categories. 

 

By identifying and nurturing these super users, news publishers can optimise total revenue per user rather than pitting ads against subs. The next growth frontier is a unified strategy — shared metrics, aligned teams, and operating models centered on super users.

Trust and transparency are advertising’s non-negotiables

Without trust, no advertising strategy — however clever — can work. 

Astrid Jørgensen, advisor, consultant, board member, and former executive at Politiken in Denmark, introduced a digital maturity framework showing the widening gap between consumer expectations, technological advances, and organisational capability.

Advertising, she argued, sits squarely in that gap. When ads are poorly labelled, irrelevant, or misleading, audiences lose faith not only in the advertiser but also in the publisher. 

Aisling McCabe, group strategy and business development director at The Irish Times, added that platforms are already delivering hyper-personalised experiences — and that publishers who fail to adapt risk irrelevance. Transparency, she stressed, is not optional but the basis for long-term subscription and advertising trust.

Her Irish Times colleague, Gemma Kelleher, group media solutions director, made the same case from the commercial front. Programmatic, she argued, is still a blunt instrument: “If we cannot prove that news is a brand-safe, trusted environment, advertisers will default to the path of least resistance.” For her, direct deals rooted in first-party insights are the only sustainable way forward.

The takeaway was unanimous. Publishers demanded: 

• Clear labelling of advertising and branded content.
• Transparency in how audience data is collected and used. 
• Shared standards to restore confidence.

The new social contract begins here: Respect the audience or lose them.

From inventory to intelligence

The second major shift is that publishers are no longer selling space — they are selling outcomes and intelligence. 

Ireland’s Business Post Group offered a compelling case. By acquiring Red C Research and the Irish Management Institute, CEO Sarah Murphy turned the company into an insights ecosystem. Advertisers no longer simply buy ads; they gain access to a bundle of journalism, research, executive training, and professional networks. The model is closer to Bloomberg than a traditional newspaper — layered value for business customers.

Across Europe, the same logic is reshaping strategies: 

• Ringier MediaTech (Switzerland) is building an in-house stack for advertiser intelligence across sports and lifestyle.
• Mediahuis Ireland positions itself as a B2B partner, not just a news outlet.
• Funke Media (Germany) puts data at the core of its branded content studio.

This repositioning reframes the relationship. Advertisers want results — leads, conversions, credibility — not just impressions. Publishers must therefore move up the value chain, packaging journalism as part of a wider insights offering.

Branded content is the beating heart

Branded content studios have quietly become the growth engines of publisher advertising.

At INMA Dublin, case studies included: 

• Daily Mail (United Kingdom) emphasised storytelling and cultural resonance. Advertisers don’t want to interrupt; they want to be part of the narrative.
• Schibsted (Norway/Sweden) blends lifestyle content with e-commerce, transforming inspiration into transaction.
• Russmedia (Austria) leverages branded video and social campaigns for local SMEs, turning trust into commerce.

These studios are no longer bolt-ons or side businesses. They are central to revenue strategies, providing creative services advertisers cannot find in programmatic marketplaces. Their strength lies in intimacy with audiences — and an ability to deliver cultural fluency at scale.

Data as currency — and battleground

If branded content is the heart, data is the bloodstream.

The cookieless future makes first-party data indispensable. Publishers from Mediafin (Belgium) to Sanoma Media (Finland), from Ouest France (France) to Aller Media (Norway), are racing to consolidate logins, loyalty programmes, and behavioural signals. 

Yet tensions surfaced. Julia Tran, chief operating officer at Mediahuis Aachen (Germany), warned against “creepy targeting.” Katrien Berte, data product manager at Mediafin (Belgium), sharpened the ethical lens: Without consent and transparency, targeting backfires. “Creepy targeting isn’t a strategy,” she said. “It’s a shortcut to irrelevance.”

The consensus: Data must become a shared currency — a transparent value exchange between publisher, advertiser, and reader. Loyalty programmes, newsletters, and micro-rewards are emerging as mechanisms for this exchange. But without standards, the battleground remains chaotic. 

AI and automation are the new ad-ops team

AI is transforming advertising just as much as it is reshaping newsrooms. At Bonnier News (Sweden), prompt engineers built Amelie, an AI assistant that supports editorial workflows but also enables commercial applications like contextual targeting. 

Across Europe, applications now include:

• Automated copy variation and testing. 
• Dynamic creative adapting to user context.
• Predictive churn modelling — not only for subscribers, but for advertisers.

Peter Chabrecek, head of strategy and business development at Ringier (Switzerland), argued that AI is “the new ad-ops team,” a way to handle optimisation, creative testing, and real-time adjustments at scale. AI, he suggested, is not just an efficiency tool but a structural re-engineering of advertising operations.

The golden rule: AI-enabled, human-controlled.

Solving the measurement crisis

Measurement remains advertising’s perennial Achilles heel. Advertisers crave accountability, but publishers still lack consistency: impressions here, dwell time there, brand lift elsewhere.

INMA’s Dorosz argued that unless publishers unite behind shared metrics, they will remain beholden to Big Tech dashboards. Research from The News Movement (United Kingdom) and Northwestern University (United States) explored attention-based metrics, while Amalie Nash, Newsroom Transformation lead at INMA, warned that news contexts cannot be treated as equivalent to TikTok clips.

The challenge is stark: If publishers cannot prove their environments outperform platforms, advertisers will continue diverting spend to simpler — if less effective — channels. Dorosz made clear that a coalition for measurement must be built now. 

Diversification: ads as part of a bundle

A powerful message from INMA Dublin was that advertising cannot stand alone. It must be embedded in diversified revenue mixes: 

• Business Post Group (Ireland) weaves advertising into its conferences, research, and education.
• RCS MediaGroup (Italy) sells sponsorships tied to sports rights and events.
• Aller Media (Norway) offers influencer marketing and affiliate commerce alongside display sales.
• Axel Springer (Germany) builds affiliate commerce directly into editorial products.

Advertising, in other words, gains strength when it is not sold as advertising, but as a component of a broader offering.

Local resilience and SME trust

Local and regional publishers reminded delegates that advertising remains resilient at community level: 

• NWZ Mediengruppe (Germany) has turned events into major advertising opportunities. 
• Medienhaus Süd (Germany) packages ad sales with Facebook management and SEO services for SMEs.
• Russmedia (Austria) says: “Hyper-local trust is our moat.”

Connor Diamond, head of data insights at Mediahuis Ireland, showed how audio and local trust combine to revive SME advertising. Podcast sponsorships and newsletters, he said, “feel like participation, not intrusion” for smaller advertisers. This intimacy differentiates publishers from platforms — and offers local businesses an entry point into digital advertising that feels authentic.

Scale belongs to platforms. Embeddedness belongs to local publishers. And advertisers still value that intimacy.

Audio, video, and the attention economy

As consumption shifts, advertising follows:

• RTÉ (Ireland) and Newstalk (Ireland) highlighted the continued strength of podcast sponsorships and radio integrations.
• The Journal.ie (Ireland) is experimenting with explainer videos carrying native ads.
• Politiken (Denmark) and Der Tagesspiegel (Germany) use video alongside live events to build sponsorship packages.

The common thread is time spent. Advertisers increasingly value attention over reach. Podcasts, newsletters, and long-form journalism provide engagement in ways platforms cannot replicate.

Diamond’s point about SMEs preferring podcasts echoed here: Attention, not sheer scale, is becoming the new premium. 

Culture and ethics are part of the sell

Advertising cannot escape culture. 

Sophia Smith Galer, journalist and author, warned that Gen Z expects authenticity and purpose in ads. Kerstin Hasseh of Hasse mit Liebe added that advertisers themselves face pressure to prove responsibility.

Ethics, in short, is not a sideline. It is central to the sell. Whether in AI transparency, data ethics, or creative representation, cultural expectations are reshaping what counts as a successful ad.

Conclusion: a rebirth, not a funeral

INMA Dublin’s lesson is that advertising is not in terminal decline — it is in metamorphosis: 

1. Trust is the foundation. 
2. Data and intelligence are the assets. 
3. Branded content and diversified bundles are the vehicles. 
4. AI is the accelerator — but only with human oversight.
5. Measurement must be redefined on publishers’ terms. 
6. Culture and ethics are inseparable from value. 

As Mediahuis Ireland CEO Peter Vandermeersch bluntly put it, the news industry was too slow in digital. Advertising cannot afford the same mistake. Publishers that embrace this new contract — between audience, advertiser, and themselves — will not only survive, but thrive.

Advertising is not dead. It is reborn: smaller, smarter, transparent, and infinitely more valuable.

Editor’s note: This article summarises, with the assistance of ChatGPT, original content created by INMA. All content has been reviewed and edited by INMA editors.

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