8 Monetization Myths That Cost Publishers Millions

Surely you've heard this one before: "But we've always done it this way."

In programmatic advertising, that mindset is a limiting factor to potential revenue. The myths we cling to about CPMs, demand partners, and the importance of signals are expensive. Outdated assumptions have compound effects and result in uninteresting, low-value display inventory.

Among the trillions of monthly impression opportunities transacted on websites across the internet - tens of billions of which are powered by Aditude’s Cloud Wrapper - there’s a gulf between what media owners believe drives revenue, and what actually drives revenue.

Let's tackle some of these myths and chart a course towards a premium baseline for digital advertisements on the open internet.

Myth #1: "Higher CPMs Are the North Star"

The CPM obsession is one of publishing's most costly delusions.

Publishers celebrating $12 CPMs while ignoring 40% fill rate are overlooking their reality. The math is unforgiving: A $12 CPM with 40% fill generates less revenue than an $8 CPM with 70% fill. 

The Reality: Low fill rates on an ad unit signals yield optimization is needed for that inventory, even if it sometimes shows high CPM ads.

The Fix: Confirm all supply mappings with each bidder. Review your ad path strategy. Ensure the reader experience aligns with how the ad unit is presented on-page, and that other elements like floating video players do not collide or overlap with the low-filling ad units. 

Myth #2: "More SSPs = More Competition"

The great bidder collection - where publishers add demand partners like they're stacking buffs, but they’re already over-encumbered.  

Here's what actually happens when you run 30+ SSP connections client-side: timeouts cascade, viewability plummets, and pagespeed slows to a crawl. Advertisers get worse performance while readers grow frustrated and bounce.

The Reality: Past 10-12 quality partners, you're adding QPS, not competition. 

The Fix: Audit ruthlessly. If a partner isn't contributing 5% of revenue or bringing measurably unique demand, they're due for a partnership review. 

Myth #3: "Consent Is Just a Compliance Checkbox"

This myth may be responsible for leaving more money on the table so far in 2025 than any other.

Publishers treating consent begrudgingly as a GDPR requirement are missing the technical implications. In a world where all parties have Compliance Checkboxes, buyers are not even attempting to determine value for an opportunity if it doesn’t start with Consent. Your consent management strategy IS your monetization strategy.

We're seeing publishers with optimized consent flows achieve dramatically higher RPMs on consented audiences. When consent strings pass through cleanly, monetization improves. 

The Reality: Consent strings directly impact your topline revenue. The auction rewards hygienic inventory.

The Fix: Stop thinking compliance, start thinking value exchange. Implement granular tracking, tune up your Consent Management Platform. 

Myth #4: "Real-Time Data Is Overkill for Publishers"

Only looking at revenue reports during end-of-month accounting procedures might be the norm in traditional organizations, but in the always-on business of digital media, buying trends need to be understood with more frequency and much less operational friction than this. 

Problems that could be identified in minutes and fixed in days are allowed to fester for weeks when programmatic revenue data is not looked at often enough. Even worse is when changes in contribution from a major partner go by unnoticed.

The Reality: The programmatic ecosystem operates in milliseconds. Your optimization cadence needs to match that reality. By the time issues appear in monthly reports, the damage is done.

The Fix: Implement real-time monitoring with Alerts via the Insights platform - any sudden changes in spend, or performance decreases by ad unit, device, browser etc, can be emailed or sent to you in Slack.  

Myth #5: "Publishers Don't Need Granular Control"

The "set it and forget it" approach to programmatic is how publishers become commodity suppliers.

Publishers today have access to more data and control than ever before—they just don't use it. Why are you sending bid requests to partners who never respond in certain countries, or from specific devices? Why are you sharing data with companies that don't contribute beneficially in return?

The Reality: Every bid request carries a value in its content and incurs a cost to the publisher if it goes un- or undersold.  

The Fix: Stop being a passive participant in your own auction. Use the control available in Cloud Wrapper to make commercial decisions about who gets to bid on what inventory, when, and with what data. The infrastructure should be custom-fit for your business, not the other way around.

Myth #6: "Ad Blockers Are Unsolvable"

The defeatist approach to ad blocking is writing off those users and their potential revenue for good.

Yes, users (and some browsers) block ads. It's not because they want to defund publishers or are opposed to digital advertising; rather, they’re technologically savvy users who know how to improve their web browsing in the face of poor user experience. The publishers succeeding with recovery aren't the ones with the cleverest anti-adblock technologies. They're the ones who fixed the underlying things about their site that drive people to block ads on the internet, then messaged their users, offering them a chance to take a look.

The Reality: The value of circumventing ad blockers has plateaued. Recovery rates are strong enough to be worth messaging your audience about. Ironically, as discussed in our analysis of the crawler crisis, you're losing more business opportunities to bots than blockers.

The Fix: Fix the disease, not the symptom. Better layouts, frequency caps, respectful formats. For those still blocking, show them that your site is worth supporting.

Myth #7: "Non-Standard Formats Can't Scale"

Publishers with custom formats, e-editions, or non-IAB inventory often think they're stuck in monetization purgatory.

This is 2025, not 2015. The programmatic ecosystem has evolved to support multi-format inventory in all kinds of web environments. What matters is whether the inventory is programmatically accessible, properly declared, and measurable.

The Reality: "Non-standard" often means "less commoditized," which can mean higher CPMs if properly packaged. Publishers sitting on unique formats should revisit the monetization strategies for each.

The Fix: Stop trying to force square pegs into round holes. Modern infrastructure can bring programmatic demand to your web inventory. If you think you're too niche, too custom, or haven't upgraded in five years, you're exactly who I’d like to speak with here in the Strategy Department at Aditude. 

Myth #8: "Supply Path Optimization Is Someone Else's Problem"

The "that's what my SSP does" approach to SPO is how publishers wind up as collateral damage in the massive supply landscape reevaluation underway by the industry’s leading DSPs.

Publishers who don't actively manage their supply paths are essentially letting others decide how their inventory is packaged and available - and at what price. When unauthorized paths proliferate, when intermediaries in a transaction are obfuscated, when buyers can't trace their dollar spent - guess who pays the price? Publishers, when the advertisers take their dollars elsewhere. 

The Reality: Clean, authorized supply paths command participation from premium demand sources. As supply chain transparency increases, publishers who don't actively manage their ads.txt entries will find themselves on the wrong side of favor.

The Fix: Know your paths. Authorize each company explicitly, and monitor their spend to ensure they deserve ongoing real estate in your ads.txt file. Adopt ownerdomain and managerdomain nomenclature in your ads.txt. 

The Third Way Forward

Myths persist when they're comfortable. They help to justify inaction, to delay what might be viewed as busywork. 

But here's the truth: a third way exists. Publishers don't have to choose between doing everything themselves or giving up control entirely. You can have sophisticated infrastructure that's custom-fit for your business while maintaining the control to make commercial decisions when you need to.

The publishers winning in 2025 aren't the ones with the most traffic or the best content (though both help). They're the ones willing to challenge assumptions, demand transparency, and take accountability in their programmatic business.

Ready to separate myth from reality? Let's look at your actual data and find the revenue you're leaving on the table. Get started with a free audit or dive deeper into how modern publishers are taking control.

The observations in this piece come from analyzing billions of impressions across hundreds of publishers in our network. As Aditude’s Chief Strategy Officer, John Shankman likes to say, “your mileage may vary”, but definitely less than these myths would have you believe.