What the RSL Standard Signals About the Future of Visibility in 2026

Asaf Shamly on December 4, 2025

When Reddit, Yahoo, Medium, and several of the web’s biggest content platforms announced a new Really Simple Licensing (RSL) standard, most coverage focused on the politics: platforms finally demanding compensation from AI companies; a new legal framework for training data; the good old open-web fight. But if you take one step back, something bigger comes into focus. For the first time, publishers are trying to engineer visibility – not for users, but for AI agents. And advertisers should be paying attention.

The Web’s Closing Doors – And AI’s Feeling the Lock

Asaf Shamly on August 21, 2025

Recently, Cloudflare took the unusual step of publicly calling out Perplexity AI for scraping publisher content without permission. And they didn’t hold back – accusing the company of disguising its crawler, bypassing robots.txt rules, and consuming massive bandwidth without attribution or consent. Cue the familiar debate: who owns online content? Should AI assistants be allowed to “learn” from everything on the web? Is scraping theft – or fair use?

When Budgets Shrink, Transparency Becomes Power

Asaf Shamly on June 5, 2025

Today’s media teams aren’t just asked to drive results; they’re asked to defend them. In a market where ad budgets are under the microscope and every dollar must prove its worth, clarity and efficiency win. It’s no longer about spending more — it’s about spending smarter. The brands that can surface waste, double down on what works, and adapt in real time will be the ones that thrive in this new media economy.

In Real-Estate and in AdTech – Location is (Almost) Everything

Asaf Shamly on May 27, 2025

You can have the best ad in the world – high-performing creative, long time in view, shown to an engaged user. But if it’s squeezed between seven other ads on a cluttered page? It’s not going to land. That’s the part we don’t talk about enough. The environment. The layout. The density. The visual noise around the impression. Let’s talk about two under appreciated KPIs that shape that environment.

Google Selling Chrome Won’t Solve Anything

Asaf Shamly on January 23, 2025

The latest courtroom drama surrounding Google has sparked debates about the future of Chrome and its role in digital advertising. But is selling Chrome really the solution? The core issue lies deeper, in the broken data model driving the digital advertising industry. It’s time for AdTech to move beyond surveillance-driven targeting and focus on privacy-preserving, data-driven innovations like AI-powered predictions and first-party data strategies.

The Open Internet and Direct Deals are Making a Quiet Comeback

Asaf Shamly on October 8, 2024

Since 2021, open programmatic ad spending has barely grown by 3% while the walled gardens – think Google and Amazon – have surged ahead with 10% growth. This gap raises questions about the future of the open internet. But, against this data, there are signs this landscape may become more balanced.