Last week, publishers, agencies and ad tech leaders from across Europe joined us in Copenhagen for the Adnami International Publisher Summit 2026.
Across a full day of presentations, discussions and roundtables, we explored some of the biggest questions facing the open web: How do publishers create more value from their inventory? How can advertisers access premium supply more easily? What role will AI play in publisher monetisation? And how can the industry move beyond impressions to focus on outcomes that actually matter?
One theme came through clearly: the open web needs to move from quantity to quality.
Opening the summit, Global Publisher Director Svenja Damzog set the scene by highlighting the opportunities and challenges facing publishers today - from changing audiences and AI to the growing complexity of the advertising ecosystem.
CEO Simon Kvist followed with Adnami’s vision for a more sustainable advertising model for the open internet: fewer, better ads. That means improving the advertising experience while creating more value for users, publishers and advertisers - and making premium inventory easier to buy and sell.
Anna E. M. Rasmussen, Insights Manager at Choreograph by WPP Media, explored how cultural and behavioural shifts are changing the way brands and publishers need to think about audiences that matter.
Her session, The Zillennial Squeeze: Gaining Relevance among the Zillennial Generation, looked at a generation navigating a very different path into adulthood. This key generation is shaped by digital-native behaviours, economic pressures (“dream downsizing”), nostalgia (keyword “kidulting”), breaking taboos, embracing singlehood, an emphasis on mental health, and changing ideas of success.
For publishers, the takeaway was clear: Content and advertising need to reflect where audiences actually are, what they care about and how they consume media.
In AI-powered publishing, Ronny Linder, CPO at Relevant, and Olli Järvilehto, COO at Relevant, explored how AI and machine learning can support publishers in their day-to-day ad monetisation.
The session looked at how AI can be applied across wrappers and analytics to help publishers make better use of their advertising data, support smarter optimisation and turn complex information into insights that are easier to understand and act on.
Rather than replacing publisher expertise, the opportunity is to use AI to make the data publishers already have more useful and make optimisation more actionable.
Precis brought the conversation back to one of the industry's most important shifts: an impression isn't necessarily an ad that's been seen.
In Beyond the Impression: Winning the attention economy with curated supply and Alvie attribution, Senior Programmatic Specialist Marcin Ptasznik and Media Specialist Nicholas Spezia shared how attention can be used to understand media quality and make better decisions around supply.
The session highlighted the role of premium environments, contextual relevance and long-term trust. The captivating presentation highlighted how attention measurement can help move the industry beyond simply maximising impression volume.
Andreas Monberg, Head of Media at Cheffelo, shared a different perspective on the role of high impact display advertising in the media mix. His session, Revitalising display around dinner decisions, explored how publisher media can influence consumers further upstream in the decision-making journey.
The findings showed that display continues to have an important role alongside other channels, with high impact formats showing potential to contribute differently across markets. The work is already informing how Cheffelo approaches future media planning.
The summit also looked at how publishers can build more value around their own audiences. In Owned Audiences, Publisher Control, James Walmsley, Advertising Director of Agency & Clients at Immediate Media, explored the growing importance of publisher-owned audiences and the ability to create scalable, addressable inventory.
This is becoming increasingly important as publishers navigate AI, made-for-advertising inventory (MFA) and changing search behaviour. Through Atria, the British premium publisher marketplace, James is bringing publishers together to create greater scale while retaining control over their audiences and the quality of their environments.
Political advertising brought a different set of challenges to the table. Adnuntius CPO Henrik Hernes, Adnami Global Supply Operations Director Sebastian Schelde, Ekstra Bladet Director of Agency Sales & Ad Tech Thomas Lue Lytzen and PolAds Head of Partnerships Rasmus Hovgaard Hansen discussed how publishers can navigate political advertising and the requirements around transparency, consent and compliance.
The discussion highlighted that political advertising is not simply an election-period consideration. Publishers need processes that can res
pond to evolving regulation, while agencies and advertisers also need to understand the responsibilities involved. Preparing early and building the necessary infrastructure can make it easier to respond as requirements develop for this promising opportunity.
To close the day, Adnami CPO Thomas From looked at one of the industry's fundamental challenges: the way premium inventory is bought and sold. The Programmatic Reset: Fixing the Buying Mechanism explored how the current buying mechanism can create unnecessary complexity for both buyers and sellers, particularly when advertisers want to access premium publisher supply across markets at scale.
The opportunity is to simplify that process: make quality inventory easier to discover, create more direct paths between buyers and publishers, and ensure more demand can reach premium environments. That means shifting the focus from simply increasing the number of impressions traded to creating a more efficient ecosystem around quality supply.
Beyond the sessions, the summit brought brilliant people from across the industry together. Our roundtable discussions in the Copenhagen sunshine sparked lively conversations around AI, programmatic, political advertising and the challenges facing publishers - with one theme coming through loud and clear: more collaboration, less complexity.
Across the day, it was clear there’s plenty of opportunity ahead for the open web. Making the most of it will take collaboration between users, publishers and advertisers.
Thanks to everyone who joined, shared their perspectives and enjoyed the sunshine, coffee, food and drinks with us. We loved having you there and can't wait to continue the conversation!