They aren't yet, but they are well on their way, particularly with the upcoming Chrome cookiepocalypse. Publishers who want to fortify their businesses have a

They aren't yet, but they are well on their way, particularly with the upcoming Chrome cookiepocalypse. Publishers who want to fortify their businesses have a couple things they need to do right now: * Build their own data moats in the face of platforms like Facebook and Google leveraging their own * Tie audience data to logged-in users, and ensure users are constantly logged-in as much as possible. If a user is logged-in, cookies are irrelevant. * Reduce risk from privacy and data legislation. Data is now just as much (if not more so) a liability as an asset * Strengthen their direct and PMP revenue with exclusive inventory/targeting/quality * Reduce reliance on other vendors and platform data * Reduce reliance on ad revenue (more on that below) * Grow their brand to associate their inventory with the notion of "quality" and help the subscription business So what we have is a publisher with a subscription product that is checking all of these boxes. They are positioned from the brand standpoint already, clearly have a valuable audience, and the value of their 1st party data will grow over time. Buyers who want quality inventory will need to go for direct deals or PMPs, or whatever self-serve tool they may roll out at some point if they feel they are at that point. Further, if they can improve the quality or nature of ads served, they can actually drive higher revenue from fewer impressions. And at a certain point, you can conduct tests and research into whether that sufficiently improves the UX so as to drive incremental subscription revenue growth (which is likely considered more desirable) over what those extra impressions could have delivered. That improves the health of their subscription business and overall business long-term by better aligning their efforts with the interests of their paying subscribers, which is a win for them. If anyone wants to talk shop some more about this, feel free to ping me (see profile) as I've dealt with this sort of scenario in a professional capacity and could go on for days about this.