As we move through the first quarter of 2026, the publishing landscape has shifted from a state of repair to one of complete reinvention. The traditional “building blocks” of the industry have been replaced by data-driven, recurring revenue models that mirror the software world.
Rachel Nulman-Shapiro, CMO at vcita, sat with Todd Handy, CEO of Disruptive Impact, to dive into some really interesting insights on what the publishing industry looks like today and where it is going. In this Q&A we’re looking at Todd's opinions on how publishers can fully monetize and maximize their relationship with their local advertisers.
Can you talk to us a little bit about the secret sauce for leading publishers, how they're successfully unlocking untraditional revenue, maybe specifically in the last year or two?
If there is a secret sauce, I think it's probably that those who are going to win really will be those who will stop selling media as inventory and they'll really start selling it as a growth system. One that you can measure.
In 2026, publishers who really unlock non-traditional revenue really have three things in my mind:
What shift do you expect to see in the services local businesses buy, and what will this look like by the end of 2026?
Well, across TV, newspaper, radio, everybody has their way of thinking how it works. But really, ultimately, businesses are still going to care about reach. We all want to know that we're reaching the target audience that we are trying to reach, and that's always been something that media companies have been focused on. But we aren't looking for that — I don't think SMBs are looking for that as the end-all, be-all of what they're doing. It's not just about reach.
I think by the end of this year, the spend really is going to focus more on the outcomes. It's not just X amount of people saw your ad. What was the outcome that I was looking for? Yes, it's going to be leads or downloads. It certainly is booked appointments, it's quotes and so forth. It's going to be foot traffic, but ultimately it's going to be how did that lead to revenue? How can I tie what my media company has helped me do to something that rang a cash register?
The publishers that keep selling impressions, they're gonna lose those opportunities to those providers who can really draw a line between the spend to the conversion. So for me, the shift really is about managing growth. Reach really is a feature. It's the outcomes that are the product.
I know you've been a really strong advocate for the “Saasification” of media. For a publisher that's accustomed to kind of a one-off campaign sell, what does it actually mean to run a media company like a software business?
Media companies have been used to forever thinking about their work with their advertisers as campaigns, right? This campaign is going to start, here's where it's going to end. That's what media companies are used to. But that's not how SaaS companies think about it. SaaS companies onboard a user or a customer, and they keep them for a long amount of time. That's why they measure in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) and annual recurring revenue (ARR).
It's really the discipline of going to a monthly promise to getting the customer onboarded properly, to measuring their adoption and proving their value and keeping them around, and then ultimately expanding them. You are not optimizing CPMs. You are optimizing customer lifetime value.
Campaigns are transactions. SaaS really has a relationship that has a scoreboard. Here's the flywheel that I'll mention throughout this discussion here: Acquire the advertiser, onboard them, adopt them, prove ROI, get retention and then expand them. That's the flywheel that we're looking for.
So how do publishers successfully leap to this MRR model and how is this really reshaping the future of this industry as a whole?
I'm gonna do a little bit of an audible here and get a little bit more SaaS wonky than maybe you want me to. In the SaaS model, they're looking for 90% or more what they call GRR (Gross Revenue Retention). Instead of 30% to 50% churn, they're expecting only 10% churn.
To get to MRR, you focus on things like monthly packages. I don't care what you call 'em, but it's a “Starter,” “Growth” or “Scale” package. Think about the bundle being not just impressions — it's local distribution, it's adding creative, it's giving landing pages or lead capture pages, it's retargeting, it's reporting. Monthly recurring revenue really lets you fund your business better because you can forecast it. For me, it's moving from “buy this campaign” to “subscribe to growth.”
In one of our recent reports, we found that 68% of local businesses will leave their media publisher because there's a perceived lack of ROI. What can media companies do in 2026 to close this ROI gap?
It's critical. Most of the time churn isn't because leads are bad. It's because the lead didn't ever become revenue and nobody could show what happened. When you have to take the advertiser's word on what did or didn't happen, you don't get to control your own destiny.
In 2026, closing that ROI gap really means three things:
If you only measure traffic, you can't manage ROI.
Since 19% of small business advertisers really struggle to convert the traffic they receive, is it time for these publishers to stop being these traffic drivers and start becoming business operating systems?
The keyword that you used there for me is “system.” SMBs don't necessarily need more traffic. They need a system that takes what they are getting and turns those into customers.
Becoming this business operating system doesn't mean building everything from scratch. It means putting it all together in one operating system, one tech stack:
Let's talk about AI. To what extent do you see publishers really integrating AI into their current advertiser propositions?
AI is going to become table stakes. On the revenue side, they should be looking specifically for things where it improves speed, performance and retention.
Practical uses include:
In my view, they can't afford not to because AI is certainly gonna lower the cost of delivering the service. AI isn't the strategy, but it's an accelerator for a recurring outcomes model.
Watch the full interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY5LWh3V0Mw
To learn more about inTandem, schedule a demo or write to bd@vcita.com.
