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Supply layer · position 1 / 8 · PUB
Publisher
Owns the audience and the video player. Sells ad inventory.
"The magazine that prints the ads — without the audience, nothing else matters."
By the numbers
Latency
0–50ms
Scale
~10B video starts/day (global)
Common vendors
NYT · Hulu · Roku channels
In the flow
Where Publisher sits
Fun facts
Reshuffle for more — each fact links to its source.
Hulu caps its ad-supported tier at roughly 4 minutes of ads per hour — about half of US linear broadcast.
scale·Hulu help
The New York Times kicked third-party programmatic ads off its EU sites after GDPR in 2018 and revenue went up, not down.
money·Digiday
YouTube's first ad ever ran in August 2007 — a Carl's Jr. spot, eighteen months after the site launched.
history·TechCrunch
Receives from (upstream)
No upstream — originates the flow.
Sends to (downstream)
Inputs
- · User session
- · Content metadata
- · Page context
Outputs
- · Ad request to ad server
- · Content + ad slots
Protocols on the wire
VASTVMAPPrebid.js
Key KPIs
Fill rateCPMYield per session
Appears in lifecycle
Featured in scenarios
Under the hood
Publishers integrate a video player (IMA SDK, Video.js, Shaka) that fires an ad request via a VAST tag URL when a slot is reached. They may run a header-bidding wrapper client-side to collect bids before the call.
Active recall
Test what you know about Publisher.