In a submission to US courts in 2025, Google asserted that ‘the open web is already in rapid decline’.
True, the company was at the time arguing for why it shouldn’t be broken up, and a spokesperson for the company has since said that it was ‘referring to “open-web display advertising” and not the open web as a whole.’
But the clipped statement was shared widely as evidence of the inevitable demise of a free and diverse internet anyway. With walled-garden platforms capturing even more of advertisers’ budgets, and people increasingly seeking information from AI chatbots, it seems like a reasonable thing to believe, after all.
To hear the other side of the argument, MediaCat spoke to Stephanie Himoff, the EVP for global publishers at Teads. What follows is an edited account of our interview.
So how did you end up looking after global publishers at Teads?
I’ve been at Teads for 14 years, which is actually 98 years in dog age, isn’t it? I joined a company called Outbrain as the UK MD and was looking after both sides of the business — demand and supply. But I had spent most of my career working either for publishers or for tech companies, providing services for publishers. So it was a natural evolution when I stepped into a global role looking at the supply-side [at Outbrain] which I did for many years until last year when we merged with Teads.
What keeps you interested in advertising and the open web?
I think it’s probably a deep belief in independent journalism and maybe also a bit of frustration. I grew up in France, and from a very early age all I wanted to be was a journalist, but I failed the entry exam to the school of journalism, which only a very small percentage of people get into, and I ended up in a business school.
I think that maybe this is a reason why I’ve gravitated towards companies that do believe in independent journalism. I’m really proud that I work for a company that has put billions of dollars back into the publishing ecosystem.
It must have been some exam.
Yeah, it was a four-hour exam. You had to do maths, history, writing skills…
It’s less rigorous over here… Anyway, The Trade Desk’s CEO, Jeff Green, has said 2026 will be the strongest year yet for the open web. Do you agree, and if so, why?
We do. If you look at enterprise brands and where the media dollars have gone, they’ve been going in a very disproportionate way into the walled gardens, and I think that has resulted in fragmented media plans. It’s becoming increasingly difficult for those media dollars to bring incrementality, and I do think that agentic AI is removing some of the friction points that we had in the open web.
My understanding is that the [Ad Context Protocol] allows AI to build at scale, but also the big difference and what I’m so excited about is that we are going to be able to show the measurable returns, and [bring] the accountability back to the open web.
Technology is going to make the open web as efficient as the walled gardens, but still allow it to keep its independence.
If the outlook for the open web is positive, why is the market not showing confidence in companies that are built around the open web?
It’s about proof. I think the technology is there, I think that it’s about showing that we can remove what we call the complexity tax.
The open web has been very opaque and very fragmented, and we haven’t made it easy until now for SMEs to scale in the open web, and I think this is all friction that can be removed by technology.
As we’re moving to outcome-based, measurable accountability in the open web, and we can demonstrate with real KPIs brand uplift, that is really going to change. It’s not a question of if, it’s just a question of when.
Does all the growth that you see in the open web come from things like CTV and retail media, or are there any positive signals also for ungated browser content?
Of course, the number-one rule is that media follows the eyeball, and there’s been a huge shift in terms of media consumption. I think Americans spend over 25 hours per week on streaming video across all platforms. And we know the exponential growth of retail media, but that’s just one side of the coin. We probably have to be realistic in addressing the elephant in the room — it’s been gloom and doom for the traditional web and traditional publishers.
They’re facing an existential crisis; we have all the numbers, right? It’s been multiple headwinds from the impact of AI summaries, content consumption changes, and then also the huge impact of [the decline of] social media referral traffic. But I think that publishers are fighting back, on the strength of the editorial and reminding users why they came in the first place to their site.
There’s also a lot more data showing us the issue with news generated by AI tools. The BBC I think was reporting recently that 45% of all the news coming from AI tools is incorrect. If you think about investigative journalism, live reporting, AI cannot do that. [That’s why] local news is super engaging. We tend to see on local news sites you have a lot more traffic engagement.
We’re also seeing publishers embracing AI, trying to be ahead of the game. All the publishers that we work with have either already incorporated AI into their website or are planning to do that.
I’m seeing big changes in the mindset of agencies. The holding companies are starting to reevaluate the importance of news and understand that it’s the trusted and high-intention medium.
Stagwell has been playing a key role. They put a KPI within their business to increase the ad spend in news media, and they’re measuring that every year.
The other thing is this human premium, which is coming back as we’re finding out about all the issues around AI-generated content. The Reuters Institute [is] seeing the value of original investigation skyrocketing plus 91%, human stories plus 72%. I think that this is what’s exciting.
Are LLMs and AI chatbots included in Teads’ definition of the open web?
I think they’re a platform. The content is within their own network, so for me, they are not included in the open web.
Does it feel like the scrutiny that regulators were applying to the platforms over the past couple of years has lessened, and do you think the decision at this stage not to break up Google has any ramifications for the open web?
I wouldn’t say that it has softened. I think it’s becoming a lot more complex, and frankly, slower moving. I don’t think personally that even the regulators were happy with the outcome of the ruling. The issue is that the legal framework is not coping with the pace of change of the platform, but if you look at the number of antitrust cases, the number of AI investigations, the number of debates around licensing is increasing.
On the ruling, there’s no doubt that it was hugely disappointing for publishers because at the end of the day the winner right now is Google. But I don’t think that this is the end.
Maybe what we need, as opposed to this very global approach, is having publishers come together at the market level. We’ve seen it in Australia, we’ve seen it in France, we’ve seen it in Germany.
I’ve heard arguments that there is every financial and strategic incentive for a business to become a platform and put up a paywall if it can. Do you see any reason why it would be beneficial for a publisher to remain on the open web, even if it has the option to become a platform?
I think it’s strategic to remain on the open web. There’s no other place where you can have the same discoverability, the freedom, the independence. If you’re a platform, the priorities are going to be driven by commercial and by algorithmic decisions. There’s no other place than the open web to really provide free, accessible, discoverable, plural, diverse content without having to be ruled by the framework of the gatekeeper.
I keep hearing people talk about advertising being in its ‘outcomes era’. Do you agree with this? If so, what’s new or what’s changed that has ushered in this era?
I agree, and I think it’s all down to accountability. We’ve been preaching about ROI and outcome-based marketing, but I think, again, we now have the technology to prove and hold us accountable in front of our advertisers. As a result, we’re seeing a lot more budgets moving to partners who can prove the business impact, not just impressions. There’s a report from the Gartner CMO Spend Survey that’s showing 54% of CMOs [in 2025] were prioritising performance marketing in their budget allocation.
What is your priority for 2026 at Teads? The open web has largely been funded by enterprise clients. Will you consider it a big win if you start to see more D2C brands moving money into the open web?
We actually have very two distinct advertiser types. We have what we call enterprise, which is brand direct and agencies, and that’s a huge part of the business and growth is going to come from CTV and from premium environments. But we also have the direct response and SME brands, which is a thriving business. This is very performance-driven, and in terms of supply, they don’t really care about the logo or where they sit. What they care about is the ROI of their media spend. At Teads, through the Outbrain legacy business, we have the feed-based business which is where we channel a lot of those DR and SME budgets, and this is based on the cost per click, so they’re not paying for every single impression.
This is a part of the business that’s very important. [When Outbrain acquired Teads] we basically merged two category leaders, in branding and performance, and I think that’s what’s exciting — we’re trying to build bridges between the two businesses from a technology point of view.