The Transparency Gap: What’s Breaking Programmatic Yield
About the podcast
In this episode of Web Without Walls, Michael Irenski, SVP Programmatic Strategy at Hearst, unpacks why the open web’s impact is still widely misunderstood, especially at the publisher level. Drawing on experience across Hearst, Amazon Publisher Services, and Ziff Davis, he explains how publishers operate in two worlds, how DSP behavior, selective buying, and the move to a cookie less world are shaping competition and CPMs, and why Hearst unified its newspapers and television into a single programmatic strategy. The conversation also covers how brand‑safety tools misclassify news content, suppress bid density, and quietly erode yield, plus why publishers need clearer visibility into where and how they are losing revenue in programmatic auctions.
About the guest
Michael Irenski is SVP, Programmatic Strategy at Hearst, where he leads publisher-first approaches to monetization across digital and omni channel inventory.
He brings deep experience across the programmatic ecosystem, having worked closely with publishers, platforms, and revenue teams to evolve how supply is packaged, transacted, and optimized at scale. At Hearst, he focuses on strengthening programmatic as a core product capability rather than a standalone channel.
His work is centered on improving yield, transparency, and operational control, helping large publishers adapt to a faster, more data-driven advertising environment.
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