Publisher growth tactics for election season | WEBINAR
SODP
SODP Media
Benchmark Grid
Publisher growth tactics for election season | WEBINAR
The Conversation Layer: Making AI Search, Chat and Answer Experiences Earn
Friday, September 18, 2026
Hosted By
Making AI Search, Chat and Answer Experiences Earn.
Publishers have spent two years building AI search, chat and answer experiences. Almost none of them are earning yet. On Friday 18 September we’re bringing ten of New York’s publisher revenue and product leaders around one table in Little Italy to work through the part nobody has solved: what the business model on the other side of the answer actually looks like
No panels, no slides, no pitches. One off-the-record lunch on where conversational monetization is really working.
The build-out is well underway. USA TODAY’s DeeperDive has replaced site search across a network of 195 million monthly uniques. Forbes has Adelaide. TIME has shipped an AI agent over its full archive and is already selling sponsored placements into it. The Washington Post has turned Ask The Post into an ad format. Adweek has an ad-supported answer engine sitting on its own site.
What hasn’t been settled is the economics. A conversation isn’t a page view. There’s no fold, no viewport, no standard unit, and the display playbook doesn’t port across. Publishers are running these surfaces at real cost with revenue models that are, mostly, still hypotheses.
Over lunch, attendees will trade what’s actually happening: how peers are pricing and packaging conversational inventory, what advertisers are willing to pay for a placement inside an answer, where the measurement gaps are, and which of these products are earning their keep versus quietly running as R&D. You’ll leave with a candid read on where the room is placing its bets, plus an attendee-only summary of the discussion.
Ten seats, one per company, VP to CRO level. The table is drawn from revenue, ad product, programmatic and product leadership at New York publishers with live or planned AI search, chat and answer experiences — across news, business and finance, lifestyle, sports, entertainment, travel and commerce.
Guests arrive, drinks, informal introductions. This time sets the tone for open, collaborative discussion.
Around the table: name, publisher, and the icebreaker — “What AI surface have you shipped, and what’s it earning?”
Mani Kumar Gouni, CEO of AdMesh, on what they’re seeing across conversational inventory. Ten minutes, context not pitch, then into the discussion.
Roundtable 1: “What we’ve built and what it’s earning: an honest audit of AI search, chat and answer products in the room.”
Roundtable 2: “Pricing the answer: how to package and value conversational inventory when there’s no impression, no fold and no benchmark.”
Roundtable 3: (time permitting): “Who pays and what for: advertiser appetite, measurement gaps, and what has to be true for this to become a real revenue line.”
Each guest shares one thing they’ll act on in Q4 — captured into the attendee-only insights brief.
Relaxed conversation, coffee, and final one-on-one discussions.
