San Francisco Study Tour 2026
A private, two-day programme for senior publishing leaders
June 15 & 16, 2026
San Francisco, California
Hosted By
What this is.
A closed-door, two-day study tour for 8-12 senior publishing leaders. Co-hosted by SODP and Ezoic. No panels, no presentations, no press — operator-led discussion under Chatham House Rules.
Built around one central question: “What is actually driving signal — and revenue in publishing today, and how are publishers monetising first-party data in the AI era?”
Who is in the Room?
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CROS & VPs of Revenue
Leadership at major publishers.
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Founders & CEOs
Leaders of independent publishers and platforms.
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Direct-Revenue Operators
Subscription, commerce, community, and licensing specialists.
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Strategic Leads
Senior AI and platform partnership leads.
Programme Breakdown
Day 1
First-Party Monetisation, Direct Revenue, AI Era
15 June 2026
Sessions hosted within Carr Workplaces Embarcadero – Coworking & Office Space, a curated cruise on the SF Bay, and a private dinner.
Arrival & Breakfast/Coffee
Have time to settle in, meet your fellow colleagues and get ready for the programme ahead.
Host Welcome & Intro's
Quick overview of the programme and icebreaker.
Scaling To $100M+
Nealesh Patel (Chief Revenue Officer, Crunchbase) — scaling publisher revenue from $10M to $100M+, AI-era GTM strategy, first-party data in the GTM motion.
Revenue Strategies Conversation
Ruben Vardanyan (CEO, Joomag) — revenue strategies he has seen publishers work with, what drove Joomag’s growth, and the playbook for hitting new platforms in the current economic shift.
Working Lunch
Revenue Reality Roundtable. Each attendee shares one revenue line that grew, one that fell.
First-Party Data Session With Ezoic
Audience signals tell you who showed up, revenue signals tell you who was worth finding — and this working session uses the SODP × Ezoic benchmark and peer feeback to map the identity infrastructure gap most senior publishers are still running blind on in 2026.
Commerce + Content Economics
Amanda Hesser (Co-Founder & Chairman, Food52) — the economics of community + content + commerce, $/visitor at scale, with first-party data threaded through.
Gather & Depart
Gather, head out to cruise.
Bridge-to-Bridge Bay Cruise
Bridge-to-Bridge Bay Cruise (90 min) — Red and White Fleet, Pier 43 1/2
Private Dinner @ Taksim
Private dinner at Taksim, Mediterranean. Theme: who owns intent, who captures the value — and what does first-party monetisation look like at your business?
Day 2
Demand, Infrastructure, Control
16 June 2026
Hosted and presented across consequential infrastructure and platform partners in publisher revenue today.
Arrival & Breakfast/Coffee
Have time to settle in and recap on yesterday and get ready for the programme ahead.
What Are You Actually Selling?
Either as a private tour to Internet Archive (to be confirmed) or as a walking session at Salesforce Park, in rotating pairs you will need to stress test the prompt ‘The one thing I’m actually selling is…’ and come back to your co-hosts by the end of the session with your one sentence’
Preparing Publishers for Agentic Monetization
Mani Kumar Gouni, Founder & CEO, AdMesh — a practical conversation on how publishers can capture first-party conversational intent, build AI-native sponsored experiences, and create incremental revenue layers on top of display, affiliate, subscriptions, licensing, and commerce.
Working Lunch
Coffee + facilitated peer discussion + Working lunch building toward
the workshop.
Revenue Plays Workshop
Revenue Plays Workshop — Dave Nemetz (co-founder of Bleach report) where every attendee shares one 90-day revenue play, peer-validated by the room to make sure you have one thing to keep accountable to do when we gather post-programme in one months time. First-party monetisation plays prioritised.
Cloudflare @ 101 Townsend
Cloudflare close at 101 Townsend — infrastructure as a revenue
driver: AI crawlers, bot traffic, crawl efficiency, performance,
infrastructure as commercial lever.
Tour wraps.
Fieldwork, not a Conference.
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Closed-door
8 to 12 leaders, intentionally smal
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Chatham House Rules
Attribution by role only
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Operator-led
No panels, no slides, no prep
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Working sessions, not networking
Every block produces a concrete take-away
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Pre-circulated "State of Personalization" report
Co-presented SODP × Ezoic. Attendees fill in their own anonymised first-party data, CDP, personalization signals 48h ahead, so the room arrives calibrated
Why Attend?
Peer-Validated Outcomes.
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A peer-validated 90-day revenue play, stress-tested in the Revenue Plays Workshop.
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Direct exposure to the platform and vendor stack reshaping publisher economics — Ezoic, Microsoft, Cloudflare
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Live case studies from operators who have actually built and scaled publisher revenue
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A read on what your peers' first-party monetisation numbers are doing in 2026 —beyond the press cycle
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A small, high-trust peer network of senior publishing leaders wrestling with the same questions
Confirmed Hosts & Partners
State Of Digital Publishing
Ezoic
Senior Speaker Line-up
Nealesh Patel
Chief Revenue Officer, Crunchbase
Scaled Crunchbase revenue to $100M+.
Ruben Vardanyan
CEO, Joomag
Reshaping the landscape of digital publishing and content experience
Revenue strategies for growth, what drove Joomags’ success, and the playbook for hitting new platforms in economic shifts.
Amanda Hesser
Former Co-Founder & Chairman, Food52
Created a $100M food empire
Commerce + content + community revenue mechanics and $/visitor at scale, threaded with first-party data.
Logistics
June 15 - June 16, 2026
Sessions held within partner offices. Group transport organized between locations.
Complimentary
The Atmosphere
Smart Casual
The room is the programme. Vetted attendees and operator-led discussion only.
How to RSVP
If you’d like to be considered, the simplest path is a short call so we can confirm fit and share the full programme details.
Numbers are tight. The room is the programme. If this is you, we would love to have you in.
SODP x Ezoic – San Francisco 2026