Media Monitor
Media Monitor is a data-led podcast unpacking what’s really happening across advertising, media, and consumer behavior—and what it means next.
Hosted by Sean Wright and Kelly Sweeney from Guideline.ai, the show breaks down the signals behind the headlines: ad spend shifts, market trends, economic pressure points, and emerging opportunities shaping the media ecosystem.
Each episode translates complex data into clear insight, helping brands, agencies, and decision-makers cut through noise, reduce uncertainty, and make smarter strategic calls.
If media is changing faster than ever, Media Monitor helps you understand why, how, and what to watch next.
Media Monitor
What Advertisers Should Buy Now—and What Can Wait in Q4
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When should advertisers lock in Q4 media—and where could waiting actually pay off?
In Episode 28 of Media Monitor, Kelly Sweeney and Sean Wright use Guideline’s forward-booking, ad spend, and pricing data to look ahead at the Q4 advertising market and assess where demand is building, where prices are rising, and where buyers may still have room to wait.
Sean frames the discussion as a media version of buy, sell, or hold.
Retail media is one area where the data points toward buying earlier. After six consecutive quarters of price growth, demand remains strong heading toward the holiday period, when retailers face some of their heaviest advertising activity of the year.
Programmatic CTV is showing similar pressure, with demand and pricing moving higher. Direct-buy CTV, however, tells a somewhat different story, with flatter conditions and some indications that buyers could find opportunities later.
Traditional television presents another contrast. Scatter pricing is declining, spend is softening heading into Q4, and—with the exception of major properties such as the NFL—advertisers may have more flexibility around when they commit.
Then there’s social. Spend continues to grow while pricing has been declining, creating a different buying dynamic in a channel where inventory is far less constrained.
Kelly and Sean also discuss digital out-of-home, the potential effect of U.S. midterm election spending on local media and CTV inventory, and what these shifts could mean for planners building Q4 media strategies now.
Before getting into the data, they cover several media and technology headlines, including OpenAI’s agreement with Yelp, the decline in referral traffic as AI increasingly answers searches directly, machine-readable web content, Google’s regulatory pressure in Europe—and Jimothy, the unusually round raccoon that somehow made its way into the conversation.
In this episode:
• What Guideline’s forward-booking data indicates about Q4 advertising
• Why retail media may become more expensive as the holidays approach
• Rising demand and pricing for programmatic CTV
• Why direct-buy CTV is showing a different pattern
• Falling TV scatter pricing and what it could mean for buyers
• How U.S. midterm election spending could affect local advertising inventory
• Why social ad spend can rise while pricing falls
• Continued momentum in out-of-home advertising
• OpenAI’s agreement with Yelp and the changing economics of web traffic
• How AI-generated search answers are affecting publisher referral traffic
• Google, European regulation, and the growing pressure on big tech
• What the rise of bot traffic could mean for the future of the open web
Media Monitor breaks down what’s happening across media and advertising and explains what the data may mean for brands, agencies, publishers, and the wider industry.
Form to be filled:
Referenced articles:
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/bot-web-traffic-overtaken-human-web-traffic-data-shows-rcna348522
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/21/style/jimothy-raccoon-seattle-videos.html
If you’d like access to the benchmark report or want to suggest a topic for the next part of the programmatic series, reach out to press@guideline.ai.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow or subscribe so you don’t miss future conversations on advertising, media strategy, and cultural marketing moments.
And if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, a quick rating or review helps more people discover the show.
You're listening to Media Monitor, where we break down what's happening in the media and the advertising industry and tell you what it actually means. Welcome back to the show, Sean. Hi, Kelly. How's it going? It's good. I'm having a great Friday. How's yours? It's going okay. Going okay. I guess I shouldn't have said Friday, but I think everyone knows we record earlier than we release. And I think that's why we're always in a good mood, because it's it's Friday.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I don't I don't think that's like a trade secret. Uh we're not we're not live. So yeah, of course there's post-production, editing, all those things that go into it. So if anyone is surprised by that, then they they haven't listened to other episodes, then for sure.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I I mean it's tough. I'm feeling like the a little bit of a a lull here because I can't report on my World Cup updates. I will say we had a surprise winner, um, but we're still kind of settling everything because we had a few different elements of this. Total point getter, ultimate winner. Uh but we're gonna be on a family vacation in a couple weeks where I'm sure a winner will be celebrated.
SPEAKER_01That's that's exciting. I'm I'm I'm hoping that there's a whole ceremony, trophies, the whole thing.
SPEAKER_00I think there will be. So here's what I thought we would do today. Um we've got some really interesting content, very, you know, meaty, kind of like if you're in the industry, cool intel that we want to get into that might get in a little bit into the weeds, but in a good way. Um we'll do our headlines because we are haven't been doing those as consistently, but I want to, and that's how we'll we'll do this thing today. Sound good?
SPEAKER_01I think that sounds like a great agenda. Let's get into it. What caught your eye?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So I mean, I think there were two things in the news this week that I wanted to call out. Nothing, you know, earth-shattering on my side, but I did see the open AI agreement with Yelp. And I thought that was really interesting because, you know, essentially what they're saying is that, you know, they don't today operate an ad network, but they are looking at a way to do so in not a traditional sense, but in this partnership, they're effectively licensing this licensing agreement that would allow Chat GPT to link to Yelp's reviews, photos, and other business information in their, you know, their searches. So I think it'll be something to watch just as they continue on their journey with ads and figure out ways to grow that. Saw that one. How about you?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. On that topic too, I was actually listening to a podcast on on kind of that very topic probably, I want to say maybe two weeks ago. It was a uh Planet Money podcast where they were talking about the collapse in web traffic. That, you know, historically it had been that, and this is probably what's fueling a lot of the Yelp beasts, is it used to be, and I might misquote it, so please, you know, we'll we'll update it with the actual numbers. But essentially, it used to be that around 60% of Google searches did not result in a click. Like just, hey, scroll down some summary. Before AI, I was like, okay, yeah, I I kind of got what I needed. I don't need to actually go anywhere. So 40% was clicked.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01My understanding is that that has tanked to below 30% since the advent of, you know, the summaries for AI. And apparently, like month over month, it continues to get worse and worse and worse. And so a lot of search now doesn't actually involve interacting with the internet. It just is an interface to an AI tool. And then you're actually not getting anything additional. So the entire internet was based on this model of like, when you come to visit me, I get a little bit of money from an advertiser who then will serve you an ad on my website. And it's this like handshake agreement where most of the internet is free and open. And in exchange, you will occasionally see an ad, or in some cases a lot, depending on the website. And Time magazine was out kind of saying that like they've integrated with ChatGPT as well, creating this unique, not unique, but like a markdown site. So it's the same website that a human would see, but without graphics, with basically just with text, so that you know the AI crawlers can read them faster and in theory serve them up more in the summary. And they engaged in a new partnership with ChatGPT, so that even if they weren't getting the clicks, there was at least some level of partnership between the two. Um it was interesting because they talked about like so far it having mixed results for Time magazine, which I thought was interesting.
SPEAKER_00Okay. And you and I, because I asked you, Sean, what the heck is a markdown site when we were talking earlier this week, do you and now that I kind of understand, and I think you you briefly described what it is, do you think there's going to be a rise in in this, just given the the nature, I mean, if it proves effective for these AI crawlers?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, I think, I think at this point, from a lot of the research that I've read, bots now outnumber humans in terms of traffic on the internet. And so without getting into the weeds today, but you're starting to approach dead internet theory in actualization. Not just like the theory of it, but the actual happening, we are approaching what is truly a dead internet, meaning the things you interact with in on the internet are not people. They're bots, they're AI, but the amount of people populating and inhabiting some sites, some apps is increasingly getting far and few. And it's more and more of this echo chamber of like chat bots, et cetera, talking to each other and talking to you. But bot traffic has surpassed human traffic on the internet. So, like, yeah, there probably will be a whole sub-internet of just markdown sites, you know, text files, things that are more machine readable that like you as a human would never interact with ever as part of your journey on the internet.
SPEAKER_00I am watching this sci-fi movie immediately when it comes out because I love this stuff. Not scared by it, just want to understand it, figure out how to exist with it. But that's really interesting.
SPEAKER_01I'm depressed by it. But may maybe two sides of the same car. I'm like more the like early aughts was like prime internet time to me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Like not that not that you can't go not you can never go back, right? Like uh nostalgia, all those things, but there is an element where like there was a bit more hopefulness around the internet. It was pretty interesting. Some things were new and novel. Pop-ups at that point had been around for 10 years, so like people had started to deal with them more regularly, that kind of stuff. But we're not there anymore.
SPEAKER_00If you get really depressed, I did see in kind of like the more like personal tech side of New York Times this week, and this is not a headline, but they have this whole like series around how to have a 90s summer, and it's giving you tips for basically how to hang out without your phone and like have fun. It's pretty funny.
SPEAKER_01To be fair, I didn't hang out and have fun in the 90s either. So Sean, I don't think I don't think leaving my phone behind is gonna change uh change that.
SPEAKER_00So what did you see in the headlines this week?
SPEAKER_01A little different. Yeah. So, you know, uh Google out this week, uh, tremendous earnings, revenue up across the charts, both total, YouTube up 13, you know, advertising uh up strong as well. That I don't know if this is the headline, so much as they got hit with another fine from the EU just a couple days ago uh for about a billion dollars, mostly tied to anti-competitive practices, suppressing competitors, steering software/slash partnerships into Google type products. And the EU continues to just hammer away at kind of big tech. Um and it's this interesting dichotomy. I was, I was reading a separate kind of thought piece on the prevailing kind of regulation that exists around tech in the EU that like is running very counter and is very counter-culture to what we see in the US, where kind of big tech essentially is carte blanche can virtually do whatever they want, right? Use your identity for stuff, kind of you sign a user agreement that basically just signs over any kind of activity you do, all these things, et cetera. That I think uh realistically it's just this very different way to go to market. Um, but it's also clearly something that like big tech is just kind of building into their business model that they're like, oh, we'll operate in Europe and kind of just deal with these these fines.
SPEAKER_00So it's you know what it is. It's like the like the the UPS and the FedEx guys that just get tickets because there's a budget for that. They're like, I gotta deliver these packages, I'm double parking. I don't care. I don't care.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. And I mean to me it's it's also interesting given, you know, there is it's this dichotomy, because in the US, when you see a lot of surveys, um, there's basically a a increasing and unprecedented distrust of big tech among your everyday people that is almost identical as like a percentage of the population as Europe. So it's not like your everyday people feel differently in the US around some of their behavior. Um they feel the same as the Europeans, but no, it's right.
SPEAKER_00It's you know, it's it's you know, mom and dad are stricter over there than they are here. And it's that's just kind of what it is. I mean, it's just you know, the the it's not that the the population is driving these behaviors at the top. It's that they're actually similar. We just have totally different philosophies, right? I mean, I don't know that that's the point that you were gonna make, but look like that's where you're going.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, where I was going, and it's just fascinating, right? Because like again, the governments have taken wildly different approaches between like hands-on regulation versus like virtually no regulation, but like your everyday people feel very strongly about like, and we're seeing this with the lawsuits, etc. So it is interesting that like will we start to see a C change for the US, given that so much of the population is not thrilled with where big tech is at. So like I don't, I I could never see the US anytime soon giving billion-dollar fines to Google. But it feels like we're at that kind of precipice of like where there's enough people, equal amounts of people that are upset in the US, probably looking over and seeing what the EU is doing, that like maybe they're thinking of of either models or ways to incorporate some of that here. Again, I don't think we're quite there yet. I'm not seeing like a sea change of it, but it is interesting to see that that huge split where the government and policymakers in the EU are tracking pretty close to everyday people. And the opposite is true in the US.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Well, before we get into it, Sean, I have a question for you. And I think I I might I might know where you stand, but does the word Jimothy mean anything to you?
SPEAKER_01You mean the big ball of fun? Love that little guy. I came across him once and I was like, what is I thought it was, I honestly I thought it was AI at first. I was like, some AI slop is in my feet.
SPEAKER_00So for those listeners unfamiliar, another kind of silly but lovely name making headlines this week and before is Jimothy, which is a raccoon in the Seattle area that has a spinal deformity, causing him to have kind of this like shrunken body length and perfectly round, shrunken body length. Just perfectly round.
SPEAKER_01Literally a sphere on four legs.
SPEAKER_00And I mean, if you haven't, I encourage you to just take a quick peek. Maybe this is for you, maybe this isn't. It popped up in headlines for me, and I did a little polling. And I will tell you, Sean, not one person that I asked about it knew what it was, but I had a feeling you would.
SPEAKER_01You know what's funny? So I I not I'm not the of the two of us, right? You're the one that will go out and poll. I had a similar conversation, and I too was the only one that had heard about or knew about Jimothy. And I was like, okay, well, maybe it's maybe it's the name that's throwing off. Do you know about the round little raccoon that lives in like Seattle? And he's like internet famous, and still the crickets. And I was like, how has my circle never heard of, seen, interacted with the world of his Jimothy? And I was like, so I was like, all right, everyone sit down. I'm gonna show you pictures and videos of Jimothy because like you need this in your life.
SPEAKER_00You need it.
SPEAKER_01You need it.
SPEAKER_00Well, I'm I'm glad that he's bringing you joy, and I hope it brings some of our listeners who are unfamiliar some joy as they inevitably immediately search this. Um but let's let's shift gears and let's dive into the content because we've got some really meaty, interesting stuff today. So, what I need to do to kind of frame this out is to talk a little bit about guidelines and our data because I think some listeners are familiar, some not so much. I'm not gonna go into the granular detailed conversation about it. Save that for a sales conversation if you want to talk to one of our folks. But at a high level, we have data around ad spend and ad and and the prices for that ad spend. And it gives us a really interesting picture into the dynamics that are going on. It's what fuels a lot of these conversations. And so we want to talk about those two things today, but from a little bit of a different lens. And that lens being our look into forward bookings and what has been committed to for Q4, what we're seeing from, you know, from a spend and an investment in different media types. So what's increasing in overall spend, what's decreasing, and then where are things being priced? You know, what is the highest price media, what's the lower priced media, and what does that mean for you as someone in the industry who's looking at building your strategy and thinking about, you know, what you need to stop the presses and go buy today, or you know, what you have a little bit of time on. So that's my high-level intro. Sean, I'd love for you to kind of walk us through some of our, you know, the findings that you've put together and help our listeners understand this ecosystem.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Uh the other thing I would say is like playing a little game of like buy, sell, hold. We'll we'll do a little bit of the tactical conversation here. We won't get too deep, but if I think about, particularly for planners and to a lesser extent publishers, right? Planners today, uh, for folks that maybe aren't so in the weeds, are literally writing their their media plans for brand, how they're going to kind of advertise at this point now, like November, December, around the holiday period. And it's always a big uh kind of question conversation, because it always tends to be kind of this this confluence of two things is one, kind of the fourth quarter is is at least in the northern hemisphere, different for the southern, but the north hemisphere is often where there's the most amount of content put out. And it's also where I'm gonna say television in the in quotes, but basically just think of like big screen, right? Not necessarily like a television feed, so much as I'm watching it on a physical television. It's highest during Q4. And that's because it's it's some of the colder months, people are inside more, and kind of just traditionally it's been when you put out your best stuff, and it has kind of followed ever since. So you have this confluence of like a lot of eyeballs plus really good content. And so it makes for a crowded advertising environment right at a time when advertisers are all over the place saying, come buy our stuff ahead of the, you know, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Boxer Day type type kind of uh framing. And we've seen kind of this surge in holiday spend for most of the English-speaking countries we cover. So we see this spike for Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, et cetera. So globally, we we know that this happens in Q4. So then it's always a prevailing question. I have to kind of make bets now of what's going to happen months from now when things get really expensive. Do I buy now and maybe save myself a little bit of money, which has always been the prevailing theory? Or when we did when we dug into our data, where do we actually think that maybe you hold, that you don't buy some of your inventory now? Because between pricing trends and how we are also looking at where spend is going, is like if if demand is weakening for some of these channels and prices coming down, you could actually probably hold on for a couple months more and buy it even cheaper than where it is today.
SPEAKER_00Got it.
SPEAKER_01As you get closer to when you want to execute your media plan. So we started to look into that data a bit where we looked at forward booking to your point of like stuff we can see today for the future. Um, and then where we don't, we kind of did some light modeling just based on existing forward booking data. So it's a combination, it's not one and the same. But there's kind of two places where we would say are kind of hot right now and are increasingly getting hotter that we would probably buy now because there's going to be scarcity, prices will only continue to increase, and we're still seeing kind of demand flow in here. And those two places are retail media. Yep. Six consecutive quarters of price growth. They continue to grow in this space. There's nothing that points to them slowing down for Q4. And it's also the time where like the retail is probably the highest demand channel in terms of people want to execute against holiday campaigns. So there's no reason today, again, this is not investment advice. Don't use this as investment advice. More of like a holistic strategy. This feels like the kind of place where it's not going to get any cheaper going into Q4.
SPEAKER_00Well, and and just before you go move on, you know, we talked about retail media, I think, in a previous episode and just like the universe of places that exist and how we're kind of like reaching capacity. Like there's only so many retail media networks that you or I are going to be members of. So the the the piece about scarcity and the finite inventory is really real. If that's the hot spot, yeah. It makes a lot of sense to kind of get in there while you can and reserve your space.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, for the sake of time, we won't go like line by line. We did this whole deck. Happy, like if you're interested, you can reach out to us, you know, at marketing.guide or marketing at guideline.ai, and we can kind of, you know, uh talk you through it. It was previously the webinar. So I'll just kind of highlight a few other things that I think are interesting is we're seeing kind of these diverging trends. Programmatic CTV is again one of those like buy, it's heating up. We expect it to continue to heat up into Q4, and prices are rising. So it's one of those places where if you've, if you've, you know, if you're trying to buy things through open market or maybe structuring things through, you know, a private marketplace, a PMP, now is the time to buy because that seems to be getting more scarce. Uh, and it's also rising in terms of prices. On the flip side, direct buy CTV is kind of flattish. So I don't know if I'm so confident as to say that like you should hold off on it, but pricing is coming down ever so slightly. You think about it too, a lot of like the tent poles really front-loaded a lot of spend and price increases at the beginning of the year. So it might be a bit of a cooler spot, come Q4. There's not that Q, you know, there's not that peripheral tent pole that like raises all ships as it relates to CTV. So there might be a chance to kind of like pick it up a bit cheaper in Q4 based on the directions of our data today. Uh so it's this inverse trend. Sticking to video for a second, television is also one of those places where in the US, all indications are pricing continues to come down, specifically for folks that are in the know, scatter pricing. So it's this type of stuff that you can buy right now. Television also for national can be bought way in the future through a thing called the upfront. Um, but so in the immediate term, scatter pricing is is coming down. Um, and also spend is decreasing going into Q4 on television. So it's one of those where, like, hey, maybe hold off. You know, outside of like the NFL, there's not a ton carrying TV in kind of the the Q4 time period. You might be best holding off and then picking some stuff up when you need it closer to when you have the plans. And as a call out to here around the midterm elections in the US, probably record high in terms of media spend. But we've seen historically is TV, especially national TV, isn't really part of their ad buys and media mix. No, where there might be scary. Is local. Yeah, focused. Uh local. And then also YouTube in years past has been really expensive. And then like CTV has been, in generally speaking, where they place bit places and social. Uh so those are places where like, hey, midterm elections might be heating up some of the inventory constraints there. And the last one I'll highlight just for the sake of time is social, because that tends to be a thing. It's really interesting because like TikTok is kind of the one that's been setting the floor on pricing. Historically, TikTok is kind of like the cheapest social you can get in the market, you know, four bucks for video, and everybody else is kind of like racing to the bottom. So this is now a couple of quarters in a row where we've seen social pricing decreasing going into Q4, but spend continues to increase there. So it's like a mixed bag of like price is down, but like spend continues to increase. But on the flip side, they kind of have infinite inventory. So there's not really this idea of like scarcity on social, right? It's like, as long as I keep scrolling, they can keep serving me ads. So there's not this idea of like, well, I need to buy it now because there might not be ads for me in Q4. It's like, well, no, people are still gonna be using TikTok, people still gonna be using Instagram in Q4. So it's one of those where like pricing's down, you could probably hold off, even though spend is increasing going into Q4, because like that's kind of just been the trend for the past, you know, four years, uh, four months, kind of, or far quarters, I'll get the right time frame, four quarters. So yeah.
SPEAKER_00And then the only one that I saw that I think we've also been talking about, you know, that jumped out to me is just you know, out of home, it continues to see increased investment based on kind of those like regional themes where you, you know, you really want to put your ad where it is. I think you mentioned that the digital out of home as well, just you know, is kind of lending itself to that, you know, it the you know dynamic ad display and and how that can increase it. So super interesting to look at it from this lens. I'll be fascinated to see, you know, how it all shakes out. Um and you know, you and me both become Q4.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I love it. Well, I think in you know, kind of a follow-on to this, we might dr delve into the categories a little bit. So if you have questions or you want to learn more about how we're thinking about this, drop us a line. And one other thing I'll plug is that we want to hear from you about this show. So, as a follow-up to today's episode in our show notes on our socials, we're gonna be promoting a survey because we want to hear what you think about the show, what you like, what you don't like, be brutally honest. And if you submit it, we'll enter you into a raffle to win a gift card. So there's a little something for you on the other end of that.
SPEAKER_01Don't be too excited. It is a gift card. There is uh monetary value associated with the gift card, but we don't have huge budgets, so it's not like uh there's gonna be a thousand people that get a thousand dollars worth of gift cards. That is not the case, but yes, we do want to raffle. We do want to hear from you. We want to sent you a little bit, but yeah, we're just curious. You know, we're almost 30 episodes in at this point. We've sustained kind of growing followership across, you know, um, the different podcasts stuff that we track. So at this point, we kind of wanted to just take a beat and then hear from you of like, okay, we've kind of gotten into a rhythm. Is this the kind of content you want to hear from us? What do you want to hear from us if you haven't heard already? And yeah, like how how can we make the show better for for all of you, our listeners? One thing we are excited about is we are gonna start to do guests on the show. So it's not just the two of us talking that that we're hoping to drop and curious to know what folks think about that as well.
SPEAKER_00I love it. All right, well, I think that's a wrap for us this week, Sean. You doing anything fun this weekend, by the way? I didn't even ask you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. We've got some kid event type thing, which which should be fun. So that'll be that'll be good. How about you?
SPEAKER_00Kid event.
SPEAKER_01Kid event. You know, I I don't want to put all my business out in the internet. So I'm just, you know, keeping it, keeping it private. But yeah, kid event.
SPEAKER_00Uh we also have kid events. Um, and I was getting our son to practice saying happy birthday. My husband's very excited. We are going to present a Liverpool football as the birthday present. So I'm excited to see how that lands. I've been searching the house for the pump because of course it becomes deflated. So I'll let you know how that goes. And if we make this two-year-old's dreams come true.
SPEAKER_01It's very exciting.
SPEAKER_00All right, Sean. See you next week.
SPEAKER_01Have a good one.
SPEAKER_00Bye.
SPEAKER_01Bye. That's Media Monitor. Follow us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts every Wednesday for a new episode. And as always, thanks for listening.