The news: Sell-side ad tech company PubMatic launched an AI-powered tool on Monday to give publishers deeper insights to determine why and how ad performance fluctuates.

Dubbed AI Insights, PubMatic says the tool uses AI-generated insights to surface information that publishers typically struggle to access, including:

• Channel optimization insights to determine how pricing and demand shift and where inventory is best allocated according to buyer behavior;
• Vertical strategies to assess which advertisers and categories are most relevant, which are losing importance, and where future demand will fall;
• DSP and buyer behavior trends, offering publishers a deeper understanding of where ad spend is concentrating or fragmenting;
• Inventory alignment signals, emphasizing the genres and placements commanding CPMs, ensuring publishers follow relevant demand spikes.

One CTV publisher cited by PubMatic used the tool to discover an opportunity to command CPMs up to 27% higher for similar inventory benchmarked against its main competitor. An online video publisher determined that one of its peers was monetizing at about 22% higher eCPMs.

Addressing core challenges: Publishers have historically had limited insights into ad performance. AI Insights aims to help identify key reasons behind shifting ad prices, which advertisers are driving changes, and whether shifts are driven by new demand, competition, or pricing.

The tool benchmarks a publisher’s inventory against its peers and leverages AI to help advertisers uncover pricing opportunities that would otherwise remain difficult to determine.

Implications for publishers: Access to real-time peer benchmarking gives publishers stronger leverage in negotiations with buyers, while offering clearer signals on where to invest in content and formats.

While other SSPs, including Magnite and Google Ad Manager, provide AI to automate manual tasks and generate performance reports, PubMatic differentiates itself by leveraging AI to understand how to improve performance beyond initial insights. With a large number of publishers competing for a small and concentrated pool of ad spending against giants like Google and Meta, PubMatic’s unique tool could help it gain an edge and increase its pricing power.

As AI increasingly shapes how insights are generated and pricing decisions are made, publishers that can clearly explain why prices are shifting and which advertisers are driving those changes can enter negotiations backed by concrete, data-driven rationale rather than intuition alone.