Your media plan is probably being shaped by a decision nobody actually made. The open web is collapsing, budget is defaulting into three platforms, and no one signed off on that in a strategy meeting, it just happened.

The numbers are not dramatic on purpose, they are just uncomfortable. Ozone's tracking of the US and UK publisher cohort shows programmatic spend down 30.6% year over year in the first half of 2026, with the US alone falling 44%. Publisher ad request volume dropped 32 to 37% in the US and 39 to 41% in the UK over the same window. That is not a correction, it is a collapse curve.

Is the open web actually collapsing, or just shrinking?

It is collapsing, because the loss is not a demand blip, it is a permanently closed traffic tap. Pew Research found that when Google's AI Overviews appear above a search result, only 1% of users click the link beneath it. Business Insider lost 55% of its organic search traffic between 2022 and 2025, HuffPost lost 50%, and The New York Times saw search's share of its traffic fall from 44% to 37%. For smaller publishers the picture is worse: travel site The Planet D lost 50% of traffic after AI Overviews launched, then lost another 90% within a year and shut down. That is not one company failing, it is the model itself ceasing to function.

So where does that budget actually go?

It does not disappear, it pools in three places. eMarketer projects Meta will overtake Google in ad revenue for the first time in 2026, $243.46 billion against $239.54 billion. More telling is this: the combined share of Meta, Google and Amazon in global digital ad spend climbs from 59.9% in 2025 to 62.3% in 2026. That is not a preference chart, it is a default chart. When publisher supply evaporates, your buying team still has to place the same budget somewhere, and the remaining scaled, brand-safe inventory sits with three companies. Nobody chose to consolidate, there was simply nothing left to choose.

Why are prices rising while supply is shrinking?

Because pricing power is moving in the opposite direction from volume. Ozone data shows UK eCPMs up roughly 30% year over year in June 2026, US eCPMs up about 7%, while volumes fell by double digits in the same window. As Ozone COO Danny Spears put it, "platforms, particularly Google, are intervening in the user journey and providing content in situ." You are paying more for less inventory, and the pricing lever is no longer on your side of the table.

Why is the bet growing while trust is falling?

Because the consolidation decision is being made by inertia, not by trust data. McKinsey's State of the Consumer 2026 finds that 95% of consumers say trust is critical when choosing a brand, and Gen Z reports meaningfully lower trust than Baby Boomers. Right as your reach to the next decade's buyers narrows down to three platforms, that exact cohort trusts those platforms the least. Layer on this: Meta is budgeting $115 to $135 billion in capex for 2026, nearly double the $72.2 billion it spent in 2025, largely on AI infrastructure. Spending at that scale has to earn a return, and that means algorithm shifts, rising ad load and pricing pressure are the likely outcome, not stability.

The open web's death is a default, not a strategy, do not let your media plan be one too.

So what should actually change in the plan?

• Review programmatic and publisher partnerships quarterly, not annually, supply is eroding too fast for a yearly assumption to hold.
• Treat owned channels, email list, CRM, first party data as an insurance policy against platform risk, not a nice to have line item.
• Push suppliers for inventory guarantees and pricing transparency, if eCPMs are climbing faster than volume is falling, ask why in writing.
• Protect remaining independent publisher relationships as a brand safety and differentiation asset, not just a cost line to trim first.

You probably do not need to stop funneling budget into three platforms, for most brands that is already the reasonable reality. But it should be a choice, not a fate. Teams who can answer "why are we here" in the next budget cycle will be a step ahead of the ones who simply drifted to where the traffic went.