Pubrunner wants publishers to earn less per visit, more per reader

A reader arrives from Google, reads one article and leaves. The publisher has no way of knowing if they'll come back. So it monetizes what it can while they're there. "Someone comes in from a search and you flood them with ads, because you don't know how long their session is going to last," said William Cichowski, founder of ad tech startup Pubrunner.

Pubrunner wants to change that. It helps publishers decide what to show each reader based on the revenue that reader could generate over time, with ads, subscriptions and newsletter sign-ups weighed in the same calculation.

"We want to shift publisher monetization from revenue per session to lifetime value," Cichowski told Open Garden. In practice, that can mean taking less money on one visit to make more down the line.

Cichowski argued that AI assistants make the shift more urgent. When users get their answer straight from a chatbot, the one-off search visit becomes a shakier business. Publishers need to give readers a reason to show up – and to come back.

"You're trying to build an audience of people who like being on your site or your app. I think over the past 10 years, publishers have lost sight of that a little, chasing maximum monetization," he said.

Cichowski points to TikTok, Instagram and Reddit, whose formats and recommendation engines are built to keep people engaged. Pubrunner wants to bring that playbook to open web publishers.

Pubrunner doesn't ask publishers to switch ad servers or paywall tools. "We work inside the publisher's existing technical environment, whatever ad server or CMS they use to run their paywalls and subscription offers," Cichowski said.

Instead, Pubrunner changes how those tools get used. Its system cross-references visit data (traffic source, device) against page data (ad count, ad-to-content ratio, images) and reader behavior.

The system is designed to learn which configurations drive engagement and adjust the experience within limits the publisher sets. Pubrunner also uses attention models as a signal, Cichowski said.

The product comes in two tiers. A diagnostic mode watches the site and flags what Pubrunner would have changed, without touching the page. "We don't make any changes to your site, but we show you the ones we would have made, with the analysis behind those decisions," Cichowski said. Publishers pay a SaaS fee for that first tier, which also collects the data needed for the next one.

The second, "decisioning" tier acts on those recommendations. "Publishers tell us which parts of the page we can change to personalize the experience for certain users. Then we do it," he said. On that tier, Pubrunner takes a cut of the incremental revenue it generates.

The model looks past what a single ad slot earns. It has to weigh what each ad or paywall prompt brings in right away against what it might cost in engagement, future visits or subscriptions. An extra banner is worth less if it cuts the relationship with the reader short.

On paper, aligning advertising and subscriptions makes sense. Inside a publisher's org chart, it's often messier. Product, ad ops and subscription teams each have their own managers, targets and tools. The problem isn't unique to French publishers.

Asked about those silos, Cichowski said Pubrunner has to build "a new product category that can align the interests of different decision-makers across the company."

That may be the trickiest part of the pitch: who signs off on lower ad revenue today for the promise of more later? It's hard to ask an ad sales team measured on monthly revenue to give some of it back for the sake of retention.

The math also depends on what the publisher decides to value. What's a newsletter sign-up worth? Over how many months do you estimate a subscriber's revenue? What churn rate do you assume? Pubrunner says it factors in those variables, but setting a shared goal is still the publisher's job.

Charging on incremental revenue raises another question: incremental against what baseline, and over what period? Cichowski didn't detail the methodology in the interview. The baseline is what separates the technology's effect from content, seasonality or a shifting audience mix.

To optimize a relationship over time, Pubrunner has to recognize readers when they come back. That doesn't limit it to logged-in users: the technology also optimizes pages and apps for readers who aren't subscribed or signed in, relying on pseudonymous browser-based IDs in those cases, Cichowski said.

The system performs better with more persistent identifiers, like those of subscribers and registered free users. Browser signals on anonymous traffic are less durable, which makes the relationship harder to track from one visit to the next.

Getting readers to register isn't a prerequisite, then, but it is a lever: the more of its audience a publisher can identify, the more the pitch pays off. Pubrunner can help publishers make more from that relationship. It won't bring back the visitors search no longer sends.

Pubrunner says it is testing its technology with several large publishers, including legacy media groups. It didn't name them. It also cites a deal with BOMESI, a U.S. organization that supports media outlets owned by entrepreneurs from underrepresented backgrounds, and wants to expand across that network's publishers.

Early-stage investor Antler backed Pubrunner at the pre-seed stage, according to Cichowski. The startup is focused on the U.S. for now, though he said he's also seeing interest from Europe, Asia and Canada.

Results will have to wait. "I can't share numbers yet – we need our pilots to wrap up first," Cichowski said. Still, he said sites running the technology are seeing higher return rates.

That's an early signal, not the economic proof the pitch needs. Getting a reader to come back more often doesn't guarantee the extra revenue will outweigh what the publisher gave up to win that loyalty.

Pubrunner will have to win the argument twice: prove the relationship pays off over time, and convince the teams that monetize each visit to accept that some visits will earn less.