The Question Every Publisher Asked at BIMS: How Do We Turn Data Into Revenue?

We were everywhere at BIMS last week. Sponsoring sessions, moderating panels, discussing business with some of the sharpest operators in B2B media. And we heard the same frustration from publishers at every stage of the data journey.

"Everyone keeps telling us our data is valuable. We're still waiting to see it on the revenue line."

That sentence is the state of the industry in 2026. Not apathy. Not ignorance. A very specific gap between knowing your data matters and actually turning it into money. Here's what the conversations at BIMS told us — and what they mean for your business.

Your audience is already being traded. You're just not in the transaction.

B2B advertising in the U.S. is a $350 billion market. B2B publishers are capturing less than 20% of it. That's not because advertisers don't value your audience. They do. They're just going to Google, LinkedIn, and Meta to reach them because the platforms have sophisticated targeting, proven performance, and a buying process advertisers already know.

Here's what should bother you. Some of the audience intelligence being sold to advertisers didn't come from the platforms at all. It came from publishers who contributed their data to third-party co-ops in exchange for insights. Those co-ops aggregate content consumption behavior across thousands of publishers, package it as intent data, and sell it to advertisers and brokers who use it to reach your audience on other channels.

You helped build the signal. Someone else is monetizing it.

The opportunity isn't to fight the platforms. It's to activate your own audience data in those same programmatic channels, on your own terms, and at your own price. Your audience is already being activated across the web. The question is whether you're going to participate in that transaction or keep sitting on the sidelines.

If you're still treating first-party data as a project, you're already behind.

Publishers are past debating whether first-party data matters. They're deep into execution, and many have already built solid foundations.

The challenge is what happens next.

Most have organized their data; some have enriched it. Far fewer have figured out how to package it and sell it in ways that go beyond their own inventory. Meanwhile, search-driven traffic continues to decline, traditional ad models are under pressure, and the window for differentiation is narrowing.

First-party data is now required infrastructure, not an optional project. Without a solid foundation, nothing you build on top of it will perform the way you need it to.

The last mile is where the money is. And almost nobody is talking about it.

This is what we kept hearing about at BIMS, from publishers at every stage of the data journey: how do we turn our data into revenue?

Driving that revenue is what Leverage Lab does. It's our entire business model.

Plenty of vendors will help you get your data organized. Some will enrich it. We can walk you all the way from structured, enriched audience data to real revenue, packaged products, active campaigns, digitally-savvy go-to-market strategy, and the reporting to prove it worked.

The publishers who are winning right now built both data and revenue infrastructure: packaged audience segments, programmatic activation across multiple channels, and the sales enablement and reporting to sell it and prove it worked. 

That's what turns data from a cost center into a profit engine.

What we heard. What we're doing about it.

BIMS confirmed what we already knew: the industry is hungry for execution, not advice. Publishers don't need another consultant to explain the problem. They need a partner who will do the work.

That's what Leverage Lab does. We organize your data, enrich it, package it into sellable products, and take it to market — with the methodology, infrastructure, and the activation to back it up. Our clients have generated over $75 million in net new revenue doing exactly this.

You've invested in your data. Now it's time to turn that investment into revenue.

If you're ready to talk about the last mile, we are too.

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