For years, publishers have heard the same advice: First-party data is the key to unlocking demand from digital advertisers.
That’s even more true now as agentic AI reshapes ad buying.
Publisher data on audience behavior is gold for training AI ad optimization engines, and publishers like Future are building their own AI solutions to capitalize on their data advantage.
On Tuesday, Future, which has a portfolio of more than 170 “specialist media” brands, including Marie Claire, Tom’s Guide, PC Gamer and CinemaBlend, launched Helix, a solution that adds AI-powered data science and predictive modeling to its in-house audience platform.
Helix should help attract advertisers who care about performance and media quality, which are both closely correlated with driving outcomes, said Jamie Samuel, VP of commercial product and go-to-market at Future.
“I mean, what else is there than outcomes, really?” Samuel quipped.
Building for the AI era
Future has spent the last several years building tech to activate its first-party data for outcome-based campaigns.
In 2021, it launched a data platform called Aperture, which lets Future segment audiences in real time using a first-party cookie to track content consumption. This allows advertisers to target Future’s first-party audiences “as soon as they turn up on the page,” Samuel said.
And last year, Future released Advisor, a content categorization solution it originally created to help guide content strategy for its publishers by highlighting which articles generate the most clicks, with a focus on ecommerce content.
Future later integrated Advisor into Aperture to help advertisers drive more clicks, Samuel said, which also sharpened Future’s contextual targeting from the URL level all the way down to individual paragraphs.
With the Helix launch, Future can now also offer predictive modeling, Samuel said, which should transform how Future’s direct sales team and its internal campaign planning team optimize campaigns. Going forward, the legacy Aperture platform and its branding will be replaced by Helix in the US.
Beyond the brief
Future’s sales reps can now bring an advertiser’s brief and campaign goals to the planning team to feed into Helix, which will suggest the audiences most likely to perform.
These audiences get packaged into direct deals or private marketplaces and activated programmatically via deal IDs.
According to Samuel, Future expects advertisers to primarily use the tool for cross-portfolio campaigns, rather than specific site or section takeovers or campaigns where advertisers already know what inventory they want to target.
Advertisers will also likely have to make certain commitments, since Future needs “a significant number of impressions to measure outcomes,” Samuel added.
But Helix is not intended for open-auction programmatic. “You still have to talk to us,” he said, “because how else would we know your goals?”
Since it’s a replacement of the existing Aperture platform, Helix use won’t require any additional fees beyond charges for targeting.
“CPM-wise, there are already upcharges for data,” Samuel said. “And the thing about trying to offer outcomes – you don’t want price to be to the detriment of outcomes, because then you’re going backwards.”
However, Samuel anticipates that the introduction of Helix optimization will encourage more advertisers to adopt Future’s audience targeting – which means Future will likely collect data fees on a higher percentage of campaigns. And if those campaigns perform better, then the demand should keep flowing.
Future has already tested the solution across 20 campaigns for fashion, retail and technology brands that ran between September and January. Helix optimization drove double-digit-percentage increases in click-through rates and “significant” improvements in return on ad spend, according to the company.
Helix surfaces high-performing audiences advertisers may overlook, Samuel said. One fashion brand, for instance, found that the audiences most likely to click its ads were also engaging with a lot of Future’s tennis-focused content around major events like the US Open. Optimizing for those audiences led to better ROAS and a lower cost per acquisition.
To spur adoption of the new solution, Future is offering a performance guarantee that will be tailored on advertiser-by-advertiser basis, Samuel said. Future will work with brands to make ongoing campaign adjustments and help them reach their campaign goals, whatever they are and regardless of how long it takes.
“We will make good on it if, on some rare occasion, we don’t deliver,” Samuel said.
Attracting advertisers
The Helix optimization engine was also designed to be interoperable with agency buying workflows.
“It’s deal IDs [and] direct IOs,” Samuel said. “We’re not trying to introduce net new complexity to our buyers.”
Interoperability should also lay the groundwork for future integrations with agency agentic buying tools, he added.
On top of that, Future is bringing its internal brand lift measurement capabilities to Helix campaigns. But agencies shouldn’t worry about Future grading its own homework, Samuel said, because the company works with several third-party measurement vendors, including one focused on footfall measurement and another on measuring online sales. (Future declined to share names.)
Having all those capabilities in its tech stack is what’s expected of a modern digital publisher, said Future’s CRO Mike Peralta.
“We’re producing great content, so we have the media quality,” Peralta said. “And at the same time, we have intelligence and data smarts that allow us to optimize towards whatever the client’s objective function is.”
In that sense, publishers today have to be both “sexy and smart” to win over advertisers, Peralta joked.
“You can’t be one or the other anymore,” he said. “You have to have the insights and reporting that ties the two together.”
Update 3/17/26: This story was updated to clarify that, with the introduction of Helix’s optimization feature set, Future is retiring the legacy Aperture branding for its data platform. The data platform will be rebranded as Helix in the US going forward, and Aperture will not exist as a standalone offering.
