Control, Costs, and Confessions: Surviving the Programmatic Maze

In this episode, Samuel Youn breaks down the real problems in programmatic advertising ecosystem and what it takes for publishers to regain control. He explains why cost transparency is still a mess, how resellers dilute your value, and what makes a strong ad tech stack in 2025.

Sam also shares how to assess tech partners more clearly, how to avoid hidden vendor costs, and why publishers need to rethink what real growth looks like in a changing market.

Samuel Youn is VP of Revenue Strategy at Chegg. He started his journey in ad tech at Imagine Easy Solutions, where he helped lead monetization efforts before the company was acquired by Chegg. Since then, Sam has played a key role in building and scaling Chegg’s advertising strategy as the business evolved. His experience spans monetization, operations, and product. He’s known for asking tough questions, simplifying complex topics, and keeping the user at the center of every decision.

Vijay Kumar is the Founder and CEO of Mile, where he has spent over a decade helping publishers navigate modern Ad Tech. His work spans pricing strategy, yield optimization, and infrastructure decisions, always focused on giving publishers more clarity and control.

As host of Web Without Walls, Vijay brings real-world experience and thoughtful curiosity to every conversation. He asks the questions publishers care about, challenges assumptions when needed, and creates space for honest, practical industry dialogue.

• “I think open exchange as like the marketplace and all you can do is enable yourself with tools and partnerships that would help you extract the most amount of value from the marketplace because supply is commodity and it will always be a commodity. all you can do is okay, I'm going to run a race across other suppliers. So how do I handle myself with the best technology and partnerships that will help me generate the most amount of value?”
• “It's just basically how I earned the right to essentially do what I'm doing. if you put that lens on everything that you do, that kind of essentially answers your question, should I be doing this or not? And you're going to cannibalize your existing revenue by doing a BNC, which is great.”