If open web publishers want a market for crawl access, the first thing they need is control. AI crawlers are already extracting, summarizing, and consuming publisher content inside AI interfaces, and – from what we’re seeing at BidSwitch – they rarely send traffic back in return. At the same time, BidSwitch exchange data shows that only about 27% of publishers are blocking major AI crawlers today.  That number says a lot. The industry conversation around AI and publisher rights may be accelerating, but the operational reality is still early. Most publishers haven’t fully locked down crawler access yet. And as long as content remains broadly available for free, crawlers have little reason to adopt paid access models later. In many cases, the user gets an answer or summary without ever visiting the original source. That creates a familiar imbalance: publishers fund and produce the content, while other platforms capture more of the value around its use.  Our position is that the open web needs a fairer, more scalable way for content access to be priced and transacted. That’s one of the biggest reasons we announced the Dynamic Content Ledger (DCL) in November 2025.  

In an ideal world, every bid impression would travel the most direct route between publisher and advertiser. However, the crowded space and resulting supply chain complexity means this is often not the reality. Multiple intermediaries lead to an excess of supply chain hops, with each having a negative impact on the efficiency and transparency of media trading – while not necessarily adding value.

Bidstream bloat is a widely acknowledged challenge in programmatic advertising, and one that is moving up the priority list as the industry increasingly looks to reduce unnecessary complexity and cost in the ecosystem, as well as address pressing sustainability issues. Here we unpack exactly what is meant by the term, how the situation arose, and the steps that the buy and sell side can take to mitigate it.