"There's only 90 minutes in the show. Half of it is editorial, half paid. I just do a pretty hardcore pitch on it, locking down the minutes. Every year, we charge more for the minutes."

"We have the Washington Post Insights team, which does in-house surveys. We're lucky to be able to tap into them. They're the best at doing this kind of work."

One reason publishers got into programmatic, Spanfeller said, is that some agencies were using bad inventory and bot networks. The issue is what is the next business model for agencies.