Having an "onmichannel" channel does the "heavy lifting in terms of brand-building," according to Domino CEO Nathan Coyle. It's about having diversified initiatives and platforms. They give back in spades on the brand side and when you do it well and keep doing it, then you start to build meaningful business and revenue as well."

As publishers seek out new revenue streams, from native advertising and paywalls to mobile apps, live video, and programmatic, first-party data has become increasingly important. Forrester predicted in its trend report that 2016 would be the year publishers take control of their data, and to a large extent, they did. Amid this shift, however, sits an often-neglected element of the publisher ecosystem that could become the next monetization frontier: the content management system, or CMS.

Header bidding has become the new obsession of the fast-changing advertising industry. This advanced technology has presented a slew of new opportunities for both advertisers and publishers, but there is a learning curve involved.