THE INTERNET SHRINK: How Dan Rua and Admiral Are Teaching Publishers to Stop Being Codependent on Big Tech

(Missing Episode of The ADOTAT Show, Now Found. Mazel tov.)

Dan Rua has been around the internet longer than some of your interns have been alive. Back when we were all waiting for AOL CDs in the mail and thinking “buffering” was just part of life, Dan was already neck-deep in network software and plotting his next billion-dollar move.

On this recovered episode of The ADOTAT Show (think Indiana Jones finding the lost ark, but with less snakes and more sarcasm), Dan sits down to explain why publishers are stuck in a toxic relationship with Big Tech—and why he’s hell-bent on becoming the therapist they didn’t know they needed.

“I was backing companies as a VC, and one of the last was Grooveshark,” Dan casually drops, like he’s recalling an old college roommate. Grooveshark, for the uninitiated, was doing streaming before Spotify put the industry on a leash. “We noticed something eating away at our revenue—ad blockers and data blockers.”

That’s right. The villains of this story aren’t just Facebook and Google—it's also those sneaky little browser extensions that publishers are practically paying to rob them blind.

The Epiphany: Publishers Have Commitment Issues

Dan’s lightbulb moment? The internet runs on an abusive business model. “There was no relationship between the publisher and the visitor,” he says. “Each side kind of abusing the relationship. Publishers would attach too many ads or terrible ad experiences, and users wouldn’t care if you lived or died.”

Sounds like a bad breakup, but with fewer text messages and more pop-ups.

So Dan took his Grooveshark team, spun out Admiral, and went on a mission to fix what he calls "a missing relationship" between the two. What came next was VRM—Visitor Relationship Management—which is Dan’s answer to a publishing world that still treats users like they’re just wallet-shaped blips on a Google Analytics chart.

“It’s a playoff of CRM, but for websites,” he says. “Before it’s a customer or a subscriber, it starts as a visitor.”

In other words, publishers have been skipping straight to marriage proposals without even asking users out for coffee first.

Publishers, Meet Your Adtech Interventionist

But here’s the rub: publishers aren’t exactly lining up to change. They’re caught in what can only be described as digital Stockholm Syndrome, cuddling up to platforms that are actively siphoning off their lunch money.

“It is tantalizing to leverage a platform to solve a near-term goal,” Dan admits, like a man explaining why people still eat gas station sushi. “But in the process, they’re selling their long-term opportunity.”

Admiral doesn’t just plug one hole in the leaky bucket—it rebuilds the whole bucket. “Publishers were building a VRM stack with five or six different point solutions,” Dan explains. “Those point solutions step all over each other.”

He compares it to inviting five wedding DJs to the same reception—nobody’s dancing, and someone’s definitely getting punched before dessert.

The Mobster Economics of Ad Blockers

Then there’s the darker side: ad blockers. According to Dan, ad blockers are basically the mob in a hoodie. “The blockers tap the publisher on the shoulder and say, ‘listen, buddy, if you cut me in on the action, I’ll let some ads show.’”

Cue the Sopranos theme song.

Dan’s team at Admiral refused to join the cat-and-mouse game of sneaking ads past blockers. “That works against the relationship between publisher and visitor,” he says. Instead, they focus on helping both parties act like grown-ups. Protect your content, respect your audience, and stop paying protection money to shady middlemen.

The Marriage Counselor for the Open Web

“Customer love.” That’s not just something Admiral slaps on a PowerPoint deck. It’s the literal name of their customer success team. And it’s working.

“We only win if our publishers win,” Dan insists. “It’s why we focus on customer love, which isn’t just the customer success team. It is our entire company thinking in a customer love way.”

Imagine if most ad tech vendors actually loved their clients, instead of treating them like a timeshare presentation. Wild.

Dan is pushing publishers to think like SaaS companies—tracking metrics like ARPU and lifetime value instead of obsessing over clicks and fill rates like it’s still 2011.

But here’s the punchline: “Most of publishing doesn’t talk about Net Revenue Retention or churn at a board level,” he says. “We're trying to help solve that.”

Translation? Publishers are trying to survive a knife fight using a spork.

AI, Skateboards, and Streak Running (No, Not That Kind)

When Dan isn’t running Admiral, he’s... literally running. “My wife and I stumbled on streak running,” he says. “You run at least a mile a day, every day. We’re years into it now.”

Dan also collects vintage skateboards—steel wheels only, none of that poly nonsense. Somewhere, Tony Hawk just got nervous.

The Big Mission: Saving the Free Internet from Itself

Dan’s North Star is simple: keep the internet from devolving into a wasteland of low-effort content and algorithm-chasing hacks. He’s aiming to protect original content creators—the journalists, writers, and storytellers who actually make the web worth browsing.

“We can’t have the content that educates, entertains, and empowers people without a sustainable model to pay for it,” Dan says, sounding more like a rabbi at Yom Kippur than a startup CEO.

So what’s his personal headline for 2030?

“Everything will be permeated by AI,” he says. “But we’re also heading toward an ‘Internet Plus’ future, where people buy into a bundle across many sites, creating a premium experience across the whole web.”

Think Netflix, but for the open internet—with fewer docuseries about serial killers.

Final Thoughts: Yoda, Tim Draper, and a Missed Decade

Dan credits Tim Draper with giving him one of the best pieces of advice: “Starting and building companies is so hard, you might as well go after really big problems.”

For Dan, that big problem is fixing the rotten incentive system behind digital publishing. “I want my kids and grandkids to have an internet that’s more vibrant than today’s,” he says.

And when I ask him what text message he’d send his younger self, Dan doesn’t hesitate: “Jump into startups immediately. I feel like I lost a decade working at IBM.”

Honestly? Same.

Dan Rua isn’t just building tech—he’s putting publishers on the couch, handing them a tissue, and telling them to stop giving their lunch money to bullies.

Admiral is here to slap the coffee out of your hand, look you dead in the eye, and say: “You’re better than this.”

And you know what? He might just be right.

Stay Bold, Stay Curious, and Know More Than You Did Yesterday.

(And yeah, you’re lucky we found this lost episode.)Regulatory Storm Incoming: The Next Big Crackdown on Performance Marketing

For years, lead generation has been the Wild West of digital marketing—lawless, unpredictable, and just regulated enough to keep the sheriff from shutting down the whole saloon. But if recent events are any indication, the industry might be on the verge of a regulatory reckoning that makes the CAN-SPAM Act and GDPR look like warm-up acts.

At the center of this firestorm is the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and its now-infamous One-to-One Consent Rule, a sweeping attempt to redefine consent under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). The rule, which was originally set to take effect in January 2025, aimed to overhaul how marketers collect and use consumer consent for calls and texts. In short, it would have required that consumers give explicit consent for each and every vendor separately, obliterating the long-standing practice of multi-sponsor lead forms.

The industry, predictably, lost its collective mind.

Businesses rushed to adjust, compliance teams burned through Red Bull-fueled all-nighters, and entire revenue models teetered on the edge of collapse. But then, at the eleventh hour, just as marketers braced themselves for impact, two plot twists unfolded in rapid succession:

• First, the FCC announced a one-year delay on implementing the new rule, citing the need for judicial review and a desire to avoid unnecessary lawsuits.

• Then, mere minutes later, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the rule entirely, effectively declaring it dead on arrival.

For an industry that had spent the past year scrambling to prepare for what many saw as an existential crisis, the sudden reversal felt like waking up from a nightmare—only to realize that while the immediate threat was gone, the bigger problem still loomed on the horizon.

The FCC Overreach: Why the Court Killed the One-to-One Consent Rule

The Eleventh Circuit didn’t just strike down the FCC’s rule—it obliterated it, arguing that the agency had wildly overstepped its statutory authority. The Court’s decision broke the rule into two main components:

1. The One-to-One Consent Requirement

   • The FCC’s rule attempted to mandate that consent be granted to one vendor at a time, rather than allowing consumers to consent to multiple companies at once.

   • The Court found this requirement to be legally baseless, stating that nothing in the TCPA suggests that consent must be limited in this way.

2. The "Logically and Topically Related" Rule

   • The FCC also attempted to restrict how broad consent could be, requiring that any future calls or texts be directly related to the topic of the website where the consumer originally provided consent.

   • The Court ruled that this limitation was arbitrary and unnecessary, noting that if a consumer explicitly agrees to receive messages about multiple related topics, that should be enough.

In short, the Court accused the FCC of trying to rewrite the TCPA instead of enforcing it, and in doing so, it tossed the rule into the regulatory graveyard.

Lead Generation’s Regulatory Future: What Happens Now?

While marketers and lead generators may be popping champagne over the ruling, it would be wildly premature to assume that the FCC—and other regulators—are done with this fight. If anything, this decision might just be the opening salvo in a much larger war over how consumer consent is defined and enforced in digital marketing.

Here’s what we know:

• The FCC could appeal. The agency isn’t known for backing down, and it’s entirely possible they’ll take this fight to the Supreme Court or attempt to rewrite the rule in a way that fits within their legal limits.

• Other regulatory agencies are watching. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), state attorneys general, and even international regulators are all circling, looking for ways to clamp down on what they see as abusive marketing tactics.

• Consumer privacy laws are tightening. With the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and other state-level regulations expanding their reach, marketers should assume that some form of stricter compliance is coming—whether from the FCC or another governing body.

What Marketing Can Learn from the Financial Sector

If marketers want a preview of what their future might look like, they should look no further than the financial services industry. Banks, lenders, and insurance companies have been dealing with intense regulatory scrutiny for decades, and they’ve developed sophisticated compliance frameworks to navigate it.

Financial institutions don’t just talk about compliance; they live and breathe it. Every marketing message, every lead acquisition strategy, every customer interaction is meticulously documented, audited, and reviewed. Violations result in multimillion-dollar fines, not just a slap on the wrist.

The marketing industry, by contrast, has treated compliance as an afterthought—something to be addressed only when forced. That approach is no longer sustainable. If lead generation wants to survive in an increasingly regulated world, it needs to start thinking like finance:

• Rigorous documentation of consent. No more vague, checkbox agreements. Every consent should be explicitly documented and easily verifiable.

• Investment in compliance infrastructure. Businesses should be treating compliance tech as a core investment, not a luxury.

• Proactive self-regulation. If the industry doesn’t take steps to enforce its own standards, the government will do it for them—and history shows that government-imposed regulations tend to be far more restrictive than necessary.

The Era of Unchecked Lead Generation is Over

Let’s be clear: just because the One-to-One Consent Rule is dead doesn’t mean lead generation is safe. If anything, this moment should be a wake-up call for marketers who are still playing fast and loose with consumer data.

The FCC may have lost this round, but regulators aren’t going anywhere. The push for tighter controls on how consumer consent is obtained and used is only going to intensify, and the smartest marketers will start adapting now—before they’re forced to.

For now, the industry has dodged a bullet. But make no mistake: the regulatory storm is still coming. The only question is whether performance marketing will evolve fast enough to survive it.