Publishers need to improve the service they give brand advertisers and reduce the amount of inventory they hand over to ad networks, Nielsen Online CEO John Burbank said in a speech at an industry event, ClickZ reports.

In his keynote at the Advertising Research Foundation's Audience Measurement 4.0 conference, Burbank said the current models won't support web publishing for much longer.

An overwhelming glut of ad inventory is diluting prices, and ad networks aren't helping matters, he said.

"All the things you love about the web ... they will go away or they will have to find new ways of funding [them]," he told the audience.