By Tim Conley, Senior Director, Curation at Criteo
When talking about the current media and digital advertising ecosystem, curation is fast becoming a topic you just can’t ignore. Curation is emerging as a strategy that is reshaping how agencies, publishers and brands engage with data, inventory, and audiences.
If used correctly, curation benefits all key stakeholders; publishers can grow their premium inventory, agencies can have tighter control over media quality and inventory access, and brands can target and reach audiences more accurately. And, perhaps most importantly, this means consumers will receive relevant and high-quality ad content across the open web.
Despite its added value for both the buy side and the supply side, there is currently confusion in the industry about what curation is – often deemed to be merely the latest ad tech buzzword. But curation is more than just a blanket phrase. It involves leveraging enriched data to improve ad targeting, leading to better outcomes for ad tech players and their audiences.
More than just organising supply
A common misconception is that curation is simply a new form of ad network. This is underpinned by the assumption that curation is the bundling of inventories, and that organised content alone adds value. But this is an oversimplification that overlooks the role curation plays in the ad tech landscape.
Curation is about packaging data and supply together, driving real value. It involves building premium media packages on the sell side, enriched with first-party data, and making this accessible to buyers across any demand side platform (DSP). By moving ad targeting closer to the source of inventory, curation creates a more controlled, transparent path from publisher to advertiser and allows for more precise audience targeting. It helps to ensure simplicity, relevance and quality are at the forefront of campaigns.
What curation means for agencies and brands
Brands and agencies can often struggle to see where their budgets are going, with many seeking simplicity, transparency, and control. This is where curation comes in. Agencies can utilise curation to regain control of Supply Path Optimisation (SPO) decisions that had previously been ceded to their DSPs. This enables agencies to truly take ownership over their programmatic supply; strengthening publisher-consumer relationships and improving the overall quality of their inventory.
Although some recent criticisms may overlook its core value, curation was designed to create a more balanced ecosystem, where the value creators drive decisions on how their media is traded. Curation allows agencies to customise pipelines, have tighter control over media quality, and have more access to high-performing inventory.
On the brand side, curation can be used to optimise advertising campaigns. By streamlining the programmatic buying process, curation provides advertisers with access to high-quality inventory and data. With the ability to leverage relevant, precise shopper insights, brands can activate audience-first campaigns that are tailored to the consumer. This enables them to target audiences more effectively and in more granular detail than traditional targeting models offer.
The role of curation for media owners and publishers
The impact of curation is particularly transformative on the supply side. It’s worth considering the context of the wider digital ad industry here: the fragmentation of DSPs and supply-side platforms (SSPs) has made programmatic advertising overly complex, creating barriers for data owners and complicating inventory management for publishers.
Curation has emerged as a solution to simplify the connections between DSPs and SSPs, allowing data owners to package their data with supply rather than integrating with every DSP. Publishers can reclaim control over how their inventory is packaged, priced, and perceived. Instead of exposing impressions to open auctions, media owners can use curation to segment and augment their offering. Augmenting a publisher’s inventory refers to adding curated data sets, such as commerce data, to make their inventory appealing to new buyers and expanding their brand reach.
The increased demand of curation means that publishers are being connected with targeted ad spend from a wider range of buyers, more often, opening access to new budgets. This is a win-win for both publishers and advertisers – enhancing inventory value and commanding more impressions.
Keeping data safe and ensuring transparency
Data is safe in the curation ecosystem, enabling data owners to trade with all DSPs from a single curation integration. The data is held in a protected ecosystem where the deal ID is used as a proxy for data targeting, making it very suitable for powerful but sensitive commerce and retail data.
Curation creates a transparent process that ensures all stakeholders can realise the full benefits of their investment. By targeting specific audiences through a clear, data-driven methodology, curation improves relationships between buyers and sellers, again helping to create a more sustainable and efficient advertising ecosystem.
Curation represents the drive to innovate
Curation isn’t just another buzzword – it’s the frontier of digital advertising. Far from being another fleeting trend, it represents the next step in the programmatic advertising ecosystem. Ad tech players who lean into curation, enabling agencies, data providers, and media owners to trade on their own curated terms, will be best positioned for success.
Overall, the message is simple: to be a pioneer in the industry, ad tech partners must be committed to empowering the principals of the industry to trade with the flexibility, transparency, and control that has been historically in the hands of the tech platforms. Curation is a powerful approach that hands flexibility, transparency and control back to publishers, agencies, and brands; delivering real value beyond the hype.
