By Anastasia-Nikita Bansal, CEO of Teqblaze
Programmatic advertising has long promised to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time. Yet, despite countless technologies and endless optimizations, many deals still fall short. This erodes trust and exposes structural inefficiencies across the ecosystem.
From TeqBlaze’s vantage point as a white-label solution partner, some SSPs still heavily rely on traditional PMPs. They are actively pushing deals to DSPs to drive performance. But instead of the expected uplift, bid rates remain in the low single digits, and fill rates are even lower. The inventory isn’t aligned with what DSPs are looking for.
Traffic curation emerged as a response to PMPs limited logic, offering more adaptive, more contextual, and more specific solutions. But is it truly solving the root problem? Or is it merely reshaping it without genuine ownership?
I perceive curation as a control shifter, not another layer of complexity. In this respect, SSPs are no longer just suppliers but supply architects. They’re stepping into a strategic role—creating deals based on trusted content, real user data, and clear audience signals.
For years, audience segmentation and data activation were squarely in the DSP’s court. However, now those critical calls are happening upstream, giving supply-side players more power to shape outcomes from the outset.
Today, SSPs are actively filtering, shaping, and packaging the supply. DSPs still play a role, but it’s evolving. Instead of dictating terms, they’re tasked with executing strategies that have already been set. They’ve become the delivery engine, not the decision-maker.
And that redefines the entire flow. Despite this shift bringing better control and smarter targeting, it also comes with new challenges. It redefines responsibility.
But let’s be honest, some players actually prefer things this way. Middlemen benefit from complexity, markups, and inefficiencies that go unnoticed. SSPs hype up their inventory without showing any real results. DSPs launch campaigns without proper targeting or clear goals. And middlemen keep collecting fees while dodging responsibility.
Many buyers know the inventory is weak but still look the other way to keep CPMs low or reach scale. Middlemen thrive on complexity — they collect fees quietly while publishers and advertisers carry the risk.
But in this scenario, publishers and advertisers lose. Advertisers waste budget on low-quality impressions that don’t deliver. Publishers lose control of their content.
It’s time to move away from systems that merely pass along traffic toward ones that are accountable for why and how that traffic is selected. For example, matching supply to verified audiences in premium contextual environments. That’s exactly where curated deals make their mark.
Everyone is curating. No one is responsible
The industry has embraced curation with enthusiasm. According to PrimeAudience, 89% of marketers are now using curated deals in their campaigns, with another 8% planning to adopt them soon.
But in some cases, there is too much enthusiasm and not enough accountability. For too long, programmatic has worked like a hot potato game — everyone touches the deal, but no one wants to own the results. But that needs to change. If we want curated deals to actually deliver value, everyone involved has to be clear on their role.
The main question is why the market hasn’t fully embraced this shift. First, a lack of transparency. Many curated deals still go live with little clarity: SSPs are bundling inventory into curated packages, and DSPs are activating those packages without a glance.
Many publishers joined curated deals, expecting to achieve scale and performance. But most often, they had no visibility that their inventory was included in a curated deal.
Second, old habits and outdated processes. I mean the reliance on legacy systems that weren’t built for a certain level of collaboration.
And third, some buyers look the other way. Even when they know the inventory isn’t high quality, some prefer to ignore the issue just to keep CPMs low or hit scale targets. Yes, it may be convenient in the short term, but it hurts performance in the long run.
The result is that deals often go live without clearly defined KPIs, and the performance underwhelms everyone involved.
When a campaign underperforms, everyone points fingers. The SSPs blame poor demand signals, the DSPs cite low-quality inventory, and the publishers are left wondering how their content ended up in the mix at all.
Obviously, curation didn’t show up as a passing trend. It arose out of necessity—the market needed more context and precision. But without accountability, curation risks becoming a new wrapper on the same old problems.
Curation can restore inventory value, but only if done right
If curation continues to evolve as a closed, exclusive system, we risk creating private club-like ecosystems where smaller publishers are locked out and buyers operate in silos. This isn’t innovation — it’s regression.
The line between supply and demand is getting blurrier by the day. DSPs are working directly with publishers. SSPs are built with buyers in mind. The whole programmatic stack is shrinking. And that’s a good thing!
Fewer steps from brand to user means fewer fees, fewer delays, and fewer chances for things to break. What used to take five or six hops now takes one or two. Buyers finally get the transparency they’ve been asking for: real pricing, clear paths, and clean reporting.
Publishers win too by keeping more of the budget, with less “ad tech tax” and better CPMs. And when everything runs through a single system, data flows smoothly. First-party insights from both sides fuel faster decisions, smarter bidding, and better results.
This is what SPO was always supposed to be and what well-executed curation now makes possible.
What we need are clear standards and shared responsibility
We’ve seen this play out before. PMPs once stood for premium quality, but without enforceable standards, they devolved into yet another checkbox on media plans. With privacy regulations tightening and third-party identifiers becoming less prevalent, the stakes for curation are even higher today.
Since there are no shared definitions, no clear standards, and no consistency across platforms, curation risks repeating the same fate.
When curation is treated as a shared responsibility, it becomes a lever for value, not just a tactic. It gives you control over how the supply is structured.
We can start by building a stronger foundation across four areas: audience segmentation, first-party data activation, inventory auditing, and transparent reporting.
The industry needs to move on from outdated targeting tactics that rely on third-party cookies’ data. Instead, we should build audiences based on page context, user behavior, and consented data.
Standardized and transparent reporting is another essential pillar to consider. What we need are shared dashboards that reflect predefined KPIs, clearly track which signals and strategies contributed to outcomes, and surface underperformance early.
It’s not about hiding markups until somebody complains about it. And curation isn’t a workaround. It’s a way to build clarity into the buying process.
Both publishers and brands also need to work with their own first-party data. These include secure IDs or layering data into curated deals. Honestly, all the tools exist—we just need to use them more intentionally.
You set the rules, not just react to what comes through. Geography, content type, format, audience filters — all agreed upon up front, all visible. That’s the difference between true curation and the old ad network model.
The most effective approaches are collaborative: publishers know exactly how their inventory is shaped, as well as the value and revenue. It’s about co-creating smarter deals. Publishers pick their inventory first, and brands add real audience signals on top.
A strong marketplace partner doesn’t just deliver impressions. It applies intelligence. It defines when, how, and for whom inventory becomes available—using transparent rules, dynamic triggers, and adaptable frameworks across taxonomy, targeting, and formats.
When a curated deal helps publishers earn more efficiently and gives advertisers the results they’re aiming for, everyone benefits. It’s about owning the connection between supply and demand and making that connection work better. In the end, true curation isn’t about layering. It’s about owning — and that’s what will separate leaders from followers in this new programmatic era.
