deal curation

In response to shifting ad industry trends, A360 Media abandoned its made-for-advertising model four years ago and streamlined its site design to court programmatic demand.

A class-action lawsuit takes Office Depot to task for deceptive pricing and ads; YouTube is taking over TV, but brands may be missing out; and advertisers weigh in on which marketing trends are worth the hype.

Two perspectives have emerged on curation: The value argument highlights refined audience targeting, while the ad network argument emphasizes enabling smaller players to compete with scaled giants.

The IAB Tech Lab is officially rebranding its Seller Defined Audiences spec as “Curated Audiences” to spur adoption in response to this year’s sell-side curation trend.

Curation is a reaction to programmatic’s worsening queries-per-second problem, says Permutive’s Joe Root. DSPs are biased toward impressions that have an identifier attached, so SSPs are using curated deal IDs as a stand-in for third-party cookies.

Dave Strauss, VP of revenue operations and strategy for North America, spoke with AdExchanger about The Guardian’s PMP priorities and how it’s tapping into other emerging revenue streams.

While tech companies are jumping on the curation bandwagon, publishers are left to navigate a new normal in programmatic advertising, where they often don’t have a say.

Freestar adopted a new approach to curation developed by Audigent that gives buyers a priority lane to publisher inventory with higher viewability and attention scores than most open-auction inventory.

By applying Adelaide’s Attention Unit scoring, buyers can target low-, medium- and high-attention inventory via TTD’s self-serve platform.

Competing agendas are limiting the tools publishers have at their disposal in ways that aren’t always primarily motivated by user privacy. Here are five things about privacy in digital media that should keep publishers up at night.

Chrome Privacy Sandbox adds support for deal IDs and extends Protected Audiences’ lifespan to 90 days; Google’s ad tech antitrust trial could open YouTube to DSPs other than DV360; and former Kubient CEO charged in accounting fraud scheme.

The trajectory of digital advertising remains unchanged. There are plenty of signs that the investments advertisers have made in cookie alternatives are already paying off.

The average CTV platform now authorizes 30 SSPs to sell its inventory. And one of the most noticeable effects of increased SSP saturation in CTV has been higher costs due to SSP reselling.

How big of a deal is The Trade Desk’s top 100 list? AdExchanger spoke to industry experts for their reactions and bounced some of their hot takes off The Trade Desk.

Since launch, 82% of advertisers that buy inventory through the Yahoo DSP have tried Backstage at least once. And buyers are seeing lower CPMs from cutting out SSPs.

The phaseout of third-party cookies kicked off the sell-side curation trend. But it’s also being driven by advertiser concerns about open web media quality and the need to enhance publisher contextual signals with audience data.

Curation’s shift to the sell side is giving DSPs less control over how advertisers curate audiences, which is creating new tensions in the programmatic ecosystem.

Buyers could solve many of the issues they have with the open web by focusing less on viewability and clicks and more on driving performance outcomes, says Goodway Group director of strategic partnerships Andrea Kwiatek.

In addition to establishing another pipe for programmatic demand, Colossus SSP will add SHE Media’s network of minority- and woman-owned publishing brands to its own minority-focused PMPs.

Getting personalization right remains tricky, and AI will only make it trickier. Then, inside Privacy Sandbox testing and the rise of curation tech.

Index Marketplaces activates the curation capabilities of DSPs, DMPs and RMNs – and the demand for their PMP deals – across Index Exchange’s network of publishers.

While 2023’s return to fiscal responsibility made for rough waters, it will pale in comparison to 2024.  Here are eight trends worth watching.