Programmatic curation has been gaining momentum for the past few years.
Now the backlash has begun.
Curation grew enough this year that we wrote an AdExplainer on the trend back in May. But in the past week, Marketing Brew, Adweek, Marketecture, ad tech Twitter and LinkedIn have weighed in, as criticisms of the trend grew.
“Whenever I hear curation, I think ad network,” said IAB Tech Lab CEO Tony Katsur on X, a pronouncement that prompted a massive debate we discuss on this week’s episode.
Curation products – often built by DSPs, SSPs and DMPs – package inventory together, often by cutting out one layer of ad tech in the process. Curation is also being pitched as a way to buy brand-safe news, top publishers or avoid low-quality inventory. And, as cookies go away, it enables buyers to use publisher first-party data instead of third-party data.
But some curation products, which focus on quality or safety, are providing buyers with the kind of ad experience they thought they were getting already. “Calling it curation is just another way to say, ‘For years you’ve been flinging your ads into the internet with no idea where they went,’” AdExchanger Senior Editor James Hercher says on this week’s podcast.
Some feel the open web should focus not on curation but raising the bar of inventory overall to ensure it flourishes and is defended against walled gardens.
Ultimately, the trend will only take off if it can improve buyer KPIs, a tough proposition given that lower-priced, lower-quality inventory often looks great on a spreadsheet – but bad for the person viewing the ad.
