Custom Bidding & Programmatic Media Consultant, Data Science/Technology/Product Leader, Chalice and SWYM Founder, Startup Advisor. Two-time Ad-Exchanger Startup of the year award winner. 🏳️🌈 Ally
So curation. All of my clients have ongoing projects enabling curation and it is the fastest growing part of my consulting practice. I really should write an article or do a webinar; the topic has some nuance. First, a definition. Curation is just an include list on the SSP. The trick is to curate (create the include list) on something that the advertiser cares about. It could be performance or brand lift or video completes or context, or some other KPI. So, you results will vary, depending on the KPI and how well you (or your partner) have selected inventory that provides lift to the KPI of choice. Assuming you have done a good job of selecting a KPI, only good comes to the advertiser when the inventory they bid on is pre-selected, upsteam of the DSP. What good things? First, and obviously, you get a head start on performance. You have already gotten rid of the inventory that does not perform (looking at you MFA and fraud.) Second, creating an include list that defines the inventory in a deal ID tends to increase the amount of that inventory that the DSP will bid on. So, less traffic shaping, more of the inventory that you want to see. Third, most DSP optimization (and inclusions/exclusion lists) is done at the domain level. Some of the SSPs let you curate on URLs. You get a big performance improvement if you can curate on URLs. Fourth, if you automate the creation of your curated PMPs, you can change the composition of your inclusions lists, daily. The PMP does not get stale. Fifth, if a large number of people use curated inventory, the CPMs for inventory from the good pubs will become higher as there are more bidders on the best inventory. Good for the health of the eco-system. Downside, there may not be enough performing inventory to go around, and some part of your campaign may need to run on open auctions. I actually think this is a good thing as you can find new pubs that perform against your KPIs and then add them to the curated list. Generally, supply chains are designed to make sure that the quality of the product is established as close to the supplier as possible. No reason why this should not apply in digital advertising. Lets talk if you want to know more.
Ok I mostly understand this but (you likely won’t be surprised by this) I find MarTech jargon impenetrable and infuriating. Nice job making “curation” in this usage quite clear. What the heck is a DSP, SSP, and PMP? I happen to have URL, MFA, and KPI already in my brain-cached decoder ring.
This belongs in a textbook. A great share!
Great post. I'm having similar conversations with several large publisher clients now, namely about how to do curation, creating curated PMPs, using 1P data/IDR in process, and how this all impacts DSP bidding/CPMs.
Love this Kenneth Rona, Ph.D.. I’d also like to dive in more. Maybe sometime next week or the week after?
Great piece - there are nuances to the type of curation as well - curation for directness/closeness, curation for performance, curation for audience/metrics
Lets do a webinar Kenneth Rona, Ph.D. I'll interview you on the subject. Like Merve Griffin!
Hey Kenneth Rona, Ph.D. I'd love to have you on to talk about curation! We'll get some good content to share with the folks on here.
Have been writing extensively about this, and I'm not one to miss an opportunity to pimp my work: https://www.adotat.com/2024/10/curation-haters-gonna-hate-but-its-still-the-only-thing-keeping-your-ads-clean/
A lot of good insight here! I'd argue that curation encompasses so many methods for improving efficiency across the supply chain while simultaneously driving incremental advertiser performance, and it proves the need for more human input and analysis on both buy- and sell-sides. Some of them have existed since oRTB was invented, while some are emerging, and all are needed to optimize...
CEO, CivicScience Advertising
6dCuration can also be a tactic to create a Deal ID that is programmed to include only the audiences of a specific segment defined by data collected on the sell side - such as site search, polls, commenting, quizzes, etc. We use "curation" tools this way (and so do many others), but we have recently decided to stop using the word "curation" because of how different our use case is compared to "an include list".