Last month, Tech Lab shared our perspective on the latest industry buzz word–curation. Our solution, the Curation Framework, highlighted that what is old becomes new again. The Seller Defined Audiences specification, released two years ago, achieves many of the same goals that curation strives for. In a LinkedIn post, CEO Anthony Katsur reshared the available standards to support curation:
- Audience and Content Taxonomies – a common language for describing audiences, content and specifically CTV genre
- Data Transparency – a standard way to label how an audience was made
- Supply Chain Object – transparency into who is selling the inventory and through which supply partners
It’s no secret that Seller Defined Audiences, while hailed as an Adweek Innovation of the year, hasn’t gained the adoption it deserves.
We asked the industry why: the industry responded.
We were thrilled to dive into the feedback we received through dozens of comments, threads, and messages.
Our path is clear. We’re kicking off a Curation Workstream in 2025 and rebranding Seller Defined Audiences as Curated Audiences, as audiences can be defined by multiple parties and not only sellers.
Under the banner of our Addressability Working Group, who first designed the Seller Defined Audience Specification, we’ll review and address feedback. Our community will drive changes to suit the needs of the industry. Some of the topics to expect in discussion:
- More methods of preventing data leakage for publishers, preserving their first party data value
- Visibility of curation or enrichment partners
- Plans for testing the framework in 2025
If you’re interested in joining the Curation Framework Subgroup to dive into the weeds on this topic, please sign up here.
Hillary Slattery
Sr. Director, Programmatic, Product Management
IAB Tech Lab