Curation as a programmatic process has grown tremendously over the past several years. It has moved away from being a trend and has become a paradigm shift for brands and media agencies looking to activate and optimize data through the supply path.
As more brands, agencies, publishers and other platforms hop on board, all are looking to understand what competitive edge curation can provide. Before anyone can get a firm grasp on the benefits, we need to define curation clearly.
Even amid the ubiquity, there is still confusion across the marketplace. The advertising industry is notorious for having a ton of bandwagon jumpers and poseurs. Curation is (unfortunately) no different, as everyone claims to be a curator these days.
IAB Tech Lab’s Curation Framework sub-working group has defined Curation in programmatic advertising as the selection and organization of inventory using technology and data, intending to create effective packages for advertisers through prepackaged or real-time operations. These curated packages are optimized to maximize value and performance for both advertisers and publishers.
Audigent identified quite early what we consider the mandatory three key elements required to
unlock the full promise of curation:
- Unique data
- Robust connections to inventory
- Optimization
Now, many companies make PMPs, and many buyers are already purchasing them. But buyers need to know that a PMP alone does not mean that a buy is truly curated. If the PMP is missing unique data, connections to inventory, or optimization capabilities, it is not curation.
With the definition out of the way, let’s look at how curation drives measurable value and performance for both media buyers and media sellers when all three key ingredients are present.
Curation can drive increased bid density and higher win rates. Audigent’s partner OpenX has helped publishers see a 20% increase in bid density and a 118% increase in win rate for curated deals compared to the open market.
It can also drive revenue uplift and increase eCPMS, as Pubmatic has helped publishers achieve up to 10% average overall revenue uplift on discovered inventory and a 25% average increase in eCPMs on incremental impressions.
Many publishers that work with Magnite for curation are also reaping benefits, with some seeing as high as a 75% net increase in CPMS after data curation fees, and as high as a 91% net increase for CPMS on CTV.
Index Exchange reports that publishers in the health vertical have seen a 260% average revenue uplift thanks to curation, and eCPms have doubled.
Finally, the curation services that Sharethrough offers to publishers have led to a 33% average increase in curated display eCPMs, compared to open auction, and a 57% average online video eCPM increase.
When we look at what this means for brands and media agencies, the numbers are equally strong. When comparing DMP segments activated on the open exchange to curated PMPs activated with the same segment, the curated buy resulted in:
- 36-81% data segments savings
- 10 – 70% lower cost per click
- 1.5 – 3.0x higher click-through rate
- 10% – 30% higher video completion rates
Perhaps the most exciting news in all of this is that the ad industry is still in the beginning stages of unlocking the value of curation. The Tech Lab’s Curation Working Group is currently standardizing ways to provide additional transparency for marketers to see who curated each deal, as well as other related deal metadata. Growing adoption will lead to increased innovation, which will only drive greater results. To get there, the industry needs to be able to identify true curation, and then use those tools to unlock value.
Drew Stein
Audigent Managing Director
Experian