The programmatic landscape is shifting. Open exchange — once the backbone of programmatic buying — is increasingly being supplemented (and in some cases replaced) by curated deals that offer better control, transparency, and performance.
What Changed?
Three forces are driving the shift toward curation:
- Supply chain transparency demands: Brands want to know exactly where their ads run and how much of their spend reaches the publisher.
- Signal loss from cookie deprecation: Curated packages often include enriched signals that compensate for reduced cookie availability.
- Quality over quantity: Buyers are realizing that reaching fewer, better-quality impressions outperforms spray-and-pray volume buying.
How Curated Deals Work
A curated deal is essentially a pre-packaged bundle of inventory that combines specific publishers, formats, and targeting criteria into a single deal ID. These deals can be created by SSPs, data companies, or specialist curators (like us).
"Think of curation as building a private marketplace tailored to your specific KPIs — without the overhead of negotiating individual PMPs with dozens of publishers."
Getting Started with Curation
Start by identifying 2-3 campaign objectives where open exchange performance has plateaued. Test curated deals alongside your existing setup and measure incremental lift, not just CPM differences. The results usually speak for themselves.
