Observed Signal · Apr 14, 2025 · Opinion / Analysis · Source: Marketecture · Impact: 3/5 · Sentiment: Neutral
DSPs Should Embrace Curation in Ad Tech
This Marketecture article argues that curation is a key differentiator for SSPs and a potential lever to improve margins in programmatic advertising. It traces how header bidding and DSPs’ SPO practices have pressured SSPs, and how curation can offer buyers higher-quality supply while preserving publisher monetization. The piece contrasts DSP behaviors—using prebid header tagging to bypass SSPs and pruning bid paths to reduce QPS—with buyer desires for performance, control, and transparent pricing. It envisions data providers participating via open APIs to curate inventory, creating marketplaces of data and identity that yield purer signals and better monetization for all parties. Examples cited include AdX’s broad reach across long-tail publishers and the Open Path approach from The Trade Desk, underscoring ongoing evolution in the ad-tech landscape. The author advocates greater DSP investment in data-curation ecosystems to shift market dynamics.
Discusses a potential industry shift toward data-driven curation and its implications for DSPs, SSPs, and buyers.
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Key Takeaways & Evidence Grounding
- Curation is identified as the most successful differentiation strategy for SSPs to preserve margin.
- DSPs use The Trade Desk’s Open Path approach to place tags in prebid headers and bypass SSPs.
- DSPs prune paths to minimize QPS while keeping their customers happy.
- Buyers want access to high-quality supply with fewer middlemen and direct tag-level access to thousands of top publishers.
- AdX is cited for its reach across millions of long-tail publishers.
Connected Companies & Entities
3 Entities mappedOntology Mapping & Concepts
Related Market Signals & Shifts
Recent verified developments and strategic activity across this market segment.
Curation Reshapes Programmatic, Often Adding Opacity
The article argues that programmatic ‘curation’ is transforming how mid-market agencies buy media — shifting control upstream from DSP-led black boxes to self-service curation platforms and third-party packagers that access SSP infrastructure via APIs. While curation promises cleaner supply paths, better performance and more buyer control, the piece warns it can simply move opacity to a different layer: buyers may still lack visibility into packaged inventory, data application, supply paths and intermediary margins. The author urges agencies to demand verifiable transparency (publisher lists, supply paths, applied data, real-time controls and clear reporting). Longer-term fixes require shortening the buyer‑publisher chain, baking transparency into transactions and giving publishers more control over packaging and monetization.
How Much DSP Is Inside SSPs Today?
The article examines the blurring boundaries between supply-side platforms (SSPs) and demand-side platforms (DSPs) in programmatic advertising, using PubMatic as an example. PubMatic, historically an SSP, now offers direct inventory access to agencies and advertisers and is developing an “operating system” for agentic advertising that uses AI agents to automate campaign workflows from natural-language briefings to live campaigns. The piece explores how curation—packaging inventory with audience data and quality criteria—changes buying paths and raises questions about fees, prioritization, and transparency. While industry standards like Ads.txt, Sellers.json and the SupplyChain object improved visibility, economic and algorithmic decisioning remain opaque. The article stresses the ongoing divergence of publisher and advertiser interests and highlights the need to understand who curates, optimizes, measures, and governs automated decision rules.
Olyzon Launches Agentic Orchestration Platform for Advertising
Olyzon, an agentic orchestration platform for advertising, has launched its technology live in market, optimizing real advertising campaigns. The platform enables agencies and brands to orchestrate media budgets across CTV, YouTube, social, digital audio, and DOOH from a single interface, integrating with existing DSPs, SSPs, and measurement partners. It is positioned as a working example of a Unified Media Platform (UMP), connecting systems that previously operated in silos. Key integrations include Amazon DSP, DV360, The Trade Desk, Yahoo DSP, Universal Ads, Vibe, Spotify, PubMatic, Swivel.ai, DoubleVerify, Xpln, Lucid, and Innovid. The launch was announced at Advertising Week New York.
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