As the industry undergoes a reset with technologies driving major changes in digital advertising, businesses must adapt. Naturally, this applies to curation but at its core, the fundamentals remain: increasing speed and reducing complexity. And when it comes to speed, a good way to think about curation is like an Electronic Programme Guide (EPG).
Facilitating that speed to spend
Over the years, the TV landscape has developed, with its multitude of channels and platforms, which has made finding and accessing what you want harder and more complex. But an EPG allows you to discover what you want and go straight to it. Accessing the programme immediately is what’s critical here, not where it’s hosted or any other factors associated with it. And it’s the same with curation.
The rise of programmatic and the complexity it’s fostered, as more platforms, providers and technologies have come into being, have left buyers wanting an easier and quicker way to find and access the audiences they need. And we act like an EPG for curation, by facilitating this need so finding and buying audiences is quicker and more efficient. Because if you’re an agency or advertiser, this is what’s crucial for your campaign. It’s about delivering the desired outcomes without buyers getting bogged down in figuring out the route to their audience. It’s about increasing speed and reducing complexity.
Containing advertising
Just as we saw with the rise of programmatic, we’re now experiencing another change in how digital advertising is bought. And arguably it’s overdue, as the industry wrestles with the inherent complexities that have emerged over the last decade.
Simply sending out a bid request to DSPs results in latency, lost signals and an associated cost for each hop involved. And with such a volume of bid requests, it’s forcing DSPs to make them more manageable, especially from a cost perspective, by throttling them back. So, despite the wealth of data across digital advertising, crucial decisions are made on only a fraction of the available inventory. And the result? Distorted decisions that then limit the effectiveness of buying models. But this is changing with the advent of containers.
Now it’s possible to package critical information – including targeting, curation and custom bidding logic – into a secure, portable container that allows decisions to be made at the supply sources. Latency reduces, signal quality improves, bids can be shaped earlier, and operational costs lowered.
And what speed does here is open more advertising opportunities by surfacing – rather than throttling – deals. Decisions can be based on a greater wealth of inventory, allowing for models to perform better. Reach is extended, and brands and agencies have a wider array of chances to reach their target audience.
In parallel, how media is discovered, negotiated and transacted is shifting. It’s becoming AI agent-led, rather than human-driven, as buying and selling agents become responsible for agreeing the audience package, price and terms.
Changing and remaining the same
And while this is ushering in a faster way of doing curation, it’s important to remember it’s not necessarily a different way. That’s because the foundations of curation remain the same, and getting them right remains the cornerstone of effective curation.
Curation as a service remains as relevant, valuable and effective as ever – it’s simply existing in a containerized agentic world. The critical ability to plan, activate and optimize curated audiences never goes away, even if the technology, or how it’s delivered, changes.
Since joining Multilocal, I’ve seen the business constantly evolve to support market needs. But, reassuringly, one thing has remained constant – a focus on making our clients’ lives easier by ensuring greater speed, simplicity and structure to curation. Once again, we’re at a tipping point for digital advertising. And once again, the business will develop its offering to remain true to its fundamentals.
