If you’re tired of hearing about curation, you might want to look away now. Go ahead! You won’t!
No, but seriously, Google has just announced a new tool, also called Curation, for Google Ad Manager. According to Google, Curation will help advertisers and agencies identify and purchase curated (!) publisher inventory and audience data from trusted providers.
Via a blog post by Google’s Peentoo Patel, Director of Product Management for Google Ad Manager, agencies and advertisers need “new ways to buy audiences and curated inventory.” To that end, with Curation, Google says it allows them “to easily connect with trusted partners to explore curated inventory packages and activate data segments directly within their agency account. By curating inventory and audiences on the sell side, agencies tap into a wealth of insights that can fuel more accurate forecasting and increased match rates.”
Curation currently supports Audigent, IAS, Liveramp, Lotame, Multilocal, Permutive, PrimeAudience, and Scope3.
Why This Matters:
Google’s new Curation tool streamlines ad-buying by allowing agencies to use a single deal ID for data targeting across multiple DSPs. Additionally, Google’s Patel talks up how this is valuable on the sell-side as SSPs have the ability to filter and control which bid requests are sent to DSPs. This should deliver better match rates.
Curation is a hot topic in ad tech—and for good reasons, which Google’s blog post walks through. With increased media fragmentation and the deprecation of third-party identifiers, audience addressability is becoming more challenging. Google’s focus on audience data in its Curation tool helps… address that need via data partners.
Advertisers are also looking to ensure media quality, whether by avoiding MFA sites or meeting brand safety standards. Curation tools give advertisers a way to answer those concerns, too.
Experts React:
Media verification company IAS issued a press release about its integration with Google Ad Manager.
“Brand suitability and contextual relevance are top priorities for programmatic buyers who are looking to avoid wasting ad spend on poor quality inventory such as MFA or ad clutter,” said Srishti Gupta, Chief Product Officer at IAS. Essentially, IAS is enabling targeting based on its contextual, brand safety, and viewability data.
Our Take:
This is a solid example of trendjacking by Google and underscores the popularity of curation as a topic and focus right now. It will be interesting to see how others in the ecosystem respond as more curation offerings are introduced, especially DSPs and publishers, who still seem to be finding their footing on how to address it. On the other hand, SSPs are uniquely positioned here, and data providers, as well, seem to be benefiting.
By the way, what is curation anyway? Have we completely figured this out yet?
