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CaaS

Curation Houses and Curation as a Service (CaaS) are emerging as the newest Programmatic power players. 

Since SPO has been the need of the hour, curation doesn’t add any more bulk to the already cluttered marketplace, but in fact it sits as an integration layer on top of the existing infrastructure and operates within the workflow. Curation houses are not another piece of the ad tech puzzle. In fact they are all-in-one toolkits helping you whip up some innovative and valuable media solutions. The curator, through their unique use case, aims to bring efficiency, scale and performance to the campaign. In fact it is this heightened ESP (Efficiency, Scale and Performance) that’s the USP of CaaS. Curation has something to offer everyone in the ecosystem. It paves the way for publishers to monetise their first party data, in compliance with privacy regulations. For data providers, curation delivers more control of their unique assets outside of existing DSP systems. It also affords them greater visibility of data usage, improving forecasting capabilities. And on the buy side, curation opens doors to crafting fresh, unique value propositions and distinct supply strategies. In an overcrowded marketplace, it helps create differentiation and cultivate genuine, personalised publisher relationships.

The rise of the Curated MarketPlace (CMP)

Open auctions are overly complex due to the multitude of participants, bidding strategies, and varying technologies involved. This complexity can make it difficult for publishers to manage their inventory effectively and for advertisers to navigate the auction environment efficiently. The sheer volume of ad inventory available in open auctions can lead to variability in quality. Publishers may struggle to differentiate their premium inventory from lower-quality inventory, while advertisers may find it challenging to identify and target their desired audience effectively. MFAs (Made for Advertising sites) are another pain point that the industry is grappling with right now. CMPs offer more controlled environments with curated inventory and negotiated pricing. It's a ‘By Invitation Only’ exclusive marketplace, alleviating the problems of quality variability and fraud. Also, since they are activated on the supply side, they can avoid bidstream data leakage prevalent in the programmatic ecosystem. The Trade Desk’s latest move of releasing a list of the ‘Top 100 publishers’ in open web is the most recent example of CaaS gaining ground. Though this move has caused ripples in the industry, for publishers (those who didn’t make the cut, obviously), for agencies (they see it as a threat to their own curation efforts with the SSPs).

Curation Houses like TeCreo are bringing in the same capability on the sell side, building CMPs, weeding out the MFAs, bringing buyers and sellers closer and most importantly, cleaning up the ecosystem.