15 October 2025

Curation is the new competitive edge in programmatic

In summary

• DSPs are moving closer to publisher inventory, with The Trade Desk’s OpenAds leading the charge.
• As buyers expand into the sell side under the banner of transparency, SSPs risk losing control of how value is defined.
• Curation is emerging as the sell side’s competitive edge, turning quality, context, and transparency into measurable outcomes that restore balance and trust.

From the era of curation to the age of competition

When we wrote about The era of curation in late 2024, we described it as a growing movement, a way for publishers, SSPs, and marketers to bring order, governance, and quality back to programmatic supply.

Fast forward to 2025, and curation has moved from best practice to competitive necessity.

The Trade Desk’s OpenAds has accelerated the conversation by giving DSPs a direct presence on publisher pages. What began as a transparency play now signals a structural shift: buyers are expanding into traditionally sell-side territory.

DSPs are moving into supply… again.

DSPs are expanding their reach into publisher inventory. The Trade Desk’s OpenAds isn’t an isolated innovation, it follows OpenPath (2022) and S\&P500+ (2024), both designed to streamline demand paths and improve inventory quality.

Now, TTD’s CEO Jeff Green has announced plans to build a branched version of Prebid that reintroduces the Transaction ID, a core identifier that many publishers viewed as a trust mechanism. While the stated aim is to “improve efficiency,” publishers are asking a fair question: can a price-minimising buyer truly operate a price-maximising marketplace?

As AdExchanger’s Sarah Sluis reports, many see this as déjà vu, another cycle where ad tech leaders promise neutrality while expanding control. For publishers still watching Google’s antitrust trial unfold, this feels familiar: the tension between transparency and dominance is far from over.

Curation: the sell-side counterbalance

As DSPs move further into supply, curation becomes the sell side’s counterbalance, the strategic way to reassert control.

Curation is the intentional packaging of inventory, data, and context to create differentiated value. It transforms undifferentiated supply into a quality-led proposition that buyers can trust. It’s not about limiting access, it’s about managing it.

Through curated deal IDs and marketplace structures, publishers and SSPs can:

• Build privacy-aligned supply paths that respect data governance requirements
• Reinforce quality standards and audience value
• Reduce tech tax and improve yield predictability

This is where programmatic maturity lies, not in the number of auctions, but in the integrity of supply.

The rise of the auction layer

Publishers are already coordinating multiple auctions, Prebid, Open Bidding, Amazon TAM, and now OpenAds.

What used to be called a wrapper is evolving into an auction layer: a mediation framework that harmonises demand across multiple systems to optimise revenue and user experience.

Within this, curation acts as the connective tissue, bringing structure to chaos and providing the controls needed to evaluate partners on performance, attention, and compliance. The auction layer is where curation and technology intersect.

Quality and trust as the real differentiators

As Adelaide’s Marc Guldimann recently put it, ad tech’s privacy problem is rooted in a quality problem. Without shared standards for what defines quality, the industry compensates with more tracking, more attribution, and more noise.

Curation fixes this by aligning buyers and sellers on transparent measures of value, like attention, viewability, and contextual relevance, rather than opaque proxies. It gives publishers a framework for sustainable monetisation and advertisers a path to trustworthy outcomes.

Ultimately, curated media is quality media, and that’s what drives long-term brand impact and resilience.

Curation rebalances the ecosystem

Curation doesn’t just defend publisher yield, it restores balance to the ecosystem.

As DSPs expand into supply, curated environments give publishers and SSPs the ability to define the rules of engagement: transparency, data governance, and quality measurement.

It’s a future where interoperability can exist without ceding ownership, and where every participant in the chain contributes to higher standards.

Louder’s recommendations

• For marketers - Choose partners who can curate, not just connect, media supply. Quality, not volume, should anchor your buying strategy.
• For publishers - Treat curation as a business model, not a tactic. Build infrastructure that lets you package and price inventory based on quality and compliance.
• For the industry - Develop shared frameworks for defining quality and measuring attention. The next stage of programmatic growth depends on cooperation, not competition.

Keep in touch

Sign up to Louder’s newsletter to receive the latest industry updates straight to your inbox.