Google, of course, has been trying to ween advertisers off cookies on Chrome web browsers and restrict data sharing on Android devices, as one example of signal loss. However, in general, a push to privacy across the industry has left advertisers less connected, while publishers still have command of their audiences and contextual signals.
Read: Ad Age’s explainer on the post-cookie ad tech landscape
Also, advertisers have shown heightened interest in curation to deal with negative industry forces, such as “made for advertising” websites, which are low-quality sources of inventory.
Curation goals
Now, publishers’ supply-side platforms and other partners are finding ways to offer bundles of ad inventory across websites, apps and connected TV. The curators take approved inventory and package it for advertisers to help them maintain large-scale ad campaigns online. Curation has become a buzzy topic in the ad tech community, and this is the first curation product Google has launched on the supply side.
Ad tech, identity providers and data firms have signed on to provide curation services in Google Ad Manager, including Audigent, Integral Ad Science, LiveRamp, Lotame, Multilocal, Permutive, PrimeAudience and Scope3, Google announced.
“Curation helps brands and agencies achieve better connectivity and signal … across display, CTV and beyond,” said Travis Clinger, chief connectivity and ecosystem officer at LiveRamp, in a statement as part of Google’s announcement.
These firms can identify programmatic inventory for sale across publishers that meet the needs of the advertiser or agency. For instance, an advertiser could prioritize “brand safe” ad inventory or inventory coming through eco-friendly ad tech sources to meet green initiatives.
Curation can “help agencies reach their desired audiences through data segments and curated packages,” Patel said. “And so I think the idea here is, if we’re doing it at the SSP level, we’ll increase the targeting match rate, since the SSP can influence which bid requests are sent to DSPs to better target agency data segments and these packages.”
Takeaways from Google and other players’ quarterly reports
On the demand side, Google named Yahoo as one of the partners and Google’s own Display and Video 360 DSP.
Publishers are invested in curation because it can fill their ad slots, but many are still trying to figure out the value of these services and whether they bring in acceptable ad rates compared to other deals. Within Google Ad Manager, publishers will get to decide whether they participate in curation and with which partners, Patel said.
Advertisers won’t pay Google for curation, Patel said. “We’re not charging agencies any fees for this,” Patel said. “Data providers already traditionally charged separate fees for their services when they curate or offer their audience solutions. The idea here is, we’re going to facilitate that fee payment to that data provider on behalf of the agency.”
Agencies can coordinate their own curation deals, Patel said. “First-party audience targeting based on data is already housed by these agencies’ [data management platforms],” Patel said, “or they may work with a curator who’s created a prepackaged deal ID that has verified inventory.”
The publishers could benefit from offering their inventory in these deals as they would be able to connect with more advertisers, establishing relationships for more direct deals in the future, Patel said.
“They’ll know which buyers are using the data segments,” Patel said, “and hopefully that will help them in future conversations around [private marketplace deals] with these same buyers and the same operational efficiencies.”
