Curation Catch-Up: CEO, James Leaver, looks back on his industry review with ExchangeWire

6 months ago, we wrote the Industry Review on Curation for ExchangeWire .? It was a great process to go through as we were able to take stock at the end of a very busy 2023 and have a look at where curation had got to.? Given the pace of change in this industry, we thought now would be a good time to review what we wrote back then and consider whether it’s still an accurate picture of the curation opportunity today.

In 2023, curation started to become a more regular topic of conversation but as we entered 2024, I think we were all taken somewhat by surprise by the extent to which curation is now so mainstream.? Barely a week goes by where there isn’t an article or discussion about curation published somewhere.? This is obviously great but there is still so much education needed across the board.? We still regularly read articles from consultants, publishers and many others about the dangers of the open internet and yet there is rarely a direct link to how curation can help solve most of the identified issues which it certainly can.??

While there are seemingly new entrants to the space every day – be it an SSP offering new features and functionality, a data company launching an offering or someone providing a new curation service – there are still so many areas of the industry that could massively benefit from well done curation.? For us, this has been the year of data companies exploring the options Curation-as-a-Service (CaaS) provides and while some are leaning in aggressively, many others are only tentatively dipping their toes. Agencies and publishers, big and small should all be looking seriously at how they can benefit from curation, as should DSP, retail networks and ad networks and, while some are, too many still aren’t. Much of the lag is down to the inherent complexities of adopting new platforms in programmatic.? While curation can no doubt solve many of programmatic's ills, for many companies it's yet another platform that needs to be mastered in order to get the most out of it.? That’s really where we are finding CaaS comes into its own as the only built from the ground up service offering in this space.? From inventory discovery? to deal set up, troubleshooting and optimisation, CaaS from Multilocal enables any company to jump in and benefit immediately - without any of the expected friction.

Something that definitely seems to put people off is how curation runs on PMP’s which everyone seems to have some degree of trauma from. Curated PMP’s however aren’t the same as normal PMP’s. Normal PMP’s are set up 1:1 so that if you need to scale your campaign, you need numerous 1:1 deals implemented, troubleshot and optimised.? Curated PMP’s, or CMP’s as we like to call them (I know CMP is a pre-existing 3 letter acronym in this industry but we want to co-opt it as its important and above all works!), are 1: Many and with CaaS we take all the rest of the pain away so that they just work.?

Curation is also fundamental to the industry improving its environmental credentials.? CMP’s are more green and with Active Curation we can make them CarbonSmart which is something we should all be getting behind. The CarbonSmart executions we have run so far this year have shown incredible results – KPI’s being exceeded while bid requests being reduced by up to 80% - and yet agencies and advertisers are still incredibly cautious about jumping in.

Essentially, our takeaway from the first 5 months of this year is, “what's holding you back from ensuring your business benefits from curation?” so, if you want to know more, please get in touch: https://www.multilocal.media/