Yahoo places curation at the center of its CES pitch

In particular, Yahoo claims it will help sophisticated advertisers manage transparency challenges and supply path optimization with CTV — an intuitive key topic of conversation at CES — while granting them more control.  

Yahoo’s solution integrates data from vendors such as supply-path optimization specialist Jounce Media, contextual advertising firm Peer39 and Scope3, the sustainability firm fronted by Brian O’Kelley, into its DSP. 

Per Yahoo’s advocates, this approach represents an industry-first approach to providing advertisers with inventory insights, with tools to assess supply quality, optimize spend, and align with their unique objectives before they bid on inventory. 

Unlike traditional DSPs that make supply decisions for marketers — a criticism that is increasingly leveled at providers of curation services — Yahoo claims its approach offers advertisers more autonomy as the insights provided by Jounce Media et al. empower advertisers to (effectively) self-curate what media inventory they bid on. 

The programmatic landscape continues to grapple with inefficiencies. A 2024 ANA benchmark revealed that 26% of ad budgets are spent on invalid traffic (IVT), MFA inventory, or non-viewable placements. 

For its part, Yahoo claims its approach can better help advertisers insulate themselves from headaches that consistently plague their programmatic media buying, such as invalid traffic or made-for-advertising websites. 

“By integrating trusted vendor data directly into Yahoo DSP, we aim to give you more transparency to curate your media buying strategies, letting you decide,” wrote Nicole Kilaita, director of DSP strategy, supply, Yahoo.

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Additionally, the DSP is also a named partner in the launch of Roku Data Cloud, a.k.a. its data clean room, via its Yahoo Backstage offering, whereby it integrates into publisher inventory using its bespoke ConnectID. 

Curation was one of the cornerstone narratives of ad tech in 2024, with debate firmly centered on whether DSPs or their peers on the supply-side of ad tech should play a more proactive role in ad tech.

Such market developments have blurred the lines between DSPs and SSPs and have split opinions on which scenario provides greater value for primary partners in a programmatic ad trade. 

One source at a premium news publisher, who requested anonymity given commercial sensitivities around such arrangements, explained some of the complications around curation.

“Stong [editorial] titles don’t necessarily need curation, and they can often hold their own in terms of pricing on the open market, but then there’s the issue around things like brand safety and attitudes around news,” they told Digiday. “Then you also have to consider the conflicts of who’s doing curation and their own motivations [i.e., their revenue priorities].”