The semantic slide of programmatic’s power word: ‘curation’

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Money is moving behind it. Deals are getting done. The term “curation” now appears in pitch decks, product updates and M&A strategy. It’s become a default explanation for what comes next in programmatic.

But when one word gets stretched to mean everything from “targeted supply” and “data-infused buying” to “PMPs with better branding” and “AI-driven everything,” it starts to lose its meaning. It’s no surprise then that the IAB is working to lock down a standard definition of curation. Ad tech’s relationship with language has always been more aspirational than precise, but curation may be the most glaring example yet.

“Everyone is defining curation and it’s got to a point where it doesn’t seem like anything these days — it’s like wallpaper,” said Bob Regular, CEO of ad tech business InfoLinks.

What ad executives are left with is a term that means something different depending on who’s using it and what they’re selling. It’s a term that’s become a kind of Rorschach test in ad tech: it reflects back whatever strategy a company wants to emphasize without having to spell out the mechanics. And in a market where perception can be just as valuable as performance, that vagueness can be a feature rather than a bug.

Terry Hornby, digital innovation director at commercial publisher Reach, believes part of the issue particularly around publishers’ apathy toward curation is a misunderstanding around the term itself. Publishers have “curated” either their own data or inventory in some form for years, after all. “I think the challenge is that publishers don’t really understand what curation is,” he said. “It’s partly the word. It’s also the technologies doing the curation, like Xander and Audigent. There are a lot more tools in there that people aren’t aware of, then you’ve got the Multlocals and others doing a different version of curation again. So, curation has this big danger of being a mess where it turns into [an ad] network 2.0 and actually publishers don’t understand where their inventory is being curated and displayed.”

And yet, for all its elasticity, curation is not without substance — if only buyers know where to look. Not all curators are created equal, and not every curation pitch holds up under scrutiny. The smarter questions to ask when a company claims to be in the curation business are disarmingly simple: Do they have meaningful data — deterministic, contextual or otherwise? Do they have access to real supply, preferably through a direct SSP integration? And, perhaps most importantly, can they optimize any of it or are they just dressing up a data management platform?

“The uncertainty makes it very difficult for publishers to make strategic decisions as to whether or not to allow something like this on our ad inventory,” said Jeremy Gan, evp of revenue operations and data strategy at Daily Mail.

Linguistic wallpaper

It wasn’t always this slippery.

Curation entered the lexicon several years ago  as a response to a real problem: the overwhelming volume and volatility of the open marketplace of programmatic advertising. The bigger the problem got, the more granularity — specific audiences, vetted inventory, verified contexts — advertisers needed to solve it. So they turned to ad tech vendors who, in turn, needed a way to provide that intel without rebuilding their infrastructure from scratch.

That’s how the term “curation” took root. It captured the act of flirting through that chaos and assembling packages tailored to those demands. It sounded premium, even artisanal, but was essentially about control: organizing the web’s unruly sprawl into something buyable.

At best, it still is.

Curation can give publishers more leverage, allowing them to layer in their own data, apply structure standards and secure more ad dollars from advertisers. It can help advertisers sidestep the waste of open exchange buying and it gives ad tech platforms a way to spin value from the inventory they already touch. Everyone benefits — at least in theory.

But they don’t in reality — at least not yet. In fact, curation can just as easily complicate things.

For publishers, it adds another layer of operational overhead without guaranteed returns. For advertisers, it can obscure transparency and inflate costs under the guise of efficiency. And for ad tech platforms, it risks becoming just another repackaging exercise that doesn’t solve for signal loss or brand safety. Everyone’s still searching for the upside — at least in practice.

Or, to put it another way, the power of the word “curation” is also its weakness. Because it sounds intentional — even elevated — it allows nearly any platform to pitch itself as strategic, even if what’s under the hood is standard fare. The sheer volume of curation-flavored offerings has created a kind of linguistic wallpaper: familiar, reassuring and sometimes meaningless. Publishers and advertisers alike are left to decode what’s actually in the package — and whether the premium label translates to premium performance.

That ambiguity might be tolerable in quieter times. But these aren’t quiet times.

A vector for control

Signal loss, media consolidation and tighter budgets have put pressure on every part of the programmatic supply chain. In that environment, curation isn’t just another product line — it’s increasingly the battleground for a deeper shift in power. At its core, curation is about control: who gets to set the terms, shape the deals and decide how impressions are bought. And that, more than any branding exercise, is what makes the term so charged.