Programmatic curation: who packages the inventory, and what buyers should ask
Part of Curated deals and PMPs
The short answer
Programmatic curation packages inventory, which can come from many publishers, into a deal built for an advertiser's goals using technology, data or a reviewed site list. In 2026 the curator may be an SSP, a data company, an agency or a publisher, so buyers ask who curated the deal, what it costs, which data it uses and whether sites change.
Key takeaways
- IAB Tech Lab defines curation as the selection and organization of inventory using technology and data, in prepackaged or real-time packages.
- The Deals API separates three roles: the origin system where the deal is entered, the curator that packaged it and the seller that contracted with the buyer.
- Curators can disclose a fee type (percentage of spend, flat fee, CPM or no fee), whether outside data is applied and whether sites change in flight.
- That disclosure travels outside the bid request, so buyers still validate live bid requests and served domains against what they were told.
- A static, reviewed site list and a dynamic, data-optimized package are both curation; they answer different planning needs.
What does curation mean in programmatic advertising in 2026?
Definition
- Programmatic curation
- IAB Tech Lab's wording: the selection and organization of inventory using technology and data, with the goal of creating effective packages for advertisers through prepackaged or real-time operations.
That definition comes from the Curation object in IAB Tech Lab's Deals API specification (opens in a new tab), the Tech Lab standard that describes curated deals field by field. It is broad on purpose. A planner who reviews 80 sites and asks an exchange to wrap them in one deal is curating. So is a data company that decorates bid requests across thousands of sites with audience segments, and so is an SSP that groups inventory by format and viewability.
The word is not new. In a December 16, 2024 post (opens in a new tab), IAB Tech Lab called curation the latest industry buzz word and argued that what is old becomes new again. It pointed to standards that already supported it: the audience and content taxonomies, the Data Transparency Standard for labeling how an audience was made, and the SupplyChain object for showing who sells the inventory. It then launched a Curation Framework working group, listing visibility of curation or enrichment partners and plans for testing the framework in 2025 among the topics.
Who curates a deal, and how are the roles told apart?
Curated deals can involve more parties than a publisher deal, and the names on a proposal do not always say who did what. The Deals API separates three roles, and a buyer can ask any seller to fill them in, whether or not the platforms involved support the API.
| Role | Deals API definition | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Origin | The system with the interface where the deal is first entered; it receives bid responses for the deal | An SSP or exchange |
| Curator | The business entity that packaged the inventory, technology or data; most often, though not always, the party that sold the deal | A data company, an SSP, an agency team or a publisher group |
| Seller | The business entity that sourced the demand and contracted with the buyer | A sales house, a publisher or the curator itself |
The specification gives two cases. In the first, a sales house finds the buyer, the deal uses data from several data providers, the deal is entered in an SSP, and a separate curator does the operations to launch it: three different companies hold the three roles. In the second, a publisher sells the deal and enters it in its SSP, while a data company decorates the publisher's bid requests and packages the inventory, so the data company is the curator even though the publisher made the sale.
What can a curator disclose about a curated deal?
The Deals API gives curators a vocabulary for four facts a buyer can ask about. Each field allows a value of 0 for undisclosed, so a blank answer is itself information.
| Field | Values defined in the specification | Buyer's question |
|---|---|---|
| curfeetype | Undisclosed, percentage of spend, flat fee, CPM, or no fee paid for curation | How is the curator paid? |
| auxdata | Undisclosed; outside data applied and fixed; applied and may change; none and fixed; none for now but may be added | Is data that does not come from the publisher applied, and can that change? |
| pubcount | Undisclosed, single publisher, multi-publisher | Is this one publishing company or many? |
| dinventory | Undisclosed, sites fixed once live, sites updated dynamically | Can sites or apps be added or removed during the flight? |
The fee field reports the type of fee, not its amount. The specification's own example: a curator charging a $5 CPM sends the value for CPM, and one charging a $100 flat fee sends the value for flat fee. The amount stays a commercial question. Its scenarios include an SSP that pays a curator a CPM to decorate inventory without passing that fee to publishers, which is exactly the case a buyer needs to hear about before comparing curated deal prices.
When inventory is fixed, the deal can also carry an Inventory object with the site domains, app bundles, seller IDs and content categories included. The specification says that object should only be included for a static set of sites or apps. A dynamic deal, by design, has no fixed list to send.
Which kinds of curation suit which planning needs?
The fields above describe three broad styles of curation. None is better in every case; each trades control for something else.
| Style | How the package is built | Strengths | Weaknesses |
|---|---|---|---|
| Static site list | A reviewed list of domains, fixed for the flight | Every site can be named, checked and explained to a client; served domains can be reconciled line by line | Scale is capped by the list; a site that stops selling is not replaced until someone edits the list |
| Data-led package | Bid requests are selected or decorated with audience or contextual data, across many publishers | Can reach large scale across many sites; follows the data rather than a fixed list | Sites may not be known in advance; extra data can add fees and raise privacy questions |
| Dynamically optimized package | The curator adds and removes sites or apps during the flight | Can respond to delivery and quality signals while the deal runs | The approved plan and the served sites can drift apart; buyers need notice of changes |
Price works differently in each style. The Deals API notes that when SSPs and curators aggregate media around data points not tied to the inventory itself, impressions in one deal can have varying price points request by request, and suppliers then give bid guidance meant to produce an effective win rate rather than a single floor.
What should a buyer ask for before buying a curated deal?
Curated deal questions to settle in writing
- The curator, the seller and the origin system are each named by company and domain.
- The fee type is stated, and whether any curation fee is taken from the publisher's share or added on top.
- The deal says whether outside data is applied, which kind, and whether more data can be added during the flight.
- The deal says whether sites can change after launch, and how much notice the buyer gets when they do.
- For a static deal, the full domain list is supplied and matches the list the buyer approved.
- The deal says whether it spans one publishing company or many.
- Served domain reporting is available, so delivered sites can be compared with the agreed list.
- Bid requests carry the SupplyChain object, so each impression's selling path can be checked against ads.txt and sellers.json.
Get the answers in the deal sheet or insertion order, not only in a call. The Deals API itself warns that the criteria it carries are not guaranteed to be reflected in bid requests, and that buyers should apply targeting matching the agreed terms on their own side. A curated deal is a promise about a package; the bid requests and the served domain report show whether it was kept. Our guides to ads.txt and the SupplyChain object cover the selling path checks.
What does buyer-led curation look like on a real brief?
Fictional example
A new home builder in Texas and Oklahoma
A fictional regional builder of starter homes wants display and video beside home buying, mortgage basics, moving and local news content for readers in the Dallas, Austin and Oklahoma City areas, in English. Two curated deal proposals arrive: one data-led package across a wide set of sites, and one offer to wrap a site list the agency supplies.
The agency sends both sellers the same written questions. The data-led proposal names the curator and the fee type, but marks its sites as dynamic and its outside data as subject to change. The site list proposal names an SSP as origin, the agency as curator and no curation fee, with sites fixed once live.
The agency picks the site list deal for the main flight, because the client wants to approve every publisher, and keeps a small test budget on the data-led package with a weekly served domain report as a condition.
How does PlacementGraph support buyer-led curation?
Frequently asked questions
Does the bid request show who curated a deal?
Not in OpenRTB itself. The Deals API specification says it adds transparency into curated deals that is not currently available in the bid stream, and the API is separate from the OpenRTB request and response. Curation details reach the buyer's platform only when the seller side pushes them through that API or states them in the deal paperwork.
Who pays the curator?
It varies by deal. The Deals API lists a percentage of spend, a flat fee, a CPM or no fee, and its examples include a data company that charges nothing for curation itself and an SSP that pays a curator a CPM without passing it to publishers. Ask which party pays and whether the fee comes out of the media price.
Can a publisher curate its own deals?
Yes. A publisher group can package its own sites, and the Deals API treats a company with several web and app properties as a single publisher. A publisher can also sell a deal while an outside data company does the packaging, in which case the data company is the curator and the publisher is the seller.
What happens if a curator changes the sites during a flight?
If the deal was disclosed as dynamic, that is expected. The Deals API strongly encourages both sides to discuss the specifics of any inventory updates. Agree how changes are announced, whether the buyer can veto additions, and how often served domain reports arrive, so changes can be checked against the brief.
Sources
- Deal Sync API Specification, version 1.0 (opens in a new tab)IAB Tech Lab, deal-api repository
- Curated Audiences and launching the Curation Framework Working Group (opens in a new tab)IAB Tech Lab, December 16, 2024
- Deals API (opens in a new tab)IAB Tech Lab
- SupplyChain object (opens in a new tab)IAB Tech Lab, OpenRTB repository
Researched and written by PlacementGraph Research. Read how we research, source and update these pages. Corrections: diana@placementgraph.com.