Data & Curation Platforms: Value Drivers or Vanity Metrics?

The ad tech space is full of big promises and shiny terminology. Words like “omnichannel,” “identity resolution,” and “precision targeting” get thrown around a lot. But beyond the jargon, the real question is: are these platforms making your campaigns better, or just adding extra complexity and cost?

We believe curation should be more than a marketing term. Here’s how to separate what works from what’s just noise.

What to Look for in Data & Curation Platforms

Not all platforms are created equal. The ones that stand out share three key traits:

Real-Time, Audience-Enhancing Curation

The best platforms package audience data with inventory dynamically, creating Private Marketplace (PMP) deals that bring actual performance value, not just volume.

Strong Technology & Fast Reporting

Look for partners that support the technology around your buys—with tools that allow for quick turnarounds, clear reporting, and transparency at every step. Platforms that simplify workflows and speed up insights make it easier to focus on performance, not process.

Sell-Side Decisioning Meets Curation

The next evolution of curation goes deeper: sell-side decisioning. At its core, sell-side decisioning means evaluating impression requests against a set of criteria...brand safety, performance signals, and content quality, and then funneling only the qualified impressions into curated deal IDs.

This is fundamentally different from simply applying data at the sell side or looking for identifiers only:

• Applying data / identifiers: Impressions are first passed along, and data is later layered on (e.g., matching cookies, MAIDs, or IDs downstream). This is reactive and often limited to whether an identifier exists.

• Decisioning: The platform actively decides which impressions should even be made available by scoring them against multiple signals (CTR history, viewability, completion rates, brand safety context, etc.) and packaging only those that meet thresholds into deals.

  
  

In short, applying data looks for what’s available; decisioning makes a call on quality.

How to Evaluate Platforms

When you’re weighing providers, ask the hard questions:

• Can they curate data + inventory in real time?

• Do they provide technology support and fast reporting that simplify workflows?

• Do they provide transparent, context-specific results, not generic projections?

• How do they perform in your world...CTV, mobile, PMPs?

Because in curation, one-size-fits-all doesn’t cut it.

Curation platforms can be powerful, but only if they deliver measurable performance gains, not just buzzwords.