TripleLift finds 99% of buyers value curation, but trust

TripleLift has published a report on deal curation in programmatic advertising, finding that 99% of buyers consider curation important to their media strategy.

The research, based on a survey of 223 advertisers in the US and UK, points to a gap between the strategic importance buyers place on curation and their confidence in executing it. Only 21% of respondents said their execution was very effective, while 28% described it as neutral or ineffective.

Deal curation has become a prominent part of programmatic advertising as buyers seek more control over where ads appear and how inventory is packaged. The findings suggest many advertisers still lack a clear, shared definition of what curation means in practice, affecting how they assess cost, quality and performance.

One of the clearest concerns was limited visibility into pricing. Sixty per cent of buyers said they do not know what they are paying for curation, while 45% felt neutral about fee transparency from current providers.

Performance was another source of dissatisfaction. Some 81% of buyers said deal performance falling short of expectations was a leading challenge to effective curation, even though respondents ranked inventory quality as the most important driver of campaign success.

The report also highlighted continuing inefficiencies in open exchange buying, noting that 20% of programmatic traffic is still flagged as invalid or low-value inventory, including made-for-advertising sites. The finding underscores the persistence of waste in parts of the market.

Transparency issues

These findings come as advertisers face growing pressure to justify media spending and prove outcomes across fragmented digital channels. In that context, curation is often presented as a way to improve media quality and align campaigns more closely with audience and content signals. The research, however, suggests buyers are not consistently seeing those benefits.

Timothy Jasionowski, Chief Product and Technology Officer at TripleLift, linked the issue to accountability over fees and buying decisions.

"When 60% of buyers don't know what they're paying for curation, that's not a reporting gap. It's a fundamental accountability failure," said Timothy Jasionowski, Chief Product and Technology Officer at TripleLift.

He added that poor supply decisions can directly affect media efficiency.

"Scale without curation wastes 20% of any investment. The fix isn't a better dashboard. It's moving decisioning to the sell side, where supply, audience, and creative align before a single bid is placed," Jasionowski said.

The report suggests the operational structure around curation remains immature in many organisations. Buyers cited fragmented creative and media workflows as one of the factors holding back results, indicating that campaign planning and activation are still often handled separately.

AI oversight

TripleLift also examined how automation and artificial intelligence are affecting advertising operations. Adoption is increasing, but many teams are still dealing with what the report describes as a "review tax", in which time saved through automated systems is offset by manual checking and verification.

According to a separate TripleLift study referenced in the report, 45% of practitioners spend up to four hours a week reviewing AI-generated outputs. That points to a more cautious use of automation than some industry narratives suggest, with human oversight still a routine part of execution.

The report also highlighted a tension between how buyers rank creative and how they value it in curated environments. While respondents placed creative among the less important overall drivers of campaign success, they also identified contextual targeting paired with creative relevance as one of the most useful elements in curated deals.

That disconnect may matter because curation sits at the intersection of inventory selection, audience data and ad messaging. If buyers undervalue creative in broader planning but rely on it in contextual environments, campaign strategy can become inconsistent from planning to delivery.

Elcano, which works with TripleLift, also contributed to the study. It described curation as most effective when linked to supply-side data and buying strategy rather than treated as a standalone layer.

"Curation becomes especially powerful when supply-side intelligence is paired with bidding and activation strategies, creating a more efficient path to performance for advertisers," said Kule Vidasolo, CEO and Founder at Elcano.

"Our partnership with TripleLift reflects how the right technology and collaboration across the ecosystem can bring differentiated assets together in a way that delivers stronger results, faster optimization, and greater clarity for buyers," Vidasolo said.