As programmatic advertising continues to evolve, curation has become an essential tool for performance agencies aiming to deliver strong results for brands. Omnicom Media Group is leaning into programmatic curation given the enhanced control, efficiency, and transparency it provides.
I spoke with Kyle Vidasolo, president of Outcomes, Omnicom Media Group’s performance arm, about the pivotal role of curation in enhancing ad outcomes, the shift toward sell-side curation, and what the future holds.
Evan Krauss, SVP of buyer demand at Index Exchange (left) and Kyle Vidasolo, president of Outcomes at Omnicom Media Group
1. As a performance agency, how are you approaching programmatic curation to drive stronger results for brands?
Kyle Vidasolo: We’re leveraging curation to its fullest extent because it allows us to optimize further upstream to guarantee performance results for our brands. Many of the brands we work with activate media themselves through their DSP of choice. By working with an SSP that enables programmatic curation, we’re still able to deliver outcomes and provide the benefit of managing campaign risk for them but do so through their preferred DSP.
We’re able to understand what’s being bought and how it’s performing, and then tie that information to the upstream supply that we’re buying so that we’re optimizing the bid requests that come through to those with the highest likelihood to hit their guarantee.
2. What do you think is driving this shift toward sell-side curation? How do you think it will affect the ad ecosystem?
KV: First and foremost, I think the biggest reason that it’s happening is because SSPs have more insight into the supply. There’s a lot of available inventory and noise to listen to—and there are costs associated with that noise listening. So, more buyers are starting to see the value of understanding what they’re buying prior to going to auction with it.
Buyers also understand that because SSPs have more signals available upstream, supply-side curation creates an opportunity to apply another layer of optimization to their campaigns to drive higher efficiency, better results, and stronger returns.
That’s a big factor as brands today are pushing for performance and more accountability for the media that agencies are buying on their behalf. The days of just trying to hit a goal and a KPI are going away.
More buyers are favoring new outcome-based models that guarantee performance and risk management. Because agencies, like Outcomes, are then taking on the risk, we need to have that much more control. That for us is why we’re focused so firmly on adding curation to our toolbox—we gain the control and precision we need to optimize and hit goals.
3. You mentioned curation allows you to apply another layer of optimization to campaigns—what does that look like and how does it lead to stronger outcomes?
KV: There are a lot of levers you can pull within a DSP to optimize what to bid on as far as inventory, audiences, and so on—but it all depends on the information coming through to the DSP.
We’ve proven at Outcomes that if we can curate and start optimizing further upstream to give the DSP more performant bid requests from the start, there’s a much higher likelihood it’ll find the opportunities that are going to deliver the action that we’re looking for, and do so faster and more efficiently.
And then we still have another opportunity to optimize again in the DSP. We can enhance campaigns even more because we’re getting optimization on both sides. The DSP still receives the bids and chooses what to purchase, but now its focus is filtered so it can bid more aggressively on the impressions that are most likely to hit the result you’re looking for.
4. Outcomes was an early Index Marketplaces partner. What led you to partner with Index and launch an Outcomes Marketplace?
KV: We align closely with Index Exchange’s philosophies on ensuring quality supply and helping media owners get more value from their inventory in an efficient way. We saw early on the potential for Index Marketplaces to accelerate our business, and then we were able to collaborate with your Product and Engineering teams to build features that would help us do that.
I partnered with Index to share buy-side perspectives to help shape the product, and as a result was confident in what the technology could deliver.
Just as important is Index’s ability to scale with the DSPs we partner with at OMG. Everything starts with scale—we need to be able to scale first, and then whittle it down and optimize it for what we’re looking for.
With Index’s scale and deep focus on quality and efficiency, we knew we’d be able to deliver better outcomes and stronger performance through curation.
5. Curation’s been a trendy topic throughout the programmatic ecosystem. Looking ahead, how do you think the conversation will evolve? What does the future hold?
KV: With the perception of curation today, I don’t think everyone fully understands it yet. Some publishers have come out and said it’s not benefiting them. But that’s not the case—programmatic curation is a tool for media owners to connect more closely to the buy side and allow us to work better together.
As a buyer, and specifically an outcome buyer, if inventory is working for me, I’m going to value it higher and want to buy more from that media owner. Using signals to understand what’s working and what’s not delivers for both of us—agencies can drive better outcomes for brands and media owners realize more revenue for their inventory.
Technology is meant to bring both sides of the ecosystem closer together. That’s the promise of programmatic. There’s more room for growth in terms of the value potential for everyone, but it hinges on deeper collaboration.
