The Programmatic Curation Gap: Why Advertisers Struggle with Execution

TripleLift’s research, titled "The Gap in Modern Curation," surveyed 223 advertisers across the U.S. and U.K. to identify why programmatic campaigns often fail to meet objectives. The findings highlight a fundamental lack of clarity regarding what curation actually entails. This ambiguity leads to significant accountability issues, most notably that 60% of buyers remain unaware of the specific fees they pay for curation services.

Timothy Jasionowski, Chief Product and Technology Officer at TripleLift, argues that the industry’s reliance on better dashboards misses the point. Instead, he advocates for shifting decision-making to the sell side, where supply, audience, and creative can align before bids occur. Currently, 20% of programmatic traffic remains flagged as invalid or low-value inventory, including Made-for-Advertising sites, despite buyers ranking inventory quality as their primary success driver.

The study also identifies a "review tax" hindering AI adoption. While teams look to automation to save time, 45% of practitioners report spending up to four hours weekly manually verifying AI-generated outputs. Furthermore, a contradiction persists in how teams approach creative assets: though buyers rank creative relevance as a key driver of success in curated environments, they simultaneously undervalue creative strategy during the initial planning phases of their campaigns.