A Q&A with Peter Cunha, Managing Director of Signal
Q: Curation has been one of the hottest topics in advertising over the past year. How would you define curation?
A: In the context of advertising, curation is all about applying high-fidelity data and audience signals to supply-side inventory to improve results for both marketers and publishers. Right now, there’s a unique opportunity to enrich inventory at the source level to enable smarter, more strategic media decisioning downstream — so that’s what we mean by curation.
At Sovrn, we essentially take the data that’s typically used to enrich the bid request and apply it at the source — as opposed to the decisioning engine being applied at the DSP layer. This enriches the signal by layering in valuable data so that publishers can offer buyers a filtered, transparent, and performance-oriented view of their inventory. Curation is something that goes beyond just targeting — it really means selecting, enriching, and bundling inventory in a way that improves value for both sides of the transaction.
Q: How do you see the role of curation evolving in today’s advertising and publishing landscape?
A: In the past, advertisers simply wanted to buy inventory that matched the data sets in their CRM. They managed the process through the DSP, which would plug into supply-side platforms (like the Sovrn Exchange) where inventory is hosted, and buy whatever matched their targeting pool. The attitude was, let’s serve up as much inventory as possible, because more matches will lead to more buying.
But as request duplication, privacy restrictions, and identity fragmentation grew more prevalent, this approach became really inefficient, and led to DSP throttling of publisher traffic, which all but guaranteed that buyers were served up the same inventory, which drove up prices and added to even more inefficiency. Now, the onus is shifting to the supply side to provide more targeted opportunities by addressing these inefficiencies and applying data at the source. All of this has led to some fundamental shifts that underpin the drive toward curation:
- We’re seeing increased demand for upstream transparency. Publishers want control. They want to know how DSPs view inventory, which audiences are being packaged, and how these supply paths are being structured.
- More value is being placed on identity and audience enrichment to tackle the problem of fragmented addressability.
- The supply side is taking more ownership over “inventory design.” Rather than focusing solely on the top-down, buyer-led decision-making of the past, publishers are working harder to curate and package inventory so that it meets buyer requirements.
Q: What are the biggest challenges publishers face in an identity-fragmented world, and how can curation help solve them?
A: Advertisers have many different avenues for spending their marketing dollar, and unfortunately, the Open Web has become very inefficient due to fragmentation, broken attribution, and broken addressability. Marketers simply aren’t going to allocate budget toward such an inefficient channel — and that’s what curation is really solving for. Curation helps to unify disparate identities, contextual audiences, and performance into more coherent, scalable supply paths. It solves problems such as addressability, targeting, and measurement.
Q: From your perspective, how is buyer demand changing? And what signals are marketers looking for now versus 1-2 years ago?
A: Today’s marketers are looking at not only identity signals, but media quality signals as well. The focus on better attribution and addressability really comes down to a shift in buyer mindset. In the past, all that mattered was reaching as many users as possible — and now they’re looking at what’s driving business outcomes. Marketers want to know whether a particular impression had a direct impact on performance (whether that’s a sale, brand awareness, uplift, etc.). Because of this, it’s essential to layer in data at the source level to enhance the quality of an impression and mitigate the risk of being traffic-shaped away.
Q: Signal Vitals provides publishers with visibility into the health and value of their inventory. Why is this level of transparency important? And how does it change the strategy for publishers?
A: The transparency offered by Signal Vitals is a game-changer for publishers because, for the first time, it gives them access to the same data that buyers use to allocate their ad spend. Historically, insight into how the buy side evaluates and selects inventory was either unavailable or too costly for most publishers. By offering Vitals at no cost to publishers with a direct connection to the Sovrn Exchange, we’re making it possible to understand how their inventory stacks up against industry benchmarks.
Programmatic spend is shifting from the open auction toward private marketplace and curated deals, so meeting quality thresholds has become essential. Buyers are prioritizing inventory that meets specific standards for viewability, attention, and ad density — which are all key signals of media quality. Signal Vitals gives publishers the tools to benchmark their performance against similar publishers, identify areas where they may fall short, and optimize their inventory so they’re included in as many deals as possible.
Rather than the reactive, trial-and-error way publishers have typically managed their inventory in the past, Vitals lets them take a more proactive approach. Instead of guessing what might drive yield, publishers can now take intentional, data-backed actions to ensure their supply qualifies for premium deal opportunities.
Q: What outcomes have you seen from publishers who adopt Signal?
A: There are three areas where we’re seeing significant outcomes.
- Attention metrics. Signal measures both the attention score and the attention time (in seconds) of a particular ad unit. This allows publishers to sort all their ad placements and uncover poorly performing inventory — and conversely, they can more accurately target their best performing inventory. Attention has a strong correlation to direct response performance gains, so the higher the attention, the higher the propensity for a user to take action on an ad.
- SSP benchmarks. Publishers are using Signal to track integration health. With Signal, they can quickly see the entire stack of SSPs transacting on their inventory and how those SSPs are performing versus global benchmarks for win rate and bid rate. This information alerts them to potential problems so they can proactively audit that connection.
- Ad density. This is an important media quality index. With Signal, publishers can see if they have too many ads in view on a page and what buyers expect that number to be in order to transact on their inventory.
Q: Identity enrichment is a major part of Signal. How does Sovrn’s approach differ from other identity solutions on the market?
A: Unlike other identity solutions that only enrich their own ID graphs, Signal’s identity enrichment boosts the performance of all universal identifiers in the publisher’s stack that can take on that signal. Right now, there are about nine providers that can take on the input of a hashed email. So Signal acts as a universal enhancement layer, maximizing the value of a publisher’s entire stack — as opposed to just focusing on one ID. Essentially, we’re lifting the tide for everybody, which is a pretty unique approach.
Q: What does the future of curation look like over the next three years?
A: At a high level, I believe we’ll see publishers acting as “supply architects” rather than just sellers. That means understanding your first-party data, understanding your audience data, and working with providers who can help to enrich that understanding.
Publishers currently don’t have a curation platform that supports their needs. They work with SSPs, and SSPs have curation platforms — but those platforms don’t give publishers visibility into how their inventory is being packaged, how it’s being priced, and what percentage the publisher receives from that transaction. So there’s a real need for a platform to unify all that activity across all SSPs and give control back to the publisher.
At Sovrn, we’re building a curation platform that allows publishers to not only see how the ecosystem is packaging up their inventory but also price that inventory accordingly.
Q: If you could give publishers one piece of advice as they prepare for the next wave of industry changes, what would it be?
A: I’d tell them to treat curation as a core part of your revenue strategy, not an experiment. Invest in inventory transparency and data enrichment. In the near future, those who control the signals will control demand.
For more information, please visit www.sovrn.com.
About Sovrn
Sovrn provides products and services to thousands of online publishers and creators to help them understand, operate, and grow their business. Sovrn is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, with offices in New York and London.
With thousands of customers deploying advertising, affiliate marketing, and data products across more than 50,000 websites, mobile apps, and connected TV channels, Sovrn reaches over 500 million active consumers every day. Since its founding, Sovrn has been a leader in online publisher technology and has been recognized by IAB, JICWEBS, and TAG for its role in combating fraud and promoting pro-transparency initiatives. Visit sovrn.com to learn more.
