In this article, Sojern’s commercial director for North American corporate, Brad Nelson, breaks down the myths about curation and explains why advertisers are more likely to succeed using a vertical approach.
Curation. By now, you’ve probably heard the term and may even be familiar with programmatic advertising’s new darling. Curation is emerging as a significant evolution in programmatic advertising, shifting from traditional models where data flowed broadly from providers to DSPs and then SSPs. Instead, curation empowers brands and buyers to collaborate directly with SSPs to strategically package specific data, audiences, and premium inventory, which is then matched within the DSP. This approach is gaining traction as a more privacy-centric alternative to third-party cookies, offering the potential for greater accuracy and more relevant personalization – a particularly valuable advantage in the travel sector, where understanding nuanced traveler intent is crucial for effective campaigns.
Is curation all it’s cracked up to be, and should advertisers be rushing to adopt these strategies? Think about it this way: for years, the programmatic space has largely taken a ‘supermarket’ approach. Advertisers purchase canned audiences and off-the-shelf solutions, often with the help of agencies. But we all go out to eat for a reason, and it’s because we want someone to give us something different. Curators are to advertising what chefs are to food, giving advertisers access to their experience along with bespoke options.
We’ve talked about how curation works in prior articles, but here let’s dig into the myths and the facts about curation, and why both advertisers and agencies must take a vertical approach to be successful.
The big difference between curation and traditional methods is where data is packaged and how often it’s updated. On a traditional exchange, shoppers purchase prepackaged supermarket data from aisles of the store, and that data gets mashed with available inventory. However, that data isn’t dynamic, which means shoppers must be conscious of expiration dates before that data touches inventory. This is especially problematic in travel. Americans look at an average of 185 pages of travel content in the 45 days leading up to a trip, which means advertisers need continual access to fresh data for accurate targeting.
What’s more, as people make purchasing decisions, the data pool gets whittled down. With curation, audiences are dynamic and updated in real-time, which means it captures potential travelers’ latest interactions and constantly offers a fresh pool of leads, which is far better for travel given the seasonality of the business.
Bluntly put, treating travel marketing like a pure numbers game with broad, cheap data is like using a firehose to water a single, precious orchid: you'll waste a ton of water and likely damage the flower. As with anything in life, focusing on quality over quantity is strategically cheaper in the long run. In fact, studies have shown that as many as 78% of media experts agree that buying low-quality media often ends up costing more in the long run than investing in high-quality media. Considering the unique multi-step nature of travel booking, curation becomes the perfect solution to connect fresh data to the path and therefore more accurately and precisely target each step of the journey. After all, prematurely showing sales rates for a hotel in the discovery phase can do more harm than good.
With traditional programmatic campaigns, it’s much more difficult to track where audience segment data is coming from, which means advertisers don’t always know what they’re getting. Data can be outdated or inaccurate, which can be a huge problem in an industry like travel. Travelers can often be swayed into making purchasing decisions if they are served the right ad at the right time, but that ad must be relevant. And it isn’t going to be relevant if it’s based on data that is weeks or months old.
With curation, advertisers know exactly which data partners they’re using, where data is coming from, and how often it updates, making it a far more transparent and reliable option. Curation also gives advertisers access to log-level data, which gives us more information about where travelers are in the ecosystem to help educate and influence future buying decisions, so there’s a feedback loop.
Curation is a great alternative to the traditional grocery store canned approach. By taking a vertical-specific approach, advertisers can maximize curation potential to reach targeted audiences and generate return on campaign investment.
