At A Glance
Curation works best when your partner’s incentives align with yours instead of steering you toward its own platforms or supply. Learn why neutrality makes data quality, interoperability, and performance more trustworthy, and what to ask when evaluating a partner.
Key takeaways:
- Check whether a curation partner has a financial stake in steering you toward specific platforms or supply.
- Look for conflicts created by consolidation, walled gardens, and business models that reward keeping you inside one ecosystem.
- Ask how the partner makes money and who benefits when you stay in its ecosystem.
- Experian is demand-side platform (DSP) agnostic and builds integrations that honor your existing supply-side platform (SSP) relationships.
Ask any agency or brand leader what they want from a curation partner, and you’ll hear similar things: better data, cleaner deals, and measurable outcomes. At the same time, most teams are also managing a media strategy that spans dozens of platforms, partners, and environments. Your strategy shouldn’t be constrained by any one of them.
While those things matter, there’s a question underneath all of them that rarely gets asked directly.
Is your curation partner structured to serve you, or to serve their own position in the ecosystem?
That question matters more today than it did two years ago. The programmatic ecosystem has consolidated. Platforms have gotten larger, partnerships have become more entangled, and the line between trusted partner and another stakeholder with an agenda has gotten harder to see.
At Experian, we think about neutrality as the structural question curation has to answer first. Before data quality. Before deal performance. Before scale.
What neutral actually means
Neutral isn’t the same as passive. It means being structured to serve both sides of a transaction without benefiting from pushing either side in a particular direction. That’s the definition of a trusted intermediary: sitting in the middle of the ecosystem to create better outcomes, not to capture a larger share of it.
For curation, that means a few things we take seriously. We are demand-side platform (DSP) agnostic. We don’t route buyers toward certain platforms because we have a financial stake in their success. We honor existing supply-side platform (SSP) relationships and build integrations that work across the agencies, brands, publishers, and technology platforms our clients already use. Our goal is to work inside your ecosystem, not compete with it.
Why neutrality is harder to find than it should be
Most players in the programmatic supply chain have built their business models around a specific position. DSPs optimize for platform retention, SSPs want a larger share of available supply, and walled gardens are designed to keep signal inside their environment.
Those are understandable business decisions. But they create conflicting incentives for anyone inside those structures who is also being positioned as a neutral curation partner.
Experian’s position is different. Our value grows when the ecosystem stays open and connected. That alignment shapes how we build, price, and go to market. It’s what makes genuine neutrality possible at scale.
Neutrality is what makes everything else trustworthy
Data quality, interoperability, and performance all matter in a curation partner. But none of those capabilities deliver their full value when the partner providing them has a stake in steering outcomes toward their own infrastructure.
Neutrality is the condition that makes the rest of the evaluation trustworthy.
For teams assessing curation partners right now, I’d start there. Ask how the partner makes money. Ask who benefits when you stay inside their ecosystem. Those answers will tell you a great deal about whether the relationship is actually built in your interest.
About the author
Kevin Dunn
Chief Revenue Officer, Experian
Kevin Dunn joins Experian Marketing Services with more than 20 years of leadership experience across marketing and advertising technology, most recently serving as Senior Vice President of Brands and Agencies at LiveRamp. In that role, he led growth across retail, CPG, travel, hospitality, financial services, and healthcare, overseeing new business, account expansion, and channel partnerships.
Kevin is known for building cohesive, accountable teams and leading with optimism, clarity, and a strong sense of shared purpose. His leadership philosophy centers on empowering people, driving positive outcomes for clients and fostering a culture where teams can grow, take smart risks, and succeed together.
Latest posts
NEW YORK, June 1, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — Are Traasdahl, CEO and founder of Tapad, the leader in cross-device marketing technology and now a part of Experian, has been named Founder of the Year by the Nordic Startup Awards. The Nordic Startup Awards’ Founder of the Year Award recognizes an individual that has shown exceptional achievements in fundraising, customer growth, financial savvy, and/or leadership throughout the past year. The Nordic Startup Awards evaluates hundreds of players in the startup ecosystem, ranging from investors and founders, to developers and journalists in Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, Norway and Finland. Taking place in two stages, each country selects its nominees for consideration for the regional awards which were held in Iceland on May 31, 2016. Traasdahl is recognized for his continuous investment in Tapad as a whole, as well as his dedication to growing and developing Tapad since founding the company in 2010. He has led Tapad from startup through a steady period of growth resulting in an acquisition by the Telenor Group for $360 million in February 2016. “I am truly honored to be named Founder of the Year by the Nordic Startup Awards, among so many other remarkable leaders in the space,” said Traasdahl. “That said, this has always been a team effort. We started Tapad with the goal of giving employees unprecedented growth opportunities while developing breakthrough solutions for our clients. This is a win for everyone at Tapad who has committed themselves to these principles over the past four-and-a-half years.” Tapad is reinforcing its commitment to fostering entrepreneurship with the launch of their new Propeller Program. Through Propeller, Tapad will host five early-stage companies at Tapad’s New York headquarters for a year to set them up for global expansion. In its inaugural year, the first participants will come from Traasdahl’s native Norway. For more information on the Nordic Startup Awards, please visit: http://www.nordicstartupawards.com. Contact us today
NEW YORK, May 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — Tapad, the leader in cross-device marketing technology and now a part of Experian, has been honored with two iMedia ASPY Awards. Announced on May 3rd at the iMedia Summit in Lost Pines, TX, Tapad’s 2016 ASPY Awards include “Best Customer Service” and “Best Mobile Partner.” In 2015, Tapad’s proprietary technology, Tapad Device Graph™, was named “Best New Media Innovation” and Tapad employee Chris Martin was awarded the “Rising Star Award.” The iMedia ASPY Awards – determined exclusively by agency votes – recognize the industry’s top marketing technology, media companies and publishers for outstanding service to agencies. The award for “Best Customer Service” recognizes Tapad’s client services team and their dedication to helping agencies fully understand their consumers’ behavior and achieve the best cross-screen campaign ROI through Tapad’s Campaign Pulse and TV Pulse analytics reporting. The “Best Mobile Partner” win recognizes the abilities of the Tapad Device Graph™ to deliver unified cross-screen solutions for the company’s partners. “We are privileged to have a talented and dynamic group of people on our client services team, and we are honored to be recognized by iMedia Connection and our agency partners,” said Tapad Founder and CEO, Are Traasdahl. “We have always strived to provide the best solutions and the best customer support, so it’s extremely gratifying to be rewarded for our efforts. If our clients and partners are happy, we are happy.” For more information on the iMedia ASPY Awards please visit: http://aspyawards.com. Read the full press release here. Contact us today
Welcome emails garner 86 percent higher open rates than regular promotional mailings. What other life cycle marketing programs should you be running?