What is a deal ID in programmatic?

A deal ID is a unique code attached to a bid request that tells a buyer the impression is part of a pre-negotiated programmatic agreement, such as a private marketplace, preferred deal or programmatic guaranteed buy. The buyer's DSP recognizes the code and applies the agreed terms, price and targeting, instead of treating it as an open-auction impression.

What is curation in programmatic advertising?

Curation in programmatic advertising is packaging inventory from many publishers, often combined with audience or contextual data, into a ready-made deal that buyers can activate in their DSP. A curator, which might be an SSP, data company or agency, filters for quality and relevance so buyers get a cleaner, smaller supply set without negotiating with each publisher.

What is Curation? Meaning in advertising

Curation

Curation is packaging inventory from many publishers, often combined with audience data and quality filters, into ready-made deals that buyers can purchase through their DSP.

The short answer, from the AdTech Sumo glossary

Curation became one of programmatic advertising's big trends around 2023–2025. A curator selects impressions across many sites and apps, based on quality, context, viewability, audience data or low invalid traffic, and bundles them into a Deal ID. Buyers then activate the deal in any DSP as if it were a private marketplace.

Curators can be SSPs, data companies, agencies, publisher groups or specialist firms. Mechanically, the curation often happens on the sell side: the SSP applies the curator's data and filters before sending bid requests, and the curator earns a fee from the clearing price. This moves some targeting and data work from the buy side to the sell side.

Supporters say curation cuts waste and gives publishers' data more value. Critics worry it adds yet another fee layer to the ad tech tax and can hide where fees are taken, so buyers ask how curator fees are disclosed and whether the supplyChain object shows every hop. The IAB Tech Lab has worked on curation guidelines for this reason.

Think of it like this

Curation is like a meal-kit service: someone else picks the ingredients from many suppliers and packs them together, and you pay a little extra for the convenience.

An example

A curator builds a deal of 2,000 European news sites with 70%+ viewability and under 1% IVT, adds a sports-fan audience, and sells it at a €6 floor with a 15% curation fee.

Curation

Think of it like this

An example

Related terms

Deal ID

Private marketplace (PMP)

SSP (supply-side platform)

Supply path optimization (SPO)

Ad tech tax