Programmatic advertising has never been short on promises—scale, precision, automation—but the reality for most agencies today looks more like a maze than a marketplace. Fragmented supply paths, inconsistent brand safety controls, and endless PMP troubleshooting leave in-house teams stuck doing anything but strategic work.
AdLib and Curated.Media think it’s time for a reset.
The two companies—both led by former MediaMath veterans—have announced a strategic partnership aimed at clearing programmatic’s cluttered pipes. Their combined approach attacks complexity from both sides of the transaction: AdLib unifies demand-side controls within any DSP, while Curated.Media optimizes, filters, and packages high-quality supply for friction-free buying.
The result? Agencies get to keep the DSP interfaces they already know, while gaining access to pre-vetted inventory libraries across CTV, display, online video, audio, digital out-of-home, and native. And they get it without extra contracts, hidden fees, or any of the workflow acrobatics typically required to activate curated supply.
Mike Hauptman, founder and CEO of AdLib, puts it bluntly: “Programmatic buying has grown increasingly complex, creating inefficiencies for agencies and missed opportunities for brands.” The partnership, he says, is about pairing smart curation with transparent execution—two things the ecosystem desperately needs.
Why This Matters Right Now
Curation has surged in relevance over the last two years. Between brand safety concerns, supply path optimization (SPO) pressures, and the rise of retail media networks and curated marketplaces, agencies are being pushed to prove that every impression is worth it. But curating effectively takes resources—resources agencies don’t always have.
This partnership eliminates the usual legwork: no PMP negotiation cycles, no QA purgatory, no operational lift. Buyers simply activate curated deals directly inside the DSP they’re already using, supported by brand-safety filters, contextual layers, audience data, and performance-driven packaging.
Compared with legacy PMP workflows—often slow, opaque, and brittle—this partnership feels more like modern infrastructure than a bolted-on fix.
Two Perspectives, One Problem
AdLib and Curated.Media didn’t just see the same industry challenge—they saw the same industry from opposite viewpoints.
AdLib focuses on demand aggregation: centralizing tools, settings, and governance so agencies don’t have to toggle endlessly between DSP features and vendor add-ons. Curated.Media, meanwhile, perfects the supply: reducing noise, filtering quality, and shaping inventory into packages that buyers can trust and measure.
“Curation is the solution to programmatic complexity,” says Cedric Peillet, founder and CEO of Curated.Media. And with this partnership, curation isn’t just a supply-side tactic—it becomes part of the full buying workflow.
The Broader Implication
Programmatic is entering a new era—one where transparency, quality, and control outweigh sheer volume. While rivals are experimenting with retail curation, AI-guided buying, SPO frameworks, and closed ecosystems, AdLib and Curated.Media are betting that flexibility plus control is the winning formula.
They may be right: in a world where agencies are being asked to do more with less, fewer headaches might just be the new competitive advantage.
The companies say the partnership represents a new standard for agencies chasing efficiency and performance in an increasingly complex digital media landscape. If they deliver on the promise, this could become a blueprint for how programmatic evolves: not bigger, but smarter.
