Dentsu Aegis Network and Xandr, AT&T’s advanced advertising company, today announced a strategic partnership with the launch of Dentsu Curate. Dentsu Curate, the new programmatic supply solution from DAN, is built upon principles of quality and transparency for performance and will leverage Xandr’s technology platform. It will be the first of its kind in APAC, marking the start of a new era in the evolution of programmatic.

The programmatic industry has been grappling with transparency issues since its inception due to its often-cluttered ecosystem with a myriad of intermediaries and varying auction techniques. Recognising this issue, a pioneering team led by Sunil Naryani, VP commercials and partnership, Dentsu Aegis Network APAC conceptualised Dentsu Curate; a new programmatic supply solution for clients, focused on driving performance with high quality inventory and transparency. With a lot of work already going into demand-side optimisation, Dentsu Curate provides a strong supply solution that enhances Dentsu Aegis Network’s access and visibility of the programmatic supply chain.

“This is an important step in our advertising transformation journey. Dentsu Curate will further our commitment of driving increased business performance with improved media quality & transparency to our clients. The tech partnership with Xandr allows direct access to supply, enabling us to curate the best quality inventory at the best price for our clients,” said Naryani. “Curate’s unique ability to be customised and bespoke to client needs has already seen great success in Hong Kong and South East Asia, driving upwards of 10% increase in viewability and 15% improvement in campaign performance. This solution will now be scaled to other APAC markets.”

With access, control, and transparency, we can curate supply direct from publishers which allows for media consolidation into a central marketplace while eliminating non-essential pass throughs in the value chain. With added addressability through data partnerships, quality of inventory is further enhanced upon curation giving greater ability to maximise efficiency of clients’ working media. As the solution evolves through ad tech partnerships and product development, Dentsu Curate expects it will spearhead a new age of supply path optimisation and curated marketplace offering in this region by harnessing the synergies from scalable tech partners, data partners and publishers.

“We believe it is fundamentally important to drive increased transparency across media, technology and costs for buyers and sellers,” said Sam Tan, senior director of market development, JAPAC, Xandr. “Dentsu Aegis Network’s investment in creating market-leading visibility into supply will be a critical component to help provide their clients with increased control over who they buy from and the fees taken at each step in the supply chain.”

In Singapore for a BFSI client, we are in the early weeks of a large global branding campaign covering 30 markets where Dentsu Curate has been deployed and the initial results are quite encouraging.

Dentsu Curate is a scalable and value driven programmatic supply solution from Dentsu Aegis Network that comes in a time of austerity, where there is a need for efficient and measured media expenditure by advertisers. It shines the way forward for programmatic in the media industry that has long been plagued by lack of transparency.