Microsoft Curate enables curators like retailers, data companies, independent trading desks, and other media companies to use their proprietary assets to enhance the value of a seller’s inventory and create unique offerings for buyers. These proprietary assets can include audience data, preferred inventory access, specially negotiated rates with sellers, optimization capabilities, investment strategy, and other features. Curated deals can be bought via Microsoft's Invest and all major DSPs.
In addition, for buyers who execute a large volume of campaigns and need to manage their media investment, Microsoft Curate’s deal curation technology offers a single platform to easily centralize their business rules and targeting configurations across DSPs to simplify campaign execution. Using Microsoft Curate, buyers could act as curators to create deals that reflect their decisions about segments, supply types, inventory lists, margin percentage, optimization, and so on.
Common questions
What fees or charges are associated with curated transactions?
Certain fees or charges apply to curated transactions, but only if the bid for the curated deal wins the impression in the seller’s final auction. These fees or charges may include a tech fee charged by Microsoft Advertising to the third-party curator for its use of the platform and the Microsoft Curate technology, and a margin to be charged by the curator for their enhancement of the inventory. If you are a seller, all bids for curated transactions will be submitted to your final auction net of such fees or charges unless you agree otherwise with the applicable curator, and such bids will need to compete in your final auction in order to win the impression. Again, to be clear, no curation-related fees or charges will apply if a bid for inventory via curation does not win.
Will my eligibility settings be respected for curated transactions?
Yes. Curated transactions are not guaranteed deals and will not override any seller account configurations, including ad quality settings or floor price settings. A curator simply “overlays” the inventory with their assets and, like a buyer, cannot modify any account settings. Any bids submitted for a curated transaction will be subject to the same eligibility settings as any other buyer.
Can I choose which curators to work with?
Yes. Via the Partner Center screen located in the UI, sellers can block transactions with other members on the platform, including buyers and curators. Generally, curators are identified with “[CURATOR]” at the end of their member name. Sellers can also pull reporting on each curator’s activity with your member through the Network Analytics report by adding “is curated” and/or “curator member ID” as a dimension. For more information, see Partner Center Screen - Seller View or reach out to your account management team.
What indicates that I’m getting a better deal with curation?
Curation allows third parties to easily enrich your inventory with their data, thereby bringing more demand for your inventory. With curation, buyers can still bid on seller inventory via open exchange, but buyers that target curated deals may also bid on seller inventory via curated transactions. All bids submitted for curated transactions will compete in the seller's final auction with all other deal and open exchange bids, net of all applicable fees and charges. As with any bid, a bid for a curated transaction needs to meet seller eligibility criteria AND be the highest bid of that auction in order to win the impression. For more information on revenue forecasts/expectations, reach out to your account management team.
Additional questions or want to learn more?
Reach out to your Microsoft Advertising account manager to learn more about Microsoft Curate.
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