/C O R R E C T I O N – TRIPLELIFT/ In the news release, “TripleLift Finds 99% of Buyers Consider Deal Curation Important to Media Strategy, Yet Only 21% Rate their Execution as Very Effective”, issued June 17, 2026 by TRIPLELIFT over PR Newswire, we are advised by the company that the original version contained incorrect information introduced by PR Newswire during transmission. The complete, corrected release follows, with additional details at the end:

TripleLift Finds 99% of Buyers Consider Deal Curation Important to Media Strategy, Yet Only 21% Rate their Execution as Very Effective

New global research looks into transparency gaps and operational challenges hindering programmatic performance

NEW YORK, June 17, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — TripleLift, the Creative SSP powered by TL Spark, its agentic intelligence layer, today announced the release of its new global report, “The Gap in Modern Curation. Connecting Impact and Orchestration,” that uncovers a growing disconnect between the promise of curation and the realities of execution. While nearly all buyers surveyed (99%) said deal curation is important to their overall media strategy, 28% described their current execution as neutral or ineffective.

TripleLift examined 223 advertisers across the U.S and U.K. on how they are approaching curation in modern programmatic advertising and why many still struggle to translate curated deals into measurable business outcomes. The findings suggest that advertisers are unclear on a common definition for what curation means in programmatic advertising, and thus are unable to execute it effectively. 

“When 60% of buyers don’t know what they’re paying for curation, that’s not a reporting gap. It’s a fundamental accountability failure,” said Timothy Jasionowski, Chief Product and Technology Officer at TripleLift. “Scale without curation wastes 20% of any investment. The fix isn’t a better dashboard. It’s moving decisioning to the sell side, where supply, audience, and creative align before a single bid is placed.”

The report highlights several key challenges that buyers are facing in 2026, including lack of fee transparency, underperforming deals, fragmented creative and media workflows, and uncertainty around the role of AI and agentic intelligence in campaign optimization.

Among the report’s key findings:

• 81% of buyers cited deal performance not meeting expectations as a top challenge hindering effective curation.
• 60% of buyers said they do not know what they are paying for curation.
• 45% of buyers described themselves as neutral regarding fee transparency from current providers.
• 20% of programmatic traffic continues to be flagged as invalid or low-value inventory, including MFA sites, highlighting ongoing inefficiencies in open exchange buying.
• Buyers ranked inventory quality as the most important factor driving campaign success, while simultaneously identifying performance inconsistency as their biggest frustration.

Curation becomes especially powerful when supply-side intelligence is paired with bidding and activation strategies, creating a more efficient path to performance for advertisers”, said Kule Vidasolo, CEO & Founder at Elcano. “Our partnership with TripleLift reflects how the right technology and collaboration across the ecosystem can bring differentiated assets together in a way that delivers stronger results, faster optimization, and greater clarity for buyers.”

The report also explores the growing role of AI in advertising operations, finding that while automation adoption continues to accelerate, many teams are still burdened by what TripleLift calls a “review tax,” where time saved through automation is offset by manual oversight and verification. According to TripleLift’s Evolution of AI in Global Advertising report, 45% of practitioners spend up to four hours per week reviewing AI-generated outputs.

Additional findings emphasize the growing importance of connecting creative and media strategies through curation. While buyers ranked creative among the least important drivers of campaign success overall, they simultaneously identified contextual targeting paired with creative relevance as one of the most valuable capabilities in curated environments, exposing a critical disconnect in how campaigns are currently planned and optimized.

As the advertising ecosystem evolves toward more autonomous, agentic systems, curation will increasingly become the operational control layer responsible for aligning inventory quality, audience intelligence, creative execution, and measurement into a single performance framework.

The full report, The Gap in Modern Curation. Connecting Impact and Orchestration, is available now.

About TripleLift
TripleLift is the Creative SSP powered by TL Spark, our agentic intelligence layer. We orchestrate creative, supply, audience, and measurement into a single outcome-driven system across the open internet, retail media, and CTV. Our platform enables brands to drive measurable performance while helping publishers maximize yield and preserve high-quality user experiences. Learn more at www.triplelift.com.

Correction: The current version of this release has the updated hyperlink under “global report” in the first paragraph.

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SOURCE TRIPLELIFT