DAN launches Dentsu Curate, its made in APAC programmatic offering

Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN) has launched a built-in-APAC programmatic solution named Dentsu Curate that it says will better performance and transparency in the industry by consolidating supply directly from from publishers into a central marketplace.

While DAN has developed this solution with Xandr, it may add other technology platforms to its roster going forward.

The network will work with tech platforms, data partners and publishers to address issues of performance and fraud in the digital supply chain, highlighted in a recent ISBA-PwC study that showed 15% of adspend was being lost in the system.  

To build out this solution, DAN is extending itself beyond its advertising roots and deeper into the technology plumbing that drives the flow of online advertising. "Instead of relying on publishers of supply-side platforms, we want to work out impression by impression what the best solution is for our clients," says Sunil Naryani, VP of commercials and partnership at Dentsu Aegis Network APAC, who led the team that developed the solution, in an interview with Campaign Asia-Pacific. 

With Curate, DAN hopes to give marketers and advertisers better reach, viability and better impact for their ads. In the process, Narayani says the role of the digital side platform will shift, as they are pushed to provide more authentic sources (with less fraud and more transparency) to advertisers. "The smarter DSPs are starting to use better programmatic talent and AI and ML (aritificial intelligence and machine learning) to sharpen their offerings," he adds. "Agencies are starting to be smarter with their supply."

DAN's clients are already seeing early benefits of using Curate, according to him. “(Curate) has already seen great success in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, driving upwards of 10% increase in viewability and 15% improvement in campaign performance," he said in a media statement.

The solution will now be scaled to other APAC markets, Naryani says. In Singapore, for a BFSI client, DAN is 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. 

According to Naryani, these kind of deals show how DAN can aid access, control and transparency for its clients and remove non-essential pass-throughs in the value chain. "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,” Naryani added in the statement.