By Sam Bradley  •  July 16, 2026  •

Ivy Liu

“This isn’t just using an off-the-shelf package provided by an SSP or within a DSP’s environment. This is about the curation of a bespoke inventory package,” said Adams.

Curation refers to the practice of using audience, contextual and supply-chain data from the programmatic bidstream to identify underused (and therefore, cheaper) ad inventory for clients. Curation is ordinarily handled by ad tech partners, such as supply-side platform (SSP) companies or firms like Audigent and Multilocal, rather than media agencies themselves.

Adams argued that Stagwell could differentiate itself in the market, and deliver better outcomes for clients, by taking back control. “This is about making sure that we have our own controls over client supply that are bespoke to them, versus just using off the shelf from [an] SSP,” he said.

The system uses AI agents built in Claude and data pulled from The Trade Desk’s OpenSincera for a “domain health check,” a means of evaluating ad inventory held by publishers based on scores for ad quality and supply-chain quality, as well as the technical performance of a web environment. That information is then used to create bespoke packages suited to a given client’s brief via a process the agency owns rather than a third-party “black box,” said Adams. 

“[Clients] can see our buy data; they can see how their inventory is being put together. We can walk them through that process,” he said. “We put our own quality stamp on it.”

Transparency and lower tech fees are recurring themes in RFIs, noted Gartner analyst Andrew Frank. “More and more want to know exactly where their ads are running,” he said. “You want to eliminate your tech taxes and you want higher win rates from the ad server.”

The CEO said this will save Stagwell media buyers time lost managing different SSP and DSP marketplaces, and reduce tech fees. In theory, he said, that should deliver a faster and cheaper service for clients and increase the “working” proportion of media budgets that end up with publishers. Concentrating spend on a “small set of preferred SSPs” would also reduce auction duplication, said Adams,.

The system relies upon Magnite and Freewheel’s publisher relationships, through which Adams said Stagwell buyers will be able to access the entire programmatic marketplace. 

Adams said this won’t compromise Stagwell’s relationships with DSPs, which will still be used to execute bids against the curated inventory. Stagwell has a close relationship with The Trade Desk, for example; in April it began developing AI agents built with the adtech company’s Koa software, amid a general rush among media agencies to create AI media planning and buying tools.

And bid-level decisioning would still run on DSP algorithms, said Adams. “Curate’s valuue is upstream: we control which sites and apps are eligible to send bid requests into our deals in the first place,” he said in a follow-up email. “That means the DSP is optimizing across a pre-qualified, quality-vetted pool rather than the open exchange. We are also working with supply-side partners who are able to apply custom “supply shaping” models to send us better requests in the first place.”

Stagwell unveiled an AI-powered “operating system” developed for its media business dubbed ‘The Media Machine’ last month.

Though Stagwell Curate brings processes in-house that are usually left to adtech partners, Though Stagwell Curate brings processes in-house that are usually left to adtech partners, Gartner’s Frank suggested more media agencies were primed to move in a similar direction.

Indies like Butler/Till have been dragging curation upstream by using SWYM.AI’s SelfCurate platform, which gives the agency’s traders direct, self-serve control over supply before it reaches the DSP. Holding company solutions like Omnicom’s Omni, Dentsu through its Media Exchange and WPP, in the form of the latter’s Open Intelligence solution, fit that bill.

And media planning agents that select appropriate inventory, or experimental AI solutions which execute media buyers automatically, are also forms of curation, he noted.

“It’s unusual for agencies to do their own curation… [but] it’s also a sign of the times,” said Frank.