14 Oct 2026 · 7 min read
Curation or Agent Negotiation: Which Answer Fits the Supply Chain Problem?
Last updated: 14 October 2026
Curation and agent negotiation are two answers to the same problem: the programmatic supply chain is long, duplicated and hard to audit, so buyers struggle to know which publisher they are paying, by which route, and how much arrives. Curation answers by packaging. A curator selects publishers and supply paths, applies quality or data criteria, and hands the buyer a deal to activate in a demand-side platform (DSP). Agent negotiation answers by agreement. A buyer's AI agent and a seller's AI agent agree specific terms within mandates people have set. Curation narrows the route; agent negotiation makes the terms explicit. The two are not mutually exclusive.
TL;DR. Curation packages selected publishers and supply paths into a deal that a buyer activates in a DSP, so the buyer inherits the curator's choices at package level. Agent negotiation has buyer and seller agents agree terms deal by deal, within mandates set by people, so the buyer sets the terms rather than inheriting them. Curation is quicker to start and suits broad reach across many publishers; agent negotiation suits spend that is concentrated with fewer sellers and needs specific, checkable terms. Both depend on the same test: whether the buyer can see the path, the cost and a record of what was agreed.
What supply chain problem do curation and agent negotiation both address?
The problem is that the same impression can reach a buyer through many routes, each with its own intermediaries and fees, and the buyer often cannot see which route it bought through or what each step took. The ISBA/PwC programmatic supply chain study of May 2020 found an "unknown delta" of around 15% of advertiser spend that could not be attributed to any part of the chain.
The industry has added transparency tools in response. ads.txt, introduced in 2017, lets publishers declare which sellers are authorised to sell their inventory. sellers.json, introduced in 2019, lets supply-side platforms list the sellers they represent. These tools show who may sell an impression. They do not tell a buyer which authorised route is best, or fix the terms of a deal. Curation and agent negotiation each try to fill that gap.
What is curation in programmatic advertising?
Curation is the practice of selecting publishers and supply paths, applying criteria such as content quality, context, attention or audience data, and packaging the result as a deal a buyer can activate in its DSP. The curator might be a supply-side platform, an agency, a data company or a specialist. The package usually reaches the buyer as a deal ID, most often for a private marketplace, which the buyer attaches to a campaign and bids on in the normal way.
Curation's strength is convenience: one deal ID can stand for hundreds of publishers already screened against the buyer's criteria. Its trade-off is distance. The buyer agrees terms with the curator at package level, the relationships with individual publishers sit with the curator or the platform, and the curator's own fee is part of the cost. How clearly that fee and the publisher list are disclosed depends on the arrangement.
What is agent negotiation in programmatic advertising?
Agent negotiation is the practice of having a buyer agent, acting for an advertiser or agency, agree deal terms directly with a seller agent acting for a publisher. Each agent works within a mandate its principal has set, covering price, volume, formats, dates and quality floors, and commitments above a set threshold go to a person for approval.
IAB Tech Lab's AAMP framework provides open components for this model, including agentic-direct for agent communication, reference buyer and seller agents, OpenProposal for publishers to describe products and packages in a standard format, and a registry example for agent discovery. According to IAB Tech Lab, AAMP's support for the Deals API covers programmatic guaranteed, preferred deals, private marketplaces, the open marketplace and linear GRPs. AdCP, the Ad Context Protocol from AgenticAdvertising.org, is a separate protocol for the same broad purpose. An agent-negotiated deal still reaches the auction as a deal ID in a DSP; what changes is who set its terms.
How do curation and agent negotiation differ?
The two approaches differ on five points.
Who sets the terms. In curation, the curator defines the package and the buyer accepts or declines it. In agent negotiation, the buyer's mandate defines the limits and terms are agreed with each seller.
The unit of agreement. Curation agrees one package covering many publishers. Agent negotiation agrees individual deals, one seller at a time, at whatever scale the agents can sustain.
Visibility of the path. Curation shows the buyer what the curator discloses. In agent negotiation the buyer's agent deals with the seller's agent directly, so the seller is known.
Speed to start. A curated deal can often run the same week. Agent negotiation needs a mandate, connected agents and approval thresholds before the first deal.
The record. In curation, the terms sit in the curator's agreement with the buyer. In agent negotiation, the terms are whatever the two agents agreed, and their value depends on both sides holding the same record of them.
When does each approach fit?
Consider a hypothetical UK retailer with a £60,000 quarterly display budget that wants reach across 30 news and lifestyle publishers. A curated package gives one deal ID covering all 30, live quickly, with selection done by the curator. Agent negotiation would mean 30 separate agreements, each with its own terms and records.
Now suppose the retailer's reporting shows that five of those publishers take most of the spend and drive most of the results. For those five, agent negotiation lets the buyer agree a fixed price, a viewability floor and specific placements with each publisher directly, and hold each to them. A reasonable design keeps the curated package for long-tail reach and moves concentrated spend into negotiated deals. The split follows the money.
What should buyers ask of either approach?
Whichever approach a buyer uses, the same questions apply:
Which publishers, at domain level, will the money reach?
Is every route verifiable through ads.txt and sellers.json?
What is the full cost from the buyer's spend to the publisher, and who discloses each part?
Which terms are fixed, and who may change them after agreement?
Does the seller hold the same record of the terms as the buyer?
What happens, and who decides, when delivery differs from the terms?
The last two questions are where agent negotiation either earns its extra set-up or does not. Alkimi takes the negotiation route as a neutral marketplace within IAB Tech Lab's AAMP framework: it checks that connecting agents are authorised by the buyer or publisher they represent, and records each agreed deal on a DealSheet that both sides hold and can retrieve independently, with humans keeping approval rights at the deal level.
Frequently asked questions
What is curation in programmatic advertising?
Curation is the selection of publishers and supply paths against criteria such as quality, context or audience data, packaged as a deal, usually a private marketplace deal ID, that a buyer activates in its DSP.
What is agent negotiation in advertising?
Agent negotiation is the agreement of deal terms between a buyer's AI agent and a seller's AI agent, each acting within a mandate set by its principal, with people approving commitments above set thresholds.
Is curation the same as supply path optimisation?
They overlap. Supply path optimisation is the buyer's effort to choose the most direct, efficient routes to inventory. Curation is one way to do it, by buying a package whose routes a curator has chosen.
Can a buyer use curation and agent negotiation together?
Yes. A common split is a curated package for broad reach across many publishers, with agent-negotiated deals for the smaller number of publishers that take most of the spend.
Do agent-negotiated deals still need a DSP?
In most cases, yes. An agent-negotiated deal is usually activated as a deal ID that the buyer's DSP recognises in the bid request, just as a curated deal is.