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Please.

I get it — people need to write “thought pieces.”

They need to keep the LinkedIn algorithm fed, the trade pubs churning, and the pitch decks looking fresh.

But let’s not pretend: most of these so-called insights on Supply Path Optimization or its glossier twin, curation, are absolute no-thinking crap.

They’re not articles; they’re Frankenstein documents stitched together from old analyst notes, a few recycled buzzwords, and maybe a lazy swipe through ChatGPT for filler sentences.

If you’ve been in this industry for more than five minutes, you’ve heard the script.

Over and over.

We’ve been chewing on this same stale sandwich for nearly a decade, and every year someone rebrands it, slaps on a shiny new bow, and insists it’s the future of programmatic.

Let’s rewind. SPO had its debut in the wake of header bidding’s great chaos. Remember when that would save programmatic?

Suddenly, one ad impression could embark on a Lord of the Rings–length journey across the supply chain.

It would ping through eight, sometimes twelve different SSPs, all trying to sell the same sliver of digital real estate back into the bidstream.

It was like one poor ticket to a Taylor Swift concert getting scalped on every street corner in Manhattan, with each hustler swearing theirs was the authentic copy.

The fallout was predictable.

And the kicker? Everyone nodded solemnly that SPO was about cleaning up the supply chain. About transparency. About efficiency. Yet when it came time to flip the switch and actually cut off revenue taps, no one dared. Because in this business, margins always win over simplicity. You don’t kill a goose that’s still laying a few golden eggs, even if it’s also filling the barn with manure.

Fast forward a few years, and the trade press decided to declare 2022 as “The Year of SPO.” As if naming a year after an acronym could magically cure the industry’s addiction to convoluted supply chains. It had the pomp of a State of the Union address, with agencies brandishing phrases like “preferred pathways,” “cost transparency,” and “working media focus.”

It all sounded so bold, so transformative. But here’s what it really was: a grand rebranding exercise. Agencies took whatever ragged supply strategies they were already running, slapped an SPO sticker on them, and paraded them around like shiny new toys. Transparency meant showing clients one sanitized slide in a deck while the rest of the sausage-making stayed hidden behind NDAs and polite half-truths.

The result? Clients got the performance theater version of SPO, not the real thing. Behind the curtain, nothing much changed. It was the second “Year of SPO,” and the before-and-after pictures looked identical. This was like launching a diet plan where the only difference between day one and day 365 is a new set of buzzwords in the marketing copy.

Now here we are, three years later, and the new savior is curation. Apparently, SPO wasn’t sexy enough, so we rebranded it. And like clockwork, the industry has been flooded with articles trumpeting curated marketplaces, bespoke inventory packages, and data-fueled transparency.

If that sounds like the specials menu at a Brooklyn coffee shop, that’s because it is: flowery words designed to justify charging more for the same cup of coffee. Strip away the froth and here’s what you’re really getting:

That’s it. SPO in drag.

Same body, new wardrobe.

The only real difference is the spin. Instead of selling this as a supply-chain cleanup, it’s now wrapped up in the language of buyer empowerment and “data monetization.” It’s the same treadmill, only this time the slides are shinier, the talking points smoother, and the branding more Instagram-friendly.

But here’s the part that should make everyone actually squirm: the way this story is being told has become so generic it could be automated. In fact, it already is.

Every article leans on the same triad: efficiency, transparency, value.
Every analyst deck trots out the same cartoon waterfall shrinking into fewer pipes, as if that graphic weren’t already a cliché five years ago.
Every blog post reads like a Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V job from 2018, with “curation” swapped in for “SPO.”

It’s not thought leadership. It’s content mulch.

We’ve reached a point where the articles themselves sound like they were written by AI on autopilot — not because AI is so advanced, but because the humans writing them have given up on saying anything original. This isn’t just a buzzword problem; it’s a creativity crisis.

And that leaves us with the question nobody wants to answer out loud:

We all get why SPO and curation are needed. Efficiency. Cost control. Reducing waste. Building trust. Those talking points are older than some of the interns writing the decks.

So why, after nearly a decade of this, are we still explaining it like it’s brand new?

There are only two answers:

Either way, the bigger failure here isn’t technical — it’s narrative. We can’t even tell this story without boring ourselves to tears.

That’s not optimization.

That’s self-sabotage.

Follow the money, not the buzzwords. That’s the only way to understand why “Supply Path Optimization” and “Curation” keep getting recycled as the next big breakthrough. Because once you strip away the glossy branding and LinkedIn humblebrags, you’re left with a truth that nobody in adtech likes to say out loud: this isn’t technology, it’s crapology.

Middlemen. Brokers. Resellers. Let’s stop calling them anything else. These are not technology companies; they’re toll collectors installing booths along the digital highway, clipping margins every time an impression drives by. The more complex the supply chain, the more tolls they invent. They don’t solve inefficiency. They preserve it. Complexity is their business model.

Curators are the poster children of this racket. They don’t create supply. They don’t drive demand. They don’t fix the pipes. What they do is take inventory you already had access to, slap a new label on it, and resell it back at a markup.

One publisher’s impression gets dropped into a “curated marketplace,” dressed up with buzzwords like “data-driven,” “attention-optimized,” “privacy-first.” Suddenly, it’s premium. Suddenly, it costs more. What actually changed? Nothing. It’s arbitrage with a PowerPoint deck. It’s reselling tap water in a glass bottle and calling it “spring-fed.”

They market this as efficiency. They talk about transparency. What it really is: optimization in drag.

Agencies love curated deals because they provide cover. Why tell a client that 40% of their media spend disappears into adtech fees when you can hold up a curated PMP and say, “See? We optimized your supply chain!”

That’s not optimization. That’s outsourced accountability. Agencies hand the homework to curators, then pat themselves on the back for “efficiency.” The cost of this charade gets passed to the client. It’s not strategy — it’s the Laziness Tax.

For publishers, curation is a tale of two markets.

Premium publishers with scarce, brand-safe inventory can sometimes see short-term lifts. In curated packages, eCPMs might rise 20–25%. But let’s be honest: those are gross figures. After the curator’s fee, the SSP’s cut, and whatever “tech tax” is buried in the fine print, the net uplift is often barely noticeable.

Meanwhile, the long tail of publishers gets treated like cattle. Their inventory is swept into massive bundles, commoditized, stripped of leverage, and sold as filler. They don’t see higher yields, they don’t get more control, and they certainly don’t get any transparency. Their only role is to make the premium slots look shinier by comparison.

And the buyers? Don’t kid yourself. They’re not saving money. If anything, curated deals often cost more. Every new “curation layer” is another toll booth. The invoice gets thicker, the language more confusing, but the economics don’t change: efficiency is promised, but margins are simply shuffled around.

It’s a scam dressed up as progress.

And here’s where it gets insulting. These same curators now partner with “adtech training companies” to teach agencies and brands how to use the thing that was supposed to be turnkey.

Read that again. Companies are paying consultants $20,000 to walk into an office, open a laptop, and explain how to switch on curated deals. Something that should be instant, automatic, obvious. Something that could be summarized in a two-page PDF.

What the hell is wrong with you? Seriously. If your company is paying “training experts” to explain how to use curated marketplaces, you’re not innovative — you’re a fool. Read that again: you’re a fool. You didn’t buy expertise. You bought someone reading the user manual out loud.

And then there are the SSPs — the architects of this toll booth economy. Look at Magnite. Instead of admitting that 90% of their inventory is crap, they take the remaining 10%, rebrand it as “curated premium,” and then ask you to pay them extra to make the garbage less garbage.

Magnite justifies this by blasting out thought leadership, sponsoring articles, and commissioning case studies that position curation as the holy grail. Their talking points are always the same:

Strip away the spin, and what are they really saying? “We need you to pay more for the same inventory, because otherwise our margins collapse.”

It’s theater. It’s the equivalent of a restaurant charging you double for scraping the mold off yesterday’s bread. And the worst part is, half the industry applauds it as innovation.

Curation isn’t a leap forward. It’s not a breakthrough. It’s not even a fix. It’s another toll booth.

Premium publishers sometimes win. Long-tail publishers almost never do. Buyers rarely see savings. Agencies dodge responsibility. And the real winners — every single time — are the intermediaries in the middle, clipping margins off both sides while pretending they’ve saved the day.

This is not technology. It’s crapology masquerading as progress.

Free ADOTAT gives you the headlines. ADOTAT+ gives you the autopsies — over 10,000 words a day breaking down who’s really making money in adtech, where your CPMs actually bleed out, and why “optimization” is more theater than solution.

We’re talking full dissections of the toll-booth economy, case studies on curators charging 30%+ for recycled inventory, and the dirty incentives that keep publishers stuck at the bottom of the food chain.

If you’re only reading the free stuff, you’re getting the trailer. ADOTAT+ is the director’s cut.