OpenX launches curation platform for agencies

OpenX Technologies announced on July 16, 2025, the general availability of OpenXSelect™, a comprehensive curation and supply-side targeting platform designed for brands and agencies. The platform integrates with 237 million U.S. users and 150 million connected television devices through OpenX's proprietary identity graph, marking a significant expansion of the company's curation capabilities.

According to OpenX, OpenXSelect represents the culmination of feedback from global brands and agencies. The platform aims to streamline inventory quality management while enabling scaled targeting through multiple data sources, including audience, behavioral, attention, and sustainability metrics. Built on cloud-native infrastructure, OpenXSelect provides direct publisher access with real-time optimization capabilities.

The announcement builds upon OpenX's seven-year leadership in supply-side curation, dating back to 2018 when the company launched OpenAudience™. That platform established OpenX as the first supply-side platform to implement an identity graph for data partner activation, fundamentally changing how audiences could be activated within the programmatic ecosystem.

Summary

Who: OpenX Technologies, a leading supply-side platform, announced the platform alongside testimonials from clients including Expedia Group Media, Stagwell Assembly, Captify, and Reklaim.

What: OpenXSelect™ is a comprehensive curation and supply-side targeting platform that provides granular inventory controls, scaled audience targeting through a 237 million user identity graph, performance optimization tools, and operational efficiency improvements.

When: The general availability was announced on July 16, 2025, building upon OpenX's seven-year leadership in supply-side curation dating back to 2018.

Where: The platform operates across connected television, native, app, and web environments, spanning OpenX's global network of more than 150,000 premium publisher domains.

Why: The platform addresses industry needs for improved inventory quality control, enhanced audience targeting precision, operational efficiency gains, and preparation for cookieless advertising environments as privacy regulations reshape targeting capabilities.

Technical capabilities and efficiency gains

OpenXSelect delivers granular inventory controls through direct partner integrations that automatically refresh to maintain brand safety standards. The platform includes an always-on Made for Advertising exclusion toggle powered by Jounce Media, along with advanced protection through Integral Ad Science's artificial intelligence systems. These IAS integration features ensure brand safety, suitability, and invalid traffic filtering across multiple advertising formats.

The platform's identity graph spans 237 million U.S. users and 150 million connected television devices, supporting advanced data targeting across cookies, mobile advertising identifiers, authenticated IDs, and IP addresses. Current partners report up to 2x the reach compared to previous methods, according to OpenX data. This framework enables interoperability for both first-party and third-party data, delivering cross-screen activation capabilities.

Performance improvements materialize through deals that reduce adtech tax, eliminate duplicative bidding, and direct more budget toward working media. The platform provides log-level reporting, automatic deal optimization, and OpenX's AI-powered Results solution, delivering transparency while giving buyers enhanced control over campaign outcomes.

Operational efficiency represents a core benefit, with OpenXSelect reducing campaign setup and optimization time by up to 50%, according to current self-service partners. Single-click controls, customizable deal templates, and one-step connected television extensions streamline campaign execution. For teams requiring hands-on support, OpenX's customer service team manages deal creation directly through the platform interface.

Industry context and market positioning

The platform launch occurs amid significant industry momentum around curation practices following IAB Tech Lab's standards. Major platforms including Google Ad Manager, Microsoft Advertising, and various supply-side platforms have integrated curation frameworks into their operations, signaling a fundamental shift in digital advertising inventory packaging and delivery.

Programmatic advertising investment continues expanding, with 72% of marketers planning to increase their programmatic spending in 2025, marking a rise from 62% in 2024. Connected television emerges as a dominant force, with its share of media budgets projected to double from 14% in 2023 to 28% in 2025. This shift represents broader transformation in media allocation, as 46% of marketers indicate plans to reallocate funds from linear television to connected television.

Supply-side platforms maintain strategic advantages in curation services due to their direct relationships with publishers and inventory access. Analysis from October 2024 revealed that SSPs can pre-qualify inventory and consolidate targeting parameters under single Deal IDs, streamlining the programmatic buying process while preserving data integrity.

Client testimonials and performance metrics

Expedia Group Media's Global Head of Digital Trading, Ash Grant, highlighted the platform's inventory quality and audience targeting capabilities. "With OpenXSelect, we now have proper control over inventory quality and audience targeting. The integration with data partners is seamless, and we've seen marked improvement in reaching our preferred audiences. It also enables us to apply inventory standards that align closely with our brand, which has made a tangible difference to campaign delivery," Grant stated.

Stagwell Assembly's Global SVP of Programmatic, Wayne Blodwell, emphasized the platform's transparency and control features. "OpenXSelect provides curation that is totally transparent, with levers that put the control in the buyers' hands. Not only will we get the ability to drive outcomes against specific KPIs end-to-end and access OpenX's proprietary identity graph, we'll also gain the confidence of high-quality supply and the time-savings of an intuitive design," Blodwell explained.

Captify's VP of Client Strategy and Operations, Doug Cuesta, reported significant operational improvements. "We've been able to cut deal setup time in half with OpenXSelect, which has opened up more time for optimization. The templated workflows make it easy to scale across channels—including CTV—and the inventory controls give us confidence in what we're running," Cuesta noted.

Reklaim's Founder and CEO, Neil Sweeney, described substantial reach improvements. "OpenX's identity graph has noticeably expanded our reach—more than double in some cases—compared to other platforms we've used. When paired with direct publisher access, and activation in our DSP of choice, it creates a more efficient media buying experience across the board," Sweeney observed.

Cookieless environment preparation

The platform addresses growing privacy concerns as mobile advertising faces particular challenges, with 54% of mobile impressions now lacking identifier coverage. Desktop environments show similar trends, with 36% of impressions operating without traditional tracking capabilities. OpenX previously launched its Cookieless Deal Library in February 2024, offering over 1,000 pre-built deal IDs for various cookieless tactics including contextual, attention, and Privacy Sandbox Topics targeting.

OpenXSelect incorporates these cookieless solutions while maintaining effective audience targeting and measurement capabilities. The platform includes access to Google Privacy Sandbox Topics segments, even for demand-side platforms that haven't adopted this technology. This preparation positions clients for continued effectiveness as the industry transitions away from third-party cookies.

Executive perspective on market dynamics

Matt Sattel, Chief Revenue Officer at OpenX, outlined the company's strategic vision. "This is just the beginning of what the platform—and our team—can do. Our cloud-native infrastructure allows us to move fast, delivering simple, effective tools agencies need. Just as importantly, our account management teams act as an extension of our partners' organizations, embedding with agency and center of excellence teams to do the heavy lifting and help drive results," Sattel stated.

The platform's development reflects OpenX's position as an independent omnichannel supply-side platform with a 17-year track record of programmatic innovation. The company maintains direct partnerships with more than 150,000 premium publisher domains and serves over 100,000 advertisers globally. As the market leader in sustainability, OpenX achieved CarbonNeutral™ certification and third-party verification for its Science Based Targets initiative Net-Zero targets.

Market implications for advertising technology

OpenXSelect's launch coincides with broader industry consolidation around standardized curation practices. The IAB Tech Lab's Curation Framework, consisting of four fundamental components including Seller-Defined Audiences, Taxonomies, Data Transparency, and SupplyChain object specifications, has gained traction among major platforms throughout 2024 and 2025.

This standardization enables more efficient computational processes for demand-side platforms, which have traditionally faced increasing computational effort measured in queries per second for integration with multiple parties and real-time supply filtering. Curation practices prove naturally more efficient and therefore more sustainable for the broader advertising ecosystem.

The platform addresses key challenges in programmatic advertising, including inventory quality concerns, audience targeting precision, and operational efficiency. As privacy regulations continue reshaping targeting capabilities, supply-side platforms with direct publisher relationships and robust identity infrastructure maintain competitive advantages in delivering effective advertising solutions.

Future developments will likely focus on standardization and best practices as programmatic buying types gain popularity. The advertising technology industry benefits from innovation opportunities to build solutions driving partner value, with curation practices providing new waves of technical creativity and potentially establishing new categories of dedicated solutions and vendors.

Key Terms Explained

Supply-Side Platform (SSP): A technology platform that enables publishers to manage, sell, and optimize their available ad inventory in an automated fashion. SSPs connect to multiple ad exchanges, demand-side platforms, and ad networks simultaneously, allowing publishers to maximize revenue by exposing their inventory to the largest possible pool of potential buyers. These platforms provide real-time bidding capabilities, yield optimization, and detailed analytics to help publishers understand which inventory performs best with different types of advertisers.

Programmatic Curation: A sophisticated inventory management approach where supply-side platforms leverage data, algorithms, and direct publisher relationships to pre-select and package premium advertising inventory. This process involves applying quality standards, audience targeting parameters, and brand safety measures before presenting inventory to buyers, creating more efficient transactions while maintaining transparency. Curation reduces the complexity of programmatic buying by consolidating multiple targeting requirements into simplified deal structures.

Identity Graph: A comprehensive database that connects various user identifiers across different devices, platforms, and touchpoints to create unified user profiles. These graphs link cookies, mobile advertising identifiers, authenticated user IDs, email addresses, and device fingerprints to enable cross-device targeting and measurement. Identity graphs become increasingly important as third-party cookies deprecate, providing alternative methods for audience targeting and campaign attribution across the digital advertising ecosystem.

Connected Television (CTV): Digital streaming content delivered through internet-connected devices including smart TVs, gaming consoles, streaming devices, and mobile applications. CTV advertising enables programmatic buying of video inventory with advanced targeting capabilities similar to digital advertising, including demographic, behavioral, and geographic parameters. This format combines the visual impact of traditional television advertising with the precision targeting and measurement capabilities of digital advertising platforms.

Made for Advertising (MFA): Websites specifically designed to generate advertising revenue rather than provide valuable content to users. These sites typically feature minimal original content, excessive ad placements, and optimized layouts to maximize ad impressions and clicks. MFA sites often provide poor user experiences and can negatively impact brand safety, leading to industry efforts to identify and exclude such inventory from premium advertising campaigns.

Supply Path Optimization: A strategic approach to programmatic advertising that focuses on identifying and utilizing the most efficient routes between advertisers and publishers. This optimization reduces unnecessary intermediaries in the advertising supply chain, minimizing fees while improving inventory quality and transparency. The process involves analyzing different supply paths, evaluating their performance metrics, and directing advertising spend through the most effective channels to maximize working media efficiency.

Private Marketplace (PMP): An invitation-only programmatic advertising environment where publishers offer premium inventory to selected advertisers at predetermined pricing or through private auctions. PMPs provide enhanced control over inventory quality, brand safety, and audience targeting compared to open marketplace transactions. These arrangements enable closer collaboration between publishers and advertisers while maintaining the efficiency benefits of programmatic technology.

Demand-Side Platform (DSP): Technology platforms that allow advertisers and agencies to purchase digital advertising inventory automatically across multiple ad exchanges and supply sources. DSPs provide sophisticated targeting capabilities, real-time bidding functionality, campaign management tools, and performance analytics. These platforms enable advertisers to optimize their media buying across various channels, formats, and audiences while maintaining centralized control over campaign parameters and budget allocation.

Invalid Traffic (IVT): Non-human or fraudulent interactions with digital advertisements that do not represent genuine user engagement. IVT includes bot traffic, click farms, malware-generated activity, and other forms of advertising fraud that can inflate campaign metrics without delivering real business value. Advanced detection systems use machine learning algorithms and behavioral analysis to identify and filter invalid traffic, protecting advertisers from wasted spending and ensuring campaign performance accuracy.

Real-Time Bidding (RTB): An automated auction mechanism that enables the buying and selling of individual ad impressions in real-time as web pages load. During RTB transactions, advertisers submit bids for specific impressions based on available user data and targeting parameters, with the highest bidder winning the opportunity to display their advertisement. This process occurs within milliseconds, allowing for precise targeting while maintaining the efficiency and scale required for modern digital advertising campaigns.

Timeline

• 2018: OpenX launches OpenAudience™, establishing the first supply-side identity graph for data partner activation
• Early 2023: IAB Tech Lab establishes comprehensive Curation Framework with four fundamental components
• February 2024: OpenX launches Cookieless Deal Library with over 1,000 pre-built deal IDs for cookieless targeting tactics
• September 2024: OpenX partners with Integral Ad Science to enhance brand safety and ad quality measurement across global publisher network
• October 2024: Industry analysis reveals SSP advantages in supply path curation due to direct publisher relationships
• July 16, 2025: OpenX announces general availability of OpenXSelect™ advanced targeting and curation platform