IAB Tech Lab's Deals API and the Curation Boom: Fix Your Deals Before Q1

What was released

On December 4, IAB Tech Lab released version 1.0 of the Deals API for public comment, open until January 31, 2026. The specification standardizes how programmatic deals are communicated from the systems that create them, typically SSPs, to the systems that receive them, typically DSPs. Today, much of that work is manual: a deal is set up in one platform, and its details are re-entered in another, with plenty of room for mismatches.

The API also brings transparency to who is involved in a deal and in what role, identifying sellers, packagers and curators. IAB Tech Lab says future versions will support discoverability, so that every participant can see where and how they are included in a deal, and by whom.

The problem it targets

Anyone who has worked on private marketplace deals knows the pattern: a deal is agreed, set up, reported as live and then delivers little or nothing. The announcement cites industry data that two-thirds of deals are configured with the desired supply yet deliver no or very little revenue, largely because of configuration mismatches and unclear setup between the parties. Misaligned floors, formats, sizes, targeting and seat IDs are the usual culprits.

For publishers, a zombie deal is not harmless. It consumes sales and ad ops time, it can give buyers a poor impression of the inventory, and it can distract from deals that actually would have spent.

Why curation makes this urgent

Curation, where a third party packages inventory from many publishers, often combined with data, and sells it to buyers as deals, has grown quickly over the past two years. Curated deals are now a major route for buyers to access open-web and streaming inventory. That adds a layer to the supply chain: the publisher, the SSP, the curator and the buyer all have to agree on what a deal contains.

For publishers, curation raises reasonable questions. Who is packaging my inventory, alongside whose? What data is being applied to it? What fee does the curator take, and how does that affect what reaches me? The Deals API does not answer all of these, but naming curators and packagers in a standard way is a step toward publishers and buyers being able to see them.

What the API could change day to day

If SSPs and DSPs adopt it, the most immediate effect would be fewer manual handoffs. A deal created in an SSP could appear in the buyer's DSP with its terms already populated, rather than being retyped from an email or spreadsheet. That reduces the chance of a mistyped deal ID, a wrong floor or a mismatched format. It should also make it easier to see, from either side, whether a deal is set up correctly before a campaign is supposed to start, rather than discovering a problem after days of zero delivery.

A seasonal note for travel publishers

Travel publishers have a particular reason to get deals in order early. The first quarter includes the cruise industry's wave season and the period when many travelers plan spring and summer trips, both of which draw travel advertisers. Much of that spend flows through deals and curated packages. A deal that fails to deliver in January or February misses the window entirely.

How to clean up your deals now

1. Inventory every active deal. Ask each SSP for a full list of deal IDs on your inventory, including those created by curators, and compare it with your own records and your sales team's expectations.
2. Find the zombies. For each deal, check bid requests, bids and impressions over the last 30 days. Deals with requests but no bids usually have a buyer-side configuration problem. Deals with no requests usually have a targeting problem on the sell side.
3. Check the usual mismatches. Compare deal floors with the buyer's expected price, confirm sizes and formats match what your pages actually serve, and verify that the buyer seat IDs are correct.
4. Close what is dead. Archive deals that have not delivered and have no active buyer interest. A shorter, accurate list is easier to manage and easier for buyers to trust.
5. Ask curators for transparency. For curated deals on your inventory, ask who the curator is, what data is applied, what fees are taken and how inventory is presented to buyers.
6. Keep supply chain files aligned. Make sure the paths used by curated deals are authorized in your ads.txt and appear correctly in your partners' sellers.json. Curated spend increasingly goes only to verified paths.
7. Name deals consistently. Use a convention that includes buyer, format and inventory type, so reporting across SSPs is readable.

What to watch

The Deals API is open for comment, and adoption will depend on SSPs and DSPs implementing it. Ask your partners whether they plan to support it and on what timeline. Publishers who have a stake in how curators are identified can also submit comments before the end of January; the Deals API page has the specification.

The takeaway

Deals and curation are where a growing share of programmatic spend is decided, and much of that system still runs on manual setup and limited visibility. The Deals API is a practical step toward fewer broken deals and clearer roles in the supply chain. Publishers do not need to wait for it: auditing, fixing and pruning deals now will pay off in the first quarter. HBDR helps publishers review deal performance across partners so that deals that should spend actually do.