LONDON – Advances in infrastructure and computing power are fundamentally changing how programmatic advertising operates on the supply side, enabling faster, more sophisticated decision-making that was previously impossible, said Sarah Botherway, marketplace operations director at Index Exchange.
Speaking with Beet.TV contributor Robert Andrews at the Beet.TV and WPP Media Leadership Summit, Botherway said improvements in latency and processing power have transformed how sell-side platforms evaluate and route impressions.
Historically, supply-side platforms had only milliseconds to assess an opportunity and determine where it should be sent. Today, that same window can support “advanced decisioning,” allowing intelligence and quality assessment to be applied earlier in the transaction.
“That enables buyers to decide earlier, add intelligence earlier, and ultimately drive better business outcomes,” Botherway said, noting that impressions can now be enhanced before they even reach the buy side.
Those capabilities are redefining the role of curation, she added. While curation has existed since the introduction of Deal IDs, sell-side decisioning shifts targeting and intelligence closer to the point where the impression is actually served. The result, Botherway said, is greater scale and improved efficiency for buyers, while reducing friction throughout the transaction.
Everyone wins with better curation
Botherway argued that the benefits extend across the entire ecosystem. For media owners, sell-side decisioning helps ensure inventory is valued more accurately and monetized more effectively. Buyers gain improved access to high-quality inventory aligned with performance goals, while demand-side platforms benefit from reduced waste and stronger performance metrics.
Security and data governance are also improved by applying audience data and signals on the supply side, she said. Rather than passing sensitive signals through multiple intermediaries, those signals can be controlled and activated directly within the supply-side environment. That approach helps limit signal loss and reduces the need to expose data across numerous transaction “hops,” particularly as more fragmented signals emerge from areas such as commerce media, contextual targeting and custom bidding algorithms.
Outlook for 2026
Looking ahead to 2026, Botherway said sell-side decisioning is laying the groundwork for a new phase of programmatic innovation. She pointed to the recently introduced Agentic RTB Framework, which aims to lower barriers for new entrants by reducing technology costs and accelerating experimentation. Through containerized infrastructure, Index Exchange is already supporting partners as they enter the market and scale more quickly.
“This is about building the foundations for a new framework and evolution in programmatic,” she said. “It allows new partners to innovate faster and add value across the ecosystem at a pace we haven’t been able to achieve before.”
You’re watching coverage from Beet.TV’s Global Leadership Summit with WPP Media, filmed in London, presented by Criteo, Index Exchange, Seedtag & The Trade Desk. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
