The advertising technology industry has always had a complicated relationship with its own nomenclature, creating categories with great enthusiasm and then, a few years later, quietly folding them into something else.
Experian, the data and analytics giant, has retired the Audigent brand, absorbing the curation technology company it acquired into its broader platform. A spokesman for Experian framed the move as consolidation rather than retreat, noting in an emailed statement that "Audigent's curation capabilities remain an important part of our platform" and that the company's vision for the acquisition — "to power the future of agentic marketing by embedding intelligence into every supply-side decision" — had not changed.
Whether the change would lead to layoffs remained unclear; Experian declined to say.
The disappearance of the Audigent name arrives at a moment when curation itself — the practice of packaging audiences and inventory for buyers — has become something of a category in search of a definition. Supply-side platforms describe it as something they power. Demand-side platforms suggest it proves they never needed the sell-side's help with targeting in the first place. Data companies call it a component of a larger graph. Holding companies have folded it into supply-path optimization. (Ask five companies what curation means and you will receive five answers calibrated precisely to whatever each company happens to sell.)
"The closest parallel may be what happened with DMPs and identity," said Marc Fanelli, senior vice president of global digital audiences and operations at Eyeota. "Those categories didn't disappear because they stopped being valuable. They disappeared because their capabilities became embedded throughout the ecosystem."
Mr. Fanelli suggested that curation may be following the same path — less a product than a feature, less a brand than a layer of infrastructure.
It is, in other words, the kind of evolution that the advertising technology business has seen before, and will almost certainly see again.
Original story published in Digiday: "Experian retires the Audigent brand", by Seb Joseph