The Trade Desk Wants to Be the App Store for Ad Tech

The Trade Desk’s messaging has long hinged on being a champion of the open internet—a convenient slogan for a company that helps advertisers buy media outside of walled gardens. Today, in what CEO Jeff Green calls the company’s biggest upgrade to date, The Trade Desk is announcing a new portal called Kokai that will help advertisers access not just the web but also third-party ad-tech partners more seamlessly. “In the past, we have done a lot of the innovations in our platform. Today, it’s a lot more about interoperability and openness,” Jed Dederick, chief client officer at The Trade Desk, told Adweek. “It will be that much easier to build businesses on top of us.” With AI-based Custom Algorithms, Marketers Wring More Value From the Open Web The Partner Portal is one facet of Kokai, launched today at an event in New York City. Kokai also features AI-charged media buying products and new measurement tools, especially for retail media. Dederick framed the Partner Portal as one of Kokai’s most significant features. The Trade Desk is offering a software development kit (SDK) to make it easier for other ad-tech companies that might offer solutions like data, measurement, identity, inventory and verification, to integrate with The Trade Desk and make themselves available to scores of buyers. "Our platform, going forward, will be more audience-based," Green said at at the unveiling. "There is so much more we can being doing with first-party data and audience." He compared the product to Apple’s App Store. “The very best thing that Apple has in its entire ecosystem is its app marketplace,” Green said in an interview on CNBC Monday. “We want to make it so many other companies can develop to us.” The Partner Portal could be a shot in the arm for vendors looking to expand their reach. But The Trade Desk isn’t acting purely altruistically—the tech will make it easier for smaller advertisers to use The Trade Desk. Typically, smaller DSPs allow for more open integration, according to John Donahue, partner at programmatic consultancy Up and to the Right. DSPs like The Trade Desk and Google’s Display & Video 360 have typically been more restrictive when it comes to third-party ad-tech integrations, he said. “It does seem they’re invested in how they get smaller advertisers to use them and widen their apertures beyond the large-scale holding companies,” Donahue said. Making media more bespoke As programmatic becomes more layered and ad-tech solutions proliferate, there is greater value in the marketplace idea. Adam Heimlich, co-founder of Chalice Custom Algorithms, noted Snowflake, the cloud data storage and analytics company, already offers a marketplace for ad tech. Heimlich anticipates more companies will follow suit. “As a vendor, it gives you multiple places to be,” Heimlich said. “With competition, everyone has access and the best solution will win.” The Trade Desk’s Partner Portal will increase the precision of buying, which dovetails with another Kokai feature: injecting artificial intelligence into the media buying process. AI has become increasingly foundational in media buying—from tools like Google’s Performance Max and Meta’s Advantage Plus to more sophisticated bespoke algorithm offerings from Chalice and Scibids. Kokai deepens The Trade Desk’s existing AI media buying tool, Koa, into more of its software. Kokai is also helping advertisers measure their retail media buys more effectively, with offline sales data available to guide buying decisions and tools to help buyers maximize TV buys for reach and frequency. With Kokai, The Trade Desk is underscoring a growing trend in programmatic to give buyers as much flexibility as possible. “The advancements to the partner program … it allows you to continue to build upon the infrastructure,” Donahue said. “That’s the broader trend in media … that value being created is more what you can build on top of.”