The Trade Desk’s Kokai: What It Means for Your Campaigns
The Trade Desk consistently leads the way in media technology and AI integrations, making them our go-to DSP partner. Our partnership gives us first-to-market access to test cutting-edge solutions within their platform as they roll out.
The Trade Desk has transitioned from its Solimar DSP platform to the new, revamped Kokai platform. Solimar was celebrated for its user-friendly interface and robust data integration capabilities, empowering marketers to optimize programmatic advertising campaigns effectively. Kokai builds on that foundation with meaningful upgrades across AI, measurement, and audience strategy.
What's New in Kokai
Kokai introduces several advancements over Solimar that matter for how campaigns are built and optimized:
- Enhanced AI-driven decisioning for smarter, faster optimization across the funnel
- Deeper integration with retail media networks, expanding inventory and audience access
- More sophisticated measurement tools for greater precision in targeting and performance analysis
Together, these improvements position Kokai as a more capable platform for advertisers who want better signal and less guesswork.
What This Means for Your Campaigns
The Trade Desk's DSP interface is changing, and so is the underlying algorithm. The transition is designed to carry over all current campaigns, historical data, and user settings without interruption.
The biggest shift is how the algorithm makes decisions. Kokai introduces Seeds as the primary driver of AI performance and campaign optimization. All algorithm decisioning is powered by first-party data modeled as Seeds, which means the quality of your first-party data now has a direct impact on campaign performance.
What Are Seeds?
Seeds are how Kokai uses your first-party data to inform audience strategy. A Seed can be built from any high-value customer list: past purchasers, website visitors, enrolled students, or completed converters of any kind.
Once a Seed is in place, Kokai does two things:
- Compares new audiences against the Seed to gauge relevance before bidding
- Generates lookalike models using machine learning to identify new users who share characteristics with your Seed audience
The result is a more targeted, data-driven approach to reaching the right people at the right time.
The ideal Seed is a list of users who have already completed the full conversion action in your funnel, such as a purchase or enrollment. The stronger the signal, the better the model performs.
How We're Approaching the Transition
Our media team is actively onboarding Kokai and integrating existing campaigns. Here's what that process looks like for our clients:
- Testing and experimentation phase to get comfortable with the new platform and its capabilities
- First-party data onboarding into The Trade Desk platform for Seed creation, or exploration of alternative Seed data sources if first-party data isn't available
- Strategy development around Kokai's advanced features, tailored to each client's goals and funnel
If you have questions about how this transition affects campaigns, let's talk.
