The Trade Desk revamps third-party data marketplace with AI-powered tool

The Trade Desk is revamping its digital advertising data marketplace with the launch of Audience Unlimited, a major upgrade aimed at making third-party data easier and more cost-effective for advertisers.

Third-party data allows advertisers to target audiences with precision, but high costs and uncertainty over which data sources are most effective have limited adoption. Many advertisers spend nearly 20% of their media budget on such data, yet usage remains inconsistent, according to The Trade Desk.

Audience Unlimited aims to address these challenges by using AI to score thousands of curated segments from hundreds of privacy-conscious providers, allowing advertisers to integrate all relevant data into campaigns at a lower, predictable cost.

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To help advertisers take full advantage of the platform, The Trade Desk is also introducing Koa Adaptive Trading Modes, offering two approaches powered by agentic AI.

In Performance Mode, Koa acts as a co-pilot, dynamically optimising bids and allocations to maximise efficiency while giving advertisers visibility into all changes and the ability to override bid factors. This mode combines the full suite of The Trade Desk’s innovations, including Audience Unlimited, Predictive Clearing, Identity Alliance, Prism, and free measurement.

Control Mode, by contrast, allows advertisers to manually manage bids and optimisations, with AI surfacing recommendations rather than taking action, and performance features available a la carte for campaigns that require strict plans or pricing.

Audience Unlimited will be available at tiered rates of 3.3% and 4.4% of impression costs in Control Mode, while it is included at no extra cost in Performance Mode. Advertisers can also continue to use traditional a la carte pricing if preferred.

The new features will roll out to select agencies on the Kokai platform in late 2025, with full availability for all users expected by early 2026.

“Audience Unlimited is going to transform the way marketers think about the value and cost of third-party data. Brands that leverage third-party data to optimise their campaigns consistently see significantly improved performance. However, the complexity of the data marketplace to date has made the deployment of data somewhat anemic,” said Samantha Jacobson, chief strategy officer, The Trade Desk.

She added, “By securing bulk pricing for data, The Trade Desk can pass on savings to advertisers, and our advanced AI will help advertisers understand the relevance of all data sources to their campaigns and layer in as much as they need to optimise performance.”

The move comes amid wider industry trends, with Amazon Ads recently launching Amazon Retail Ad Service, enabling third-party retailers to display contextually relevant ads across their online stores. Customers can click on these ads and complete purchases directly on the retailer’s site, leveraging Amazon’s two decades of advertising technology expertise to scale and enhance the shopping experience.

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