The Trade Desk Revolutionizes Digital Advertising with 'Audience Unlimited'

The Trade Desk, a leader in digital advertising technology, has announced a significant enhancement of its third-party data marketplace, introducing 'Audience Unlimited'. This innovative offering is designed to help advertisers optimize their campaigns and reach target audiences more accurately.

Traditionally, the use of third-party data by advertisers has been limited due to high costs and difficulties in selecting effective data sources. On average, many advertisers allocate only about 20% of their media budgets to third-party data, which has hampered their ability to leverage the full potential of these resources.

Solving Challenges with 'Audience Unlimited'

'Audience Unlimited' addresses these challenges by leveraging advanced AI technologies. The service scores thousands of data segments provided by hundreds of trusted, privacy-focused third-party data providers, based on their relevance to the advertiser's campaign. This means that advertisers can easily integrate all relevant data sources into their campaigns in a cost-effective manner, moving away from the traditional a la carte pricing model.

The solution promises consistent pricing and seamless integration, eliminating unexpected costs and reconciliation complexities while enabling high-precision targeting at scale using third-party data.

Samantha Jacobson, Chief Strategy Officer at The Trade Desk, stated, “'Audience Unlimited' will fundamentally change how marketers perceive the value and cost of third-party data. Brands utilizing third-party data for campaign optimization consistently see improved performance, but traditional market complexities have been barriers to its optimization. By establishing a bundled pricing model, we can deliver cost benefits to advertisers, while our sophisticated AI clarifies the relevance of all data sources, allowing for flexible combinations to optimize performance.”

Introducing Koa Adaptive Trading Modes

To help advertisers make the most of 'Audience Unlimited', The Trade Desk is introducing 'Koa Adaptive Trading Modes'. This new feature allows advertisers to flexibly operate Koa, depending on their campaign strategies and requirements, offering two modes with advanced agent-based AI:

Performance Mode

In this mode, Koa acts like a co-pilot, dynamically optimizing bids and allocation to maximize efficiency and performance. Advertisers set the overall strategy and constraints, and within those bounds, AI continuously guides them towards the best solutions. High transparency is ensured, allowing advertisers to monitor changes made by Koa and overwrite bidding requirements when necessary. Performance Mode also fully utilizes The Trade Desk's innovative features, including 'Audience Unlimited', 'Predictive Clearing', 'Identity Alliance', 'Prism', and free measurement tools, all working together in an optimized manner.

Control Mode

Control Mode gives advertisers manual oversight of bids, budget allocation, and optimization, allowing them to construct campaigns flexibly according to their needs. The agent-based AI provides recommendations and opportunities, but decisions on how and when to use specific parameters, such as region, device type, and ad formats, rests with the advertisers. This mode is suitable for campaigns that require detailed planning or stringent pricing requirements, with performance functionalities being available on an a la carte basis.

Advertisers using 'Audience Unlimited' will see a tiered fee of 3.3% and 4.4% on impression costs in Control Mode, while Performance Mode is available without additional fees. Additionally, advertisers have the option to apply data a la carte as needed.

Michael Bibby, CEO of Dstillery, commented, “'Audience Unlimited' fundamentally transforms how advertisers approach targeting. By incorporating AI-driven audience selection directly into campaign strategies, data evolves from a complementary role to being central to performance enhancement. By making available hundreds of thousands of marketplace segments and custom segments, advertisers can fully harness the power of data and AI to achieve smarter, more relevant targeting.”

Anne Acker, SVP of Commercial Partnerships at LiveRamp, remarked, “Third-party data serves as a growth engine for advertisers to reach larger audiences, discover new insights, and make more informed marketing decisions. Solutions like 'Audience Unlimited' eliminate uncertainties when identifying and constructing high-quality segments from trusted data sources, paving the way for a new future in media buying. Leveraging advanced AI adds value that enables marketers to extract greater value and efficiency from the third-party data that best meets their unique business needs.”

Both 'Audience Unlimited' and 'Koa Adaptive Trading Modes' are set to roll out in late 2025 to select agencies on the Koa platform, with full availability for all users anticipated in early 2026.

About The Trade Desk

The Trade Desk is a technology company that empowers ad buyers. Through its self-service cloud-based platform, advertisers can create, manage, and optimize digital ad campaigns across various formats on devices such as PCs, mobile, and connected TVs. By connecting with key data, inventory, and publisher partners, it guarantees maximum reach and operational efficiency. Additionally, The Trade Desk's Enterprise™ API allows for customized platform solutions. Based in Ventura, California, The Trade Desk has offices in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. For more information about The Trade Desk, visit The Trade Desk or follow on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.