Three Years After Kokai, The Trade Desk Is Betting on Refinement with Zuma
The update adds six backend agents, closed beta Koa AI and one-click lift studies as The Trade Desk tries to make Kokai easier to use.
- The Trade Desk rolled out an update to Kokai on Friday introducing the Koa AI assistant in closed beta, with Samantha Ross, senior director of product marketing, saying improvements address customer feedback that users "want it to be easier to use, easier to find what they're looking for."
- When Kokai originally launched, buyers complained they were forced onto an unprepared platform, prompting budget shifts elsewhere and contributing to a 33% stock drop in Q4 2024 as the company faced pricing pressures from Amazon and Yahoo.
- Landing pages now surface performance trends upon login, lift studies that took five to seven days to set up now launch in one click and go live within 48 hours, and a Nielsen IQ partnership brings automated conversion and sales lift studies to CPG advertisers.
- Rather than forcing buyers to use Kokai exclusively, The Trade Desk is opening its AI layer to external tools like Claude, allowing clients to route agents through preferred platforms with the company claiming all clients now use Kokai, up from 85% adoption last quarter.
- Amid weakest quarterly growth since 2020 with revenue up just 3% to $715 million, CEO Jeff Green called agentic AI "one of the biggest opportunities that advertising will ever see" and bought back 6 million shares in March as a vote of confidence.
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Trade Desk says Koa AI in Zuma cuts CPAs 32% across 62 campaigns
Conversational assistant, frequency controls and lift studies arrive in closed beta, limiting which traders can test them now. Wider availability stays undated. Continue reading this article on ppc.land. Sign up the PPC Land newsletter to get the latest marketing news.
The Trade Desk announces the launch of Zuma, the new version of its Kokai platform, launched in 2023 to plan, buy and measure advertising campaigns on the Internet. This update integrates the agentic AI, simplifies performance measurement and offers a more intuitive user experience. According to the company, Kokai Zuma aims to reduce the increasing complexity faced by media buyers, faced with fragmentation of channels, formats and terminals. The…
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