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AI makes the Kokai platform experience more powerful for advertisers

AI works best when human input guides it. Kokai’s AI capabilities are unique in prioritizing the “human touch,” unlike the AI solutions from many other media buying platforms. By keeping control in advertisers’ hands, our AI solutions work for you, not in place of you.

Graphic of a blue object representing AI transparency on a purple background for The Trade Desk

Marketers reportedly feel disintermediated by AI as certain platforms leverage machine learning to make choices on their behalf — often without informing marketers about where their ads ran or how well their campaigns performed.1 

The AI tools in the Kokai platform experience are different. They put traders in the driver’s seat and operate as expert co-pilots so they don’t need to give up total control in order to benefit from automation and AI. 

Our platform AI and AI assistant, Koa, can help you achieve stronger advertising outcomes with the control you need (and the transparency you expect). 

3 ways Kokai’s AI enables controlled automation 

In Kokai, advertisers don’t have to give up total control in order to benefit from automation and AI. They decide which campaign decisions to control themselves and which to leverage an assist. 

Here are three key campaign factors advertisers can optimize by using AI as their co-pilot. 

1. Budget allocation 

  • Advertisers have the power to specify their own budget-allocation rules or opt for an automated, value-driven budget strategy. 

  • If you choose the latter, the platform AI can help you manage your allocations, monitor the performance and relevance of your ad groups, and automatically reallocate budgets among your ad groups to help increase the value of your campaign. 

2. Customizable bid strategy 

  • Advertisers are encouraged to apply as many bid factors as they can on every dimension of their campaigns (e.g. device type, geolocation, demographic). 

  • The bid factors you apply help the platform AI prioritize the impressions that will be most valuable to your campaign. 

Results

A U.S. food and drink brand used Kokai’s advanced value optimizations and bidding algorithms over its campaign flight and saw a 103% increase in ROAS.2

3. Dynamic audience targeting 

  • Kokai offers thousands of audience segments for advertisers to choose from. AI can help ensure your campaign is continually optimizing its targeting based on your unique inputs. 

  • By uploading your first-party data and activating retail data, advertisers can build seeds that help them better understand their high-value and potential new customers. 

  • Next, you can activate Koa to expand your original audience selection to reach more potential customers. This setting works with your campaign seeds to identify and add high-relevance custom segments to boost performance toward your goals. Activate via a setting at the ad group level, Audience (Au) tile. 

results

McDonald’s used seeds and Kokai’s AI capabilities to target its most valuable customers. It saw a correlation between higher-quality impressions and lower cost per order, ultimately driving a 40% decrease in CPA.3

See the power of AI for yourself 

A platform-wide data analysis revealed that campaigns running on Kokai have delivered on average: 

  • 43% lower cost per unique household 

  • 24% lower cost per click 

  • 27% lower cost per acquisition 

When media buyers are in control of AI, they are in control of their campaigns. Our human-first AI tools allow our customers to optimize their campaigns in real time to help drive better outcomes. 

Contact your Trade Desk representative to make sure you’re getting the most out of Kokai’s AI. 

This information is provided solely for background and is not a representation or guarantee of any future performance. 

Sources: 
1. “AI Will Soon Dominate Ad Buying, Whether Marketers Like It or Not,” The Wall Street Journal. March 6, 2025. 
2. The Trade Desk, platform data. 
3. The Trade Desk, platform data.