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OpenAds: Enabling the most trusted, efficient ad auction

Advertisers and publishers agree: A fair, high-integrity, and transparent marketplace benefits everyone in the digital advertising supply chain. When both sides align on trust and efficiency, it opens the door to better outcomes, smarter decisions, and stronger partnerships across the ecosystem.

Illustration showing three bidding paddles. The paddle in the center has an illustration of a marble rolling down a straight, open path.

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It’s not hard to see why: Buyers get better performance from clean auctions, and clean auctions are correlated with high-quality ad impressions and supply chains. As investment follows performance, clean auctions create a win-win for buyers and publishers. 

OpenAds aims to eliminate the inefficiencies associated with the programmatic marketplace by introducing a high-integrity auction “wrapper” that can help make the advertising supply chain more efficient and performant. 

Why we’re launching OpenAds

Today, the digital media ecosystem has a significantly higher supply than demand. This imbalance has given rise to auction distortion tactics like: 

  • Metadata manipulation
  • Dynamic take rates
  • Request duplication

These practices undermine campaign performance by making it hard for advertisers to understand what they are buying and to make informed decisions. At the same time, they prevent premium media publishers from understanding the real market for their inventory and effectively managing their yield. Overall, these tactics erode trust, reduce ROI, and threaten the health of the ad-supported open internet. 

Consider this high-trust marketplace example

AuctionWeb — now known as eBay — launched in 1995 as a site that allowed people to buy and sell items through online auctions. In its early days, buyers were hesitant to spend more than a few dollars, unsure if purchases would arrive or be authentic. As eBay grew, it introduced trust-building features like seller ratings and buyer protections, evolving into a reliable global marketplace where people now confidently purchase everything from collectibles to cars, boats, and even real estate. 

It’s time for programmatic advertising to make its own transformation into a high-trust marketplace. 

How OpenAds will work

OpenAds is designed to be the open internet’s most transparent and clean auction. The solution will offer an unprecedented level of transparency to drive better performance and higher ROI for advertisers and help publishers grow their businesses. 

It is built atop a foundation of Prebid and, at launch, will introduce several new feature innovations that enhance the auction’s integrity and enable publishers to independently verify its fairness. 

The Trade Desk has proven with OpenPath that sending bids more directly to the publisher’s ad server improves campaign transparency and performance for advertisers. OpenAds extends that benefit and is designed to increase fairness, transparency, and trust in the supply chain. 

OpenAds Data Visualization

What will make OpenAds different:

  • Open-sourced logic: Auction mechanics will be published and auditable. 

  • Code attestations: Publishers and buyers will be able to verify what’s running. 

  • No manipulation or noise: Just clean, buyer-aligned auctions that will reward quality. 

OpenAds will offer 2 versions

To accommodate the differing technical requirements between large and small publishers, OpenAds will offer OpenAds Enterprise and OpenAds for Business. These two versions of the product will provide similar benefits, but the enterprise version will offer more advanced tools and controls that large publishers need to support their strategies. OpenAds for Business will simplify the experience for small teams. 

To learn more about details for each version, reach out to your representative at The Trade Desk.  

Benefits for advertisers and publishers

With OpenAds, advertisers can receive: 

  • Better campaign performance through increased supply chain efficiency 

  • Rich metadata signal for improved decision-making 

  • Predictable, high-integrity auction to inform bid strategy analysis 

With OpenAds, premium publishers can gain: 

  • Transparent, auditable auction for true price discovery 

  • Predictable, high-integrity auction to inform yield strategy analysis 

  • Efficient supply chain for increased programmatic revenue 

Common questions

No. The Trade Desk only represents the buyer in a transaction, and we do not manage yield for publishers. 

We are launching OpenAds because we know that our advertiser clients see better performance in high-integrity auctions. With OpenAds, we are hosting the auction and designing it to include several innovative new features that ensure transparency and allow participants to independently verify its integrity. 

No. These are two distinct products that support the same strategy. It’s helpful to think of OpenPath as a pipe that bids into auctions. OpenAds is a clean auction for OpenPath to bid into. 

No. OpenAds will be a fair and predictable high-integrity auction, which means, among other things, the highest bid will win. This will be true whether the highest bid comes from The Trade Desk or another demand source. At launch, OpenAds will be integrated with The Trade Desk as a demand source, but we plan to incorporate additional third-party demand sources in the future. 

Yes. The Trade Desk remains committed to Prebid. OpenAds will usually run adjacent to a publisher’s existing Prebid deployment. OpenAds is not a replacement for a full-stack Prebid offering, and it is not a “hosted Prebid”-style offering. 

How to get started with OpenAds 

For most advertisers and agencies using The Trade Desk platform, there is no change or action required to begin using OpenAds. Within the Kokai platform experience, our platform AI, Koa, automatically buys ad inventory through the cleanest, most performant supply paths and their associated auctions. 

Publishers interested in signing up can reach out to their inventory partnership representative at The Trade Desk to join the beta waiting list. 

Are you a publisher interested in joining the beta?

Beta testing for OpenAds launches November 2025. Interested publishers can sign up by reaching out to their inventory partnership representative at The Trade Desk to join the beta waiting list. 

Have additional questions or want to learn more? Use the contact form below. 

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

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