Upgrade your inventory strategy with Blue Lists

Traders require control over the inventory they buy — and how they buy it. One strategy you may use to achieve this is through activities described as inventory curation or supply path optimization (SPO). However, this involves a process of media analysis that is disconnected from media activation and often managed by different, sometimes disjointed, teams. 

Blue Lists give buyers a new way to control their inventory, making it easier to set up and activate a cohesive inventory strategy at scale. Built directly into The Trade Desk’s Kokai platform experience, Blue Lists enable you to define the publisher inventory you want to buy, apply preferences for how to buy it, and package those decisions into a shareable marketplace. 

Whether refining your approach to supply paths or managing large-scale strategies across teams and regions, Blue Lists help reduce manual lift and increase your control, letting you buy what you value most and drive business outcomes. 

How Blue Lists work 

Blue Lists are customizable, publisher-based marketplaces with advanced features that allow buyers to: 

• Curate custom lists of preferred publishers (instead of just websites or mobile apps) 

• Define supply path buying preferences by publisher, where applicable 

• Publish the Blue List as a targetable marketplace that buyers can activate with a single click 

Blue Lists enable more scalable and strategic inventory management across campaigns, clients, and regions. 

Why use Blue Lists 

Media buyers, especially those managing large budgets, may often rely on manual work-arounds to coordinate inventory strategy across teams (think: sending spreadsheets back and forth, reformatting data for different platforms, or managing publisher lists across disjointed platforms). The result is fragmentation, inefficiencies, and missed opportunities to buy premium inventory. Blue Lists are built to change that. 

Key benefits include: 

• Faster setup: Customize your Blue List using the Sellers and Publishers 500+ list or upload your own site or app list 

• Greater control: Apply supply path preferences at the publisher level 

• Smarter scaling: Avoid bloated, manually updated lists and missed coverage by selecting publishers, not individual domains 

• Stronger outcomes: Expand access to premium inventory that drives greater business outcomes and makes it easier for AI tools to optimize performance 

When to use Blue Lists 

Blue Lists are especially useful when: 

• You want to centralize inventory strategies and make them available for activation by different media buying groups or agencies 

• You’re looking for more effective SPO at a more granular level — per publisher or per channel 

• You want to capitalize on the performance benefits of marketplace buying without giving up your ability to control quality 

Simplify workflows and scale your inventory strategy

Inventory strategies shouldn’t be hard to operationalize. Blue Lists give you a more efficient way to manage supply, express preferences, and scale what works without adding more complexity to your workflow. 

Want to learn more about how Blue Lists can help you upgrade your inventory strategy? Reach out to your representative at The Trade Desk today to get started.