The Trade Desk has unveiled its latest innovation, Deal Desk, built into its Kokai platform to streamline how advertisers and publishers manage direct deals and upfront commitments. This new feature delivers enhanced visibility into deal performance, offering insights into metrics like pacing and quality. It also suggests alternative options when current deals fall short.
Digital deals make up a substantial portion of programmatic ad spend, yet many underperform due to limited transparency. Deal Desk addresses this by leveraging AI to optimize performance for both advertisers and publishers, ensuring campaigns make the most impact.
Will Doherty, Senior VP of Inventory Development at The Trade Desk, emphasized the importance of improving deal efficiency: “Deal Desk represents a long-overdue innovation for our industry,” he said, adding that it promotes stronger strategic relationships in the digital advertising supply chain.
Key functionalities include Deal Quality Scores that help advertisers benchmark performance, assist publishers in crafting transparent deals, and automate activation and prioritization. Additionally, the platform enables users to expand or cancel underperforming agreements.
Major publishers, including Disney, are already testing Deal Desk in their private marketplaces. Jamie Power, Disney’s SVP of Addressable Sales, praised the feature: “We continue to put our advertisers first… evolving how we transact to deliver greater efficiency and performance.”
Deal Desk is expected to enter beta testing in Q3 2025.
