MUMBAI: For years, third-party data in digital advertising has been like the pricey side dish everyone admired but few ordered. Now, The Trade Desk (NASDAQ: TTD) is serving it up in a new format Audience Unlimited, an AI-powered marketplace upgrade designed to make precision targeting cheaper, smarter, and easier.
Traditionally, advertisers who dared to dip into third-party data often forked out nearly 20 per cent of their media costs on it, only to wrestle with the uncertainty of which segments were worth the spend. Audience Unlimited aims to sweep away those hurdles by scoring thousands of curated data segments from hundreds of privacy-conscious providers, then offering them in bulk at transparent, inclusive pricing.
“Audience Unlimited is going to transform the way marketers think about the value and cost of third-party data,” said The Trade Desk chief strategy officer Samantha Jacobson. “By securing bulk pricing for data, we can pass on savings to advertisers, while our AI helps them understand relevance and layer in as much as they need to optimise performance.”
The upgrade isn’t just about cheaper data. It’s tied to new Koa Adaptive Trading Modes, powered by agentic AI, that let advertisers pick their level of automation:
● Performance Mode: Koa acts as a full co-pilot, dynamically optimising bids, allocations and performance across The Trade Desk’s suite of innovations, from Audience Unlimited to Predictive Clearing and Identity Alliance. Here, Audience Unlimited is included at no extra cost.
● Control Mode: Traders take the wheel, manually managing campaigns but still benefiting from AI recommendations. Here, Audience Unlimited comes at a tiered cost of 3.3 per cent or 4.4 per cent of impression spend, with the option to use a la carte data pricing.
Early adopters are already buzzing. Dstillery CEO Michael Beebe said, “By embedding AI-powered audience selection directly into campaign strategy, it transforms data from an afterthought into a core driver of performance.”
Liveramp SVP of commercial partnerships Anne Acker echoed the sentiment, “Solutions like Audience Unlimited take the guesswork out of building high-quality segments. With AI in the mix, marketers can extract even more value and efficiency.”
Audience Unlimited and Koa Adaptive Trading Modes will roll out to select agencies on The Trade Desk’s Kokai platform in late 2025, with a full launch in early 2026.
If third-party data once felt like a gamble, The Trade Desk is betting that with AI scoring, predictable pricing, and flexibility, advertisers will now treat it as the ace up their sleeve.