Three years after Kokai, The Trade Desk is betting on refinement with Zuma

The Trade Desk is pushing out another update to Kokai, its buying platform. But don’t expect the same uproar as its last major overhaul three years ago. Unlike then, this one leans on fixes agencies have been asking for rather than forcing them through a disruptive integration.

When Kokai launched, buyers complained they were being forced onto a platform that wasn’t ready for how they actually worked. In turn, they started spending money they would’ve otherwise spent with The Trade Desk elsewhere. That frustration got blamed for the company’s revenue miss since going public, and its stock fell 33% on the news in Q4 2024.

With this update, the plan is to do the opposite.

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‘Inside, most of them are dumpster fires’: Confessions of a frustrated indie agency ad exec

Agencies are often expected to have all the answers for their clients, and pre-empt any issues before they even arise. Behind the scenes, though, the way they operate can be a different story.

In this edition of our Confessions series, where we trade anonymity for candor, a former exec from an independent ad agency talks through the frustrations they’ve had with the way their company operated on the inside.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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