Stagwell plans to pilot The Trade Desk’s new agentic capabilities
The Trade Desk is expanding into agentic advertising.
The company is launching Koa Agents, a new agentic tool designed to streamline planning, buying and measuring campaigns, in alpha. The new capabilities Stagwell is developing within The Trade Desk’s MCP are expected to be available to select clients in beta later this summer.
The pitch is straightforward: reduce the manual workload of campaign execution without sacrificing control. Buyers enter their campaign goals and audience parameters, and AI-powered agents take over from there, activating and optimizing campaigns in real time.
While agentic planning and buying is still in its infancy stage, it’s the buzziest innovation across the whole industry.
“Koa Agents represent a meaningful step forward for our clients,” Slavi Samardzija, Stagwell’s global chair of media and commerce, said in a press release. “By combining The Trade Desk’s AI capabilities with our data, identity infrastructure and Stagwell Media Platform, we can make advanced advertising more accessible, strategic and effective.”
The Trade Desk, which owns The Current, launched Koa in 2018 as an AI tool to optimize the 12 million impressions ingested into the platform every second. Now, with that number upwards of 20 million impressions, Koa is evolving into a more autonomous system.
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Agentic systems hinge on quality foundational data for decision-making. Using incomplete inputs can skew results, The Trade Desk’s senior vice president of engineering, Aravind Chandrasekharan, explained in a recent op-ed.
“Scale doesn’t correct the gaps; it amplifies them,” Chandrasekharan said. “And when AI learns from imperfect inputs, it doesn’t just reflect bias; it compounds and accelerates it into outcomes.”
As part of the planned relationship, Stagwell intends to combine its own audience scoring and identity capabilities with The Trade Desk’s deep well of data signals to help surface high-value inventory. The integration will be powered through The Trade Desk’s Open Agentic Kit, which connects the two companies’ platforms into a unified workflow across planning, activation and measurement.
Because the agentic tool is expected to continuously iterate, if a campaign is performing well, buyers will be able to find incremental lookalike audiences, have the tool explain which segments are driving results and discover new channels that could give an extra boost.
Despite that increased autonomy, Chandrasekharan argues that agentic AI won’t replace marketers. The tech will take on the complexity, while humans set the guardrails and road map for success.
“That’s not automation replacing marketers,” Chandrasekharan said. “It’s a shift from manual control to amplified judgment.”
For agencies, in particular, where teams are expected to do more with fewer resources, that shift could make their jobs easier while producing better outcomes.
“This shift isn’t just about efficiency,” he added. “It’s about changing the role of the marketer from managing tools to directing outcomes. Less time pushing buttons. More time making strategic decisions.”
The Current is owned and operated by The Trade Desk Inc. This information is provided solely for background and is not a representation or guarantee of any future performance.
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