Advertisers will soon be able to programmatically buy sponsored product ads on delivery app Gopuff through The Trade Desk, thanks to its integration with Koddi.
This new deal between The Trade Desk and commerce AdTech company Koddi means that sponsored product inventory from Gopuff, the food delivery app operating in more than 500 US cities, suburbs and towns, will now be available on The Trade Desk platform.
This is the first time The Trade Desk is selling this kind of retail media ad inventory directly through its platform. Matthew Fantazier, VP of retail data partnerships at The Trade Desk, said: “Retail media represents one of the fastest-growing areas of digital advertising, but access to onsite advertising placements has been limited and fragmented. By working with Koddi, advertisers can now run full-funnel campaigns on The Trade Desk platform, breaking down silos for retailers and advertisers and unlocking new opportunities for performance and measurement.”
What are The Trade Desk trying to do? According to Fantazier, their goal is “to make it as easy and intuitive as possible for media buyers to connect with Gopuff’s unique audience”. He also mentioned on social media that The Trade Desk sees this partnership with Koddi as a critical step in addressing the adoption challenges of retail media.
Why is this interesting?
Previously, The Trade Desk had only sold offsite placements that used retail data to target ads across the open web. This consolidation of onsite and offsite inventory under The Trade Desk is the first of its kind.
Having onsite and offsite inventory accessed through different consoles and with different technologies is a real challenge for brands and agencies. They have to learn different interfaces and integrate various advertising offerings into a cohesive plan.
Media buyers and brand advertisers who aren’t involved in retail media daily may not know who the retailers are or who their audiences are. They are buying from a brief, and like any normal human being, they tend to buy things they know. Indeed, in many cases, they are incentivized to allocate spending to their agency’s existing media channel relationships, not new ones.
From a neutral observer’s stance, it is also interesting to see The Trade Desk ink this deal, as they have been quite specific in talking about the disadvantages of walled gardens.
The Analyst’s perspective: realising the full commerce media opportunity
Conor McKenna of Luma Partners had an interesting take on the announcement: “We’re finally seeing a deeper merger of Commerce Media and Programmatic as The Trade Desk begins to buy on-site Retail Media on Gopuff with Koddi. This is a trend we’ve been expecting for some time as the natural next step for Commerce Media and programmatic.”
McKenna continued: “As the traditional ‘Open web’ comes under pressure, it’s only natural that the programmatic ecosystem will move more aggressively into the growing set of new supply coming from the ‘Everything is an Ad Network’ trend. The permissions structures for who can build an ad business have completely changed, and it’s time that the programmatic ecosystem starts getting involved with on-site, not just the off-site audiences.”
Ultimately, McKenna believes these sorts of distribution deals will deepen relationships, setting up a better opportunity to connect on-site and off-site, all of which will realise the full Commerce Media opportunity.
What do Koddi and Gopuff say about the deal?
Nicholas Ward, president and co-founder of Koddi, says that the integration “significantly boosts demand for our retail partners while simplifying fragmented buying experiences”.
Michael Peroutka, Head of Gopuff Ads, believes that the partnership is “a momentous step forward in bringing this vision to life’ by giving brands the ability to ‘plan, implement, and optimize their media investments in unison.”
My take
When brand advertisers or agencies complain about the number of retail media networks (RMNs) or talk about how difficult it is to compare apples to apples, what they really mean is that the tools and channels they use already do this, so why can’t retail media?
Wider distribution is key to the success of any business, and retail media is no different. But there is a tension because RMNs want to control their own destiny—and they own inventory and pricing—rather than let someone else dictate this.
This tension between better distribution and control will be resolved by one simple question: Do the retailers want growth? Making things hard to buy would hinder growth in any industry, but it is really holding back retail media. Bespoke media platforms are not optimised for scale or growth.
RMNs must have their ad inventory appear on a media plan to access brand budgets. That’s where the largest budgets are, and that is how brand advertisers buy their media—through their partner media agencies.
Whether RMNs choose The Trade Desk or some other form of distribution is secondary to the decision to be where the brand budgets are. This deal between The Trade Desk, Koddi, and Gopuff is one of many of these types of deals that we will see in the next few years.
