The Trade Desk has launched Koa Agents, its first in-platform AI agents for programmatic media planning, buying, optimisation and measurement. Stagwell is the first global marketing network to adopt them.
The pitch is straightforward. Instead of manually configuring campaigns step by step, marketers describe their goals and Koa Agents execute, optimise and adapt in real time. Tasks that used to take days of setup now happen automatically.
Koa Agents compress campaign setup from days of manual work to real-time automated execution
In its first alpha deployment, Koa Agents will automate audience planning and activation for Stagwell clients, identifying high-value consumers, building segments and continuously improving performance. Stagwell plans to offer Koa Agent capabilities to select clients in closed beta later this summer.
The Trade Desk also introduced the Open Agentic Kit, an integration framework that lets other platforms and holding companies plug into Koa's agentic workflows. That is the bigger play. If agencies adopt it widely, The Trade Desk becomes the operating layer for automated open-internet buying.
Why it matters
This is the clearest signal yet that programmatic buying is shifting from human-configured to agent-driven. Google has been pushing AI Max on the search side. Meta has been automating creative selection. Now The Trade Desk is bringing agentic AI to the open internet, where display, CTV and audio budgets live.
For Australian advertisers running programmatic through agencies, this changes the conversation. The question is no longer whether your agency uses AI tools. It is whether their AI stack can plan, buy and measure across the open internet without manual bottlenecks.
What to do about it
Ask your media agency whether they are testing Koa Agents or equivalent agentic buying tools. If the answer is no, ask what their timeline looks like. The gap between agencies using AI-native buying and those still running manual workflows will widen fast through the second half of 2026.
