Global ad tech leader The Trade Desk announced Deal Desk, a new core feature of the Kokai platform.

Deal Desk is a tool that allows advertisers to manage strategic one-on-one deals and pre-purchase agreements with publishers.

This feature provides both advertisers and publishers with transparent information on deal performance, quality, and progress.

It also suggests premium internet alternatives when deal performance falls short of expectations.

Digital advertising transactions account for a large portion of programmatic ad spend, but until now, impression quality and progress were often unclear, leading to poor performance.

Deal Desk is the industry's first to leverage advanced AI to understand deal performance and help better optimize campaigns.

Advertisers can use Deal Quality Scores to determine if a deal is valuable for their campaign or if better conditions might be found in the open market.

Publishers can submit deal proposals with detailed metadata and clear terms via API or user interface, and gain insights and improvements through the Deal Quality Scores advertisers see.

Moreover, Deal Desk automates deal activation and prioritization, allowing users to focus on strategic analysis and optimization rather than wasting time on speed issues.

New deal expansion and cancellation functions create a mutually accountable structure, enabling advertisers to easily include better-suited inventory when deals don't meet certain conditions.

The feature is scheduled to begin beta testing in Q3 2025.

Early publishers adopting Deal Desk include industry leaders such as Disney.

Disney emphasized the importance for advertisers to have the necessary tools, accessibility, and flexibility amid increasing shifts toward bid-based purchasing.

Will Doherty, SVP of The Trade Desk, called Deal Desk a major innovation in improving the digital advertising supply chain and a great aid in developing strategic relationships between advertisers and publishers.

Such attempts to integrate AI and transparency into ad tech to improve deal performance represent a refreshing change in the advertising market.