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The Trade Desk is connecting its AI assistant Ask Koa with Dstillery's DS-1. This lets advertisers not only build audiences before a campaign launches, but also remodel them based on live results and make them directly available for ad delivery. Adweek reported on the integration on 4 November 2026. For media teams, this is mainly a change in working speed: a process that once took several days of coordination could potentially become a task completed within a few minutes.
What changes in live media buying
A typical scenario: a video campaign reaches the desired scale, but certain audiences respond far better. Until now, planners had to request new segments from a data provider, build them, and then activate them in the demand-side platform. Now the agents on both sides can exchange campaign context and audience goals. Ask Koa supplies the link to the campaign in The Trade Desk; DS-1 handles searching for or modelling suitable audiences.
Dstillery product chief Taejin "TJ" In told Adweek that the earlier manual process typically took four days. The new connection is meant to deliver suitable segments within minutes. For agencies, this creates more opportunities to test new hypotheses within the same campaign run, rather than waiting for the next flight.
The key difference from the March pilot
The predecessor is already on record: on 3 March 2026, Dstillery, the CTV agency Keynes and The Trade Desk presented the DS-1 activation. At that time, Keynes used an agent in its own Slack workflow to develop segments and hand them over to the advertising platform. According to a joint company announcement, a process that took around 48 hours shrank to five minutes.
The step now described goes further: the two agent systems are being connected, so that insights from a campaign already running can feed into the next audience version. On its DS-1 product page, Dstillery describes audience search based on keywords, websites, purchase intent and existing data, as well as passing segments on to buying platforms.
Why this matters for German media planners
The benefit is not only faster segment creation. The model could shorten the classic workflow between planning, the data team and operational campaign management. Anyone who frequently tests creatives, audiences and budgets against one another can more closely tie audience strategy to actual campaign signals.
At the same time, the quality of data and goals becomes more important: an agent can generate an audience quickly, but only with cleanly defined conversion goals, suitable input signals and a sensible test structure can the team judge whether it is worth using. Our report on Kokai Zuma and The Trade Desk's new AI and measurement features provides the technical background. How responsibilities shift as a result is shown by Dave Pickles' return to a new CTO Council.
Agents also need approvals and measurement standards
The Trade Desk describes its MCP access to Ask Koa in the Open Agentic Kit. According to the documentation, this infrastructure is in a closed beta for selected partners. For configuration changes, the platform provides review and confirmation steps.
This fits a broader development in the advertising market: the IAB Tech Lab roadmap for agentic advertising pursues shared interfaces and traceable workflows between providers. Our background on OpenProposal and AAMP standardisation explains why this exchange is more than just another chatbot in the ads dashboard.
The practical shift: An audience is increasingly becoming a dynamic campaign decision. Whether this actually leads to better advertising results, brands still need to measure using suitable tests and results.
Sources: Adweek, 4. November 2026; Dstillery/Keynes/The Trade Desk, 3. März 2026; Dstillery DS-1; The Trade Desk Open Agentic Kit.