What it takes to rip-and-replace commerce media tech

It can end up being every commerce media leader’s worst nightmare: a complete refresh of their entire ad tech stack, from their self-serve all the way down to their ad server, machine learning, and even direct sales relationships. This “rip-and-replace” scenario—swapping out an existing ad tech provider for another—often brings with it failed integration flashbacks and dread. Questions around onboarding friction, revenue impact, and long-tail support come fast and frequently. 

But at Koddi, we’ve successfully navigated this scenario over and over again with our partners. They’ve come to us after tech shutdowns and meltdowns, often needing to completely rebuild their program from the ground up. 

Even though this sounds like a headache, in practice, the rip-and-replace scenario can actually lead to better outcomes than our partners could have ever expected.

This article tells the story of one of our partners who started over from both a tech and a GTM standpoint, and the performance they saw even in the first few weeks. 

Technology is just the beginning

It turns out, replacing tech with better tech takes more than…better tech. In reality, you need strong alignment, trust, and a true partnership between vendor and client across product, engineering, ad ops, and go-to-market teams. 

When we began working with this new partner from the ground up, every part of the rollout—from internal systems to external messaging—was built with shared ownership and clear accountability. Taking over an ad program previously managed by another provider meant that our people became an extension of our partner’s product, ad ops, engineering, and strategic teams. This meant that we:

• Built their dream roadmap together. The roadmap reflected real priorities across functions. It included UI features advertisers had requested, reporting views the sales team needed, and strategic capabilities that leadership had been waiting on for months. Our product team translated these asks into phased deliverables with resourcing, sequencing, and launch dates.
• Established clear integration paths and timelines. We mapped how systems would connect across catalogs, budgets, targeting data, and reporting. Koddi worked directly with engineers on both sides to remove blockers and keep implementation on schedule. Our people flew to their offices to put hands-on-keyboard and solve any integration blockers together.
• Trained ad ops teams and advertisers on the ins and outs of the new platform. Internal users learned how to build, QA, and monitor campaigns. Advertisers received personalized onboarding, training, and live support to build confidence and drive early success. We came ready with documentation and plans to set advertisers up for success on day one.
• Took charge of sales enablement and GTM efforts. As experts of this partner’s new platform, our team created updated sales materials, messaging frameworks, and campaign packages. Koddi supported the sales team with talk tracks, brand outreach, and early meetings to introduce the new platform to the market.

In these ways, Koddi did what it took to ensure seamless onboarding. Great performance starts with a great partnership, ensuring that each team member is fully prepared to sell, activate, support, and engineer solutions for advertisers from the first day the new technology is live.

When brands can activate quickly, growth just happens

Supplier onboarding was one of the clearest signals that the rebuild was working. Under the previous provider, the program had onboarded 40 suppliers over a span of three years. With Koddi, that number jumped to 95 in just six months.

This was not a coincidence. Activation was fast, simple, and fully supported. Advertisers could get started in a single Zoom call. They could set up campaigns, fund them, and go live with no delays or dependencies.

There were no offline processes, no waiting on invoices or approvals, and no complicated access barriers. Whether they were spending $25 a month or $25,000, they could start right away. The platform scaled across advertiser types without requiring manual overhead.

This gave the program an entirely new foundation: new brands could get in easily, sales teams could focus on key accounts, and campaign velocity increased while retaining control and visibility.

Activating the long tail—without sacrificing profitability—is key to success

Long-tail advertisers carry high operational costs and low return. For many programs, this group is either deprioritized, or deliberately priced out (usually via high minimums). When onboarding one small supplier requires weeks of manual steps and adds negligible revenue, the ROI simply isn’t there.

Koddi flipped that equation. Our system is built to automate campaign setup, reporting, and payments. With no campaign minimums and no service layer required to get started, entry-level advertisers can easily be brought into the fold, following the playbook of industry leaders like Meta and Amazon.

A one-SKU brand can launch a campaign, manage it, and see performance without a support ticket. That makes even the smallest accounts profitable. And when they grow, the infrastructure is already in place to support them.

This unlocks an entire segment of advertisers that were previously unreachable. It also gives the network more depth, more diversity, and more overall resilience.

Because the Koddi platform is built to self-serve, scale, and automate onboarding, it amortizes onboarding costs across hundreds of suppliers. The cost to support a $25/month advertiser becomes negligible, especially when that advertiser can swipe a credit card, launch a campaign, and receive proactive support all in one seamless motion.

This opens up an entirely new tier of advertiser relationships that legacy platforms simply can’t support.

When it all comes together, performance speaks for itself

Beyond access and onboarding, performance is where the results truly shine. In just six months:

• CTR increased by 18%
• Average ROAS seen by suppliers nearly doubled
• New insights & targeting from Koddi’s platform helped more brands hit their targets more precisely  

Ad budgets were no longer limited by operational overhead or platform constraints. As performance improved, spend scaled organically. More advertisers went live. More campaigns launched. The platform worked harder, not just faster.

These were not isolated wins. The improvement was visible across the board, from the largest accounts to the smallest SKUs. With more suppliers onboarding faster, spending more efficiently, and delivering better outcomes, growth became a natural consequence of the technical and partnership foundation we had laid.

Our role in partner success is never over

When a rebuild is done right, the payoff lasts well beyond launch. A strong foundation creates momentum. With the right team in place, it becomes easier to ship new features, activate more advertisers, unlock new inventory, and grow demand across the network.

The work doesn’t stop, but the lift gets lighter. Progress compounds. And quarter after quarter, the program keeps getting better.