From vision to value: 2025 commerce media innovation

At the start of 2025, we laid out a clear vision for growth at Koddi: “Get the experience right, together.” 

As a product organization, this meant investing in building tech and creating the right partnership ecosystem “For all commerce media:” one that spans every vertical, delivers exceptional consumer experiences, optimizes toward advertiser goals, and adapts to each commerce media network’s unique opportunity.

In the first half of the year, we’ve launched bold new capabilities across AI, demand activation, measurement, and monetization, all in direct partnership with the networks and advertisers we serve. We’ve built new integrations and partnerships, we’ve driven measurable results, and we delivered beyond what we thought possible in the first half of this year.

Today, I’m excited to share how we’ve delivered against our vision in five key areas: AI/ML, demand, off-site, yield optimization, and measurement. What follows is a look at what we’ve shipped and how it’s driving real results for our commerce media networks today, and how that momentum is shaping what comes next.

Advancing our AI/ML capabilities

In the first half of 2025, we scaled our AI infrastructure, launched multiple high-impact models, and delivered measurable performance gains for advertisers. From Autobidding to ad quality to real-time optimization, AI at Koddi isn’t just a feature—it’s a system-wide lever driving results across the platform. Here’s how that’s already showing up, and what it unlocks next.

• Campaign automation: We launched a next-generation campaign automation engine built to deliver speed, precision, and scale. Powered by advanced machine learning, this system dynamically adjusts bidding strategies based on real-time auction signals, performance data, and spend pacing, helping advertisers maximize impact without manual intervention. Advertisers on our new automation saw average revenue increase by 60%, with many advertisers seeing >100% gains. The upside here is massive: when applied broadly, this unlocks hundreds of millions in additional value across the commerce media ecosystem.
• Quality score tools: Our newest quality models are delivering big wins, like a 40% lift in ad revenue and CTR in one recent release, and that’s just one of five major upgrades we’ve shipped so far this year. Advertisers now have direct access to Quality Scores in the UI, providing real-time insight into effectiveness and relevance. By expanding our NVIDIA Triton Inference Server integration, we are scaling our deployment of a new class of real time deep learning models, boosting current performance and powering our H2 innovation pipeline.
• Advertiser recommendations: Smart recommendations in the self-serve UI surface what matters most—campaigns nearing budget caps, bids limiting performance, or top opportunities to scale. These insights simplify decision-making, reduce time-to-action, and help both advertisers and CMNs accelerate growth. As adoption expands, recommendations will become a key part of the performance flywheel.

These powerful AI systems are already delivering, unlocking millions in untapped revenue for commerce media networks without requiring new demand or manual intervention. Advertisers hit their goals faster, with higher ROI. Consumers enjoy seamless, relevant shopping experiences across every channel. This is AI built for impact, driving smarter decisions, stronger performance, and scalable growth for every partner.

Delivering incremental demand

In 2025, we launched the first and only SSP purpose-built for commerce media, giving brands seamless access to retail inventory at scale and unlocking entirely new streams of programmatic demand. Whether activating through DV360, The Trade Desk, StackAdapt, Yahoo DSP, or others, brands can now buy commerce media directly through the platforms they already use. Koddi is the only place where that’s possible today.

Additionally, Koddi launched an integration with Skai, enabling faster retailer onboarding and access to premium inventory via Skai’s platform.

Through Koddi’s SSP, commerce media networks can:

• Unlock new demand and national budgets through expanded DSP integrations: Direct pipes to the largest DSPs in the ecosystem—available through both Koddi-managed and client-owned seats—make commerce media inventory programmatically accessible to more advertisers than ever before.
• Maintain full control with granular settings: Commerce media networks can manage demand with precision: gate or enable individual DSPs, tune bid weightings, and configure inventory by placement, device, and format. Forecasting tools help model the revenue impact of each config before it goes live.
• Monetize across on-site sponsored and in-store inventory: From sponsored listings to display, video, audio, and in-store media, Koddi’s SSP supports diverse formats and surfaces—maximizing value from every impression.

This isn’t just a technical milestone. It’s a strategic unlock for commerce media networks—and it’s already driving rapid adoption across the industry.

Enabling off-site activation

This year, we focused on making campaign setup and activation—on-site and off-site—faster, easier, and more scalable. Advertisers can now launch, manage, and optimize full-funnel media with minimal lift and maximum visibility through:

• A faster, frictionless campaign creation experience: We rolled out a modern campaign builder—purpose-built for clarity, speed, and scale. Advertisers and publishers alike will find it intuitive and familiar, not another custom flow they need to relearn. The new architecture also lets us launch new ad formats in hours, not weeks—including same-day rollouts for multiple publishers.
• A creative library that actually works: No more guessing which formats are supported or uploading the same asset multiple times. Our creative library gives advertisers a centralized place to manage assets, apply brand templates, and re-use creatives across campaigns. Publishers can enforce brand standards, lock key elements, and approve once for repeated use. For teams without in-house design, we offer a built-in creation toolkit—plus full AI-powered creative generation coming in Q3.
• Publisher-controlled creative approvals: Flexible approval workflows put publishers in control of what goes live. They can review assets, provide actionable feedback, and block campaigns from launching until standards are met—especially valuable in co-branded or multi-stakeholder environments. (Fully integrated within the creative library.)
• Seamless integrations with TTD, DV360, and Meta: We’ve expanded integrations with The Trade Desk, DV360, and Meta—supporting both Koddi-managed and client-owned seats. Advertisers can activate off-site media using publisher audiences, manage creatives, and access reporting directly within the Koddi UI. Coming in Q3: shared budgets across on-site and off-site campaigns for unified planning and pacing.
• Unified workflows across on-site and off-site: Every part of the campaign experience—reporting, optimization, asset management, and setup—is now consistent across on-site and off-site media. Advertisers can plan holistically, execute flexibly, and scale confidently without duplicating effort or sacrificing visibility.

Maximizing revenue and yield for CMNs

Most commerce media networks still have untapped potential on-site.

Often, the demand is there, but CMNs don’t fully utilize it due to pacing gaps, under-optimized placements, or missed long-tail opportunities. That’s why we built the Koddi Ads Analytics Suite: a purpose-built set of dashboards that surface actionable insights, drive monetization, and turn opportunity into throughput.

The suite includes three dashboards built for action:

• Publisher Overview: A real-time view of program health surfacing high-impact growth opportunities. See unspent budgets, underperforming placements, and where ad-to-transaction funnels are leaking.
• Pacing Dashboard: Tracks campaign pacing and ROAS projections while pinpointing why a campaign is behind. Drill into each step – from auctions entered to impressions, clicks, and transactions – to identify bottlenecks and recommend specific next actions to recover.
• Network Insights: Monitors key KPIs over time and lets teams drill into anomalies with precision. Spot a sudden drop in CPC or CTR? Quickly trace it to the specific placement, format, or audience segment responsible; so you can fix what’s broken without guessing.

One program used these tools to identify an ad format with high traffic but low auctions-to-impression conversion. By moving the placement higher on the page, they saw a 13-point improvement in that rate and a meaningful revenue lift. Fast, data-driven optimizations like this are exactly what the Koddi Ads Analytics Suite is built to enable.

Another self-serve lever we’ve built for CMNs is pricing control. With our new Price Floor Insights dashboard, publishers can analyze, test, and tune their price floors at a granular level. That means seeing where current floors may be suppressing demand or under-monetizing inventory, running simulations to understand the revenue impact of different pricing strategies, and adjusting floors in real time based on market conditions, all with just a few clicks.

Taken together, these tools give CMNs both visibility and control. Whether it’s surfacing missed revenue, correcting pacing issues, or fine-tuning auction performance, we’re building toward a future where yield growth is faster, and fully in the hands of our partners.

Unlocking the full potential of commerce media measurement

As commerce media matures, the question isn’t just what performed, it’s what drove incremental impact. In 2025, we doubled down on measurement innovation, giving our partners the tools to isolate and prove true value from their media investments.

With Koddi’s incrementality tools, CMNs can now:

• Measure incrementality across formats: Test/control experiments combined with first-party data integration provide a clearer view of which campaigns are driving net new orders and revenue.
• Improve targeting precision: Granular insights highlight the audiences and placements that deliver measurable lift, not just surface-level engagement.
• Enhance decision-making: Real-time feedback loops and custom dashboards help teams and advertisers scale what works – and cut what doesn’t.

More partners across our network are adopting incrementality-first frameworks, using Koddi to move beyond vanity metrics and toward validated business outcomes.

And this year, we took another major step forward: introducing organic conversion and revenue data directly into our ads measurement platform. For the first time, advertisers can view the total impact of their media—paid and organic—in one place. That means metrics like Total ACoS (TACoS), once buried in manual workflows, are now immediately available in the UI. We believe this is an industry first—and with publisher support, it’s helping advertisers make faster, smarter decisions based on the full picture.

What’s next for Koddi

The work we delivered in H1 – real-time Autobidding, full-funnel reporting, expanded DSP integrations, unified campaign workflows – wasn’t theoretical. It came directly from the needs and goals of our partners, and it’s already driving measurable impact. Our roadmap has never been separate from the goals of the networks we serve; it’s built in lockstep with them. That’s what we mean when we say getting the experience right, together: building tools that reflect how our partners actually work, and where they want to go next.

In the second half of the year, that alignment continues. Deeper auction-time ML, automated price floors, AI-generated creative and seller tooling, unified on-site/off-site campaigns, and lifetime value measurement are all on deck. 

This isn’t some abstract vision; it’s what our partners have asked for, and what we’re building next. Always with them, always for them. 🚀