The Trade Desk – Onboarding

Onboarding & Training to Start Buying on the Open Internet via The Trade Desk

Getting started with The Trade Desk requires structured onboarding and knowledge transfer. From technical configuration to role-based training and live platform walkthroughs, the goal is to ensure teams can use TTD confidently and effectively from day one.

Onboarding & Training to Start Buying on the Open Internet via The Trade Desk

Modules & Features

Onboarding introduces core modules and functionalities within The Trade Desk, including campaign setup, audience targeting, access to open internet inventory, creative management, Kokai optimization, and reporting. The approach is hands-on and aligned to specific media use cases, ensuring platform features are not only understood but also directly applicable to daily campaign workflows.

Roadmap & Structure

A structured onboarding roadmap defines responsibilities, implementation phases, training milestones, and enablement timelines. This ensures clarity across all stakeholders, supports coordinated activation, and helps accelerate familiarity with The Trade Desk through a phased, transparent onboarding plan and platform usage rollout.

Standards & Best Practices

Onboarding ensures alignment with TTD-specific campaign standards, covering naming conventions, budget pacing, audience strategy using UID2/EUID, brand safety, and tracking setup. Adopting these best practices supports data consistency, reduces operational complexity, and enables scalable programmatic management across teams and markets.

Market Knowledge

Onboarding includes contextual insights into the programmatic ecosystem – covering channel requirements, marketplace dynamics, and regional media behaviors. Digitl maintains direct relationships with publishers and third-party vendors to support market-specific information on formats, audience composition, reach, and targeting – including access to premium inventory like RTL AdAlliance O&O and Retail Media data partners. Where applicable, onboarding also supports planning third-party integrations to align platform usage with local media environments.

Review

Structured checkpoints are embedded throughout the onboarding process to validate setup, access, role assignments, and the correct use of TTD features. These reviews occur at key milestones to track adoption progress, identify potential blockers early, and assess whether platform usage aligns with campaign and business objectives. Feedback loops are used to adapt training focus where needed, ensuring full operational readiness before, during, and after campaign launch.

Cooperation

Cross-functional alignment is central to effective onboarding. Collaboration across media, analytics, data, and IT teams – both within the client organization and between client and Digitl – ensures The Trade Desk is technically integrated and operationally embedded. A shared understanding of responsibilities and workflows enables efficient implementation and consistent platform usage. Ongoing cooperation throughout the onboarding process supports long-term stability beyond initial setup.

See what The Trade Desk onboarding support is offered:

Technical Implementation & Tracking Bedrock

Digitl supports clients in establishing a resilient technical foundation for all data-driven activities on The Trade Desk. This phase involves the strategic deployment of Universal or static tracking tags (pixels) to monitor visitor activity and ensure precise attribution. Beyond basic setup, Digitl helps advertisers enable the integration of Enterprise APIs and the Campaign Connector to ensure a seamless data flow between systems. A primary focus is the activation of Unified ID 2.0 (UID2) and EUID, allowing marketers to maintain precise targeting and frequency management in cookieless environments like CTV.

Account Architecture & Governance

The team provides strategic guidance on selecting the optimal structural design to ensure long-term scalability. Advertisers receive support in choosing between a Campaign-Based or Organization-Based structure based on their specific needs for access control, regional billing, and data isolation. During setup, Digitl defines critical advertiser-level settings, including default frequency caps, the configuration of the Creative Library [CL], and the establishment of Advertiser Rails to uphold brand safety guidelines across the open internet.

Strategic Seed Development

Digitl assists marketers in defining "seeds," which serve as the foundational data input for high-performance trading. These seeds represent an advertiser's most valuable customers and are ideally derived from first-party conversion data, CRM files, or verified retail purchasers. By setting these trajectory-anchors, Koa™ AI is enabled to calculate relevance scores and identify high-signal audiences across the open internet that match a brand's ideal customer profile.

Omnichannel & Supply Chain Strategy

Onboarding includes mapping a brand's strategy across a diverse mix of premium channels. Marketers gain immediate access to the Sellers and Publishers 500+ (SP500+), a curated marketplace for top inventory across CTV, Programmatic DOOH, and Audio. The team also introduces OpenPath supporting clients in identifying relevant connections to provide a direct and transparent pipeline to publishers, which improves transaction economics and increases transparency.

AI Pilotage & Value-Based Bidding

Learning how to use AI as a co-pilot rather than a "black box" replacement is integral. Clients are trained to leverage Koa™ AI for real-time impression valuation, evaluating up to 15 million ad opportunities every second. The onboarding process covers dynamic, value-based bidding, where the platform stack-ranks impressions and adjusts bids based on predicted KPI achievement. Clients' teams learn to configure the Budget Allocation tile [B], allowing the AI to automatically reallocate funds to the highest-performing ad groups mid-flight.

Measurement & Operational Readiness

The final stage of onboarding ensures that media spend is directly linked to tangible business outcomes. Assistance is provided in setting up the Measurement Marketplace [Mm] to track brand lift, foot traffic, and retail sales. Marketers are trained to use the Programmatic Table UI to generate multi-dimensional reports and assess campaign health through proprietary metrics like Decision Power. Ongoing expertise is reinforced through resources like the Programmatic Academy by Digitl and the Edge Academy by TTD, ensuring clients remain at the forefront of programmatic innovation.

Custom Playbooks & Knowledge Transfer

The onboarding process is well documented in technical playbooks to ensure operational continuity and governance across an advertiser's programmatic infrastructure. These custom playbooks cover the specific technical architecture, including API configurations, tracking tag deployments, and data flow logic established during setup. To transition teams to a self-service model, Digitl conducts role-based training sessions and live walkthroughs of the Programmatic Table UI, covering everything from campaign setup to advanced optimizations. Advertisers also gain access to TTD’s Edge Academy and the Kokai Workflow Guide for continuous learning and certification, ensuring the team stays at the forefront of platform innovations.

Frequently Asked Questions

What steps should be taken if an advertiser lacks sufficient first-party conversion data to create a seed?

If high-quality conversion data is unavailable, marketers can begin with a proxy action, such as a homepage visit, or utilize third-party data segments and retail data. As the campaign gains momentum and the tracking pixel attributes real-time conversions, the seed will automatically prioritize this new data to refine targeting.

Can multiple media channels be assigned to a single campaign?

While multiple channels can be assigned to a campaign, only the specific channel designated at the ad group level is used for bidding. For a streamlined omnichannel approach, Digitl recommends grouping campaigns with the same seed and objective while breaking them out by channel to maintain clean optimization paths.

How frequently does Koa™ AI update its optimization rankings and priorities?

The AI co-pilot updates its rankings and priorities every other day, following a standard 24-hour data collection cycle. This ensures that optimizations are based on recent performance trends while allowing sufficient time for statistical significance.

How does Digitl transition teams from onboarding to a self-service model?

The onboarding process is designed for a gradual knowledge transfer, moving from initial technical setup and early campaign support to a fully self-service model where marketers request specialized support only as needed. This is supported by custom playbooks and access to the Edge Academy for ongoing certification.