The Trade Desk’s Q3 2021 earnings, reported this week, came in at $301 million in revenue — a 39 percent year-over-year increase that represents the company’s strongest quarter and continues a streak of outperformance that has made it the most valuable independent adtech company in the market. The earnings were accompanied by the formal launch of Solimar, The Trade Desk’s new platform architecture, which integrates UID2 at the identity layer and introduces the Koa AI decision engine as the primary optimization framework.

For media buyers and agency trading desks, Solimar represents a material change to how campaigns are set up and optimized within The Trade Desk’s DSP. The UID2 integration is the most consequential element for post-cookie planning, but the Koa AI changes affect every campaign regardless of identity approach. Understanding what has actually changed — versus what is marketing language — requires looking at the specific features rather than the platform narrative.

What Solimar Actually Is

Solimar is The Trade Desk’s redesigned campaign management and data infrastructure, built to support what the company describes as “first-party data at the center” of campaign planning rather than third-party audiences as the primary targeting input.

The technical changes underlying the Solimar launch include: a redesigned data pipeline for ingesting and activating first-party data, UID2 token integration into the bid stream handling, Koa AI exposure across more campaign types and optimization goals, and a redesigned reporting interface with clearer segmentation of identity signal sources.

These are meaningful engineering changes, not cosmetic UI updates. The architecture shift from third-party-data-primary to first-party-data-primary represents The Trade Desk’s bet on the post-cookie world — the platform is being built around the assumption that authenticated first-party data will be the most valuable campaign signal as cookies deprecate.

UID2 Integration: What It Means in Practice

UID2’s integration into Solimar means that publisher inventory passing UID2 tokens in bid requests can now be targeted and measured with first-party data that has been onboarded to The Trade Desk and matched against UID2 identifiers.

For a media buyer with a CRM audience — email addresses of existing customers, for example — the practical workflow is: upload the CRM data to The Trade Desk’s data platform, match the records against UID2 using LiveRamp or a comparable identity service, and then target those matched UID2 audiences in bid requests against publisher inventory that passes UID2 tokens.

This workflow is operational today on Solimar for publishers that have implemented UID2 in their bid requests. The limitation is supply: UID2-enabled publisher inventory is not ubiquitous. Publishers that have implemented LiveRamp ATS, the Washington Post’s Zeus identity product, or direct UID2 integrations are passing tokens that The Trade Desk can match. Anonymous inventory — which is still the majority of open exchange programmatic supply — cannot be targeted this way.

The implication for campaign planning: UID2-targeted campaigns on The Trade Desk are private marketplace campaigns against authenticated publisher inventory, not open exchange campaigns. Scale is constrained by authenticated publisher supply. Buyers who expect UID2 to replace cookie-based open exchange targeting at similar scale will be disappointed — the scale is not there yet, and building it requires publisher adoption that is still in early stages.

Koa AI: What Changed for Optimization

Koa is The Trade Desk’s AI optimization engine, and Solimar expands its role in campaign decision-making. In practical terms for campaign buyers, the most significant Koa changes in Solimar involve CTV optimization and cross-channel bid stream management.

For CTV campaigns, Koa in Solimar incorporates predictive audience modeling that uses contextual signals — content genre, program type, day-part, viewership context — alongside whatever audience data is available to optimize delivery toward the campaign goal. The CTV optimization improvement is meaningful because CTV inventory is largely anonymous: streaming viewers are not authenticated in the programmatic supply chain in most cases, so contextual optimization is more important for CTV than for authenticated web environments.

For cross-channel campaigns spanning display, mobile, and CTV, Koa’s frequency and reach optimization across channels has been upgraded to account for the different identity signal availability on each channel. The system attempts to provide coherent campaign delivery across authenticated, pseudonymous, and anonymous inventory segments without over-weighting the authenticated segment in ways that would reduce reach.

The Trade Desk’s published case studies on Koa optimization performance typically show 10-20 percent efficiency improvements compared to non-AI-optimized campaigns. The improvement mechanism is primarily better signal utilization and dynamic bid adjustment rather than superior audience data — the AI gets more value from the same signals, not better signals.

Does Solimar Reduce Google Dependence?

The question media buyers are most interested in is whether Solimar and UID2 provide a credible alternative to Google’s programmatic infrastructure as the cookie era ends. The honest answer is: for specific use cases and inventory types, yes; as a complete Google replacement, not yet.

The Trade Desk’s competitive advantage is strongest in:

CTV and streaming video: Google’s footprint in CTV is less dominant than in web display. The Trade Desk has built strong supply-side relationships with premium streaming publishers — Hulu, Paramount+, Disney+, and others — that give it genuine reach in the fastest-growing programmatic format.

Non-Google publisher relationships: Publishers using Prebid and non-Google header bidding solutions pass inventory to The Trade Desk that Google’s buy-side does not prioritize. For buyers willing to invest in direct publisher relationships and PMP deals, The Trade Desk’s supply-side network outside Google’s ecosystem is substantial.

UID2-authenticated inventory: As UID2 publisher adoption grows, The Trade Desk’s identity infrastructure becomes a meaningful differentiator versus DSPs that have not integrated UID2.

What Solimar does not replace: Google’s open exchange scale in web display (AdX remains the largest single SSP by bid request volume), Google’s search advertising (no DSP competes here), and Google’s native social-equivalent environments. For buyers who run the majority of their programmatic budget through Google’s ecosystem, Solimar represents a strong independent alternative for non-Google inventory, not a wholesale migration path.

FAQ

What is Solimar and do I need to change my campaign setup to use it? Solimar is The Trade Desk’s redesigned platform architecture that launched in late 2021. Existing campaigns are migrated to the Solimar infrastructure automatically — you do not need to rebuild campaigns from scratch. The interface changes, data connectivity options, and UID2 integration capabilities are available in the updated platform. The most significant workflow change is in first-party data onboarding and activation, which now has a dedicated data management interface within the platform rather than requiring third-party data pipeline connections.

Can I use UID2 audiences in Solimar today, and what publisher supply is available? UID2 audience targeting is available in Solimar today for buyers with CRM data that can be matched against UID2 identifiers. Publisher supply passing UID2 tokens is growing but not yet sufficient for large-scale open exchange buying. The most reliable UID2 inventory access is through private marketplace deals with publishers that have explicitly implemented UID2 — Washington Post, several major news and sports publishers, and publishers using LiveRamp ATS with UID2 pass-through. Ask your Trade Desk account team for current UID2 supply availability in your key verticals.

How does Koa AI affect manual campaign optimization? Koa is applied at the bid-stream level by default — it adjusts bid prices based on predicted performance in real time. For campaign goals where you have strong historical performance data, Koa’s optimization becomes more effective over time as it learns from your specific campaign signals. Manual bid multipliers and targeting overrides are still available and override Koa’s automated adjustments where you apply them. For new campaigns without historical data, Koa’s cold-start behavior is relatively conservative — you may want to run with less automated optimization initially until the model has sufficient signal.

Is the Trade Desk a good choice for mobile programmatic post-ATT? The Trade Desk has built SKAdNetwork measurement integrations for mobile app install campaigns and has contextual targeting capabilities that work without IDFA. For mobile web campaigns, UID2’s browser-independent architecture works on iOS where cookies are restricted. For in-app mobile programmatic, The Trade Desk’s footprint is smaller than Google’s UAC or Facebook Audience Network, and its mobile inventory depth is less developed than its web and CTV offerings. For buyers who prioritize mobile in-app performance, evaluate The Trade Desk as part of a diversified mobile stack rather than as a single-platform replacement.