THG Beauty Media and The Trade Desk Launch Open-Internet Retail Media Partnership — The Trade Desk, Inc.

Event summary

THG Beauty Media partners with The Trade Desk to enable self-serve access to its audience segments via Kokai platform.
Advertisers gain direct access to high-quality retail data for targeted campaigns across the open internet, including CTV and audio.
Partnership allows marketers to measure media activity against actual sales, improving return on ad spend.
THG Beauty Media combines e-commerce scale of LOOKFANTASTIC and Cult Beauty with closed-loop attribution capabilities.

The big picture

This partnership represents a strategic shift in retail media, moving from walled gardens to the open internet. By combining THG's first-party beauty retail data with The Trade Desk's programmatic capabilities, advertisers gain more precise targeting across channels like CTV and audio. The collaboration underscores growing demand for closed-loop attribution that directly links ad spend to sales outcomes.

What we're watching

Market Expansion: How THG Beauty Media will leverage this partnership to expand its retail media offering beyond beauty into other verticals.
Data Utilization: Whether advertisers can effectively use event-level data without retailer clean rooms to improve campaign performance.
Competitive Dynamics: The pace at which competitors adopt similar open-internet retail media approaches, potentially reshaping the digital advertising landscape.