JJ Dobrovolski, Senior director of business development at The Trade Desk in Canada, speaking at FWD25.
In Canadian advertising, uncertainty is the default rather than the exception. Economic pressures, fragmented consumer attention and rising client expectations for ROI have created a market where instability and complication reign. For marketers, the pressure isn’t just to adapt, but to make smart decisions quickly and with tighter budgets. That’s where The Trade Desk is focusing its efforts: helping advertisers regain control of their campaigns through transparency, objectivity and better data.
JJ Dobrovolski, senior director, business development at The Trade Desk in Canada, says there are two questions he hears from marketers more than anything else: how do we make our data work harder, and how do we get more clarity on what’s working? “Marketers are trying to get data fit really quickly,” he says. “They want to know how to make the best use of their first-party data, and how to better understand campaign performance. They want to know how to measure what’s working, and how to act on that in real time.”
He says many platforms still don’t clearly offer those answers. Walled gardens limit visibility into inventory and performance, and others make advertisers choose between flexibility and scalability. The Trade Desk is designed to work differently. It’s built for the buy side only and doesn’t own media or inventory. Instead, it helps advertisers and agencies buy and optimize digital media across the open internet, allowing them more say over how campaigns are planned, optimized and measured through an omnichannel approach.
“Marketers succeed by mastering their data and teaming up with partners who deliver impact,” Dobrovolski says. “You might not know what your budget looks like for the next quarter or the next half of the year, so it’s important to have a partner who can grow with you quickly, and knows when best to pull back and make adjustments.”
That kind of adaptability is a highlight of Kokai, The Trade Desk’s reimagined proprietary AI-powered platform for programmatic media buying. It combines real-time optimization with an intuitive interface and smart audience tools. One of its key features is the use of seeds, or high-value audience signals from an advertiser’s own data, which are then used to find similar users across the open internet and helps advertisers expand their reach to the audiences most likely to convert.
McDonald’s in Canada was one of the first brands to test Kokai at scale with the goal to reach more high-value customers at a lower cost. Using seeds and Kokai’s tools, it was able to identify and reach lookalike audiences across quality inventory and tie those impressions directly to in-store outcomes. “McDonald’s saw about a 40% decrease in cost-per-acquisition, higher-quality audiences, and better outcomes than it was previously seeing,” notes Dobrovolski.
Where McDonald’s focused on efficiency, consumer health company Kenvue took a broader approach. The company owns brands such as Tylenol, Aveeno and Listerine and was one of the first to use The Trade Desk’s integration with Loblaw’s retail media data. The goal was to apply shopper insights not just to lower-funnel targeting, but to the full brand journey.
Using data to drive conversion both within Loblaw’s physical and digital networks, across the full funnel, it saw a significant return on ad spend. As an early user of Loblaw’s retail media data, Kenvue was part of an alpha testing group that provided feedback to help shape how the retail data product would be rolled out. “That kind of collaboration improves the product,” Dobrovolski says. “And in the meantime, it’s seeing real performance gains.”
That openness to iteration is part of a larger strategy The Trade Desk is focused on in Canada. Along with forming partnerships with data and measurement companies like NLogic, Numeris and Environics Analytics to help clients plan media across digital and traditional platforms, The Trade Desk also takes aim at inefficiencies in the media supply chain. For example, their OpenPath product helps advertisers connect directly with publishers, reducing the layers of intermediaries that can eat into advertising budget and cloud transparency. “This helps advertisers get more value, and publishers take home more revenue,” says Dobrovolski.
OpenPath simplifies the buy/sell transaction with direct integrations between the buy and sell sides within The Trade Desk’s platform.
The Trade Desk is also further integrating metadata-based quality signals into its platform, following its acquisition of Sincera, a leading advertising data company that provides objective, actionable insights. These data-rich advertising signals help brands better understand where their ads appear by looking at things like refresh rates, page clutter, or how much meaningful content surrounds the ad. “It’s one more way to make sure ads are actually connecting in the right places,” Dobrovolski says.
All of this supports a longer-term shift Dobrovolski sees accelerating: the movement away from closed platforms that limit visibility, and toward the premium open internet where advertisers have more control, choice and information. “In a walled garden, the inventory supplier controls access, data and reporting,” he says. “The open internet is the opposite. It’s collaborative and empowering for everyone who participates. We’re a big champion of that.”
That shift isn’t just a philosophical one. It’s increasingly a practical necessity for marketers trying to keep up with change, deliver accountable results and protect the integrity of their brands. “Advertisers and agencies are looking for more transparency, objectivity, flexibility and data-driven results, and that’s what the open internet inherently provides them,” says Dobrovolski. “We believe a fair market and healthy competition should always win and that’s the future we’re helping to build.”
