The Trade Desk
Advancing omnichannel advertising through audience-first insights
Facing a fragmented media landscape and rapidly evolving consumer behaviours, media advertising platform The Trade Desk set out to demonstrate the power of connected omnichannel strategies to transform media planning and audience engagement. Together, we delivered a groundbreaking global research programme to uncover meaningful insights into how brands can create more seamless, audience-first campaigns.
The study revealed that connected campaigns are 1.2 times more memorable, 1.4 times more attention-grabbing, and 1.9 times more likely to resonate with audiences.
These findings underpinned a human, context-driven framework that has already delivered meaningful commercial impact: a 20 percent rise in omnichannel investment from advertisers, including a £1.5m commitment from a major FMCG brand, and more than 50 senior-level advertiser conversations worldwide to date.
By strengthening The Trade Desk’s evidence-led position in industry and showcasing the tangible benefits of omnichannel advertising, the work contributed to The Trade Desk’s broader momentum in the market, with 19 percent share-price growth over the same period.
Navigating a fragmented landscape
The Trade Desk is the world's largest independent programmatic media-buying platform, trusted by advertisers around the globe to deliver data-driven, omnichannel media planning.
In recent years, advertising has become an increasingly complex, multifaceted landscape, with rapid shifts in consumer behaviour and shrinking marketing budgets challenging traditional models. Omnichannel strategies have emerged as a unified, customer-centric way to connect with consumers across digital channels – such as websites, streaming services, connected audio and digital billboards – to provide a seamless, consistent, and personalised experience.
Advertising needs to be as personalised and as human as possible. This means people are less bombarded by adverts, leading to less audience fatigue, and brands that are more connected to audience motivations and situations.”
As an industry leader, The Trade Desk has the technology to deliver omnichannel advertising, but needed a compelling, globally relevant narrative to drive strategic change and unify advertisers around a shared vision. Solving these problems would require not only technical rigour and global coordination, but also creative approaches capable of illustrating the fluidity and nuance of real-world media engagement.
It was more than research. We needed a strategic tool that elevated how we talk about advertising both inside and outside the business. We knew PA was the right partner because they combine rigour with storytelling, placing people first and turning complex data into understandable human insight that drives real world impact.”
We recognised that to transform industry mindsets, we had to blend rigorous science with creative storytelling – making complex data about consumer behaviour relatable and truly actionable for both brands and the wider industry.”
Humanising insight and redefining planning
We partnered with The Trade Desk and Brainsights (a neuroanalytics company that specialises in measuring and analysing consumer engagement), to deliver a multi-method research programme across ten markets in EMEA, APAC, and the US, combining neurological testing, ethnography, and data analytics.
To prove the real impact of connected omnichannel strategies on consumer engagement, we launched a pioneering neurological experiment that measured subconscious responses to real advertising campaigns across five media channels. We used EEG headsets that record electrical activity in the brain. “We knew the headsets would be able to reveal attention, emotional engagement, and memory encoding to capture authentic reactions in context,” explained PA human insight lead, Fran Martin.
Through more than two billion neuro data points, we proved that connected, omnichannel strategies led to measurable human outcomes – not only reduced cognitive fatigue, but also increased emotional engagement and memory encoding.
To create a context-driven planning model that moves beyond demographic segmentation, we designed the Engagement Space framework – a statistically robust, context-based model derived from a 20,000-person survey, ethnographic diaries, and analysis of over 50 industry sources.
This approach mapped how media behaviour shifted throughout the day according to consumer mindset, emotion, and situation – creating eight spaces that described how, why and where people engage with a vast array of different media. Our experts designed the framework so that it offered both global scalability and local nuance, ensuring it was relevant and practical for media planners everywhere.
We set out to provide a genuinely human-centred alternative to traditional planning. By linking deep psychological insight to media strategy, we’re enabling brands to engage audiences in ways that build trust, loyalty, and lasting impact.”
Delivering measurable impact and industry transformation
The impact of our work has been immediate and far-reaching. Commercially, the research drove a 20 percent increase in investment in The Trade Desk’s omnichannel planning tools, secured a £1.5 million commitment from a major FMCG brand, and led to more than 50 senior client meetings with leading global advertisers including General Motors, Danone, and Samsung.
The foundational whitepaper became The Trade Desk’s most accessed report, with over 2,000 downloads, serving as a key tool for internal strategy and client engagement.
The framework gives end-users – media planners and marketers – a deeper understanding of their audiences, enabling more relevant and effective campaigns. Its impact was amplified through global conferences, interactive tools and brand-specific neuro reports, continuing to drive change across the advertising ecosystem.
By combining science, storytelling, and strategic implementation, we have empowered our client and the industry to navigate complexity with confidence. This is more than just measurement – it’s transformation.”
In a world where media is increasingly complex, this research provided clarity. For the first time, we combined neuroscience, quant, and qual to prove the value of omnichannel strategies in a way that resonated globally. But what made this research truly game-changing was how it was used: it became a unifying narrative across PR, marketing, sales, and senior leadership and we couldn’t have done this without PA’s consultative partnership.”
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