Kenshoo Skai on October 13, 2026 disclosed a direct integration with Uber Advertising that lets brands and agencies plan, run and optimize Uber campaigns inside the Skai platform in Canada, Mexico, Chile, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, Taiwan and Australia - a list that leaves out the United States, Uber's home market.

In Short

Skai, a company whose software lets advertisers run campaigns on many websites and shopping apps from one dashboard, can now also run ads that appear inside the Uber and Uber Eats apps. That matters to big brands and their agencies, which can now handle Uber in the same place as Amazon, Walmart or Meta instead of logging in to Uber separately. The change only applies in eight countries, and the US is not one of them, so American campaigns still have to be run elsewhere.

What the integration covers

The announcement was dated from San Francisco on October 13, 2026. According to Kenshoo Skai, which describes itself as "the agent-native omnichannel marketing platform," the integration connects to Uber Advertising "through Uber Advertising's own technology infrastructure" and brings what the company calls Uber's "rapidly growing commerce media opportunity" into its software. The word "direct" carries weight here. Skai is not reselling Uber inventory through a third-party exchange; the connection runs to Uber's in-house ad technology.

In practical terms, according to Skai, brands and agencies can "analyze, create, manage, and optimize Uber campaigns" within the platform. For global advertisers, the company says support across eight markets "combines centralized intelligence and governance with flexibility to respond to local consumer behavior and market dynamics." Uber ads are, according to the release, "now available through Kenshoo Skai for eligible brands and agencies in the eight supported markets."

The release frames this as a starting point rather than a finished product. Skai says the integration creates "a foundation for deeper Uber-specific capabilities, automation, and optimization over time." Uber's statement uses almost identical language, referring to "a stronger foundation for new capabilities over time." Neither party attached dates or feature names to those future capabilities.

A second element concerns data. According to Skai, "aggregated Uber campaign insights and capabilities will also enrich Kenshoo Skai's broader intelligence layer." The stated purpose is to stop treating Uber "as an isolated advertising platform" and to let "marketers and AI agents" judge its performance against other channels: where demand is emerging, how Uber contributes to overall results, "where to allocate the next dollar." The future tense in that sentence is worth noting. The release does not say that cross-channel analysis of Uber data is available now.

The two statements

Matt Vignieri, Chief Growth Officer at Kenshoo Skai, positioned the deal within a broader argument about the market. "Commerce media is expanding far beyond the traditional definition of retail media," he said. "Uber is a great example of where the market is heading. It sits at the intersection of intent, location, commerce and real-world action, creating moments that are incredibly valuable to brands."

Manas Mittal, VP of Product Management at Uber, spoke for the other side. "We want to make it easier for advertisers to activate against the unique commerce moments happening across Uber every day," he said. "This direct integration with Skai Omnichannel Platform gives brands and agencies a more seamless and holistic way to manage, optimize, and measure Uber Advertising campaigns across markets, while creating a stronger foundation for new capabilities over time."

There is a small but telling difference between the two descriptions. Uber's executive lists "measure" among the functions. Skai's own description of what users can do - analyze, create, manage and optimize - does not use that word.

Uber's numbers, and how they shift

The release leans on Uber's scale. According to the announcement, Uber "serves more than 208 million monthly active consumers and facilitates more than 40 million trips and orders every day" across its global platform. The Uber Advertising boilerplate at the bottom of the same document uses a rounder figure: "more than 200M monthly active users." Both numbers are supplied by Uber and refer to its global user base, not to the eight markets the integration covers. No market-level audience figures were given.

Those numbers have crept upward over the year. In June 2026, when Uber merged rides and delivery advertising into a single self-serve platform, the cited figures were nearly 200 million monthly active users and 40 million trips per day, drawn from Uber's third-quarter 2025 earnings. The October figure of 208 million is consistent with continued growth, though the release does not date it or name its source period.

On the Skai side, the boilerplate claims more than 8,200 brands and agencies as customers, naming PepsiCo, Opella, Mars, Publicis, Tinuiti and WPP, and integrations with more than 300 publishers and retail media networks, including Amazon Ads, Walmart Connect, Epsilon, Google, Microsoft, Meta and TikTok. In May 2026, when Skai claimed the first agent-native marketing operating system, the customer count stood at more than 8,000. These are vendor-supplied totals; neither has been independently verified.

Eight markets, and the one missing

The geography is the most concrete part of the announcement, and the most revealing. The eight supported markets span four continents: Canada and Mexico in North America, Chile in South America, the UK and France in Europe, Japan and Taiwan in Asia, and Australia.

The United States does not appear. That absence stands out for several reasons. The US is Uber's largest market and the one where much of its advertising product development has started. Uber Intelligence, the data collaboration product built on LiveRamp's clean room, launched in December 2025 in the US only. The Sponsored Listings cross-channel incrementality measurement Uber publicized on October 5, 2026 is limited to US restaurant locations. Skai is itself headquartered in San Francisco and counts large US marketers among its clients.

Why would a direct integration exclude the US? The release does not say. It does not describe the arrangement as a first phase, nor does it promise US availability later. The headline refers to an "international commerce media opportunity," which suggests the international scope was deliberate, but the reasoning is not explained. Possible explanations - an existing US arrangement with another partner, a phased rollout, or different contractual terms in the US - would all be speculation without confirmation from either company.

Other notable markets are also missing. Germany, Spain, Ireland and the Netherlands are among the ten European markets where Uber opened Journey Ads to programmatic buyers in June 2025, yet only the UK and France made the Skai list. Brazil, which Uber has named among its early expansion markets for Creative Studio, is absent too. Chile, by contrast, is a market that rarely features in Uber Advertising announcements covered by PPC Land; it does not appear, for example, among the markets listed for the Journey Takeover format with Coca-Cola in January 2026.

What the release leaves out

For a direct technical integration, the announcement is thin on specifics. Several gaps matter to buyers.

Ad formats. Uber's portfolio now includes Sponsored Listings and Sponsored Search on Uber Eats, Journey Ads inside the rides app, Brand Takeover, Item Showcase, Offers Spotlight, Destination Offers, the tablet-based JourneyTV network, and Offsite Ads on Meta and Google Shopping. The release names none of them. It refers only to "Uber campaigns" and "Uber ads." Whether Skai users can buy rides inventory, delivery inventory or both is not stated.

Technical basis. On June 2, 2026, Uber opened its ad platform to developers with Ads APIs covering campaign management for Sponsored Listings and Sponsored Search, plus reporting on ad performance, sales and category share. Those APIs were described as globally available, with access subject to Uber review rather than self-serve activation. The Skai release refers to Uber's "in-house technology" and "own technology infrastructure" but does not say whether the integration is built on those APIs. If it is, the format scope would likely be limited to Sponsored Listings and Sponsored Search - but that is an inference, not something either company stated.

Eligibility. Availability is limited to "eligible brands and agencies." The criteria are not defined. It is not clear whether eligibility depends on spend levels, a separate Uber contract, a Skai subscription tier, or approval through Uber's onboarding process.

Pricing. There is no mention of fees, whether Skai charges extra for the Uber connector, or whether media is bought at the same rates available in Uber's own console.

Measurement and attribution. Retail and commerce media are sold on closed-loop measurement - tying an ad exposure to a purchase. Uber's statement references measuring campaigns, and Uber has built several measurement products in 2025 and 2026. The release does not describe what reporting flows into Skai, whether sales or incrementality data is included, how attribution windows are defined, or how Uber's first-party data is protected when "aggregated" insights feed Skai's intelligence layer.

Commercial terms. No financial terms of the partnership were disclosed.

None of these omissions is unusual in a partnership press release. Taken together, though, they mean the announcement establishes that a connection exists in eight markets without establishing what can be bought through it.

How Uber reached this point

Uber's advertising business started small. In August 2020, Uber Eats rolled out Sponsored Listings for restaurants in the US, with restaurants setting their own cost-per-click bids from their dashboards and qualified US restaurants receiving $25 million in marketing credits. Journey Ads followed in late 2022, adding in-ride placements, and video arrived in 2024.

The last 18 months have been about opening the system to outside tools. In June 2025, Uber made Journey Ads available through Programmatic Guaranteed deals in Google's Display & Video 360 and The Trade Desk across ten European markets. The company had by then publicly targeted $1 billion in annual advertising revenue. December 2025 brought Uber Intelligence. January 2026 brought Journey Takeover at CES.

The pace picked up in mid-2026. The Ads APIs arrived on June 2. On June 15, Uber added ride offers, brand takeovers on Eats and offsite ads for brands. A day later came Offsite Ads, which extend Uber's managed audience signals to Meta and Google Shopping, a move PPC Land grouped with other shifts in the programmatic advertising stack. On June 22, Uber consolidated its tools into Uber Marketing Manager. The Skai integration is the latest step in that sequence: after opening to DSPs, developers and its own self-serve console, Uber is now connecting to the multi-channel management platforms that large advertisers already use.

Skai's run of integrations

For Skai, the Uber deal fits a pattern of adding commerce and social channels to a platform that began in paid search. The company was known as Kenshoo before rebranding as Skai in 2020; it now operates under the combined Kenshoo Skai name.

In September 2025, Topsort made Skai its first API partner, giving Skai clients access to retail media networks across more than 40 countries, including DoorDash and Just Eat Takeaway. Vignieri was quoted in that announcement too. In May 2026, the company presented Kenshoo Skai Studio for building squads of AI agents and expanded its Celeste agent, delivered through support for the Model Context Protocol, which lets customers connect their own agents. In August 2026, Reddit said it had completed Ads API integrations with Skai and Innovid.

The Uber release threads the agent theme through its language. It speaks of "marketers and AI agents" evaluating performance and describes the deal as advancing an "open omnichannel platform strategy by connecting data, intelligence, media, and AI agents across an increasingly fragmented marketing ecosystem." What the agents can do with Uber data specifically is not described.

Competitive context

Skai is not alone in chasing delivery and mobility inventory. In June 2026, CommerceIQ added DoorDash Ads to its retail media management product through the DoorDash Ads API, so brands could run DoorDash campaigns alongside Amazon and Walmart. That same month, Pacvue presented Prism, a cross-channel system it pitched as replacing channel-by-channel budgets with outcome-based accountability.

The common thread is consolidation. Large consumer goods companies buy media across dozens of retailer and platform consoles, each with its own interface and reporting format. Platforms like Skai, CommerceIQ and Pacvue sell the promise of a single interface. Each new direct connection - DoorDash for one, Uber for another - becomes a selling point against rivals.

Why this matters

For agencies and brands managing commerce media budgets outside the US, the integration offers one practical change: Uber campaigns in eight markets can sit in the same management layer as Amazon, Walmart Connect, Meta and other channels already connected to Skai. That reduces the operational case for treating Uber as a stand-alone test budget, which is how many marketers have approached newer commerce media networks.

For Uber, it is another distribution route. Every tool that can buy Uber inventory without a separate login lowers the barrier for budgets that already flow through those tools. The vendor-supplied scale figures - 208 million monthly users, 40 million daily trips and orders - are the pitch; the question for buyers is whether the reporting and formats available through Skai match what Uber offers in its own console.

For US advertisers, the announcement changes nothing yet. Until either company explains the omission or extends the integration, American Uber campaigns remain outside Skai's direct connection, at least as far as this release describes it.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Kenshoo Skai, a San Francisco-based omnichannel marketing platform claiming more than 8,200 brand and agency customers, and Uber Advertising, the ad business of Uber and Uber Eats. Statements came from Matt Vignieri, Chief Growth Officer at Kenshoo Skai, and Manas Mittal, VP of Product Management at Uber.

What: A direct integration with Uber Advertising's in-house technology that lets eligible brands and agencies analyze, create, manage and optimize Uber campaigns inside Skai, with aggregated Uber insights to feed Skai's cross-channel intelligence layer later. Ad formats, eligibility criteria, pricing and measurement details were not disclosed.

When: Disclosed on October 13, 2026, with availability described as immediate for eligible advertisers in the supported markets.

Where: Eight markets - Canada, Mexico, Chile, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, Taiwan and Australia. The United States is not included.

Why: According to Skai, Uber reaches consumers close to the point of purchase and fits a commerce media market that extends beyond traditional retail media. Uber gains another route for advertisers to buy its inventory, and Skai adds a channel that rivals such as CommerceIQ and Pacvue are also pursuing in delivery and commerce media.