Teads and Koddi on September 29, 2026 disclosed a global partnership that lets advertisers buy onsite retail media placements on Koddi-powered networks in the US and Europe, including Gopuff UK, Hopper and Wolt Ads, through Teads Ad Manager using OpenRTB connections rather than custom integrations.

In Short

Teads, a company that sells ad space across websites and TV screens, can now also sell ads inside shopping and delivery apps such as Wolt, Gopuff UK and Hopper, because those apps use Koddi's ad technology. Brands that already plan campaigns in Teads no longer need a separate deal with each app to show their products to shoppers who are about to buy. What changes is the plumbing: the apps keep control of their prices and ad slots, while buying happens through a common industry auction format instead of one-off connections.

What the two companies agreed

The partnership was made public at 05:00 Eastern Time on September 29, 2026, from New York. According to Teads, which trades on Nasdaq under the ticker TEAD, the arrangement delivers "an open, universal OpenRTB standard for onsite retail media inventory" and is global in scope. In practical terms, the integration connects Teads Ad Manager, the company's buying platform, to retail networks that run on Koddi's commerce media software.

Two ad products are covered at the outset. Advertisers can activate Sponsored Product Ads - the promoted listings that appear among search results and product grids inside a retailer's app or site - and what the companies describe as "high-intent Display placements." Both are bought in Teads Ad Manager alongside the display, video and connected TV campaigns that already run there.

Three Koddi-powered networks are named as examples: Gopuff UK, the British arm of the instant delivery service; Hopper, the travel booking app; and Wolt Ads, the advertising business of the Helsinki-based delivery platform. The release uses the phrase "including platforms such as," which means the full list of participating networks was not published. No financial terms were disclosed. Nor did either company say how revenue from the arrangement is shared, what fees apply, or when buying became available.

According to Koddi, its platform "enables retailers to open their valuable onsite inventory programmatically while maintaining complete control over inventory, pricing, and quality standards." Enterprise networks using Koddi can now reach Teads' advertiser base "without managing custom, proprietary integrations," the companies said.

The closing paragraph of the release is forward-looking. It says the partnership "establishes a foundation for expanded ad format support and additional retail partnerships across markets in the future." No dates, formats or partner names were attached to that statement.

Why OpenRTB matters here

Onsite retail media - ads shown inside a retailer's own website or app - has historically been bought in closed systems. A brand wanting sponsored listings on a grocery app would typically log in to that retailer's self-serve console, set bids there and read results there. Repeat that across ten retailers and the result is ten logins, ten reporting formats and ten sets of rules.

OpenRTB is the IAB Tech Lab specification that most of open-web programmatic advertising already runs on. It defines how a seller describes an impression in a bid request and how a buyer responds. By framing the Koddi integration around it, the two companies are arguing that retail inventory can be plugged into the same auction pipes that carry display and video. The phrase "open, universal OpenRTB standard" in the release deserves some care, though. OpenRTB itself is maintained by IAB Tech Lab, not by Teads or Koddi; what the companies describe is their implementation of it for onsite retail placements.

The technical difficulty has never been the protocol alone. Sponsored product listings are rendered by the retailer, which pulls product images, prices and ratings from its own catalogue. A buyer does not upload a banner; it nominates a product. IAB Tech Lab addressed this in January 2025, when it finalised an OpenRTB extension for product listing ads that added a prodfeed object to the bid request, allowed and blocked product category arrays, and a new Native Ads API data type, 13, for product IDs. Under that extension, the publisher renders the creative and the buyer supplies a product ID. Neither Teads nor Koddi said whether their integration uses that extension, and the release does not name an OpenRTB version.

The problem the companies cite

To frame the partnership, Teads pointed to research from IAB Europe. According to the company, IAB Europe's Attitudes to Retail Media report found that "the fragmentation of retail media networks (51%) and a lack of standardization (53%) remain the primary barriers for buy-side stakeholders."

Those figures match the second annual edition of that report, which IAB Europe released on July 30, 2025. PPC Land's coverage of that study recorded 180 respondents across 31 markets, with fragmentation cited by 51% of buyers and lack of standardisation by 53%. The same survey found that brands working with four to six retail media networks rose from 10% to 24%, which helps explain why fragmentation registers as a cost. The release does not give the edition year. The figures were collected between April and June 2025, more than a year before the September 2026 announcement.

Other numbers from IAB Europe point in the same direction. A guide published by IAB Europe in April 2026 noted that 70% of buyers cited a lack of retail media standards as an investment barrier, and that 88% of buyers require return on ad spend data while only 71% of retail media networks provide it consistently. Measurement, in other words, remains a separate problem from access. A shared auction protocol solves how an impression is bought; it does not, on its own, settle how a sale is attributed.

How each party describes its role

The release carries three statements from named executives, one from each company involved.

Catalina Salazar, Global Head of Advertising at Wolt, framed the deal around incremental demand and retained control. "At Wolt Ads, we're focused on giving brands more ways to reach highly engaged, high-intent shoppers across our platform," she said. "Opening our marketplace to differentiated demand partners like Teads via Koddi Ads lets us bring in incremental demand via the buying platform of the advertiser's choice while maintaining full control over how our inventory is monetized."

Justin Sparks, GM of Retail & Commerce Media at Teads, emphasised the buy side. "Advertisers can activate retail media as part of their broader omnichannel strategy in Teads Ad Manager, reducing complexity while maximizing their campaign's performance," he said. He went further on the structural argument: "By embracing OpenRTB as a standardization framework, retailers unlock access to significantly more demand by opening up to omnichannel DSPs like ours. We believe this partnership represents the future of retail media: open, standardized, and integrated into the broader advertising ecosystem, connecting shopper and national brand dollars to the same pipes globally."

That last phrase deserves attention. "Shopper" budgets, typically controlled by trade marketing and negotiated with retailers, and "national brand" budgets, controlled by brand and media teams, have historically sat in different departments with different metrics. Sparks' argument is that a common buying platform can route both. Whether finance and procurement teams agree to merge those pools is a separate question the release does not address.

Nicholas Ward, President at Koddi, called the integration "a significant milestone in making retail media truly programmatic on a global scale." According to Ward, "By connecting premium demand from Teads' global advertiser ecosystem with retailers' high-intent onsite inventory across markets, we're empowering brands to scale retail media activation efficiently while giving retailers access to meaningful incremental demand."

Koddi's pattern: one network, many buyers

For Koddi, Teads is not the first outside demand-side platform to be connected. On October 9, 2025, The Trade Desk enabled programmatic retail media buying through a Koddi partnership, with Gopuff as the first retailer and sponsored product ads as the first format. Koddi said at the time that more than 95% of media buyers were open to buying onsite retail media programmatically.

The Wolt relationship followed in May 2026. On May 19, 2026, Wolt Ads opened its in-app inventory to programmatic buyers through the Koddi SSP, starting in Germany. In that integration, Koddi's supply-side technology connected directly to Wolt's existing auction and product architecture, and Wolt retained control of auction logic, inventory allocation and ad presentation. No buy-side platform was named at the time. The September 29 announcement supplies one.

The sequence suggests a deliberate structure. Koddi positions itself on the sell side, as the technology a retailer uses to run its ad business, and then connects that supply to several buyers. According to Koddi, "Retailers using Koddi Ads are adopting open programmatic to maximize inventory yield and meet demand in their preferred DSP." For a retailer, more buyers bidding on the same slot can lift prices. For an advertiser, the attraction is that a single platform reaches several retailers.

Koddi's own description of its scale is broad. According to the company, it builds retail and commerce media networks for clients including Booking.com, Kroger, Fanatics and Cars.com, has "more than a decade of experience" and is "powering billions of media spend." It refers to "the $100 billion commerce media opportunity" without citing a source for that figure. Earlier PPC Land reporting on the Wolt deal recorded that Koddi was founded in 2013 in Fort Worth, Texas, originally for travel advertising, and that it claimed about 20 million daily users across its ad servers.

Hopper's inclusion is a reminder that commerce media extends well beyond groceries and household goods. Koddi's roots in travel advertising, and a client list that includes Booking.com, mean that some of the "retail" inventory reachable through this integration is in fact travel inventory, where intent signals relate to flights and hotels rather than baskets.

Teads' retail media track record

The release describes Teads as "an early innovator in bringing real-time bidding (RTB) capabilities to native retail listings." That claim refers to earlier work. On July 24, 2025, Pentaleap and Teads connected retailers' onsite Sponsored Product Ads to auction-based buying, with Teads Ad Manager as the buying interface and Pentaleap's ad serving technology handling the low-latency demands of retail pages. The two companies described that integration as the first programmatic solution for buying sponsored product inventory across multiple retail networks through one platform. Pentaleap is not mentioned in the September 2026 release, and Teads did not say whether the Koddi integration runs alongside it or replaces it.

The mechanics matter because real-time bidding on retail pages faces a constraint display advertising does not. A search results page inside a grocery app must load almost instantly, and sponsored listings are blended into organic results. Any external auction has to return a decision within that window, or the retailer simply fills the slot with its own listing.

Teads describes itself as "the omnichannel outcomes platform." According to the company boilerplate, it is directly partnered with more than 10,000 publishers and 20,000 advertisers globally and has a global team of around 1,700 people in more than 30 countries. The body of the release, meanwhile, says Teads is "supported by sales teams in over 55 countries." The two figures measure different things - where staff are based versus where sales coverage exists - but the gap is wide enough to note. In July 2025, PPC Land reported Teads operating in 36 countries with nearly 1,800 employees, which implies headcount has fallen by roughly 100 since then.

The financial backdrop

The partnership arrives at a difficult point for Teads. The company was formed when Outbrain acquired Teads, a deal that closed on February 3, 2025, before Outbrain completed its transformation into Teads Holding Co. on June 9, 2025, with shares trading as TEAD from June 10.

Results since have been uneven. In March 2026, Teads posted a $352.1 million goodwill impairment for the fourth quarter of 2025, alongside a $428.2 million quarterly net loss, while annual connected TV revenue passed $100 million. On August 6, 2026, the company suspended its full-year 2026 guidance after second-quarter revenue fell 17% to $284.6 million. Ex-TAC gross profit from direct response and SME advertisers fell 30% to $34 million in that quarter, while CTV revenue grew 67% and reached 13% of the total.

That split is relevant to the retail media push. Retail media is, by design, a performance-oriented channel, measured against sales. A business that has seen its direct response line contract has an obvious interest in inventory that sits close to the point of purchase. Teads did not connect the two in the release, and no revenue projections for retail media were provided.

Other moves in September 2026 fit the same pattern of repositioning. On September 10, Teads extended its Whale TV HomeScreen partnership to more than 100 countries. Five days later, on September 15, it named two senior commercial executives, Alex Underwood as Managing Director of North America and Alena Morris as Senior Vice President, Client Solutions & Strategic Products.

The release's own forward-looking statements are unusually specific about this deal. Among the listed risks: "the risk that our strategic partnership with Koddi may not yield the anticipated benefits, advertiser adoption, or scale across the US and European markets as expected" and "technical and operational challenges related to the OpenRTB integration." Such disclaimers are standard for listed companies, but naming the partnership and the integration explicitly is a reminder that adoption is the open variable.

The European context

Europe is where the standardisation debate has been most visible. IAB Europe data released on October 7, 2025 put European retail media spending at €13.7 billion in 2024, up 21.1%, and projected €20.8 billion for 2026 and €28.8 billion for 2028. Two days later, on October 9, 2025, IAB Europe opened public comment on its Commerce Media Measurement Standards V2, which added quick commerce metrics, along with flexible ad size guidelines based on a Tesco Media approach.

Quick commerce is directly relevant here. Gopuff and Wolt both operate rapid delivery models in which shoppers open an app with an immediate need and a short session. The window to show a sponsored listing is narrow, which is precisely why the release keeps returning to the phrase "high-intent."

What remains unclear

Several practical questions are not answered in the material released on September 29.

The first is which Koddi networks are live. Only three are named. Koddi's client list includes large US retailers such as Kroger, but the release does not say whether Kroger or other boilerplate clients are part of the Teads integration.

The second is geography. The release says "US and Europe," yet the named European networks are Gopuff UK and Wolt Ads. Wolt's programmatic inventory went live through Koddi in Germany in May 2026; whether other Wolt markets are included was not specified.

The third is measurement. Retail media's value proposition rests on closed-loop sales reporting, which connects an ad exposure to a purchase inside the retailer's own data. The release does not describe what reporting advertisers receive in Teads Ad Manager, whether retailer sales data flows back, or under what privacy arrangements.

The fourth is commercial terms. Programmatic retail media adds intermediaries between the brand and the retailer. Each layer can take a fee. Neither company addressed how margins compare with buying directly through a retailer's own console.

None of these gaps is unusual for an initial partnership announcement. They do define what buyers would need to know before treating the integration as equivalent to direct retailer access.

Why this matters for marketers

For agencies and brands, the significance lies less in any single retailer than in the direction of travel. Since late 2025, Koddi has connected its retail supply first to The Trade Desk, then to an SSP integration with Wolt, and now to Teads. Each step moves onsite retail placements - historically the most closed part of retail media - further into standard programmatic workflows.

That shift carries trade-offs. Programmatic access can reduce operational overhead, but it can also sit uneasily with the relationship-based way many brands negotiate retailer investments, which often bundle media with trade terms, shelf placement and promotions. A sponsored listing bought through a DSP does not come with a joint business plan.

For retailers, the calculation is about yield and control. Wolt's statement stresses "maintaining full control over how our inventory is monetized," a line that echoes almost every retailer comment on programmatic access since 2025. Retailers want additional bidders, but not at the cost of their own pricing power or the shopping experience.

For Teads, the partnership adds a category of inventory that its CTV and open-web businesses do not cover. Whether that inventory produces measurable revenue will likely show up first in how the company describes retail media in its third-quarter 2026 results.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Teads (Nasdaq: TEAD), an omnichannel advertising platform, and Koddi, a commerce media technology company, with Koddi-powered networks including Gopuff UK, Hopper and Wolt Ads. Statements came from Justin Sparks of Teads, Nicholas Ward of Koddi and Catalina Salazar of Wolt.

What: A global partnership that makes onsite Sponsored Product Ads and Display placements on Koddi-powered retail and commerce networks buyable in Teads Ad Manager through OpenRTB connections, without custom integrations for each retailer.

When: Disclosed on September 29, 2026, at 05:00 Eastern Time. No go-live date, financial terms or timeline for additional formats were given.

Where: The US and Europe, with the release issued from New York. Named European networks are Gopuff UK and Wolt Ads.

Why: According to the companies, fragmentation and missing standards are the main barriers buyers face in retail media, citing IAB Europe figures of 51% and 53% from July 2025. Retailers gain additional bidders for their inventory, Koddi adds another buyer after The Trade Desk, and Teads adds a performance-oriented inventory category after its direct response business declined in 2026.