THG PLC today announced a strategic partnership with The Trade Desk that enables advertisers to access customer segments from Cult Beauty and LOOKFANTASTIC for the first time through self-serve programmatic advertising platforms. The arrangement represents a departure from traditional retail media approaches by making UK beauty retail data available across the entire digital ecosystem rather than confining it to retailer-owned properties.

Media buyers can now activate THG's audience segments across connected television, audio, display, and video inventory on The Trade Desk's Kokai platform. The partnership eliminates previous retailer clean room requirements, providing advertisers with event-level data to build custom segments and measure performance without intermediary data processing environments.

Rachel Moss, Retail Media Director at THG PLC, characterized the development as entering "the next phase" of the company's partnership with The Trade Desk. The relationship began over a year ago, during which period THG welcomed several new partners and increased investment in marketing services. Moss stated that THG is "extremely proud" of how the retail media offering is developing.

The arrangement meets growing market demand for personalized, effective campaigns based on commerce data. Advertisers gain direct access to audience segments spanning high-value shoppers, budget consumers, intent-driven browsers, and lapsed audiences across nutrition, skincare, makeup, haircare, and fragrance categories. The segments cover the full marketing funnel, from awareness through conversion.

Technical infrastructure and measurement capabilities

The partnership provides measurement of media activity against actual sales, enabling closed-loop return on ad spend analysis. This capability addresses persistent challenges in digital advertising where campaign exposure and purchase behavior occur across disconnected platforms. Traditional attribution methods struggle to connect advertising impressions served on streaming platforms or publisher websites to subsequent retail transactions.

Tim Abraham, GM of Data Partnerships at The Trade Desk, described THG as presenting "an incredible opportunity for advertisers to help improve the effectiveness of their ad spend." Abraham emphasized that the partnership enables advertisers to access event-level data for building custom segments and measuring performance without clean room requirements.

Clean rooms have emerged as standard infrastructure for retail data collaboration as third-party cookies phase out and privacy regulations tighten. These environments allow different parties to analyze combined data sets without directly sharing raw information. However, clean rooms introduce technical complexity and processing delays. The Trade Desk's approach eliminates these intermediary steps by providing direct data access through its platform.

Advertisers using The Trade Desk's platform can extend omnichannel campaigns across premium inventory, including connected television and audio formats representing the industry's fastest-growing channels. The integration allows brands to apply retail data throughout the marketing funnel, potentially reducing media waste and maximizing impact on business outcomes including direct sales and brand metrics.

The Trade Desk's proprietary artificial intelligence systems enable accurate targeting based on purchase behaviors and optimization toward sales outcomes. Abraham characterized this as creating "a win-win for both marketers and consumers across the open internet."

Market positioning and competitive dynamics

The partnership arrives as retail media spending continues rapid expansion across European markets. Retail media networks are projected to capture approximately 20% of total global advertising revenue by 2030, representing approximately $300 billion in spending according to research from Omdia published in September 2025.

THG operates two distinct UK beauty retail properties that combine to provide comprehensive market coverage. LOOKFANTASTIC serves as "the ultimate beauty destination" with a vast product range targeting broad audiences. Cult Beauty attracts what THG describes as "discerning enthusiasts" with a curated selection of coveted and innovative brands. This dual approach allows brands to connect with the full spectrum of beauty shoppers, from those discovering new trends to dedicated connoisseurs.

The combined customer base spans millions of consumers across the UK. THG emphasizes that its offering combines "unrivalled ecommerce scale, in-house creative firepower, and closed-loop attribution" to deliver what the company characterizes as a new standard in retail media performance.

The Trade Desk has systematically expanded its retail media capabilities throughout 2025. The company enabled programmatic retail media buying through integration with Koddi's commerce media platform in October 2025, with Gopuff serving as the initial launch partner. That integration addressed fragmentation challenges by providing advertisers access to sponsored product ads and onsite retail placements through unified platforms.

The Trade Desk reported $739 million in third quarter revenue in November 2025, with CEO Jeff Green describing "strong adoption across verticals as more shopper marketing budgets flow into programmatic and more retailers turn to us as their trusted partners." The company highlighted retail media as a key expansion area alongside connected television growth.

Industry consolidation and standardization pressures

The THG partnership reflects broader programmatic advertising consolidation as platforms seek to reduce fragmentation across retail media networks. Advertisers previously managed campaigns across multiple retailer platforms using different interfaces, reporting systems, and optimization approaches. This complexity increased operational costs while limiting campaign efficiency and cross-platform attribution capabilities.

Research from Koddi shows more than 95% of media buyers are open to purchasing onsite retail media programmatically, demonstrating demand for solutions that simplify access and improve workflow efficiency within retail media operations. Brands working with four to six retail media networks doubled from 10% to 24% in 2025, signaling diversification strategies among European advertisers.

The Trade Desk-Koddi integration addressed workflow challenges by eliminating the need for separate campaign management across multiple retail media networks. Advertisers can now manage retail media inventory through unified interfaces alongside display, video, and connected television advertisements.

The Trade Desk has pursued supply chain transparency initiatives throughout 2025, including the October launch of OpenAds in response to changes in programmatic advertising infrastructure. CEO Jeff Green described the initiative as necessary to preserve fair auction mechanics after industry-standard transaction identifiers were modified.

The company operates as an independent demand-side platform serving advertisers and agencies purchasing digital advertising programmatically. This positioning contrasts with technology giants including Google, Amazon, Meta, and Apple that operate advertising businesses alongside media ownership or walled garden monetization priorities.

Data democratization and self-serve capabilities

THG's announcement emphasizes "democratising access to retail data" by offering advertisers access to Cult Beauty and LOOKFANTASTIC segments on a self-serve basis for the first time. This marks a shift from managed service approaches where retailers control campaign execution and limit advertiser access to underlying data.

Self-serve platforms have gained prominence across retail media as advertisers demand greater transparency and control over campaign operations. Criteo launched a self-service retail media platform in 2022, enabling advertisers to buy ads across retailers at scale using standardized workflows and metrics.

The approach provides several operational advantages. Advertisers can inspect campaign performance through detailed reporting, adjust targeting parameters in real-time, and optimize budgets based on performance data without requiring retailer approval for each modification. This contrasts with managed service models where retailers act as intermediaries between brands and campaign execution.

However, self-serve capabilities introduce new challenges around measurement standardization and data quality verification. IAB Europe updated its Pan-European Retail & Commerce Media Landscape Map in October 2025, documenting hundreds of companies across retail media networks, technology providers, agencies, and platforms operating throughout European markets.

The resource organizes participants across eight distinct categories including Retail & Commerce Media Networks, Demand Side Platforms, Data Collaboration tools, Verification services, and Attribution and Measurement providers. The Trade Desk appears in the Demand Side Platforms segment alongside Skai, Pacvue, Flywheel, Epsilon, and other established advertising technology companies.

Platform capabilities and advertiser requirements

The Trade Desk's Kokai platform processes more than 13 million advertising impressions per second, applying deep learning algorithms across digital media buying processes. These artificial intelligence capabilities include predictive clearing for optimal bidding, impression scoring based on advertiser relevance, improved measurement and forecasting, budget optimization, and KPI scoring.

The platform introduced measurement tools particularly relevant for connected television and retail media channels. These include free retail measurement data from partner retailers when audience data is enabled. The platform also introduced the Retail Sales Index for measuring online and offline retail sales against retail ad spend, the TV Quality Index for assessing viewer ad experiences across streaming platforms, and the Quality Reach Index to help marketers expand customer bases by targeting relevant profiles.

The Trade Desk announced Deal Desk in June 2025 to streamline advertising deal management processes. The platform incorporates Deal Quality Scores that determine when a deal offers unique campaign value versus better opportunities in open marketplaces. Publishers gain access to new APIs and user interfaces for proposing deals with comprehensive inventory descriptions and clearly defined terms.

The company maintained a customer retention rate exceeding 95% for the tenth consecutive year according to financial results announced in November 2024. This performance suggests platform capabilities meet advertiser requirements despite interface controversies that emerged during the Kokai transition.

Beauty category advertising dynamics

The beauty category demonstrates distinctive advertising characteristics that influence retail media effectiveness. TikTok data released in December 2025 revealed Romanian beauty brands dramatically underinvest in the platform while achieving superior ROI efficiency. Marketing mix modeling covering January 2023 through December 2024 used store-level sales data to isolate the incremental impact of each media channel.

The research found that beauty brands operated at approximately 50% of optimal TikTok spending levels. Strategic reallocation toward higher-ROI platforms could deliver substantial returns, with findings demonstrating potential 6x sales impact by doubling investment for certain beauty brands. The study employed rigorous marketing mix modeling methodology to evaluate how media investments translate into offline sales.

Seasonal campaigns achieved 130% higher ROI than non-seasonal campaigns in the beauty category, highlighting the importance of alignment with key retail moments. The beauty sector experiences pronounced seasonal patterns tied to holiday gifting, skincare routines affected by weather changes, and promotional events throughout the retail calendar.

The integration of retail data with advertising campaigns enables more sophisticated targeting and measurement, particularly for consumer packaged goods brands seeking to connect advertising exposure with purchase behavior. This capability addresses fundamental challenges where campaign effectiveness remains difficult to evaluate across disconnected digital touchpoints.

International market expansion and future development

The Trade Desk has emphasized international growth rates exceeding North America performance, with business outside the United States representing 13% of total revenue during the third quarter of 2025. CFO Laura Schenkein characterized The Trade Desk as positioned "squarely at the forefront of CTV transformation, a powerful application of AI, the expansion of retail media, and the proliferation of programmatic buying internationally."

The company's partnership approach with THG demonstrates how retail media expansion occurs through technology integration rather than direct retail operations. This contrasts with Amazon's approach of building proprietary advertising platforms within its own marketplace environment.

Audio advertising emerged as another high-growth channel for The Trade Desk, with consumers spending an average of three hours daily listening to music and podcasts. The company highlighted integrations including Spotify, which demonstrated 15% growth in incremental reach for omnichannel campaigns. The audio channel benefits from authenticated audience data and premium content environments.

THG Beauty Media's mission emphasizes building retail offerings while evolving technology and data capabilities, underpinned by what the company describes as deep customer insights. With millions of customers across two leading UK online beauty retailers, THG combines ecommerce scale, creative capabilities, and closed-loop attribution to offer brands retail media performance.

The company serves over 1,300 third-party brands through its platforms alongside a specialist portfolio of owned brands. THG's broader operations span THG Beauty and THG Nutrition divisions, with Myprotein representing the world's largest online sports nutrition brand. The company delivers products both directly to consumers and through strategic offline partnerships worldwide.

The partnership timeline indicates THG began working with The Trade Desk over a year ago, meaning the relationship commenced during 2024. The evolution from initial partnership to full self-serve data access represents significant infrastructure development, including technical integration, data formatting standardization, and measurement framework establishment.

Timeline

Summary

Who: THG PLC, a global e-commerce group headquartered in Manchester, UK, operating THG Beauty (including LOOKFANTASTIC, Dermstore, and Cult Beauty) and The Trade Desk, a global advertising technology company headquartered in Ventura, California. Rachel Moss serves as Retail Media Director at THG PLC, while Tim Abraham serves as GM of Data Partnerships at The Trade Desk.

What: A strategic partnership enabling media buyers (advertisers and agencies) to access THG's customer segments from Cult Beauty and LOOKFANTASTIC via self-serve capabilities across the entire digital ecosystem on The Trade Desk's Kokai media-buying platform. The arrangement provides event-level data for building custom segments and measuring performance without requiring retailer clean rooms. Advertisers gain access to audience segments spanning high-value shoppers, budget consumers, intent-driven browsers, and lapsed audiences across nutrition, skincare, makeup, haircare, and fragrance categories. The partnership includes closed-loop measurement of media activity against actual sales for return on ad spend analysis.

When: THG PLC announced the partnership on February 16, 2026. The relationship between THG and The Trade Desk began over a year ago, indicating initial partnership commenced during 2024 before expanding to full self-serve data access in 2026.

Where: The partnership operates across The Trade Desk's global advertising platform, enabling campaign activation across premium open internet inventory including connected TV, audio, display, and video formats. THG's customer data originates from UK-based Cult Beauty and LOOKFANTASTIC retail operations serving millions of consumers. The Trade Desk's Kokai platform processes advertising impressions globally while allowing advertisers to extend campaigns across multiple digital channels.

Why: The partnership addresses growing market demand for personalized, effective campaigns based on high-quality commerce data while democratizing access to retail data through self-serve capabilities. Retail media represents the fastest-growing advertising channel, with projections indicating networks will capture approximately 20% of total global advertising revenue by 2030, representing approximately $300 billion in spending. The arrangement enables more precise targeting to meet brand building and performance objectives while reducing media waste and maximizing impact on business outcomes including direct sales. The partnership reflects broader industry consolidation as platforms seek to reduce fragmentation across retail media networks and provide advertisers with unified campaign management capabilities.

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