Brands should be able to see all of their own data.
That doesn’t sound like a controversial statement. However, many ad platforms obscure parts of their clients’ data because the results are unpromising, discreditable or difficult to convey, according to Dan Larkman, CEO and founder of performance CTV tech company Keynes.
Keynes’ goal is to “make it not confusing,” Larkman said, by showing the “why” behind how certain decisions within the ad platform are made.
On Tuesday, Keynes announced the launch of Kortex, an AI-powered platform for CTV advertisers.
Getting into the “nuts and bolts” of campaign results has been a huge help for apparel brand Tuckernuck, said Jordan Light, senior manager of paid media, by allowing the company to revise its CTV placements based on real-time engagement and performance.
Tuckernuck has worked with Keynes since early 2025 and has been a pilot testing partner for the Kortex product in the past two months.
And in case you were wondering why Kortex is spelled with a K, one of Larkman’s colleagues quipped that the company should follow the tradition of the Kardashians. Which is to say, since Keynes starts with a “K,” they might as well keep the trend going.
Kreative Optimization
The Kortex platform houses a number of agentic ad solutions, each with a unique task, such as running ad analytics for a specific TV network or smart TV operating system.
The agents then use that historical data to plan and optimize the next campaigns.
The granularity that Kortex provides has given Tuckernuck “quite a bit of enlightenment,” as Light put it, when it comes to how different creatives perform, particularly from a regional perspective.
For instance, people living in a sunny, beachside town might be more inclined to engage with creative that mimics their environment, whereas someone who’s seen nothing but rainclouds for the past month might not find that content particularly resonant.
Those insights have allowed Tuckernuck to segment their audiences more effectively, Light said, rather than taking a more “one-size-fits-all” approach, where every person reached by the campaign sees the same ad.
Since adopting Kortex, Tuckernuck hasn’t had to make any “massive” changes to its strategy, he said. But the agentic tech is also helpful for informing creative production and asset development.
If Tuckernuck sees that a certain creative asset is driving tons of site traffic but not having much of an effect on conversion, the team takes that as an indication to “mix and match” with media on other platforms to build a more full-funnel experience, said Light.
Getting The Full Picture
The amount of data that goes into the campaigns is “at a different level” than other digital media, said Larkman, since CTV campaigns run on hundreds of TV networks and Keynes works with over 350 audience providers.
With so much data on hand, marketers need to understand not just what drove the last click but everything that influenced someone up until that point, he added.
Keynes has always strived to provide its clients with that holistic perspective, mostly by collecting and aggregating client data from assorted platforms where their clients operate, such as Shopify, Google Analytics and Meta, as well as from clients’ site pixels.
The new product doesn’t have a special window into black-box platform engagement but sees what types of data its customers receive on those platforms.
Kortex offers a new layer of transparency by creating “visualizations for brands” that help them understand data on a more granular level, said Larkman. For instance, at first glance, a marketer might think that ads on a specific streaming service haven’t benefited a campaign at all.
But, on closer inspection, an advertiser could see that on a certain device type and at a certain time of day, those ads actually perform extremely well. That’s an easy revision that saves budget by not axing the channel entirely or wasting spend when the ads don’t work.
The new agentic suite is like finding “a good mechanic you can trust,” according to Light. They can actually “pop open the hood and show you the problems,” without the lurking feeling of being hoodwinked.
“I’m not a mechanic myself, I don’t have that same level of expertise,” he added, but “once I’m walked through it, I’m able to explain.”
