MCP (Model Context Protocol) | Definition
Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that enables AI assistants to connect seamlessly with external data sources, tools, and systems through a single, unified interface. Originally proposed by Anthropic and open-sourced in late 2024, MCP has seen rapid adoption by industry leaders such as OpenAI and Google DeepMind. MCP acts as a bridge between large language models (LLMs) and external services. Because LLMs do not natively communicate with APIs, MCP servers translate between model requests and external APIs, standardizing interaction for easier integration. This architecture elegantly solves the N×M integration challenge—moving from custom, one-off connectors for each app-data pair to a universal standard.
Why does MCP matter for marketers?
MCP is transforming how marketing and analytics teams interact with campaign data. Instead of using complex dashboards or waiting for manual reports, marketers can now ask natural language questions and receive structured answers in real-time. However, industry experience reveals that MCPs deployed without careful context and prompt engineering can yield inconsistent or inaccurate results. Effective use of MCP requires an orchestration layer that adds domain-specific context and validation, ensuring that outputs are accurate and actionable. This is especially important in the nuanced realm of digital advertising.
How does Kochava use MCP?
Kochava integrates MCP servers within StationOne, its integrative AI productivity platform, to address the challenges of reliable orchestration and secure connectivity. Kochava MCPs are available across the Kochava family of products, enabling functions such as retrieving attribution data and campaign insights, exploring recommendations from marketing mix modeling, and more. StationOne ensures that these MCP integrations are context-aware, privacy-preserving (running locally), and accessible across multiple AI providers. Kochava customers can also leverage a growing library of MCP-enabled integrations spanning major adtech and productivity platforms.
Interested users can request StationOne beta access at StationOne.ai/request-invite/.
