Kong Kubernetes & DataDog Integration

Hello, I am running into an issue while trying to have my Kong deployment (deployed using Helm chart with ingress enabled, push metrics to datadog agent running on the same cluster as a daemon set. I suspect the issue (misconfiguration by me) could be on either side. Either I have not configured the plugin itself correctly (host, in particular) the pod annotations…

apiVersion: configuration.konghq.com/v1
kind: KongPlugin
metadata:
name: datadog
namespace: kong
labels:
global: “true”
plugin: datadog

(host:localhost and port:8125 (default datadog port))and here’s how I have annotated the kong deployment that was created by the Helm chart

annotations:
ad.datadoghq.com/kong.check_names: ‘[“kong”]’
ad.datadoghq.com/kong.init_configs: ‘[{}]’
ad.datadoghq.com/kong.instances: ‘[{ “kong_status_url”: “http://%%host%%:9245/metrics/” }]’ .

I have validated from the DD pod that KONG metrics are available @ http://:<9245>/metrics

What am I missing ? Any pointers/help is appreciated.