With OpenAds, The Trade Desk is rewriting what it means to be ‘buy-side’

That friction has been on full display since the start of this month. That’s when The Trade Desk launched OpenAds, a new version of the online ad auction built from Prebid’s open-source software. Think of it as a parallel system that runs alongside the existing one, but with a key difference. It still uses universal Transaction IDs, the identifiers that let advertisers trace where and how their ads are being bought across multiple platforms. Prebid recently removed those IDs, arguing they gave buyers too much control over publisher inventory and pricing. 

The Trade Desk sees it differently: those IDs, it said, make the marketplace more transparent and efficient. Without them, advertisers lose sight of what they’re paying for, and publishers lose leverage to prove what their inventory is worth. Which is what makes The Trade Desk’s position so contentious: it’s a buyer advocating for structural changes that reshape how sellers do business. . 

“I don’t care if OpenAds itself is successful,” Green told the audience. “I’m very happy if Prebid or others and something similar, or even better. But we know we can improve where we’re at — and we want to speed that up.”

That message lands differently depending on where the ad exec sits. 

For many publishers, The Trade Desk’s deeper role in auction mechanics feels like an encroachment into sell-side territory — a familiar unease following the launch of OpenPath in 2022, the company’s direct-to-publisher buying route. The Trade Desk’s gm of product Mike O’Sullivan, pushed back on that perception, arguing at the same event OpenAds isn’t meant to replace Prebid but to give publishers another option to experiment with. After all, most publishers don’t rely on just one auction system anyway. They typically run several side by side to bring in more ad demand. OpenAds, he said, is simply another one they can add to that mix. 

He explained: “If there’s an integrity signature that we know categorically that there’s been no modification to the Transaction ID, user ID or any other elements within it then we’ll have higher trust, and therefore will bid accordingly. So for publishers, they can run both.”

In other words, OpenAds was always meant to be a provocation – a way to force difficult conversations about how auctions are governed, including whether Prebid can still move fast enough to protect the open web from inefficiencies that benefit no one but intermediaries. And there are still far too many of those. 

In Green’s view, too much of the programmatic marketplace has been undermined by these players who, as he put it, “duplicate, obfuscate and sometimes lie” about what they’re selling and how to whom. By building a more auditable, integrity-driven auction, the ad tech vendor believes it can help ensure that advertisers and publishers get what they deserve. Admittedly, the company hasn’t always handled those efforts with the deftest touch. But as Green put it, “This is facilitating the dialogue that we need to be having.”

O’Sullivan backed up that urgency with data. When The Trade Desk can identify environments where multiple video ads are playing simultaneously — a common symptom of bad inventory quality — campaigns see performance improve by an average of 15%. He added: “Imagine if you;re Hulu and you’ve paid to create ‘Shogu’ and then someone puts four videos on the same page and on the bid request in the auction. There’s no disclosure of any of this. These are the types of problems we’re trying to solve.”

Still, The Trade Desk’s brand of reform comes with a cost. Its push for cleaner, more transparent auctions may sound altruistic — even necessary — but it also compresses the margin of ad tech vendors and publishers  caught in the middle. Some say they’re being unfairly lumped in with the bad actors — collateral damage in The Trade Desk’s bid to scrub the supply chain. Green has a different take. To him, the company’s efforts will ultimately push more money toward the publishers and partners creating real value — just not through the layers that have long stood in the way.

“This is not buy side versus sell side, its about quality publishers who are taking home less than they should be, and publishers that are taking home more than they should be,” said Green. “Let’s make certain that we create an environment where the premium can rise to the top.”