Amid stock price drops, The Trade Desk promises ‘win-wins’ for clients and publishers

By Ronan Shields • February 28, 2025 •

Ivy Liu

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It’s been a little over two weeks since The Trade Desk issued its first-ever earnings miss, during which time its stock price dropped by almost 40%. However, at its flagship NYC partner event on Thursday, executives there outlined their priorities for the year ahead.

Joined on stage by the likes of The New York Times, NBC Universal, Paramount, and Warner Bros.Discovery (among others), the narrative heralded “the rise of the premium internet,” indicating its priorities on Madison Avenue for the year ahead.

In opening remarks, its commercial chief Tim Sims outlined The Trade Desk’s outlook on a new industry paradigm, one that’s free from Google’s influence. This paradigm includes the importance of authenticated audiences and a more efficient supply chain.

“Too often, the paradigm in our business has been, ‘If I win, you lose,’” he said, referencing Google’s strong-arm tactics laid bare in the antitrust trial which took place in September 2024. “I’d argue that the same mindset still exists from other players in the programmatic supply chain, this notion of high-extraction, but low value-add… the evolution of programmatic media has been the definition of that win-win.”

He went on to say, “Data-driven decision-making is adding value in the case of buyers, and increased yield is, of course, adding value in the case of the publishers, and nowhere is that playing out more so than in the world of the premium open internet.”

To set some context, it’s worth remembering how the publicly listed demand-side platform issued its first-ever quarterly earnings miss earlier this month, despite Q4 revenues rising 23% year-on-year to hit $741 million, with CEO Jeff Green outlining a 15-point plan to regain momentum in 2025.

However, the scale of the challenges in the year ahead was made evident the day prior (Feb. 26), when law firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd issued a note seeking a lead plaintiff for a class action lawsuit, “United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers & Allied Workers Local Union No. 8 WBPA Fund v. The Trade Desk.”

Part of the “missteps” that caused the Q4 miss was the slower-than-expected uptake of its Kokai trading platform, a platform with forecasting tools that help with campaign execution, that it first unveiled in 2023 (see Related Insight), with this sluggishness cited by the law firm.

“The Trade Desk’s inability to effectively execute the Kokai rollout negatively impacted… revenue growth,” reads the law firm’s allegations, adding, “defendants throughout the Class Period made false and/or misleading statements.”

‘Rise of the open internet’

A central part of Green’s 15-point plan was “preparing for a world when Google exits the open internet,” referring to the ongoing antitrust trial in which Google faces a potential forced sale of its sell-side ad tech operations.

Such an outlook was represented at the event, dubbed FWD 25, with The Walt Disney Company’s svp of addressable sales, Jamie Power, on hand to discuss how their partnership with The Trade Desk, first unveiled a year ago, as the House of Mouse seeks to automate most of its ad spend.

During a panel session, Power explained how programmatic ad spend is also powering the company’s upfront deal with household names.

“What’s more interesting [about spending patterns on Disney] is when you look at the biddable channel, 70% of biddable spend is apart from commitments,” she said. “So it’s not scatter, It’s clients choosing to interact within a bidding environment.”

Conference sessions also attempted to address the questions of The Trade Desk’s clients (both brands and holding companies), with McDonald’s head of global media joining them on stage and agency execs packing the halls of The Times Center, NYC.

Also speaking on stage was Anne Enright, McDonald’s head of global media, when quizzed on her priorities in the year ahead, she noted that even as its programmatic spending rises exponentially — fellow panelist Julie Power revealed that its programmatic spend with Disney more than tripled in the last two years — brand safety was still a concern.

“You can’t take your eye off that, and it’s so dynamic,” she added, citing the company will likewise “fundamentally change how we do media.”

Know your supply chain

Also taking to the stage was (arguably) The Trade Desk’s newest high-profile arrival, Mike O’Sullivan, GM of product, who joined via way of the company’s acquisition of Sincera, a development that bucked the DSP’s reputation for preferring to build rather than buy.

Some have interpreted this move as The Trade Desk’s effort to future-proof itself from the rise of sell-side ad curation — one of the industry buzz terms of 2024 — despite the company’s vp of inventory development earlier telling Digiday, “We don’t think a lot about curation.”

Addressing FWD 25 attendees on “why you should care about the supply chain,” O’Sullivan explained how the company didn’t think all parts of the industry supply chain are bad, although, he did present a slide indicating that more than 169 supply-side platforms have 2,000-plus bid adapters deployed.

O’Sullivan emphasized his opinion on how it’s critical to minimize the negative impact of companies that take out a disproportionate amount of value. “If we clean up the supply chain, buyers will pay less for their campaigns, publishers will make more money,” he said. “It’s truly a win-win.”

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