The Trade Desk

The Trade Desk, Inc. (stylized as theTradeDesk) is an American multinational technology company that specializes in real-time programmatic marketing automation technologies, products, and services, designed to personalize digital content delivery to users.

The Trade Desk is headquartered in Ventura, California. It is the largest independent demand-side platform in the world, competing against DoubleClick by Google, Facebook Ads, and others. Unlike traditional marketing, programmatic marketing is operated by real-time, split-second decisions based on user identity, device information, and other data points. It enables highly personalized consumer experiences, and improves return-on-investment for companies and advertisers. Demand-side platforms, like The Trade Desk, work with ad exchanges to deliver such tailored digital experiences.

The company continued to grow since its founding in 2009. As of 2021, it offers a self-service publishing platform for brands & advertisers, a data management platform for advanced analytics & segmentation, and enterprise APIs that enable advanced integrations. It has over 225 partners worldwide, and is responsible for delivering personalized content on Spotify and more.

The Trade Desk has been recognized for its omni-channel approach to programmatic marketing automation, with strong data analytics capabilities, fast response-times, and support for various connected devices, online platforms, and media formats. It reported a 95% customer retention rate for 27 straight quarters in 2020, and an annual revenue of US$836 million in the same year.

The firm currently employs around 3,100 people in 25 office locations worldwide. It was ranked among the 100 Best Medium Workplaces by Fortune in 2018, and have been continually named in the list since then.

Early years
The Trade Desk was co-founded in 2009 by Jeff Green and David Pickles. They met at Microsoft after it had acquired Green's real-time digital advertising auction firm, AdECN, in 2007. By 2012, the company was included as an alpha partner in Facebook’s launch of the real-time bidding (RTB) advertising platform, Facebook Exchange.

In 2015, The Trade Desk was named among the top 10 of America’s Most Promising Companies by Forbes. Founders Green and Pickles were also named as Ernst & Young Entrepreneurs of The Year 2015 in the Greater Los Angeles region.

Initial public offering
On September 21, 2016, The Trade Desk became a public company with an $18 offering price. The company's opening day was reported as a "vote of confidence for the demand-side platform, whose S1 filing revealed healthy financials: Triple digit revenue growth and profitability — rare in a sector that is seeing much of its growth chomped away by the duopoly Google and Facebook." The company continued to experience tremendous growth, and reached a market cap of US$40 billion by 2021.

Post-IPO growth
In 2017, The Trade Desk integrated connected TV buying and measurement directly into its platform; acquired marketing insights firm AdBrain; and partnered with fraud prevention firm White Ops to block fraudulent ad traffic prior to purchase. The firm also improved transparency in programmatic buying by enabling buyers to see all selling or reselling parties to a bid request.

In 2018, the firm began investing heavily into the Asia Pacific region with the launch of its programmatic ad buying platform in China, giving access to Chinese media companies, such as Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu Exchange Services. It also launched new AI tools: an AI forecasting engine named Koa, a new user interface, new tools for mapping strategies called The Trade Desk Planner, and a proprietary global user identity resolution tool called Unified ID.

In 2019, Amazon opened connected TV (CTV) Apps integrated with Amazon Publisher Services, enabling the purchase of ad inventory for third-party TV content provider The Trade Desk, through Amazon Fire TV devices.

In September 2019, The Trade Desk launched an advertising campaign, "Media for Humankind", to position itself as a "more transparent digital advertising" alternative to Google and Facebook.

In mid-2020, Unified ID 2.0 (UID 2.0) launched as a second iteration to leverage a post-cookie internet using encrypted email and phone number data to create a secure identity standard. The identity resolution software was adopted by Disney and Paramount, as well as by major advertisers, including Procter & Gamble and Unilever. In early 2022, The Trade Desk launched OpenPath, granting advertisers direct access to its premium digital advertising inventory. Publishers using OpenPath include Conde Nast, Reuters and The Washington Post.

In March 2024, NBCUniversal announced that its broadcast content for the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics would be available, in partnership with The Trade Desk, to online automated programmatic marketers, for the first time.

The company has consistently been named to annual lists by, among others, Fortune magazine, and was included with the Forbes Global 2000 in 2022.

Financials
The Trade Desk raised $2.5 million of venture capital in March, 2010. Investors included venture capital firms Founder Collective and IA Ventures, and angel investors Jerry Neumann and Josh Stylman.

The Trade Desk went public on September 21, 2016, with an initial stock price of $18.00; its IPO closing market price gained to $30.10 per share.

In 2017, revenue rose 52 percent to $308 million, then rose to $477 million in 2018. In 2019, third-quarter revenue was reported as $164 million, attributed to the growth of connected TV advertising.

On June 17, 2021, the company completed its 10–1 stock split, with a trading price of $68.

The Trade Desk finished 2022 with a record total spent on the platform of $7.8 billion, and annual revenue of over $1.5 billion.