Ties between The Trade Desk and key media agencies are weakening

By Sam Bradley  •  March 7, 2025  •

Ivy Liu

One holding company media buyer, who exchanged anonymity for candor, told Digiday that rising client investment in CTV — and the many DSPs that can be used to place such spend — meant their agency was becoming less reliant on The Trade Desk over time.

“We’ve had — we have — a great relationship with TTD. I just think that the dominance of the inventory that they represent is less and less important,” said the buyer.

That sentiment has only grown louder over the past two years as media agencies have taken more control over programmatic ad buying. Once content to let ad tech players like The Trade Desk handle it, agencies have been pushed by advertisers to step up, building out their own tech and services to optimize ad buying. Naturally, that shift pulled them away from The Trade Desk and closer to the other power players in the auction: supply-side platforms, which hold the data and tech agencies need to secure the best ad impressions.

In addition, there’s concerns among some media buyers over rising data fees and dwindling transparency around the ways its products work. “Those things add up to the point where it may be less expensive to run [a campaign] through a walled garden or another platform,” said Jonathan D’Souza-Rauto, biddable product lead at agency Kepler.

In turn these frustrations are starting to influence where advertisers choose to spend their dollars. Indeed, media agency execs say their dependence on it is slipping as client investments bend toward channels that The Trade Desk doesn’t dominate in, namely CTV where, despite its expertise, there’s competition.

Viant, for example, saw overall revenues increased 30% in 2024. According to co-founder and COO Chris Vanderhook, that was due to a “massive tailwind” from CTV demand.

It’s a thought not lost on the execs at Amazon Ads, who are using the promise of CTV advertising powered by its rich data as a hook to convince more advertisers to use its own DSP. So far, it appears to be working. The company raked in $17.3 billion in ad revenue last year, a 17% rise driven by its DSP’s growth. As Digiday previously reported, it’s beginning to encroach upon established ad tech players and, in time, is expected to provide serious competition for The Trade Desk. 

“Amazon’s DSP has come a long way, and a lot of that has to do with… their market dominance, their data, their commerce solution, their proprietary inventory,” said one anonymous buyer. “They are coming for The Trade Desk.”

These tensions are mounting as The Trade Desk’s grip on ad dollars faces pressure from three sides: a fragmented CTV market, the slow death of third-party cookies that fuel its audience targeting and the looming risk that their disappearance could dent its buying efficiency in key areas. 

After the firm’s recent earnings brought The Trade Desk its first revenue miss in 33 straight quarters, chief exec Jeff Green told analysts that the company had overhauled its client-facing teams as part of a 15-point plan to regain momentum. That included layoffs (it’s unclear how many precisely) and a reorientation of some teams around clients and business verticals; the company’s jobs board currently includes several openings for director and manager positions focused on managing brand relationships.

In addition, Green said TTD planned to pursue more joint business plans (JBPs) — direct arrangements struck with big advertisers.

A Trade Desk spokesperson referred Digiday to remarks Green made during TTD’s most recent earnings call in a request for comment — during which, Green claimed that TTD’s brand direct relationships were growing 50% faster than other parts of the business.

This not so subtle push to cozy up to agency clients directly might look like a threat, but it’s arguably the least important factor at play.

The Trade Desk’s pursuit of more top advertiser partnerships isn’t expected to be an issue, given clients will still typically ask agencies to execute and advise on investments. “JBPs are not a threat to the way agencies work,” said one buyer, who asked to remain anonymous, citing continued existing relationships with The Trade Desk.

Even recent structural shake-ups within the company’s agency team aren’t seen as something that will escalate tensions with agencies — at least no higher than they already are. In fact The Trade Desk’s day-to-day relationship with agencies appears to still be relatively healthy, especially those outside the holdco groups, according to five buyers that spoke with Digiday.

For instance, at indie shop Wpromote, head of media investment Deanna Mulkeen described TTD’s DSP as “a critical part of our media mix … Nobody is perfect, but I think The Trade Desk has been really strong for us.”

And for many advertisers, that’s unlikely to change anytime soon.

According to Ryan Eusanio, svp, video and programmatic at Omnicom Media Group, most clients will utilize multiple DSPs according to their media needs. An advertiser focusing on YouTube might adopt DV360 as a “primary” platform and use another as its “secondary”, he said.

“A lot of our clients use [The Trade Desk] as a primary DSP. They’ve been an industry leader in the CTV space for a very long time, [and] we’ve built a lot of co-developed capabilities with them,” he explained. 

The real question, though, is how far that collaboration with agencies will go.

The Trade Desk remains the preeminent gateway to the open web for many. But when growth is on the line, partnerships often take a back seat.

https://digiday.com/?p=571065