Trade Desk, Inc. (TTD)

The Trade Desk is a global advertising technology company that gives ad buyers a self-service platform to create, manage and optimize digital advertising campaigns across ad formats, channels and devices. The platform relies on artificial intelligence, including an AI co-pilot called Koa, and on integrations with inventory, publisher and data partners. Enterprise APIs let clients customize and extend its functionality. The company focuses on the buy side and positions itself as independent of media ownership. It earns revenue from a platform fee, generally a percentage of clients' total platform spend, and from value-added services and data that support their campaigns.

The platform lets advertisers and agencies buy digital media programmatically on exchanges and sell-side platforms or directly from publishers. They can use third-party data from its data marketplace, bring in their own first-party data, and monitor and optimize campaigns in real time. Campaigns can also be linked to offline sales results. Key features include auto-optimization (including Audience Unlimited), reporting and analytics, data management and measurement tools, media planning, and private marketplace support. Offerings aimed at inventory quality and transparency include OpenPath, PubDesk, OpenSincera and OpenAds. The company also develops the open-source identity framework Unified ID 2.0 and its European version, EUID. The platform's most recent major upgrade is Kokai. It covers connected TV, other video, display, audio, native and mobile channels.

Clients are advertising agencies, advertisers and other service providers, mostly under ongoing master services agreements. These generally run one year, renew automatically, and can be terminated on 60 days' notice, with no material commitments to spend. Two holding companies each represented more than 10% of gross billings in 2025. The company says its client retention rate has exceeded 95% for over a decade. It serves a digital advertising market reported at over $700 billion in annual spend, within a global advertising market that passed $1 trillion in 2024. Growth areas include CTV, mid-market clients, and international expansion in the U.K., Germany, France, China, Japan, India and Australia.

The company gets inventory from over 430 directly integrated ad exchanges, publishers and supply-side platforms, and has integrated with more than 370 third-party data vendors. Its infrastructure is hosted in data centers around the world. Client service teams onboard new clients, who then move to self-service, and the company trains users through its Edge Academy e-learning program. Competitors include other demand-side platforms, among them divisions of large companies such as Google and Amazon. Revenue is seasonal, peaking in the fourth quarter and around major U.S. political elections. As of December 31, 2025, the company had 3,843 full-time employees in 21 countries, about 63% in North America, 20% in EMEA and 17% in APAC.