Annual Reports
The Trade Desk, Inc.'s annual reports contain management's most considered account of the business. These are the sections, passages and visual pages worth opening in the originals preserved in Sources.
The Trade Desk, Inc. — FY2025 Annual Report (Form 10-K) — FY2025
The latest 10-K, and the one that recasts the company as an AI-led advertising technology leader while revenue growth slowed to 18%. · Open the full document →
Item 1. Business — Overview and Our Industry — p. 7 · Read the full section →
Management's own definition of the business and the one sentence that explains how a platform fee on client spend becomes revenue.
How The Trade Desk describes itself and how it gets paid.
We are a global leader in advertising technology. We empower ad buyers to create, manage and optimize digital advertising campaigns across ad formats, channels and devices. […] Our clients are advertising agencies, advertisers and other service providers for agencies or advertisers, with whom we enter into ongoing master services agreements (“MSAs”). We generate revenue by charging our clients a platform fee generally based on a percentage of our clients’ total platform spend and from providing value-added services and data to support their advertising campaigns.
p. 7 · Read in context →
Item 1. Business — Our Clients; Our Advertising Inventory and Data Suppliers — p. 16 · Read the full section →
Where the spend comes from and on what terms: contracts carrying no commitment, and concentration at the holding-company level.
Contract terms and holding-company concentration in gross billings.
Our MSAs, some of which may include joint business plans and other incentive programs, do not contain any material commitments on behalf of clients to use our platform to purchase ad inventory, value-added services or data. Generally, these MSAs have one-year terms that renew automatically for additional one-year periods, unless earlier terminated, and are terminable at any time upon 60 days’ notice by either party. […] If all of our individual client contractual relationships were aggregated at the holding company level, two holding companies would have each represented more than 10% of our gross billings in 2025 and one holding company would have represented more than 10% of our gross billings in 2024.
p. 16 · Read in context →
Item 1A. Risk Factors — The loss of advertising agencies, advertisers or holding companies as clients — p. 24 · Read the full section →
Concentration risk stated plainly: no exclusivity, agencies own the advertiser relationship, and spend can move.
Why the agency layer sits between the platform and the advertiser.
Our client base consists primarily of advertising agencies and advertisers. We do not have exclusive relationships with advertising agencies or advertisers, and we depend on agencies to work with us to build and maintain advertiser relationships and execute advertising campaigns.
The loss of agencies or advertisers as clients could significantly harm our business, financial condition and results of operations. If we fail to maintain satisfactory relationships with an advertising agency, we risk losing business from the current and future advertisers represented by that agency.
p. 24 · Read in context →
Item 1A. Risk Factors — The market in which we participate is intensely competitive — p. 28 · Read the full section →
The structural asymmetry for an independent demand-side platform: rivals that own the inventory they sell.
The walled-garden problem stated in the company's own words.
Furthermore, our current and potential competitors may have significantly more financial, technical, marketing, and other resources than we have, which may allow them to devote greater resources to the development, promotion, sale and support of their products and services. They may also have more extensive advertiser bases and broader publisher relationships than we have, rich first party data sets, may be better positioned to execute on advertising conducted over certain channels, such as social media, mobile, and video and in the case of “walled garden” inventory providers, may exclusively sell their own inventory directly to advertisers, which prevents us from competing with them entirely for such inventory.
p. 28 · Read in context →
Item 1A. Risk Factors — Third parties control our access to unique identifiers — p. 38 · Read the full section →
The dependency that sets this company apart from other ad platforms: identifiers it does not own or control.
Browser cookie policy, including Google's April 2025 reversal, and the UID2 hedge.
Today, three major web browsers—Apple’s Safari, Mozilla’s Firefox and Microsoft’s Edge —block third-party cookies by default. […] However, on April 22, 2025, Google announced that it would maintain its current approach to offering users third-party cookie choice in Chrome (thus, presumably, ending its efforts to deprecate third-party cookies in Chrome), and will not be rolling out a new standalone prompt for third-party cookies in Chrome. […] Although we believe our platform is well-positioned to adapt to browsers’ blocking or limitation of some cookies, particularly with our Unified ID 2.0 offering, the impact of such changes — and broader scrutiny on the advertising technology ecosystem — remains uncertain and could be more disruptive than we anticipate, including to the display advertising ecosystem in particular, where such changes could adversely impact our growth in that channel.
p. 39 · Read in context →
Item 7. MD&A — Executive Summary — p. 77 · Read the full section →
The scoreboard management chose: revenue against gross spend, plus the five opportunities it is underwriting.
The objectivity claim and the enumerated growth opportunities.
Our platform delivers valuable insights and results to clients without the conflict of interest and lack of objectivity that come with also selling owned advertising inventory. […] We believe that our key opportunities include (i) our ongoing global expansion, (ii) continuing development of our omnichannel ad inventory (including in channels such as CTV and other video, mobile, audio and others), (iii) continuing development, optimization and adoption of the data usage, measurement and targeting capabilities provided by our platform, which create a natural flywheel in our business, (iv) the adoption and utilization of third-party data, in particular, retail data, and first-party data by our clients, and (v) continuing development and incorporation of AI in our platform and related offerings.
p. 77 · Read in context →
Item 7. MD&A — Components of Our Results of Operations: Revenue — p. 81 · Read the full section →
Explains why revenue is a fraction of the money flowing through the platform, and why the balance sheet looks oversized.
One segment, agent accounting, and the gross-billings effect on receivables and payables.
We have one primary business activity and one operating segment. […] We generate revenue from clients who enter into agreements with us to use our platform to purchase advertising inventory, value-added services and data. We charge our clients for total spend on our platform, which includes spend and fees on advertising inventory, value-added services and data to support those purchases, in addition to the platform fee that is generally based on a percentage of our clients’ total spend on the platform. Generally, we report revenue as an agent on a net basis, which represents gross billings net of amounts we pay suppliers for the cost of advertising inventory, supplier-provided components of value-added services and data (collectively, “Supplier Components”).
Accounts receivable is recorded at the amount of gross billings to clients, net of allowances, for the amounts we are responsible to collect; and our accounts payable are recorded at the amount payable to suppliers. Accordingly, both accounts receivable and accounts payable appear large in relation to revenue reported on a net basis.
p. 81 · Read in context →
Item 7. MD&A — Results of Operations for the Year Ended December 31, 2025, Compared with the Year Ended December 31, 2024 — p. 85 · Read the full section →
Where management separates volume from price: gross spend grew 11% while revenue grew 18%.
Management's attribution of the 18% revenue increase.
Revenue increased by $451 million, or 18%, for the year ended December 31, 2025, as compared to the year ended December 31, 2024. The overall increase was driven by an 11% increase in gross spend on our platform, which was primarily driven by more overall advertising campaigns executed by new and existing clients, increased application of and changes in the mix of revenuegenerating value-added services and data and higher spend per campaign. The increase in revenue was also driven by a higher proportion of revenue earned from client spend due to increased utilization of our value-added services and data; and higher platform fees. Enhancements to our platform and the value-added services and data available to clients in 2025, including from Kokai and othe features, and increased pricing associated with value-added services and data, enabled both our clients and us to capture increased value and drove higher utilization of our value-added services and data.
p. 87 · Read in context →
Item 7. MD&A — Critical Accounting Policies and Estimates — p. 97 · Read the full section →
The net-versus-gross judgment is the accounting policy that defines the reported size of this business.
The principal-versus-agent test applied to advertising inventory and data.
We believe that the assumptions and estimates associated with the evaluation of revenue recognition criteria, including the determination of revenue recognition as net versus gross in our revenue arrangements, stock-based compensation expense and income taxes have the greatest potential impact on our consolidated financial statements. […] Generally, we report revenue net of amounts we pay suppliers for Supplier Components. Judgment is required to determine whether we are the principal and report revenue on a gross basis for Supplier Components or the agent and report revenue on a net basis for the amount of fees charged to the client. In this assessment, we consider if we obtain control of the specified service before it is transferred to the client, as well as other indicators such as the party primarily responsible for fulfillment, inventory risk and discretion in establishing price.
p. 99 · Read in context →
The Trade Desk, Inc. — FY2024 Annual Report (Form 10-K) — FY2024
Included for one reason: it holds the pre-AI self-description and the 26% growth baseline that the FY2025 rewrite is measured against. · Open the full document →
Item 1. Business — Overview — p. 6 · Read the full section →
The prior self-description — an ad-buying platform, not an AI company — against which the FY2025 rewrite reads as a repositioning.
FY2024 opening definition of the business.
The Trade Desk, Inc. (the “Company,” “we,” “our,” or “The Trade Desk”) offers a self-service, cloud-based ad-buying platform that empowers our clients to plan, manage, optimize and measure more expressive data-driven digital advertising campaigns. Our platform allows clients to execute integrated campaigns across ad formats and channels, including connected television (“CTV”) and other video, display, audio, and native, on a multitude of devices, such as televisions, streaming devices, mobile devices, computers and digital-out-ofhome devices. Our platform’s integrations with major inventory, publisher and data partners provide ad buyers reach and decisioning capabilities, and our enterprise application programming interfaces (“APIs”) enable our clients to customize and expand platform functionality.
p. 6 · Read in context →
More annual reports
The Trade Desk, Inc. — FY2023 Annual Report (Form 10-K) — FY2023 · 101 pages · The Kokai launch year and the last 10-K filed as a Delaware corporation. · Open →
The Trade Desk, Inc. — FY2022 Annual Report (Form 10-K) — FY2022 · 94 pages · First 10-K to carry the CEO Performance Option expense at full run-rate and the initial share repurchase authorization. · Open →
The Trade Desk, Inc. — FY2021 Annual Report (Form 10-K) — FY2021 · 127 pages · The Solimar-era baseline: display-first origins, pre-CTV-dominance channel mix and the year the CEO Performance Option was granted. · Open →