Competition

Competitors describe The Trade Desk, Inc.'s market in their own filings and calls. These verified passages and visual pages show where their strategies meet, using source documents preserved in Sources.

Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN)

Amazon Ads runs Amazon DSP, the demand-side platform that bids for the same connected-TV, video and open-web impressions The Trade Desk's clients buy, and it has spent the last two years signing the CTV supply — Roku, Disney, Netflix, Spotify, SiriusXM — that independent DSPs also need. Only the advertising discussion is used here; AWS, Stores and devices are out of scope.

Amazon's own description of Amazon DSP and the supply it has locked to it. The Roku deal is presented as giving advertisers 80 million connected TV households — which Amazon calls the largest authenticated CTV footprint in the US — 'exclusively through Amazon DSP,' alongside a direct pipe into Disney's ad exchange. Both the household count and the 'largest' claim are Amazon's and unaudited, and exclusivity as described covers the Roku audience path rather than Roku inventory as a whole. Read against The Trade Desk, this is a competitor arguing that premium CTV reach is reachable on better terms inside its own buying platform.

Andrew R. Jassy, CEO, prepared remarks: Another area we're excited about is our demand-side platform, or Amazon DSP. Our DSP enables advertisers to plan, activate, and measure full-funnel investments. Our trillions of proprietary browsing, shopping, and streaming signals, paired with extensive supply-side relationships and our secure clean rooms, provide advertisers the ability to optimize advertising, deliver greater precision, and drive efficient and effective advertising outcomes. And in June, we announced a momentous partnership with Roku, giving advertisers access to 80 million connected TV households—the largest authenticated connected TV footprint in the U.S.—exclusively through Amazon DSP. It's a giant leap forward for advertisers, bringing best-in-class planning, audience precision, and performance to TV advertising. We also announced an integration between Disney's real-time ad exchange and Amazon DSP. This collaboration allows advertisers to gain direct access to Disney's premium inventory across platforms like Disney+, ESPN, and Hulu while allowing them to leverage insights from both companies.

p. 2 · Read in context →

Asked to break advertising growth into its parts, Amazon's CEO says the DSP gap-closing work is done: 'We have addressed customer feedback over the past 20 months and closed key gaps, making our DSP fully featured.' That is Amazon's self-assessment, not a third-party product review, and it is the single sentence most directly at odds with the argument that a full-featured independent DSP is hard to replicate. He pairs it with the Roku CTV position and Netflix, Spotify and SiriusXM inventory integrations.

Andrew Jassy, CEO, answering Colin Sebastian (Baird): Our demand-side platform, Amazon DSP, is also growing rapidly. We have addressed customer feedback over the past 20 months and closed key gaps, making our DSP fully featured. Our partnership with Roku provides the largest connected TV presence in the U.S. Furthermore, we have added integration opportunities with ad inventory from Netflix, Spotify, and SiriusXM for our DSP customers.

p. 10 · Read in context →

Scale and direction of travel for the advertising business Amazon points at the same budgets: $17.2bn of revenue in the quarter, up 22% year over year, with a cited Forrester ranking as a leader in omnichannel advertising platforms. The Netflix, Comcast local and Samsung interactive-video items show Amazon extending its demand into third-party CTV supply rather than only its own properties. The Forrester citation is Amazon's characterisation of a report not reproduced in the transcript.

Andrew R. Jassy, CEO, prepared remarks: Moving on to Amazon Ads. We continue working to be the best place for brands of all sizes to grow their businesses, and we are pleased with the continued strong growth across our full-funnel offerings, generating $17.2 billion of revenue in the quarter and up 22% year over year. Forrester recently recognized Amazon as a leader in omnichannel advertising platforms, with unmatched supply and insights for connected TV and commerce media. We deepened our Netflix partnership with Amazon Audiences, which enables advertisers to apply Amazon’s exclusive signals from shopping, browsing, and streaming to Netflix’s highly engaged viewers to reach the right audiences and drive even stronger performance. We also partner with Comcast to expand local advertising to thousands of brands, and expanded interactive video ad capabilities to partners starting with Samsung TVs.

p. 4 · Read in context →

Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL)

Google runs the other end-to-end alternative to an independent buying platform: Display & Video 360 on the demand side, Google Ad Manager on the supply side, and YouTube as the largest ad-supported living-room property. Its Google Network line is the closest public proxy for third-party open-web buying, and the DOJ ad tech remedies proceeding could restructure the supply chain The Trade Desk buys through. Search, Cloud and Other Bets are out of scope.

Google's stated CTV strategy: push the living room from a brand surface toward a measurable performance one, with checkout built into the TV screen via Buy with Google Pay. This is the same argument The Trade Desk makes for CTV budgets, advanced by the owner of the inventory rather than a neutral buyer. No reach or revenue figure is attached to the claim in the transcript.

Philipp Schindler, President & Chief Business Officer, prepared remarks: Looking at monetization across YouTube, we're driving sustained growth across our key priorities. In the living room, we see continued momentum across both brand and direct response. With the launch of Buy with Google Pay, viewers can complete purchases directly on their CTV, turning the TV screen into a stronger performance surface.

p. 4 · Read in context →

Google's own account of where the DOJ advertising-technology case stands: its advertiser tools and the DoubleClick and AdMeld deals were found not anticompetitive, but its publisher tools were held to have unfairly excluded rivals, with a remedies judgment pending and the DOJ seeking structural relief. This is the disclosure of the defendant, and it describes proposals rather than an outcome — but any structural change to Google's publisher stack reshapes the supply chain independent buyers route spend through.

Alphabet Inc. FY2025 Form 10-K, Risk Factors: In April 2025, the presiding judge issued a mixed decision in the DOJ case against us, ruling that neither our advertiser tools nor the DoubleClick and AdMeld acquisitions were anticompetitive, but that our publisher tools unfairly excluded rivals. A separate proceeding to determine remedies, the range of which varies widely, took place in September 2025 with the parties presenting differing remedy proposals. The DOJ's remedy proposal includes structural remedies that could harm our business. Closing arguments were held in November 2025, and we are awaiting a final judgment.

p. 20 · Read in context →

Viant Technology Inc. (DSP)

The closest like-for-like read on The Trade Desk: an independent, buy-side-only omnichannel DSP with a CTV emphasis, competing for the same agency and brand budgets. Viant names The Trade Desk in its 10-K competition section and returns to it repeatedly on calls, including a sustained argument that OpenPath compromises The Trade Desk's independence.

How a rival DSP defines the competitive set in its own filing: The Trade Desk as the public company 'exclusively serving our industry,' Yahoo DSP as the large private player, and Google and Amazon as divisions of larger firms. Viant characterises the market as fragmented but consolidating, with 'few scaled competitors' carrying self-service and autonomous-AI capability — a structural claim Viant makes for itself, unsupported by outside data in the filing.

Viant Technology Inc. FY2025 Form 10-K, Item 1 — Competition: Our industry is highly competitive and fragmented. We compete with large, privately-held companies, such as Yahoo DSP, with public companies exclusively serving our industry, such as The Trade Desk, and with divisions of large, well-established public companies such as Google and Amazon. The competitive landscape in recent years has been affected by consolidation and limited investment in new startups in our industry and there are currently few scaled competitors with self-service capabilities and AI-driven autonomous capabilities like those offered by ViantAI.

p. 14 · Read in context →

Asked how the DSP competitive environment is evolving, Viant's CEO puts The Trade Desk in the same frame as Google and Amazon: 'Google wants to sell you YouTube. Amazon wants to sell you Prime Video. And Trade Desk wants to redirect your spends through OpenPath, their own SSP where they are making incremental margins.' He then argues those moves make The Trade Desk 'no longer independent or objective when it comes to the pathways.' This is a competitor's characterisation of OpenPath's economics, not a documented fee analysis; the elision seams a garbled clause in the transcript.

Tim Vanderhook, CEO, answering Wyatt Swanson (D.A. Davidson): I mean, I view the competitive space as getting smaller and smaller. Trade Desk has made specific moves around OpenPath and charging for what used to be SSP territory. So we made in our prepared comments Google wants to sell you YouTube. Amazon wants to sell you Prime Video. And Trade Desk wants to redirect your spends through OpenPath, their own SSP where they are making incremental margins. Viant takes a different approach from that, and so we see less competition. You look at truly objective buy-side only platforms. Historically, there was The Trade Desk and ourselves. […] some of The Trade Desk's recent moves, that puts them more in the, I guess, no longer independent or objective when it comes to the pathways.

p. 9 · Read in context →

Viant's sizing of the independent buy side: after excluding Amazon, Google's DV360 and Yahoo DSP as platforms that also sell media, it counts the field of 'independent and objective enterprise-level buying platforms' at two — itself and The Trade Desk. The passage is Viant's positioning argument and the self-attribution charges against Amazon, Google and Yahoo are assertions without cited evidence; the count is useful mainly as a competitor's own definition of the category The Trade Desk sits in.

Chris Vanderhook, Co-Founder & COO, prepared remarks: Google's DV360 deploys the same self-attribution tactics as Amazon, claiming YouTube and Google Search are the only channels capable of driving sales on behalf of the advertiser. Yahoo DSP is no different, claiming the same self attribution across their publisher properties. Well, advertisers are finally waking up. They have learned you cannot trust the buying platform that also serves as a seller of ads because selling their own content will always take priority at the expense of the advertiser. We believe this leaves Viant and The Trade Desk as the two remaining independent and objective enterprise-level buying platforms in market

p. 4 · Read in context →

Nexxen International Ltd. (NEXN)

A partner and a competitor at once: Nexxen runs its own self-service DSP against The Trade Desk while supplying it with smart-TV inventory and ACR data. That dual role makes its disclosures unusually informative — it names The Trade Desk as the first DSP on its programmatic smart-TV home screen, and separately reports how an unnamed leading DSP customer's supply-path push cut into its own revenue.

Nexxen sizing a CTV surface that has not been programmatically buyable — the smart-TV home screen, on which it cites Nielsen for about ten minutes of viewing a day — and naming The Trade Desk as the first DSP to take it, routed into the Ventura ecosystem under a three-way agreement with Vidaa/V. Shown here as evidence of where new CTV supply is being created and who gets first access; the Nielsen figure and the 'first' claim are Nexxen's, and no spend or revenue is attached.

Ofer Druker, CEO, prepared remarks: According to Nielsen, viewers spend an average of about ten minutes per day on this screen deciding what to watch, making it a highly visible and valuable surface. Until now, advertising space on this page has been sold and managed through direct deals and ad servers. Our innovations transform this surface into a fully programmatic advertising opportunity. […] Vidaa, which rebranded as V, is a CTV operating system for Hisense and other OEM brands, and is our first OS partner to adopt this technology, which is now integrated across V-powered devices globally. As announced by The Trade Desk last week, we are pleased to welcome them as our first strategic DSP partner to adopt the solution following an agreement between V, The Trade Desk, and Nexxen International Ltd. to bring this inventory into The Trade Desk Ventura ecosystem. Together, we are collaborating to establish standardized DSP capabilities and drive industry awareness.

p. 9 · Read in context →

Nexxen cutting guidance and attributing part of it to 'a shift in our leading DSP customer reinforcing its SPO strategy' — supply-path optimisation pulling spend away from an intermediary. Nexxen does not name the customer anywhere in the transcript, and the identification should not be assumed — the only mention of The Trade Desk on this call comes from an analyst asking how the existing Trade Desk partnership is going, not from management. The response — doubling down on its own DSP and data to 'reduce third-party reliance' — is the competitive part: a supply partner building demand-side capability of its own.

Ofer Druker, CEO, prepared remarks: While we are encouraged by our momentum and strategic progress, we are disappointed to lower guidance due to near-term headwinds, including softness in select channels and a shift in our leading DSP customer reinforcing its SPO strategy.

That said, our platform's interconnected advanced technology solutions, TV data, and robust omnichannel media footprint give us confidence we can navigate these dynamics and emerge stronger in 2026 and beyond. Our strategy is evolving, not changing, as we are doubling down on our DSP, discovery, and broader data platform to drive enterprise adoption, strengthen end-to-end revenue opportunities, and reduce third-party reliance.

p. 10 · Read in context →

Criteo S.A. (CRTO)

Criteo competes for commerce and retail-media budgets from both sides: Commerce Max is a retail-media DSP and Commerce Grid an SSP that claims to be the programmatic route into retailer audiences for any DSP. It is also the peer furthest ahead on advertising inside an AI assistant, having been named OpenAI's first ad tech partner — a discovery surface that sits outside the open-internet auction.

Criteo's claim to first-mover position in advertising inside ChatGPT: OpenAI's first ad tech partner, with over 1,000 brands live. The brand count and the 'first' designation are Criteo's own and the revenue contribution is described elsewhere on the call as immaterial to guidance. For a demand-side platform, the relevance is the surface, not the size — ad inventory inside an assistant is not bought through the open real-time auction.

Michael Komasinski, CEO, prepared remarks: We entered 2026 with the ambition to lead in agentic AI, and we are already delivering on this ambition with discipline and focus. We became OpenAI's first ad tech partner, integrating our demand into ChatGPT's advertising offering with a focus on experiences that are relevant, additive, and built on user trust. This positions us at the forefront of a new high-intent Discovery Channel for our advertiser clients.

Momentum is building. We now have over 1,000 brands live with incremental budgets from both existing and new clients, strong agency traction, and early expansion across international markets.

p. 3 · Read in context →

A peer's sizing of the market both companies are chasing: AI-powered ad buying growing from roughly $35bn in 2025 to over $140bn by 2030, attributed to Madison and Wall. Criteo uses it to justify a self-service push into SMB budgets. The forecast is a third-party estimate quoted by an interested party, and 'AI-powered ad buying' is not defined in the transcript, so it is not directly comparable to programmatic spend measures.

Michael Komasinski, CEO, prepared remarks: Importantly, GO expands our addressable market, particularly among small and medium-sized businesses. This is supported by strong industry tailwinds with AI-powered ad buying expected to grow from approximately $35 billion in 2025 to over $140 billion by 2030, according to Madison and Wall.

We are already seeing strong interest and expect GO to be a multi-year growth driver. Clients running fully cross-channel campaigns are spending up to three times more, reinforcing the value of an integrated approach.

p. 5 · Read in context →

Criteo positioning Commerce Grid as 'the only programmatic path to Retail Media at scale,' open to any DSP, with over 30% of its commerce inventory buys already routed through it. The exclusivity claim is Criteo's and is contested by the retail-media offerings of other platforms; taken at face value it describes a toll position between advertisers' DSPs and retailer audiences — the same budgets The Trade Desk pursues through its own retail-media integrations.

Michael Komasinski, CEO, prepared remarks: A key differentiator for us is our Commerce Grid's supply side platform. It uniquely enables access to commerce audiences with full DSP interoperability and provides the only programmatic path to Retail Media at scale. It's a growing contributor to our business as agencies and brands ramp up investments to activate commerce audience deals and several leading retailers now use it to power offsite monetization. Today, over 30% of commerce growth inventory buys run through our SSP with meaningful upside as adoption continues to grow in the years ahead.

p. 4 · Read in context →

Adobe Inc. (ADBE)

Adobe Advertising is an enterprise demand-side platform that competed for the same video, display and search budgets, and Adobe's filings are the clearest public record of a software incumbent retreating from that fight: the DSP sits inside a segment Adobe labels legacy, shrinking and now dissolved. Creative Cloud and Digital Experience are out of scope.

Adobe classifies 'our Adobe Advertising offerings' — described in its FY2024 10-K as an end-to-end demand-side platform for video, display and search — among legacy solutions alongside eLearning and PostScript printing, and folds the segment that reported them into a single company-wide segment from Q1 FY2026. The filing gives no advertising-only revenue figure; the Publishing and Advertising segment as a whole was $256m of $23.8bn, down 7% year over year. The reclassification is disclosed as a management-reporting change, not as an exit.

Adobe Inc. FY2025 Form 10-K, Item 1 — Segments: Publishing and Advertising. Our Publishing and Advertising offerings contain legacy solutions including eLearning solutions, technical document publishing, web conferencing, document and forms platform, web App development, high-end printing through Adobe PostScript and Adobe PDF standards and our Adobe Advertising offerings.

Effective in the first quarter of fiscal 2026, we will combine our prior segments—Digital Media, Digital Experience and Publishing and Advertising—into a single operating and reportable segment due to changes in how management intends to evaluate results, allocate resources and execute the strategic opportunities outlined above. Accordingly, we will reflect this segment change in our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the first quarter of fiscal 2026.

p. 18 · Read in context →

The write-down that accompanies the reclassification: a $70m non-cash goodwill impairment on the Publishing and Advertising reporting unit, the unit holding Adobe Advertising, in a quarter of record company revenue. Adobe does not attribute the impairment to the advertising business specifically, and the unit also contains eLearning, web conferencing and print technologies — so this bounds rather than proves the DSP's decline.

Steven Day, Interim CFO, prepared remarks: In Q2, Adobe achieved record revenue of $6.62 billion growing 13% year-over-year as reported and 11% in constant currency. Diluted earnings per share was $4.25 on a GAAP basis and $5.96 on a non-GAAP basis. Our GAAP results reflected a $70 million or $0.17 per share non-cash goodwill impairment charge related to our Publishing and Advertising reporting unit.

p. 6 · Read in context →

More peer documents

Q4_FY2025 — 15 pages · Needham's Laura Martin puts the three-way share question directly to Viant — DV360 third-party down 2%, The Trade Desk up 13%, Viant up 19% — and management answers with named head-to-head wins. · Open →

Q2_FY2025 — 12 pages · Viant's read on the mid-2025 Amazon-competition scare that hit The Trade Desk, including where it thinks Amazon's data advantage does and does not travel beyond CPG. · Open →

DSP_annual_report_FY2024 — 112 pages · Prior-year version of the same competition section, useful for testing whether a rival's description of the DSP competitive set has shifted year over year. · Open →

AMZN_annual_report_FY2025 — 80 pages · Amazon's advertising-services net sales line and its competition and risk language — the audited frame around the DSP claims made on the calls. · Open →

Q1_FY2026 — 12 pages · Google quantifies the divergence in one breath: YouTube ad revenue up 11% while Network advertising revenue is down 4% year on year. · Open →

Q1_FY2026 — 33 pages · Nexxen on the DSPs onboarding its home-screen inventory and its ACR data licensees, and on winning enterprise DSP clients — the partner-competitor boundary in its own words. · Open →

Q4_FY2025 — 16 pages · Criteo's two routes into offsite retail media — Commerce Max and opening retailer audiences to third-party DSPs — and how it expects the industry to focus there in 2026-27. · Open →

ADBE_annual_report_FY2024 — 100 pages · The FY2024 10-K wording that describes Adobe Advertising as "an end-to-end, demand-side platform," the baseline against which the FY2025 legacy classification reads. · Open →