Transcripts
The Trade Desk, Inc.'s management answers for the business every quarter. These are the exchanges that explain it best — verbatim, from the call transcripts preserved in Sources. Each link opens the full transcript at that page in a new tab.
Q1 FY2026 Earnings Call — Q1 FY2026
The current state of the story: growth decelerating on macro, management drawing the line between cyclical and structural, and the clearest statement yet of why it refuses to own supply. · Open the full transcript →
The retail-data scale claim against Amazon, and what a flat-fee data product did to one campaign.
Jeffrey Terry Green (CEO and Co-Founder): Over the last five years or so, we have created the world’s largest and richest marketplace of retail data. Combined, we believe the retailers in our data marketplace represent more than 80% of sales from top U.S. retailers, compared to Amazon, who represents less than 15% of U.S. retail spend. This is a huge advantage for us. […] For example, a leading travel brand recently ran a test to evaluate campaign performance with and without activating our new product Audience Unlimited. The results across all KPIs were fantastic. Audience Unlimited delivered 30% lower CPMs on media, 38% lower data costs, a 75% more efficient CPA, and a 2.7x increase in conversion rate compared to the control group. Most importantly, Audience Unlimited increased campaign performance while simultaneously reducing manual effort in the audience selection process.
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How the revenue actually splits — by channel, geography and vertical — in the most recent quarter.
Tahnil Davis (Interim Chief Financial Officer and Chief Accounting Officer): In Q1, we delivered revenue of $689 million, representing 12% year-over-year growth. We generated $206 million of adjusted EBITDA during the quarter, representing a 30% margin. Our growth in Q1 was driven by strong trends across CTV and audio. Video, which includes CTV, represented a low-50s percent of our business in Q1 and continues to grow as a percentage of our channel mix. Mobile represented a high-28s percent share of the business during the quarter, while display represented a low double-digit share. Audio represented around 6% of the business and grew year over year at a rate higher than any other channel in Q1. […] Geographically, the United States represented approximately 82% of our revenue in Q1, and international represented approximately 18%. Our strong momentum in both EMEA and APAC reflects the investments we have made in these regions over the last several years as well as momentum in CTV across these markets. Among verticals that represent at least 1% of our business, we saw particularly strong growth in medical health, automotive, and events. We continue to see some pressure in the home and garden and food and drink sectors as CPG brands navigate geopolitical uncertainty, consumer softness, and input cost inflation.
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The margin commitment defended with softer revenue: how the 40% EBITDA target is meant to hold.
Justin Tyler Patterson (KeyBanc); Tahnil Davis (Interim Chief Financial Officer and Chief Accounting Officer): Great. Thanks. Good afternoon. I am curious to hear more about investment priorities against that 40% EBITDA margin target. Obviously, revenue and margins are both off to a softer start in the first half. I am curious how we should think about the levers to achieve that target. Thank you. […] As a company, we have always been very disciplined around hiring and reinvestment in the business. 2026 is a year of disciplined reinvestment for us. We expect our full-year adjusted EBITDA margin percentage to be at least 40%, approximately in line with last year. We again expect headcount growth to remain below revenue growth, reflecting continued operating discipline and increasing productivity across our business. At the same time, we will continue investing in areas where we see the highest long-term ROI, particularly around platform innovation, AI, retail media, and measurement. One advantage of our model is that we generate strong cash flow and can maintain significant flexibility in how we pace our investments and expenses, which allows us to maintain those high levels of profitability. So our focus is clear: maintain strong profitability, invest where ROI is the highest, and continue positioning the business for greater leverage over the long term.
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What the platform actually does per second, and why management thinks agentic AI reinforces rather than bypasses it.
Jessica Reif Ehrlich (Bank of America); Jeffrey Terry Green (CEO and Co-Founder): Thank you. Jeff, you said early in the call in your prepared remarks you mentioned the partnership with Stagwell. It just seems like you would not have brought that up if it was not important. I know it is early days, but when do you think agentic trading will become the dominant dynamic in programmatic media, and how will The Trade Desk, Inc. be impacted by this? […] We fundamentally believe that we will lead the agentic revolution in programmatic advertising. I have said on a number of stages in our industry recently that I do not think there is an industry in the world that is better suited to be upgraded from agentic AI than programmatic advertising. I do think programmatic will benefit tremendously from agentic. […] Most companies that are focused on agentic in our space are just talking about plugging into these tiny pools of inventory—one advertiser connects to one publisher. In doing so, you more or less create another ad network, where you have hundreds of thousands of ad networks, because of the combination of advertiser to one publisher and agents talking to each other, and it gets rid of the opportunity for you to look at everything at once and then make holistic decisions and compare all of those. That is part of the reason also in the prepared remarks that we talked about why it is so important to look at all of the QPS that we do and to maintain decisioning so that you can look at those—currently 20 million ad opportunities every single second—and then choose carefully the 300 or 400 the biggest brands in the world should be buying. […] One simple way to explain agentic AI is that it is a layer on top of the API that can reason—or, said simply, an API that can reason—while simultaneously creating productivity. What we started with Stagwell is the ability to create and edit campaigns in the most basic form. That will, of course, evolve into optimizations.
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Q4 and Full Year FY2025 Earnings Call — Q4 FY2025
The best single explanation of the model: where the take rate comes from, what OpenPath charges, why CPG and auto cost five points of growth, and what the reorganization was for. · Open the full transcript →
A head-to-head against the Amazon DSP, quantified — the concrete case for not owning inventory.
Jeff Green (CEO): One of the world's leading appliance manufacturers recently ran a test between The Trade Desk and the Amazon DSP, focusing on CTV ad performance in one of their most important markets. They found that, with The Trade Desk, they were able to reach 70% more unique households because we gave them access to a much wider range of relevant touch points with those consumers. With The Trade Desk, they were able to reach those consumers at 30% lower total cost, so significantly better reach for meaningfully lower cost. And the kicker is The Trade Desk platform performed six times better in terms of delivering their campaign goals. All of this happened because we provided the client with objective decisioning across the open Internet. We didn't prioritize our own impressions because we don't own any.
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The guidance philosophy behind a weak Q1 margin: a timing effect, with the data-center transition named.
Tahnil Davis (CFO): So regarding our Q1 EBITDA guide, thanks for the question. So first, in Q1, I would characterize this as primarily a timing thing. We continue to expect full-year adjusted EBITDA margins to be approximately in line with 2025. The primary driver in Q1 is infrastructure investment. […] Our incremental investments are focused on infrastructure and talent. In particular, we're completing our transition to owned data centers and strengthening the AI and machine learning capabilities that power our platform. So the balance is clear: invest where the ROI is highest, maintain strong profitability, and position us for improved leverage beyond 2026.
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Why management rejects the brand-versus-performance split, and what last-touch attribution breaks.
Jeff Green (CEO), replying to Matthew Swanson (RBC): There is this narrative on Wall Street that performance budgets are more DTC or they're more mid-market and then there's brand budgets that are separate from that. That paradigm, I just reject. I think everything is performance now; it's just a matter of where you are in the funnel. The problem with framing it that way is you reinforce a serious problem in the ecosystem, which is that all of the measurement frameworks that have existed to date just give credit to the last person who touched the ball before it went in the net. The rest of the team gets nothing. […] Nobody types in 'Buy Mercedes-Benz' into Google without seeing the commercial or hearing about the company before that. Giving all the credit to the last touch has been a serious mistake.
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Q3 FY2025 Earnings Call — Q3 FY2025
The call where management finally put numbers on the Amazon question, defined the open internet from first principles, and answered what happens if a rival prices its DSP at zero. · Open the full transcript →
A first-principles definition of the open internet — the single most useful passage for a new reader.
Jeff Green (CEO): A reminder, the open Internet is the portion of the Internet where price discovery and competition exists. In the open Internet, every transaction is arm's length. Walled gardens are built around owned and operated inventory instead of third-party inventory. Price discovery comes when the buyer and seller are different entities.
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Trial exhibits used to argue Google's DSP stopped buying the open internet: YouTube up ~800%, open internet flat.
Jeff Green (CEO): This was helpfully made public throughout the antitrust trial of the Department of Justice versus Google when they revealed numbers that Google normally does not report on. Exhibits and industry experts estimated that in 2019, the open Internet and owned and operated inventory on YouTube were equally split in share of wallet on DV360. However, between 2019 and today, roughly all of the incremental dollars and growth from DV360 has gone to YouTube. YouTube spend increased by about 800%, while Google's buying of the open Internet stayed essentially flat for the same period of time. During that time, the Trade Desk seems to have surpassed Google in the amount bought on the open Internet, again, according to others.
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Where the growth is supposed to come from: consumer time on the open internet and 60% of TAM outside the US.
Jeff Green (CEO): Second, we're introducing trading modes. This is a bit like driving modes in a car where the user can decide how they would like to engage with the system. Would they prefer to have control where they have more decisions and a greater burden of work? Or would they prefer to simply optimize the performance and lean on the machine? In both cases, we're introducing Agentic AI as a copilot to ensure optimal campaign performance, but its role and engagement will differ based on the trading modes. […] Our research shows that the average consumer now spends two-thirds of their digital time on the open Internet, even though most budgets today still go through Facebook, Google, and TikTok. This imbalance will correct over time. Outside the U.S., our business is growing significantly faster than in the United States. Given that 60% of the TAM is outside of the U.S., this movement is in the right direction of capturing the TAM.
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The account-coverage machinery quantified: live JBPs, pipeline, scorecards and the resulting CPM decline.
Jeff Green (CEO), replying to Justin Patterson (KeyBanc): Last quarter, we had over 180 live JBPs with some of our largest clients. We have an additional 80 JBPs in the pipeline right now worth billions of dollars in total. We've been driving individual contributor-level accountability with BD, AM, and trader scorecards. As a result of those accountabilities alone, we believe that's contributed to CPMs declining by up to 43% on average and resulting in meaningful return on ad spend improvements. […] Today, joint business plans now make up about half the business. As you can tell from that pipeline, we're in a great position for that to be even more of our business as we go into next year.
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Asked if AI search shrinks publisher inventory; the answer sizes the funnel TTD actually selects from.
Jason Helfstein (Oppenheimer); Jeff Green (CEO): Jeff, are you seeing an impact from Agentic search on available publisher inventory? And how are you helping publishers navigate that and basically AI? […] So we look at roughly 20 million ad impression opportunities every single second. That's about $1.7 trillion every single day. That means we're doing more transactions than Visa, Mastercard, and American Express combined do in a year in less than 30 seconds. When you look at that many impressions, and just to be open, we buy a low single-digit percentage of that total, you'd have to when it's that big. So that means that if we take 20 million down to 15 million per second because of AI, there's not really much different about our business model, nothing at all.
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Q2 FY2025 Earnings Call — Q2 FY2025
The call that set off the Amazon debate — "Amazon is not a competitor" in full context — plus the dual-class extension rationale and why a large-advertiser book behaves differently from an SMB one. · Open the full transcript →
Why tariff pressure hits TTD differently: the book is large global brands, not SMBs.
Vasily Karasyov (Cannonball Research); Jeffrey Terry Green (CEO): So Jeff, you work with nearly all of the world's biggest advertisers. And Laura, in her prepared remarks, mentioned the uncertainty because of the tariff situation. We also heard names like P&G, Kimberly-Clark, Ford, and Volkswagen talk about this uncertainty on their earnings calls. So my question is, how do you see that dynamic playing out in terms of ad spend in the remainder of the year? And how are you factoring that into your Q3 guidance? […] There is an important point that we haven't made enough, I think, in our prepared remarks, and I don't know that this is fully appreciated about the difference between us and many other businesses in digital advertising. Most others rely heavily on SMBs, and our platform is largely concentrated on the large global advertisers. So we see the effects that are directly impacting them. So I would argue that this is a short-term negative, which by the way, this fact that we concentrate on the large ones is not generally a negative. It is almost always a positive. But just in this moment, it's negative because of how uniquely they're being affected by the tariffs and related policies.
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The hardest question on the call: if the open internet is winning, why are the walled gardens growing faster?
Jessica Jean Reif Ehrlich Cohen (Bank of America); Jeffrey Terry Green (CEO): Jeff, while you present a strong case for the open Internet, it seems to be losing market share when you consider the growth rates of major platforms like Meta, Amazon, and Google. How do you see the share shift between walled gardens and the open Internet in the coming years? Are Connected TV and retail media simply growing at a slower pace than walled gardens? Specifically for Trade Desk, when you speak about capturing market share, who are you taking it from? Is it other demand-side platforms or the walled gardens? […] While Facebook had a strong quarter and clearly understands the potential of AI, their situation allows for easier optimization du to their abundant supply and the consistent engagement on Instagram. In the short term, integrating AI into Facebook and Instagram is less complex than building better supply chains across the entire Internet. Our focus on enhancing the premium segments of the open Internet may take longer but offers greater potential. […] It's essential to recognize that we are engaged in a distinct and extended game, and the impact of AI provides us with a substantial advantage.
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Q4 and Full Year FY2024 Earnings Call — Q4 FY2024
The landmark call: the first guidance miss in 33 quarters, owned as self-inflicted, with the reorganization, the Google-exit thesis and the TAM math laid out under direct questioning. · Open the full transcript →
The structural response: largest reorganization in company history, and engineering broken into scrum teams.
Jeff Green (CEO): First, we implemented the largest reorganization in company history in December. While we usually make structural changes at year-end to enhance our business, this one was larger than usual. We clarified roles and responsibilities for most employees, resulting in a change in reporting structures. Additionally, we streamlined client-facing teams, minimizing complexity and clarifying duties. Some teams now focus on brands, while others concentrate on agencies. Our commitment to agencies remains strong, while we expand direct relationships with brands, particularly through Joint Business Plans, which grow 50% faster than the rest of our business. […] Fourth, we revamped our product development process, returning to smaller, agile teams that provide weekly updates instead of relying on waterfall methods, which are less suitable for our fast-changing industry. Our engineering team is divided into nearly 100 scrum teams, enhancing collaboration with the business team on what has been accomplished and what’s upcoming.
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The two bets underneath the thesis: that Google leaves the open internet, and that objectivity is the moat.
Jeff Green (CEO): Second, we are preparing for a world where Google distances itself from the open internet. I believe Google will eventually withdraw from the open internet, which would address many of its antitrust issues. […] Third, we will prioritize and safeguard our objectivity more than ever. Increasingly, the few competitors we face exhibit significant objectivity issues. Amazon, for instance, is soliciting ad budgets while competing against numerous Fortune 500 companies across various sectors. Fifteen years ago, we argued that the objective, independent DSP should capture the majority of the market because it can be trusted.
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The CFO takes ownership of the forecast failure, and confirms take rate held its historical range.
Laura Schenkein (CFO): However, for the first time, in our 8.5 years as a public company, excluding the first quarter of 2020, our results came in below our expectations. As a company, we take great pride in our ability to forecast accurately, and we take full ownership of this shortfall. Importantly, this miss was not due to lack of opportunity or increased competition, it was on us. […] As expected, our take rate in 2024 once again remained within a very consistent historical range. The shift of advertising dollars to CTV continues to be a core driver of our business.
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The investment answer: deliberate deleverage, capital intensity near 5% of revenue, and a stated off-ramp.
Laura Schenkein (CFO): On the investments required for 2025, first just looking back at 2024, we delivered an incredibly strong year in terms of profitability and cash flow generation. And we exited the year with a strong balance sheet. So as I mentioned in the script, we anticipate a modest increase in the growth rate of our operating expenses in 2025 compared to previous years. And as a result of that, we would expect some deleverage for the year. […] Our capital intensity also remains low. We expect CapEx to be approximately 5% of total revenue. And when I look across our growth drivers frankly, I believe nearly all of them are still in their early stages compared to where they will be in 5 to 10 years. So if we generate significant revenue gains, we'll continue investing. And if not or if the current environment significantly changes, we'll have the flexibility to adjust our investment pace accordingly.
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Amazon separated into its three advertising businesses — the framing management reused for the next year.
Jason Helfstein (Oppenheimer); Jeff Green (CEO): Thanks for taking my question. So Jeff, I just wanted to ask a bit about Amazon. It's gotten a lot of investor attention, a lot of trade press as far as the company making improvements to their DSP, getting aggressive with Prime Video ads. Just how do you view them in the competitive landscape? Did you see any kind of change in the fourth quarter? And just, I guess, how do you think about them as a competitor going forward? Thank you. […] And I think it is really important that investors parse out the three roles that Amazon plays in advertising. The biggest one by far is that they are a search engine, competing with Google's core business if you will. And that is the biggest source of revenue for them in advertising. The second is probably Prime Video. And I think that one is very interesting because I think that the right way to look at them is somebody like Paramount or like Box. They are creating premium content, and they created a lot of ads as a result of that.
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More calls
Q1 FY2025 Earnings Call — Q1 FY2025 · 12 pages · The first call after the miss, where management argues the fixes took hold — 25% growth — and restates the founding bet from the original business plan that there would be ten or fewer scaled DSPs, most of them conflicted. · Open →
Q3 FY2024 Earnings Call — Q3 FY2024 · 14 pages · The source of the "10 macro forces" framework management cited on the next several calls; go here for the pre-miss version of the bull case, set out one force at a time. · Open →
Q2 FY2024 Earnings Call — Q2 FY2024 · 13 pages · The operating model at its peak — 26% growth described as the continuation of a multi-year 20%-plus streak — useful as the baseline the later deceleration is measured against. · Open →
Q1 FY2024 Earnings Call — Q1 FY2024 · 13 pages · Growth accelerating to 28% with the heaviest UID2 and OpenPath discussion of any call, before the Kokai migration became a drag. · Open →
Q4 and Full Year FY2023 Earnings Call — Q4 FY2023 · 19 pages · The clearest statement of the take-rate model as designed at inception: hold take rate constant while raising platform value, alongside FY2023 spend of $9.6 billion. · Open →
Q1 FY2022 Earnings Call — Q1 FY2022 · 42 pages · The pre-Kokai era, for readers wanting the origin of UID2 and OpenPath and the 95%-plus customer retention figure management leaned on then. · Open →