Nothing can stop Jeff Green’s The Trade Desk, apparently.
The DSP reported another strong quarter, with Q4 2020 revenue totaling $319.9 million — up almost 50% (48%) year-over-year. TTD customers spent a record $4.2 billion through the platform last year, a rise of more than one-third (34%).
To this point, the pandemic hasn’t hurt the company. According to eMarketer, total global ad spending declined 4.5% last year, as key verticals like travel, auto and entertainment remain soft. TTD saw impressive growth, however, driven mainly by CTV, political advertising during an election year and the holiday season.
“CTV spend (on our platform) more than doubled for the year,” said Green during the earnings call. Meanwhile, political advertising represented a high single-digit contribution to the company’s growth in the fourth quarter.
“Political filled a hole for (us) that was left by other advertisers and other important verticals that have not yet returned to their pre-pandemic levels,” added Green.
With the company’s latest earnings report, TTD’s stock price now sits at $903.35. Last year, at the same time, the stock was just under $774.
Beyond its financial success, Green also talked up TTD’s growing ecosystem role during earnings, highlighting the company’s traction with its Unified ID 2.0 solution (UID).
Among SSPs, Index Exchange, Magnite, Pubmatic, OpenX and SpotX are all on board. Criteo is, as well, plus data connectivity companies LiveRamp and Neustar. On the publisher side, MediaVine and fuboTV have signed on for UID, along with The Washington Post and their Zeus Technology. Nielsen is also supporting the initiative.
On the value proposition for its ID, Green said, “What advertisers really want is a trusted system that solves the identity problem while also solving for the measurement opportunity. And if we get that right, once again, we prove out the value of the open Internet versus the limitations of walled gardens, where measurement is typically some variation of grading your own homework.”
Earlier this week, The Trade Desk also announced that Prebid has signed on to be one of the independent governing organizations of UID. That announcement follows the TTD’s submission of its ID to PRAM after the group called for contributions of addressability code for collaborative development.
“Governance of UID will ultimately be federated,” said Green.
