How The Trade Desk went from media agency BFF to frenemy

By Michael Bürgi

The Trade Desk was once seen by agencies as the helpful, friendly alternative to the might and heft of Google when buying inventory programmatically. Seems those happy days have faded in recent months, as several media agencies complain the ad-tech firm has become less transparent, more expensive to use — and perhaps so big that they have begun to fear it.

Why fear it? Because The Trade Desk has made efforts over the last year to generate a closer and more direct relationship with brands — media agencies’ clients. But also because, besides seeking out negotiating clout on their own, there’s not much media agencies can do since The Trade Desk has become such an important part of programmatic buying and selling of inventory.

None of the media agencies or analysts Digiday reached for this story would speak for attribution, due to continued existing relationships with The Trade Desk (TTD).

A TTD representative refuted the agencies’ complaints, saying the firm has done nothing different in the last year that would provoke them — and added that no agencies have voiced complaints about these issues.

“Our agency partners are our closest allies in the transformation of the media business to a more data-driven ecosystem built on trust, transparency, and objectivity within the open internet,” said the representative.

For many agency traders, TTD’s concentration of power is both from a business perspective, because it performed more consistently than, and grew steadily relative, to other vendors, but also because it did a solid job early on of positioning itself as the anti-Google (whose DV360 is a rival to TTD) and a champion of the open web.

Now the tables are almost turned, not only because agencies point to poorer customer service assistance from TTD, but improved customer service from Google. That latter development may have more to do with Google experiencing its first-ever revenue downturn in 2022, which has perhaps necessitated a kinder and friendlier approach to agencies and clients. Still, the end result, to media agencies, is that TTD comes across as less helpful than it used to be.

So what are the complaints?

Direct outreach to clients around agencies

All the agencies reached for this story agreed TTD is approaching clients more directly. One pointed to The Trade Desk’s increasingly close relationship with Walmart as a direct threat.

In February 2022, TTD launched OpenPath, which worked with a number of publishers to provide advertisers with direct access to their inventory. Agencies are grumbling this effectively cuts them out of the buy-sell equation. (Although one agency exec noted TTD’s move hurts other programmatic vendors more than it hurts agencies.)

TTD sees it quite differently. “To help our agency clients drive objective value in digital advertising, The Trade Desk has long pioneered and championed supply chain improvements that increase transparency, most recently with the launch of OpenPath,” responded TTD’s rep. “As a result, the relationships and alignment on the buy-side that we have with our agency clients have never been …read more

Source:: Digiday