The Trade Desk
One sentence overview: The Trade Desk Inc markets a software platform used by digital ad buyers to purchase data-driven digital advertising campaigns across various ad formats and devices.
The Trade Desk Ticker : TTD
June 5, 2020 Stock Price : $354.29
June 5, 2020 Market Cap : $16.2 billion
Total Shares Outstanding Recent Quarterly Report : 48 million shares
Jan 2020 | March Low | Apr 30 | June 5, 2020 | YTD % | |
The Trade Desk | $271 | $144 | $294 | $354 | 31% |
S&P 500 | 3231 | 2237 | 2912 | 3194 | -1% |
The Trade Desk Investor Relations Page
http://investors.thetradedesk.com/investor-overview
The Trade Desk SEC Page
https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?CIK=ttd&Find=Search&owner=exclude&action=getcompany
The Trade Desk Glassdoor Ratings
https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/The-Trade-Desk-Reviews-E779832.htm
The Trade Desk Overview
The Trade Desk was co-founded in 2009 by Jeff Green, the company’s chairman and CEO, and David R. “Dave” Pickles, its chief technology officer (CTO). The partners had met at Microsoft, where Pickles worked, after it acquired Green’s real-time, online auction advertising company, AdECN, in 2007.
In 2012, the company was included as an alpha partner in Facebook’s launch of the real-time bidding (RTB) advertising platform, Facebook Exchange.
The Trade Desk launched its IPO September 21, 2016, with an initial stock price of $18.00; its IPO closing market price gained to $30.10 per share
Products
In 2017, The Trade Desk became one of the originators of the OpenRTB SupplyChain, which provides transparency in programmatic buying, enabling buyers to see all selling or reselling parties to a bid request.
In 2018, The Trade Desk launched new AI tools: Koa, an AI forecast engine; Megagon user interface; and The Trade Desk Planner, for mapping strategies. That year, the company also introduced its proprietary unified ID solution, as a free universal cookie identification service.
In September 2019, The Trade Desk launched an advertising campaign, “Media for Humankind,” to position itself as a “more transparent digital advertising” alternative to Google and Facebook.
The Trade Desk is a “demand-side” or “buy-side’ ad platform which allows advertisers to buy ads in auction-like format through real-time bidding. This is an automated method for buying and selling inventory that eliminates the need to call up an agency or salespeople to place the ad. The official term for this is programmatic, and the trend is popular in ad-tech.
Business and Financial Drivers




Competition
- Google Marketing Platform
- Basis
- MediaMath TerminalOne Marketing OS™
- dataxu
- Amobee DSP
Future Outlook
The rise of the connected TV and content creators like Disney Plus, The Trade Desk is well positioned to provide a demand side ad platform.
Disclaimer: I do not have any formal recommendation for or against this stock, so don’t buy or sell stocks based solely on what you read.
Interested in receiving a weekly recap of reviewed stocks? Sign up.