The Commerce Desk generated $715 million in Q2, up by solely 3% year-over-year.
Shares dropped by greater than 20% in after-hours buying and selling instantly after TTD reported its outcomes on Thursday.
“Our income development is beneath our expectations and beneath the usual we maintain ourselves to,” CEO Jeff Inexperienced instructed buyers.
Though he additionally cautioned that TTD’s underwhelming top-line numbers final quarter usually are not reflective of the underlying well being of the enterprise.
Inexperienced famous that sure classes – notably automotive and plenty of CPG model – are dealing with main headwinds, from macroeconomic and political turmoil to persistent commodity pressures, together with declining West African cocoa harvests to rising aluminum prices.
These headwinds are largely hitting the largest legacy advertisers.
CPG giants like Procter & Gamble, for instance, “had been as soon as the largest in promoting,” Inexperienced stated, “and they’re nonetheless one of many greatest.”
That’s mirrored in The Commerce Desk’s buyer combine. Inexperienced stated that “nearly all” of the spend flowing by way of the DSP comes from Fortune 500 firms. However the true acceleration is going on exterior of TTD’s 500 largest model accounts, the place development is at 50% year-over-year thus far in 2026.
In different phrases, TTD is seeing what Inexperienced known as “inexperienced shoots” from smaller challenger or ecommerce-native manufacturers, in addition to greater than 30% development in its EMEA and APAC companies – a shift from earlier years when development was concentrated primarily within the US.
He additionally known as out audio advertisements, which are actually TTD’s fastest-growing media sort, an indication that CTV has matured and is rising off a bigger base. Audio accounted for 7% of complete spend in Q2.
However even with these inexperienced shoots, Wall Road is frightened about one thing extra elementary: pricing.
For buyers, lots of TTD’s issues and market vulnerabilities come all the way down to the corporate’s persistently excessive take charge – inside some extent or two of 20% for the previous decade. In its 10 years as a public firm, TTD’s take charge has risen 5 occasions and dropped 5 occasions, Inexperienced instructed analyst Justin Patterson of Keybanc Capital Markets, who requested whether or not Inexperienced had modified his “pricing philosophy” and would contemplate slicing charges to win again enterprise.
“If we are able to develop quicker or win extra enterprise by altering that worth or altering the method, we’ll at all times take a look at it and contemplate it,” Inexperienced stated. However, he added, TTD is assured in its pricing and has been capable of preserve its take charge constant over years whereas additionally including incremental worth with new merchandise and partnerships.
“I don’t suppose that the online quantity has to vary dramatically as a result of we’re extraordinarily assured that we’re including extra worth than we value,” he stated.
In the meantime, as regular, Inexperienced additionally used TTD’s earnings name to take photographs at walled backyard platform merchandise, particularly citing the Amazon DSP – which touts its zero-margin take charge – and Google’s new Purchaser Direct program, which funnels programmatic direct offers to publishers that use GAM and caps advert tech vendor and information charges at roughly 10%.
In Inexperienced’s view, these companies don’t signify the pursuits of patrons, although. Purchaser Direct is explicitly a writer instrument, and the buy-side advert tech on supply from Amazon and Google respectively is likewise constructed to serve their very own media, together with Amazon Prime, Amazon Sponsored Product Adverts, YouTube and advertisements throughout Google.
These platforms could trumpet their low charges, however the prices are simply being shuffled, Inexperienced argued, and within the course of they ship lower-quality stock on the open internet.
“These approaches look extra like advert networks of 2006 than replicate the progress that our business has made within the final 20 years,” Inexperienced stated.
Which begs the considerably facetious but additionally truthful query: What progress has our business made within the final 20 years?
