Chris Vanderhook Accuses The Trade Desk of Building Its Own Adtech Death Star

If you’re still thinking TTD is your partner, Vanderhook thinks you’ve been ghosted.

Pesach Lattin (ADOTAT)
May 13, 2025

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🔥 “The champion of the open internet wants to turn it into their own walled garden.”

🚨 How to Start a War Without a Press Release

Chris Vanderhook isn’t just trolling The Trade Desk — he’s declaring war on its entire operating model.

We already noted last month he was taking them on but now he’s gone full war

Forget sanitized press releases. The gloves are off in public now, and the battlefield isn’t an earnings call — it’s Linkedin

Chris Vanderhook, co-founder of Viant, keeps taking swing at The Trade Desk (TTD), accusing it of executing one of the greatest sleight-of-hand moves in adtech: building a walled garden while branding it as a revolution.

And here's what’s got the industry whispering:

💣 The Alleged Strategy

TTD is quietly assembling a vertically integrated empire:

🖥 Ventura: its own CTV operating system
🛠 A CMS layer à la Wurl or Amagi
🪪 UID2/OpenPass to control identity resolution
📦 A full-stack adtech suite to eat the pipes it once claimed to open

This isn’t speculation.
It's been pitched in closed-door meetings. Floated in agency DMs.
One exec described it as “Google’s playbook, but with better lighting and no press release.”

Even Sonos, once rumored to be TTD’s hardware partner, has exited stage left — pulling the plug on its CTV hardware ambitions and leaving Ventura with no clear entry point into the living room.

🧠 Let’s Call It What It Is

The Trade Desk isn’t trying to power the open internet.

It’s trying to own it — one layer at a time.

UID2 gives them the identity lock.
OpenPath puts the squeeze on SSPs and publishers.
JBPs cozy them up to Fortune 100 brands — often at the expense of agencies.
And Kokai? It’s an AI margin engine disguised as automation.

Jeff Green doesn’t need a turtleneck. He’s already building his own version of Apple — for adtech.

“The champion of the open internet wants to turn it into their own walled garden.”

Chris Vanderhook

⚠️ Why This Hits You Now

TTD’s earnings stumble cracked the halo.
Wall Street blinked.
And Viant smelled blood.

Three holding companies are already re-evaluating JBP agreements.
One global CPG brand has paused its Kokai rollout.
And multiple agencies are quietly shifting test budgets to platforms that aren’t quietly eating their role in the ecosystem.

If your Q4 strategy includes major TTD spend, you should be asking:

“Am I still the customer? Or am I just the pass-through?”

🔒 This Is Where ADOTAT+ Begins

You’ve just read the first 10% of one of the biggest shakeups in adtech strategy.
What comes next?

Screenshots from execs warning, “We’re getting locked out.”
The internal pitches that are turning agencies against their own DSP contracts.
Viant’s play-by-play strategy to siphon off TTD’s mid-market accounts.
A full breakdown of which publishers are refusing to sign OpenPath terms.

This isn’t LinkedIn speculation. It’s inside-baseball strategy, seen from the trench.

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Chris Vanderhook Accuses The Trade Desk of Building Its Own Adtech Death Star

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