The Trade Desk

ADOTAT's reporting on The Trade Desk: Jeff Green's strategy, the stock's slide, the layoffs, the option repricing, and the gap between what the company tells investors and what its filings show.

All Posts

Wire & File

Oct 2, 2026

Wire & File: Apple Wrote The Trade Desk's Rules. A Jury Wrote Meta's. Dailymotion Wrote A New Name.

Safari locked out The Trade Desk while Google's bids cleared, New Mexico priced Meta's privacy promise at 43 million violations, and Dailymotion rebranded its way past its traffic questions. Plus the IAB's rulebook nobody has to follow, AI agents almost nobody can stop, Jon Cook walking out of WPP's "one company," Nike's layoff plan, and Google asking the web to fact-check the AI it keeps promoting.

The Adotat Staff

The Trade Desk

Sep 25, 2026

The Trade Desk Says It's a Platform. It's an Ad Broker.

Thirty years ago, anyone who sold inventory they didn't own was called a broker. The ANA found 29 cents of every DSP dollar goes to the middle, and The Trade Desk still can't show buyers the segment earned its cut.

The Adotat Staff

Wire & File

Sep 25, 2026

Wire & File: Everybody Announced A Transformation. The Trade Desk Reset The Options

The WFA rebuilt agency pay and filed rebates under "separate issue." Infillion attacked walled gardens while building one. Dentsu signed on to represent both sides of an anime deal. IAB Europe forecast agentic scale and Apostra reported $1.2 million. And in the File: The Trade Desk's repricing proxy, where Jeff Green's 1.6 million options get reset, his 50.2% of the vote decides it, and the 575 people laid off don't qualify.

The Adotat Staff

The Trade Desk

Sep 7, 2026

Nothing Without Great Labor. The Trade Desk Cut 575 People Who Supplied It.

Brooklyn College put the line on its seal. Horace put it in the mouth of a man who had never worked a day in his life, pestering a stranger on the Via Sacra for an introduction. Two thousand years later he runs the reorg.

Pesach Lattin

The Trade Desk

Sep 6, 2026

Sunday Issue: The Trade Desk Fired 575 People Before Labor Day. The Memo Called Them Its Greatest Asset.

Jeff Green had $1.5 billion, zero debt, and $269 million of unused buyback authorization. He chose 575 people, the day before Labor Day weekend, and called it agility.

Pesach Lattin

Trade Desk Turned Off Its "Fundamental Reinvention." It Named That Zuma.

The Trade Desk

Aug 28, 2026

Trade Desk Turned Off Its "Fundamental Reinvention." It Named That Zuma.

The signature feature of Kokai is now a checkbox you can uncheck. The stock is down ninety percent. The guy who ran their TV operating system left to run a fake supermarket in Las Vegas.

Pesach Lattin

Canadian DSP StackAdapt's Report Implies Its Platform Can't Earn The Trust It's Asking For

The Trade Desk

Aug 20, 2026

Canadian DSP StackAdapt's Report Implies Its Platform Can't Earn The Trust It's Asking For

A StackAdapt-commissioned survey set out to prove marketers are ready to trust AI with their budgets. Instead it produced a coin-flip approval rating for autonomous AI, a 6% action rate on its own recommendations, and a client base that voted, given the choice, for AI to write reports instead. Four trade outlets ran it as news anyway.

Pesach Lattin

Jeff Green Said Amazon's DSP Had No Upside. Trade Desk Guided Down $89 Million.

Investors

Aug 12, 2026

Jeff Green Said Amazon's DSP Had No Upside. Trade Desk Guided Down $89 Million.

The Trade Desk's Q2 was a 3 percent quarter. The guide was the news, the take rate is still a secret, and the measurement product that would prove the whole thesis is in alpha.

Pesach Lattin

The Trade Desk

Aug 11, 2026

The Trade Desk Croutons Came Back

An analyst asked Jeff Green what The Trade Desk charges. He described a hypothetical bullshit sandwich. Everyone thanked him and moved on.

Pesach Lattin

Buddy Video, or Hostage Video? How Brian Lesser's WPP Media Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Jeff Green

WPP

Aug 4, 2026

Buddy Video, or Hostage Video? How Brian Lesser's WPP Media Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Jeff Green

Why is WPP "outsourcing" their media buys to the Trade Desk?

Pesach Lattin