The Trade Desk Is 'Looking More Now' at Acquisitions, CEO Jeff Green Says

The Trade Desk has announced just two acquisitions since its 2016 IPO — and CEO Jeff Green now says the demand-side platform is scanning the market for deals more aggressively than at any point in its history.

Speaking on the company's third-quarter earnings call on Monday night, Green said: "Our philosophy on M&A has not fundamentally changed. We are always looking, and I will just transparently say we are looking more now than we historically have, partly because I just think there is a bunch of opportunity in the market that there has not been in the past."

For a company whose deal record fits on an index card, that is a notable admission. Green declined to name targets. He made clear the bar any deal must clear is higher than ever.

What has The Trade Desk actually bought?

The public record is thin:

• Adbrain, a London-based identity resolution company, acquired in October 2017.
• Sincera, a New York ad data startup The Trade Desk had already backed through its venture arm, acquired in January 2025. Terms were not disclosed.

AdExchanger reported a third deal in between, but the target was never named. The Trade Desk's cash flow statement shows $4.35 million spent on a business acquisition in the first nine months of 2025 — the window in which Sincera closed. At roughly $1.45 million per quarter, that figure signals tuck-in purchases, not transformational buys.

Neither announced deal triggered a spending spree, and Green worked to keep it that way. Weeks after the Sincera news broke, he used his slot at the IAB's Annual Leadership Meeting to squash talk of a new acquisition strategy, noting Sincera's team was small before steering the conversation back to technology The Trade Desk builds itself. Nearly two years on, the philosophy is officially unchanged. The amount of looking is not.

"We do not ever want to lose sight of the opportunity in front of us and do not want to get distracted through M&A, but at the same time recognize that that can help accelerate us," Green said. "We are always looking."

Why the shift now?

The timing is not accidental. Revenue has fallen for the first time since the IPO. Fourth-quarter guidance sits about 11% below last year's. Amazon continues to eat into The Trade Desk's share of the market.

Green has spent the year rebuilding from the inside: updates to the buying platform, a tighter focus on measurement and a 15% workforce cut. Building alone has not fixed the business fast enough. Critics have spent months pointing to holes a purchase could plug, from identity data to retail transaction signals.

The money to fill those gaps is already in the bank. The company ended the third quarter with $1.23 billion in cash and cash equivalents, plus another $420 million in short-term investments, with no debt on its balance sheet.

What standard would a deal have to meet?

Green set a high threshold. "It is also critical to take away that our standards are also higher than ever," he said. "The reason why our standards are higher than ever is we have an opportunity to execute and accelerate our growth with all the changes that we have made in our business. I would never want to derail that by making our 17th priority our number one priority simply because we bought a company."

In plain terms: any acquisition must fit the turnaround already underway, not redefine it.

"By being super focused on the things that we look at and hold that acquisition standard to a very high level, we think we create the clearest opportunities ahead," Green said.

With revenue declining, Amazon pressing and more than $1.6 billion in ready capital, the question for 2026 is whether The Trade Desk's first large-scale buy finally arrives.