The Trade Desk's Q3 Revenue Dipped to $736 Million as Profit Fell 67%

The Trade Desk posted $736 million in Q3 revenue, down slightly from $739 million a year ago, while profit dropped from $116 million to $38 million. The company beat the pessimistic forecast it set for itself earlier this year, but growth has stalled — and CEO Jeff Green knows it.

"Our growth is still below the level we expect from ourselves and what we think we are capable of," Green told investors on the Q3 earnings call Monday evening, "and, honestly, what the ecosystem needs from us."

Who is buying programmatic now?

The buyer has changed. Decisions about media buys that once sat with hands-on-keyboard traders now rest with senior agency leaders, brand procurement groups and C-level executives, Green said. The knowledge gap has narrowed, too. CFOs and CEOs are quickly learning "the esoteric details of programmatic advertising," he noted — a sharp shift from the days when a CMO might not have known what a log file is.

Where the money went in Q3

Channel mix tells its own story:

• Video, including CTV, online and mobile video: low 50% share of total spend
• Mobile: high 20% range
• Display: low double-digit percentage
• Audio: 7% of the business — TTD's fastest-growing channel by percentage, per Green

Notably, CTV and retail media barely came up on a call where they normally dominate. Instead, attention went to smaller lines. "You can argue this was our best political cycle yet," Green said, pointing to growth since the last midterm and prospects for the presidential race in two years. New CFO Nate Olmstead said TTD "saw particular demand strength in medical health and the political election business," and the company touted healthcare measurement partnerships with Veeva Crossix and IQVIA Digital, plus an OptimizeRx integration for medical ad inventory and targeting.

Can APAC and AI carry growth?

With North America plateauing, international is picking up slack. TTD's APAC business grew 30% in the first nine months of the year versus last year, led by 45% growth in China. EMEA is up more than 20%.

Then there's AI. "AI has produced a tremendous opportunity for us," Green said, describing how "AI is helping us operate, AI is helping us build product and AI is in the product to help our clients manage their advertising."

The numbers back him up, at least on efficiency. Time spent creating a campaign is down 9% on average, with a 15% reduction for ad group creation and another 9% for uploading creatives. The agentic platform is in beta, but "early adopters highlight meaningful time savings," Green said. He framed the platform as an advertiser API offering "quadrillions of permutations for every single campaign" — the value prop being a data feed, a few easy controls and AI managing thousands of tunable dials.

Is a bigger acquisition coming?

Even TTD's reserved M&A posture may shift. The company's known deals — Adbrain in 2017 and Sincera last year — were acqui-hires, with a third undisclosed acquisition in between. "I will just transparently say we're looking more now than we historically have," Green said. "Partly because I just think there's a bunch of opportunity in the market that there hasn't been in the past."

Investors welcomed the forecast beat but stayed wary of the programmatic open web. The message from Monday's call: TTD's next leg of growth depends on new buyers, new regions and AI doing the tuning.