The Trade Desk turned in another clean beat-and-raise style quarter without the “raise” in formal guidance, but the message between the lines was hard to miss: product velocity and channel mix are pulling the company ahead of broader digital ad growth. Revenue rose 18% year over year to $739 million, a solid reacceleration in a market that is still digesting signal loss, privacy changes, and uneven brand budgets. GAAP profitability improved as well, with net income up 24% and margin edging to 16%, while non-GAAP operating muscle stayed strong at a 43% adjusted EBITDA margin. When a demand-side platform can grow high teens at scale and expand margins, you’re looking at a business compounding both the top and bottom lines through a mix of share gains and operating leverage.
The operating engine looks well tuned. Customer retention remained above 95% for the eleventh straight year, which is an absurdly steady number in ad tech and speaks to two things: the breadth of premium inventory, especially in connected TV, and the company’s knack for measurement that ties spend to outcomes. The Kokai platform continues to feel like an accelerant rather than a replatforming tax. New modules such as Audience Unlimited sharpen data access and control, while OpenAds aims at the elephant in the room: auction opacity. If OpenAds gains critical mass, it nudges buyers and publishers toward a more transparent clearing process, which tends to favor a neutral, multi-channel DSP. That’s a quiet moat builder.
Identity remains the battleground where most of the open internet either stumbles or compromises. Here, The Trade Desk’s advocacy for UID2 is paying dividends. Fresh integrations with Axciom and Treasure Data turn UID2 from a nice idea into working fabric across activation and measurement. Is UID2 perfect? No identity system is in a post-cookie world. But compared to the black-box alternatives of walled gardens, it offers an interoperable standard that brands, agencies, and publishers can actually govern. If UID2 is the scaffolding, Kokai’s AI and modeling are the bricks and mortar—together they rebuild targeting and attribution without leaning on the old crutch of third-party cookies.
Channel mix is bending the story toward higher-value, harder-to-access inventory. CTV remains the headline, with premium partners spanning major networks and global streamers. Recent moves like DAZN’s EUID and OpenPath adoption for live sports in Europe, plus OSN’s data-driven inventory in MENA, widen the global grid. The DIRECTV collaboration around a custom Ventura TV OS hints at something even more interesting: if the operating system becomes a programmable surface for ads and measurement, the DSP that can orchestrate across OEMs, apps, and broadcasters wins disproportionate mindshare. Meanwhile, retail and commerce media continue to ramp. Koddi’s integration to bring sponsored product and onsite retail inventory, with Gopuff as a first partner, gives The Trade Desk more shoppable, closed-loop surfaces where advertisers can prove lift rather than just impressions. Add the nascent pharma marketplace, stitching HCP and DTC data with partners like IQVIA and Swoop, and you have yet another high-compliance, high-CPM vertical that many platforms avoid because it’s messy. Messy, yes, but lucrative when done right.
Financially, the company balanced growth with discipline. Adjusted EBITDA was $317 million, up 23% year over year, keeping the 40-plus percent margin club intact even as The Trade Desk invests in new products and partnerships. Operating cash generation of $225 million funds both R&D and capital returns. Management repurchased $310 million of stock in the quarter, exhausted the remaining $60 million authorization in October, and added a fresh $500 million program. I don’t worship buybacks on principle, but when a software model throws off durable cash and the competitive position improves, the signal skews positive. A quick aside before the spreadsheets: sustaining 40%-ish EBITDA margins while leaning into AI inference costs, identity frameworks, and global CTV integrations is not trivial; it implies unit economics that are improving with scale, not just holding flat.
The outlook into Q4 calls for at least $840 million of revenue and about $375 million of adjusted EBITDA. That sets the stage for seasonal strength in brand and CTV budgets, political spillover in select markets, and more retail media experimentation as holiday campaigns chase measurable conversions. The near-term watch items are familiar. Macro brand spend can wobble. Privacy regulation remains a moving target across geographies. The CTV landscape is competitive and sometimes crowded with overlapping pipes. And of course, the gravitational pull of walled gardens never fully disappears. But the open-internet thesis works when you align incentives: give advertisers transparent auctions, deterministic or high-fidelity IDs where possible, outcome-oriented measurement, and premium video supply at scale. The Trade Desk keeps checking those boxes.
Stepping back, the strategy looks like a flywheel that’s finally whirring. Identity rails like UID2 attract publishers who want independence and advertisers who want cross-channel truth. That inventory and measurement clarity draw more spend into CTV, retail, and emerging verticals like pharma. More spend fuels Kokai-level innovation and open-source standards such as OpenAds, which improve performance and trust, which then raise retention and wallet share. It’s not flashy for the sake of flash; it’s infrastructure that quietly compounds. If you’re looking for cracks, you’ll find the usual industry risks. If you’re looking for momentum, you’ve got it in the numbers and in the partnerships. And if you’re looking for leverage, the 43% adjusted EBITDA margin answers that question before you even reach the footnotes.
