February 12th-February 19th // Estimated Reading Time: 11 minutes

Below is a roundup of last week’s notable industry news, with summaries and our opinions. More Q4 earnings reports rolled in, they weren’t great, but one in particular was VERY surprising…

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The Trade Desk Promises Big Changes After Missing Its Q4 Guidance 👎
Source: AdExchanger
February 12th, 2025 

Summary: The Trade Desk missed its quarterly guidance for the first time since going public in 2016—a streak of 33 straight quarters(!) that just came to an end. The company takes these self-set targets seriously—as CFO Laura Schenkein noted, they view them as commitments, not suggestions. "It was on us," she told investors.

Despite Q4 revenue climbing 22% to $741M and profits nearly doubling to $182M, falling short of their $756M target sent shares tumbling nearly 30%.

CEO Jeff Green acknowledged some "execution missteps" related to personnel (he didn’t elaborate further) and revealed a December organizational shake-up that re-org’d teams around specific market segments. 

The company's growth strategy is shifting too. While they're going beyond agencies and expanding direct brand relationships, they're being smart about it—partnering with agencies in joint business plans (JBPs) that grow accounts 50% faster than usual. Beyond their high-growth CTV business (now nearly half their revenue), they're particularly excited about digital audio, which Green called "the most on-sale corner of the internet" at just 5% of their budget mix.

They're also eyeing bigger industry shifts: Google's potential retreat from open-web advertising (voluntary or court-ordered) and Amazon's compromising position of competing with many of its advertising customers—from Microsoft in cloud services to P&G in consumer goods.

Green's message was clear: Q4 was a miss, but he strongly believes in the company’s strategy and intends for The Trade Desk to come back strong.

Opinion: On one hand, chill out everyone. This company has been kicking butt forever. Give them a break. They’ll be fine. 

On the other hand, holy moly! What might cause a company with such an incredible track record and sterling reputation to miss their target?

Seriously though, between Alphabet, The Trade Desk, Amazon, and a few other companies (see below) not putting out great Q4 earnings reports, there is reason to be concerned about the industry’s outlook right now.

But let’s focus on The Trade Desk specifically for a moment, because this is such a lightning rod of an earnings report at such an interesting time. Below, we lay out the bull and the bear case for the company’s future prospects through 6 points:

3 bulls, 3 bears. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Where do you fall on each of these points? Are you a Trade Desk bull or bear? Poll time!

More Q4 Earnings…

AppLovin (👍): Revenue was up 44% to $1.373B, beating estimates. The company will sell its gaming app development business for $900M to focus on bringing its AI-powered ad platform AXON to new verticals such as fintech and insurance. AppLovin was America's most successful tech stock in 2024, gaining more than 700% last year and more than 900% in the last 12 months. Shares, which topped $500 for the first time, rose more than 20%. The company is now valued at a whopping ~$165B. Quite the opposite story of The Trade Desk…

Reddit (🤷): Revenue was up 71% to $427.7M, beating estimates. Ad revenue was up 60% to $394.5M. Global daily active unique users were up 39% to 101.7M, missing estimates, due to a Google search algorithm change. Although search-related traffic rebounded in Q1, shares fell 15% in after-hours trading.

Roku (👍): Revenue was up 22% to $1.2B, beating estimates. Platform revenue, which includes advertising, broke the $1B mark. Net losses narrowed to $35.5M from $78.3M a year prior. Streaming households were up 12% to 89.8M in Q4 and passed 90M in January. Shares rose 14% in after-hours trading.

Perion (👎): Revenue was down 45% to $129.6M, missing estimates. The company touted its CTV and digital out of home growth drivers and plans to unify its brands and tech under the Perion One strategy and platform. Shares fell 13%.

IPG 🔒(👎): Organic revenue was down 1.8% to $2.4BB, missing estimates. The agency holding company, which will be acquired by Omnicom in the second half of the year, predicts 2025 organic revenue to decline 1%-2%. IPG is planning a $250M restructuring ahead of the deal closing. Shares fell nearly 2%. 

Dentsu (👎): Organic revenue was up 2.6%, but the Japanese agency holding company reported a loss of $820M for 2024. It took a $1B impairment charge and predicted 1% organic growth for 2025. It will invest $328M in its media business with the goal of achieving 4% organic growth in 2027. Shares fell by single digits.

Opinion: Other than AppLovin, which continues to defy gravity (and expectations), and Roku, the earnings reports from this week didn’t seem to impress investors. The results torpedoed our initial hypothesis that smaller, independent ad tech companies may be outperforming many of the large, scaled platforms and stealing share. We do have a bunch of smaller ad companies reporting results in the next couple of weeks, so we'll get more clarity, but overall the outlook is … gloomy.

Other Notable Headlines ✍️

Is Sonos Launching a $400 Streaming Box with TTD? - The speculation around The Trade Desk's CTV operating system Ventura continues. Last year, The Trade Desk announced that it was developing a CTV OS that could rival Roku OS, Amazon's Fire OS, and Google's Android TV. Now there are rumors that Sonos' reported streaming TV device “Pinewood”, which would be powered by Ventura, could hit the market for $200-$400. In an interview with Videoweek, a Trade Desk exec emphasized that the company would never own inventory or content, supporting a cleaner supply chain and avoiding a conflict of interest that hijacks the user experience. But of course, Ventura could give The Trade Desk access to very valuable user data from Pinewood devices to fuel targeted advertising, which may rub consumers the wrong way. There has been turmoil recently at Sonos, where the CEO stepped down last month and CMO departed last week, following a botched revamp of its mobile app, and it's unclear if those changes will impact Pinewood's development.

Hightouch raises $80M on a $1.2B valuation for marketing tools powered by AI - The investment doubles Hightouch's valuation from its last funding round in 2023. Hightouch has a customer data platform (CDP) that uses machine learning to make it easier for marketing, sales, and customer service teams to sync and use data from their data warehouses. Another tool called AI Decisioning helps marketers use AI to run countless A/B tests to optimize their campaigns. Hightouch's decision to raise more money to invest in its tech was driven by momentum and demand for AI Decisioning, which is taking off as corporate interest in AI tools skyrockets.

IPG nears sale of R/GA to a management-led group backed by private equity🔒 - LA-based private equity firm Truelink Capital is backing the buyout group in a deal that could close in just a few weeks. IPG has been trying to unload R/GA since last summer. If the acquisition goes through, it would join other marketing assets in Truelink's portfolio, including the shopper marketing tech firm Flipp, marketing tech company Ansira, and the experiential marketing firm GES. IPG is poised to join Omnicom in its own deal set to close in the second half of the year. It sold another digital agency, Huge, in December. 

TikTok Reinstated in US App Stores After Assurance From Attorney General - TikTok is back in the Google Play and Apple App stores after receiving official confirmation from the US AG that they wouldn't be fined. TikTok has until early April to find a buyer. The Trump administration has spoken to Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, and other tech companies about a potential deal, and even mused that the US government could take a 50% stake in the popular short-form video platform. Last year, Congress passed a bill that would force TikTok to be sold to a non-Chinese buyer or face a ban in the US. A ban would have big implications for advertisers, who spent about $8B on the platform last year.

Early April is not very far away…

Other Notable Headlines
(that you should know about too) 🤓 

Thomson Reuters Wins First Major AI Copyright Case in the US - A judge ruled in Reuters' favor on "fair use," which is often invoked by AI companies when they want to use copyrighted content for training their models without permission. This ruling could be a blow to other fair use arguments.

Amazon kills ‘Inspire,’ its TikTok-style feed for discovering products - Launched in 2022, Inspire generated controversy not long after when Amazon was accused of low-balling creators for posting on the platform. This is uninspiring.

LinkedIn Launches Its Own Conversion API - The product, along with upgrades to its revenue attribution report, will help marketers measure campaigns over a longer lookback window using their first-party data and offline data.

Google just lifted its 2019 ban on fingerprinting for advertisers - Advertisers can once again track users across devices using a methodology called fingerprinting, which pieces together data from devices and browsers. Privacy advocates are not happy.

Pyte Acquired by All Hands AI - Pyte is a privacy-first data collaboration platform. All Hands AI develops an open-source agentic software engineering platform. Pyte has raised more than $12M in funding.

Mediaocean Completes Acquisition of Innovid - Mediaocean will combine Innovid and Flashtalking to create an independent, omnichannel ad serving / dynamic creative / measurement / identity platform.

Criteo Launches Open-Source Dataset to Support Ad Privacy - Criteo calls CriteoPrivateAd "the largest real-world anonymized bidding dataset" to enable companies to build ML-driven algos for bidding without leveraging user data. 

TripleLift Taps Ex-Innovid CCO Dave Helmreich as CEO - Helmreich has also held senior leadership roles at Stackline, Oracle, LiveIntent, and Audience Partners.

BuzzFeed to launch new social media platform called BF Island - BF Island will let people use AI to create content around their interests and share it on the platform.

Social + AI! Seems awesome! What could go wrong?

That’s It For This Week 👋

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