March 19th-March 25th

Below is a roundup of last week’s notable industry news, with summaries and our opinions. Lots of stories to hit on so we’re going with lightning round format this week! Starting with a TikTok countdown…

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Top Stories 👁️ 

Oracle’s Role in TikTok’s Future Gets Capitol Hill Scrutiny - TikTok has until April 5th (10 more days) to find a buyer in the US or face a ban. Some lawmakers are imploring President Trump to give TikTok more time to separate from China-based parent company ByteDance, but he may be more focused on making a deal. Oracle has reportedly held discussions with the White House and top congressional aides about a potential deal. Oracle is a TikTok tech partner and made a run for the platform (in partnership with Walmart) when it was under threat in 2021. But TikTok has other suitors. That includes AI search browser Perplexity, which just unveiled its "Vision for Rebuilding TikTok in America" last week, which included how it would aim to make TikTok's powerful algorithm more transparent. The news comes as TikTok reshuffles its ranks: Blake Chandlee, TikTok’s global head of business solutions is leaving the company🔒April 1st but will continue as an advisor. TikTok promoted🔒VP of global business solutions Khartoon Weiss to lead ad sales in North America, replacing Samir Singh, who left in February. Many advertisers are staying put on the platform for now, but others have scaled back or left completely, driving down CPMs by as much as 80% in the last year.

Opinion: The TikTok situation is a classic "hurry up and wait" scenario that's creating winners and losers. The real question isn't whether Oracle (your boomer Dad’s enterprise tech company) can run TikTok (your Gen Z nephew’s entertainment app)—it's whether any American company can maintain the TikTok magic without the algorithm.

So who are the winners and losers?

Winners: 

✅ Opportunistic advertisers enjoying fire-sale CPMs
✅ Instagram/Snapchat grabbing nervous ad dollars
✅ Perplexity getting free PR for its moonshot bid

Losers: 
❌ Creators with TikTok-dependent incomes
❌ ByteDance's valuation (potentially down $15B+)
❌ Advertising effectiveness post-transition

10. More. Days.

The Trade Desk stumbles, and the ad tech world cheers — maybe too soon - The Trade Desk has been on the receiving end of an industry-wide pile-on following a rare earnings report in which it missed its own financial targets. Since then, there’s been lots of scrutiny of its new UI Kokai, which has been slow to gain traction🔒, and Sonos recently shelved plans for a TV that would have debuted TTD's new TV OS, Ventura. As the independent demand-side platform (DSP) navigates this difficult period, Digiday sees three challenges for TTD. First, it can't secure enough premium CTV inventory. Second, the fate of third-party cookies is unresolved, tempering momentum for its alternative identifier, Unified ID 2.0. And third, AI tools are reducing the open web's traffic, leading to less available ad space and fewer ads bought through The Trade Desk.

Opinion: Wall Street loves building pedestals just to knock them down. One narrow earnings miss after 33 consecutive beats, the stock goes down 50%+ and suddenly TTD is "struggling"? C’mon.

(Checking in on ̶J̶a̶s̶o̶n̶ ̶S̶e̶g̶a̶l̶ Jeff Green…)

Three significant Jeff Green bets are facing headwinds:

1. CTV inventory is consolidating within walled gardens

2. UID2 needs Google to deprecate cookies for urgency

3. The Ventura OS needs actual hardware partners

The Trade Desk remains the best programmatic horse to bet on, but Green now needs to prove he can make good on these bets quicker than initial expectations. The ad tech graveyard is filled with former darlings who didn’t evolve quickly enough (RIP Rocket Fuel, MediaMath). TTD’s gotta be careful.

Warner Bros. Discovery Turns On OpenPath For Web News, But Not CTV - Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) will use The Trade Desk OpenPath's direct-to-publisher supply connection to juice demand for CNN’s display inventory. WBD hopes that by providing additional insights into pricing and ad quality through OpenPath, more advertisers will want to use CNN's inventory to reach niche audiences in its business or travel sections. OpenPath also offers CTV inventory, but WBD isn't exploring that opportunity just yet, even though it has CTV properties like Max, discovery+, and HGTV. In separate news, WBD is reorganizing its ad sales division🔒under Ryan Gould and Robert Voltaggio, who were elevated just last month. The goal of the reorg is to drive cross-platform sales and digital innovation while maintaining WBD's agency-focused go-to-market strategy.

Opinion: Supply path optimization (SPO) is the unsexy plumbing work that's helping advertisers get to their desired inventory more efficiently and is reshaping digital advertising. OpenPath is TTD’s SPO play, which cuts out SSPs from the supply chain.

For premium publishers like CNN and The Guardian (which joined OpenPath recently), OpenPath offers a way to reclaim margin from ad tech while potentially boosting programmatic revenue. For The Trade Desk, it's about consolidating power.

The real story here? WBD keeping its CTV inventory off OpenPath. They're saying: "We'll test this with display, but our premium streaming inventory is too valuable to disintermediate just yet." Smart move, and it’s partially what’s preventing TTD from making progress in CTV (as we mentioned above).

Best Buy Ads Has A Tool That Makes Its First-Party Audiences Addressable On Meta - Best Buy Ads has launched Social+, a social ad network that helps advertisers target their desired audiences directly on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Social+ leverages Best Buy's first-party data and integrates with Meta's Advantage+ shopping campaigns. The tool has many limitations at this point; for example, advertisers can't use it unless they work with a Best Buy Ads rep. But Social+ gives advertisers targeting capabilities that go beyond what's available through Meta directly. Best Buy's goal is to eventually expand the tool to other social media platforms. The retailer took a similar approach with Roku in 2023, when it traded access to its purchase and audience data for exclusive rights to sell Roku’s smart TVs at Best Buy stores.

Opinion: Best Buy's Social+ isn't the first retailer-social platform integration, but it's arguably the most unique we've seen. While Walmart (TikTok), Amazon (Instagram), and others have dabbled in social commerce, Best Buy's approach is different—they're going to market with an entirely new product. It’s kind of like the Walmart Connect offering, which enables advertisers to use Walmart data on the open web via The Trade Desk. But with Social+, Best Buy is offering its data on the most performant inventory pool out there—Facebook and Instagram (and eventually other social platforms).

We expect to see a lot more retailer-social platform integrations in the months to come.

Ad Tech OG John Nardone Is The New CEO Of JWP Connatix -  Nardone has quite the resume, most recently serving as CEO of ad server Flashtalking, which was acquired by Mediaocean in 2021. But before that, he helped place the internet's first ads in 1994 as president and global head of media at digital agency Modern Media, and he was also CEO of [x+1], an OG DSP purchased by Rocket Fuel in 2014. JWP Connatix is the merged company of video monetization platforms JW Player and Connatix. Nardone will focus on a smooth integration of the two companies, which are about 6 months into the process, before turning his attention to finding new opportunities for profitability for the company and its publishers. 

Opinion:  Smart move. Nardone has seen every ad tech hype cycle since digital advertising existed. He’ll know how to execute an integration during a financially turbulent time for the industry.

The JWP Connatix merger creates a full-stack video solution at the perfect time: publishers desperately need both content tools and monetization as video consumption grows and evolves. Nardone’s track record of successful exits means this may not be a long-term play. Perhaps 18-24 months of integration followed by strategic positioning for acquisition.

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That’s It For This Week 👋

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