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The Trade Desk’s ‘premium internet’ shift stirs concerns among publishers over ad dollar allocation 🔒
Source: Digiday
May 28th, 2024
Summary: The Trade Desk CEO Jeff Green sent publishers in a tizzy when he recently laid out the DSP's vision for a "premium internet" defined by high-quality ad inventory, first-party data, and user consent. Some publishers are worried that they'll get cut out of the equation if they don't have enough email addresses or support Unified ID 2.0 (UID2), The Trade Desk's alternative identifier. Some are concerned that they'll lose control of their data by integrating with UID2, since they'd have to share hashed emails of their logged-in users with TTD, who would then propagate that data across the web. The Trade Desk says publishers only need to have 5%-10% of their audiences logged in to grow their ad revenue from The Trade Desk, but reaching that threshold is a big lift for some publishers. The Trade Desk says publishers can increase their logged-in user bases with OpenPass, its single sign-on product that collects email addresses and converts them into UID2s. All of this makes publishers wary about the amount of control The Trade Desk has over their ad businesses.
In related news, The Trade Desk released their first ever ranking of the top 100 publishers 🔒. The Trade Desk is continuing to define the "premium internet" with its new list, which will be updated every six months. Hulu is No. 1 in the inaugural list, followed by Disney and Max.
Opinion: The Trade Desk is exerting their market power on publishers. Why? Because they want first-mover advantage to be able to monetize the best of the open web. They believe that's the way of the future. Let's unpack their strategy.
The scrutiny on quality inventory along with cookie deprecation has pushed publishers to a crossroads; will they play nice with ad tech or put up their walls in order to wrestle back control? Smaller publishers will definitely play nice. They have no choice. Either play nice and maximize programmatic demand to extend your runway or die now. Some big ones will play nice too. But the cream of the crop will try to put up their walls, as they aspire to be in the class of Google and Amazon and not just another publisher beholden to ad tech. The Trade Desk is working hard to prevent these walls from going up, for the benefit of their customers (marketers) and for the longevity of their own business.
The Internet will likely bifurcate into two tiers in the future: the walled gardens, and what Jeff Green is calling 'The Premium Internet'. The long-tail of the Internet will largely die off. And when that happens, so will the droves of ad tech companies that make a living off of monetizing it. All that money will move upstream into The Premium Internet and the walled gardens. That's good for The Trade Desk, especially if they can minimize the number of walled gardens and maximize the size of the Premium Internet.
While The Trade Desk rails against the walled gardens publicly, it quietly knows they aren't going anywhere, so it is pushing the Premium Internet narrative in order to take out the rest of its competition and consolidate all of that long-tail ad spend up to its sweet spot.
The Trade Desk wants us to get to the future, faster, and be in the driver's seat when we get there. It's a smart strategy.
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