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Below is a roundup of last week’s notable industry news, with summaries and our opinions. Rough week for The Trade Desk…

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Top Story 👁️

The Trade Desk Claps Back at Reports That Walmart Is Pulling Back: ‘We’re Fully Committed’🔒 
Source: Adweek
August 15th, 2025

Summary: The Information reported last week🔒 that Walmart renegotiated its deal with The Trade Desk and removed its exclusivity clause, which will let advertisers use Walmart's shopper data through other DSPs. The retailer is reportedly so annoyed with The Trade Desk's high fees that it is looking at other buying platforms and may even build its own. TTD is pushing back hard on the idea that Walmart is retreating from their four-year partnership.

In response, TTD issued a statement emphasizing they're "fully committed" to and even planning to expand the partnership. The Trade Desk CEO Jeff Green also touted the partnership during its recent earnings call. 

The timing couldn't be worse for The Trade Desk. Its stock has nosedived nearly 40% since early August following a weak Q2 earnings report that spooked investors about Amazon's growing competitive threat. On the earnings call, Green noted "a record amount of spend was influenced by retail data" on both TTD's platform and Walmart DSP, but the market clearly isn't convinced about the partnership's future.

The Walmart partnership has been crucial for TTD's ability to compete with Amazon's rival DSP, which has taken millions from The Trade Desk this year. With exclusivity now gone, TTD faces even more pressure from Amazon's growing threat in the ad tech space.

Opinion: Not much else to say right now about The Trade Desk, other than, when it rains, it pours.

For Walmart, The Trade Desk partnership was always meant to be their ad tech training wheels. For four years, Walmart has been watching how The Trade Desk sells their data, learning which advertisers bite, understanding pricing dynamics, and, most importantly, seeing just how much programmatic demand exists for Walmart's shopper data. The exclusivity clause gave them a risk-free way to test the waters while TTD did the heavy lifting of building advertiser relationships and proving market demand.

Now that the test has proven successful (TTD reported "record" retail data spend in their statement), Walmart is ready to graduate. They’ll almost certainly look at owning their ad tech—the question will be whether they'll buy their way in or build from scratch. Given that quality ad tech companies are trading at distressed valuations and Walmart needs speed to market to counter Amazon's growing programmatic dominance, we think acquisition makes infinitely more sense than a multi-year build.

For now, Walmart's decision to kill exclusivity is great news for advertisers who will have more flexibility to use Walmart's 240+ million weekly shoppers' data while transacting through other DSPs. Exclusivity deals have always been about platforms securing competitive moats, not about serving advertiser interests. That said, this could be a temporary reprieve for marketers until Walmart stands up its own walled garden. 

Companies to keep an eye on as potential Walmart acquisition targets are those that have been in the rumor mill recently: Yahoo, Criteo, and Adform. Of course, Walmart could always pull off a surprise acquisition for a dark horse that we aren’t even thinking of; perhaps a company such as Teads or maybe even Instacart?

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