The Trade Desk Q3 2025 Earnings Review
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The Trade Desk Q3 2025 Earnings Review

12 min read

Table of Contents

In case you Missed It:

a. Trade Desk 101

The Trade Desk is the leading buy-side player in open internet advertising. The firm’s two most compelling revenue segments are streaming and retail media. In these segments, it has tight relationships with most of the leading streamers and stores. Its platform allows advertisers to bid on & purchase impressions with surgical precision, scale and open reporting. Purchases are essentially made on an impression-by-impression basis, uplifting targeting efficacy and doubling ad return metrics. Needed data is infused into every purchasing decision to ensure placements provide optimal value. With this company, advertisers are freed from a need to commit millions at annual upfront events to reach audiences. They can commit to smaller purchases in real-time and with fantastic accuracy. No more guessing. No more “spray and pray.”

Kokai is the name of its data-driven, AI-copilot infused platform. It combines TTD’s leading open internet scale with its vast roster of partners to inject more data and signal into each decision. It’s what tells advertisers who they should be targeting. Kokai does so through TTD’s decade of experience that allows it to essentially find groups of high intent “copy-cat customers” with similar interests. Advertisers onboard their own data (what TTD calls “concentrated data seeds”) and The Trade Desk does the rest. Kokai allows buyers to focus on whichever variable, key performance indicator (KPI) or campaign objective they’d like to. Finally, Kokai emulates the ease of data onboarding that has made Alphabet and Meta so popular.

Unified ID 2.0 (UID2) is its open internet, omni-channel identifier. It uses hashed emails to responsibly ensure consumer and brand security. It knows exactly who is accessing what site or app. Kokai tells you who to target, while UID2 is what tells you where they are. 

Other products include:

  • OpenPath allows publishers on the sell-side to directly plug into TTD’s buy-side platform. It “shines a light on where advertising value is, where that value is being obscured and what signals advertisers value the most.” It does not replace sell-side programmatic players like Magnite, as it does not do things like yield management for these publishers. It’s just TTD’s way of cleaning up the supply chain and letting publishers with their own resources connect more easily. This way, publishers gain a better understanding of impression value and buyers gain a better view into what they’re buying.
  • Galileo is the firm’s product for ensuring seamless, automated first-party data onboarding.
  • TV Quality Index (TVQI) uncovers the incremental value of professionally produced content as compared to user-generated content.

OpenPath and UID2 are meant to support the sell-side rather than supplant it. TTD does not want to build a sell-side platform. It wants to exclusively represent the buy-side to eliminate conflict of interest. Helping sell-siders with identity and supply chain is meant to help its buyers enjoy more success.

b. Key Points

  • Accelerating growth was powered by connected TV (CTV). 
  • Kokai is delivering strong incremental value.
  • No tariff or macro-related excuses this quarter.
  • They feel they now have the right team in place, following 3 C-level hires in 2025.

c. Demand

TTD beat revenue estimates by 2.8% & beat guidance by 3.1%. Its 22.4% 2-year revenue compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) compares to 18.7% last quarter and 26.6% 2 quarters ago.

d. Profit

  • Beat EBITDA estimates by 13.7% & beat guidance by 14.4%.
  • Beat GAAP EBIT estimates by 35%.
  • Beat $0.44 EPS estimate by $0.01. EPS rose by 10% Y/Y.

Founder awards are meaningfully fading and enabling strong GAAP-level operating leverage. On the other hand, GAAP EBIT growth stemming from this help meant their tax bill doubled Y/Y and was 55% of net income vs. 35% of net income last year. That's why the EPS beat is a lot smaller than the beat for the other two pre-tax profit metrics. At that same 35% rate as last year, EPS would have been $0.55 vs. $0.41 Y/Y for 34% Y/Y growth.

e. Balance Sheet

  • $1.44B cash & equivalents.
  • No debt.
  • Share count fell by 2% Y/Y.

f. Guidance & Valuation