More Like The Shade Desk
For years, The Trade Desk has been lionized as an untouchable titan of ad tech. But that narrative is shifting, Digiday reports.
TTD’s failure to meet its Q4 revenue guidance opened a floodgate of criticisms against the company. And buyers are increasingly throwing shade at the platform’s new Kokai user interface as they prop up rival Mediaocean.
TTD was also dealt a major blow last week when Sonos scrapped its plans to manufacture a streaming TV device. This device was going to carry TTD’s proprietary operating system, which could have propelled its ambitions to corner the growing CTV ad market.
Investors are taking note of all this upheaval. TTD’s stock price dipped by 30% after its latest earnings, and a rebound will likely depend on whether TTD CEO Jeff Green can articulate a plan for growth.
But those critics eager to dance on TTD’s grave are probably jumping the gun, writes Digiday’s Seb Joseph.
For one, complaints about TTD come in the wake of the company having one bad quarter – its first ever as a public company. It’s also worth pointing out that lots of other ad tech companies and ad agencies missed their revenue projections in Q4.
And besides, TTD has enough scale that if some of its bets pay off – say, its CTV plans or pushing UID2 as a cookie replacement – the company could flip the narrative back in its favor.
Be All That You Can – Wait, Nevermind
The self-proclaimed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) isn’t just wreaking havoc on federal agencies – its actions are also affecting ad agencies, reports Ad Age.
Specifically, sweeping budget cuts and layoffs at government organizations, including the Departments of Veteran Affairs (VA), Health and Human Services (HHS) and Homeland Security, are causing those agencies to pause their marketing efforts, if not cancel contracts outright.
The federal government may not come to mind as a big ad spender, but government agencies put out lots of ads to educate citizens on everything from vaccinations to seat belt safety and to encourage military recruitment.
(Heck, just a few days ago the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security launched a campaign intended to shock undocumented immigrants into “self-deporting.” Guess that one didn’t get paused, huh?)
But for the ad agencies that work with the government on these campaigns, things have already gotten dire. At least one Virginia-based consultancy laid off hundreds of employees after losing a contract with the VA, according to Ad Age. Others have explicitly lost government business as a direct result of their own DEI policies.
Agencies with military contracts, however, haven’t faced as much heat yet. So guess those recruitment ads are still safe … for now.
FTC You In Court
The Federal Trade Commission is the latest regulatory agency to have its independence challenged by the Trump administration.
On Tuesday, President Trump fired the two active Democratic FTC commissioners, Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, Reuters reports. Both claim their firings were illegal, citing Supreme Court precedent.
Back in 1935, the Supreme Court upheld a law that allows the firing of FTC commissioners only for good cause, such as dereliction of duty. Two federal judges recently found that Trump violated federal law when he similarly fired members of the National Labor Review Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board.
Still, the Republican chair of the FTC, Andrew Ferguson, says he believes Trump’s firing of Bedoya and Slaughter is on solid legal footing.
Ferguson and fellow Republican Melissa Holyoak are now the FTC’s sole remaining commissioners. Trump’s pick for the third Republican commissioner, Mark Meador, has yet to be confirmed by the Senate.
But that’s not the only FTC news this week. On Tuesday, Wired reported that the commission deleted 300 business guidance blogs that were written under former Democratic chair Lina Khan.
The blogs informed companies how to avoid violating consumer protection laws. For example, a blog detailing Microsoft’s violations of COPPA for collecting data from kids via Xbox consoles has disappeared.
Critics noted many of the deleted blogs criticized Big Tech companies that have attempted to curry favor with the Trump administration – raising doubts about how seriously the FTC will regulate these companies going forward.
But Wait! There’s More
The NBA petitioned the Supreme Court to review a lower court ruling that revived a lawsuit claiming the league violated the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act by embedding Meta’s tracking pixel on its site. [MediaPost]
Apple lost its appeal challenging a German regulator’s classification of the company as a significant market power, opening the door to stricter antitrust oversight. [Reuters]
Unilever has ousted Ben & Jerry’s CEO David Stever over the ice cream brand’s political activism. [BBC]
Brands are increasingly calling out their competitors in ad creative. [WSJ]
Bluesky made more money selling T-shirts that mock Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg than it did selling custom domains on its platform. [TechCrunch]
Shady Instagram accounts are stealing content from influencers and monetizing it on adult sites – and then using AI to make the influencers appear to have fetishized disabilities. [404 Media]
You’re Hired
CTV ad platform tvScientific hires Spencer Weinman as CRO. [release]
Digital ad platform Nativo hires Marcus Chan as SVP and head of finance. [release]
Digital sports journalism brand Jomboy Media promotes COO Courtney Hirsch to CEO. [Deadline]
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