The Trade Desk is cutting its workforce. A company spokesperson confirmed the news with AdExchanger.
The layoffs affect less than 1% of the company. The Trade Desk’s current headcount is approximately 3,900.
TTD is hosting an all-hands meeting at 12:30 pm eastern to go over the news with remaining employees.
In a statement, a spokesperson from The Trade Desk noted that TTD has hired nearly 1,000 people this year, including “dozens” at the senior leadership level.
Still, there have been several recent notable departures, including Jud Spencer, who was a lead engineer at TTD for more than 12 years. He left in November.
Tuesday’s reorg “is part of our mission to constantly ensure we have the right skills and experiences in place to drive innovation and value for the world’s biggest advertisers in what is a fast-evolving ad tech environment,” the TTD spokesperson said. “And as part of that, a handful of folks are moving on from The Trade Desk.”
The restructuring comes almost exactly one year after The Trade Desk underwent what CEO Jeff Green described as “the biggest reorganization” in the company’s history.
That reorg, which took place last December, involved restructuring TTD’s client-facing teams, Green told investors in February during the company’s Q4 2024 earnings call. He said this shift was designed to improve how TTD serves advertisers and agencies.
That disastrous fourth-quarter earnings report – which included TTD’s first-ever earnings miss – marked the start of a turbulent year for The Trade Desk, including growing pressure from Amazon and Google, its main rivals in the DSP market.
During that call, Green acknowledged short-term disruptions caused by the reorg, but said it was necessary to position TTD for efficiency and growth.
The layoffs on Tuesday suggest TTD is still adjusting to those changes as it works to balance efficiency with expansion heading into 2026.
This most recent restructuring also lands amid heightened scrutiny of programmatic supply chains following industry debates – instigated by TTD – about reseller transparency.
The Trade Desk has positioned itself as a vocal proponent of greater accountability for advertisers across the open web, but its stance – and the release of OpenAds, its forked version of Prebid’s wrapper – have introduced new friction points between TTD and sell-side platforms.
At the same time, The Trade Desk is still leaning into Kokai, the AI-powered update to its media buying platform, which launched in 2023. Despite operational growing plans, Kokai remains central to TTD’s long-term strategy as it continues to face intensifying competition from Amazon and mounting investor pressure to prove that its AI investments can drive meaningful growth.
