One of The Trade Desk’s longest-tenured leaders on the product side has left the company.
Jud Spencer, who served as one of TTD’s lead engineers for the past 12-plus years, confirmed to AdExchanger that his last day at the DSP was Nov. 21.
Spencer declined to elaborate on the reason for his departure or to comment on his future plans.
However, he did say that he is interested in continuing standards work around ad inventory and the transparency of programmatic transactions. He added that his time spent at TTD was rewarding because it was an opportunity to make meaningful changes to the ad tech supply chain.
“It was important work that allowed buyers to understand what they were purchasing and from whom,” Spencer said. “There’s more work to do here, and I hope that progress continues with initiatives like global placement ID, Transaction ID and derivative projects that make these even more valuable.”
The Trade Desk declined to comment on Spencer leaving the company.
Trade group dynamics
In addition to helping develop The Trade Desk’s DSP platform over the years, Spencer was instrumental in its supply-side inventory sourcing and media quality assessments and he oversaw TTD’s various tech partnerships, including with verification provider HUMAN.
On top of that, Spencer has been an active participant in key industry trade groups, namely the IAB Tech Lab’s Programmatic Supply Chain Working Group.
Spencer also worked with Patrick McCann, a Prebid board member and Raptive’s SVP of research, to develop the OpenRTB Transaction ID standard, which Prebid implemented into its auction wrapper.
However, Spencer’s departure from The Trade Desk coincides with increasingly contentious relations between TTD and industry trade orgs, Prebid in particular.
Over the past few months, The Trade Desk and Prebid.org have been embroiled in a public disagreement over whether universal Transaction IDs should be included in all programmatic bid requests.
That disagreement led to Prebid nixing universal Transaction IDs from its auction framework in August. That, in turn, led The Trade Desk to launch OpenAds in October, its own forked version of Prebid that mandates the use of Transaction IDs.
The leadership shuffle
While both Spencer and The Trade Desk are remaining mum about his move and any possible motivation behind it, it’s worth pointing out that there’s been an overhaul recently of TTD’s executive-level leadership.
The DSP hired three new C-level execs this year following the exit of some of its longest-tenured leaders.
In October, TTD announced that its chief revenue officer, Jed Dederick, had stepped down after a year in the role, ending his 13-year run at the company. Dederick was replaced as CRO by former Google exec Anders Mortensen.
In August, TTD’s chief financial officer, Laura Schenkein, stepped down after a two-year stint. She previously spent a decade in financial leadership roles for the company. Schenkein was replaced as CFO by former Salesforce exec Alex Kayyal.
In March, The Trade Desk hired another former Salesforce executive, Vivek Kundra, as chief operating officer. TTD’s COO position had gone unfilled since Rob Perdue stepped down in 2019, following six years in the role.
And, back in 2023, TTD’s longtime chief technology officer, Dave Pickles, left the company after 13 years in the role and 15-plus years total. Thus far, the vacant CTO role has yet to be filled.
Between Pickles and Spencer, the company has now lost two of its longest-running leaders on the product side.
However, Sincera Co-Founders Mike O’Sullivan and Ian Meyers appear to have gained more influence over The Trade Desk’s product development since their startup was acquired by TTD in January. O’Sullivan’s new official title at The Trade Desk is GM of product.
Alongside Jeff Green, The Trade Desk’s CEO, O’Sullivan has been the public face of some of TTD’s recent product announcements, including its OpenSincera media quality assessment tool for publishers and its OpenAds auction wrapper.
While TTD seems to be laying the groundwork for its future leadership and sketching out a new product road map, the exit of so much institutional knowledge at the executive level over just two short years is notable. Spencer leaving is just the latest example of how much The Trade Desk has changed in recent years.
Now, it remains to be seen how The Trade Desk’s new leadership will shepherd the company through growing challenges from rival DSPs like Amazon, increased competition from SSPs over the demand-side business and open questions from investors about the viability of some of TTD’s recent moves.
