The Trade Desk’s connected TV ambitions extend beyond ad transactions.
Last year, TTD announced plans to launch a TV operating system, called Ventura OS, that powers the viewing experience on smart TVs with an open, ad-supported system. It was a surprising step for a demand-side platform rooted in the buy side.
Sure, there’s some overlap between building ad tech and consumer-facing tech, but it’s still not the kind of move you’d expect – more like a sidestep than a natural progression, like hiring a makeup artist to decorate your wedding cake, for example.
The idea behind Ventura, according to The Trade Desk, is to build a neutral smart TV operating system that will allow hardware manufacturers and publishers to control their data and ad inventory. TTD claims to avoid conflicts of interest, because it doesn’t own content or inventory.
Leading the effort is Matthew Henick, SVP of Ventura OS, who joined The Trade Desk last year after a brief stint as CEO of Deep Voodoo, the AI startup founded by “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. He’s also had executive roles at Epic Games (as VP of metaverse development), Facebook (as VP of content strategy and planning) and BuzzFeed (as head of BuzzFeed Studios).
Since Henick came aboard at TTD, the Ventura project has faced a few setbacks, including the loss of its initial hardware partner, Sonos, which abruptly canceled plans to produce a video streaming device in March. Henick told AdExchanger that ongoing US tariff-related economic uncertainty has also made discussions with hardware makers more complicated.
That said, Ventura continues to move forward. According to Henick, a “vanilla version” of the product is complete, and TTD is in talks with TV manufacturers and partners like DirecTV to develop and distribute customized versions of the OS.
Beyond that, Henick has lofty goals for what Ventura can achieve.
“We think about the future of television pretty much every second of every day – and how to make it more fair, more transparent, competitive and independent,” Henick told the crowd during a panel at Advertising Week in New York City in early October.
Afterward, Henick sat down with AdExchanger to discuss what’s next for Ventura and how TTD envisions the future of TV.
AdExchanger: You’ve talked about trying to create a more equitable TV ecosystem. How does Ventura achieve that?
MATTHEW HENICK: The two most clear, tangible things are that we will never have our own content service and we will never own any ad inventory.
What makes owning a content service such a conflict of interest?
Amazon has a commerce business that’s also powered by a subscription business. One of Amazon’s biggest retention drivers is Prime Video. So Amazon has every reason in the world, when you turn on your television, to steer you into Prime, because that will increase your attachment to your subscription.
We’ve seen this in the DSP space. If you’re giving $1 to Amazon DSP or Google’s DSP, you should expect that, 90% of the time, it will go toward Prime Video and Amazon ad space or YouTube and Google ad space.
If, as you’ve said in the past, it’s a problem that tech giants are trying to control the means by which people watch television, how does a new OS solve that? And do you run the risk of becoming part of the problem yourself if you succeed?
I mean, we’re not doing this as charity, right? We think this will benefit The Trade Desk’s core business. We just happen to also believe we can do it in a way that benefits all the players who add value to the ecosystem.
If we do any of the things that the other Big Tech companies are doing, we will end up destroying the power and the value of our core business. That keeps us in check and allows us to be fully transparent with our partners.
How are you pitching the Ventura OS to potential hardware providers?
There are some OEMs that are large enough to get a one-time bounty from Google or Amazon per television sold. We talk to manufacturers about what they’re giving up in exchange.
You’re getting five bucks once every five and a half years, but you’re giving up access to recurring revenue that is clearly much higher than that and you’re outsourcing your customer relationship to a Big Tech company.
If you’re a retailer and you do a deal with Fire TV, you are putting the world’s largest ecommerce retailer in the living room of every single one of your customers. How is that eventually going to work out?
What about your pitch to consumers?
People are choosing a television 99% of the time based on two criteria: screen size and price. The OS just comes along for the ride.
Operating systems today aren’t necessarily built with the user in mind, and that’s a real opportunity.
What feedback have you been getting from advertisers?
We’ve had a lot of really great conversations with advertisers, but also publishers, because they’ve always had a love-hate relationship with their OS.
I was surprised by how uncomfortable publishers and manufacturers are trying to trust us. Many were told very explicitly by other partners that they would never do X, Y and Z to be in direct competition – and now they are. I’ve had to explain in great detail how The Trade Desk’s business works and how our core business is aligned with theirs.
How will programmatic CTV transactions change once Ventura fully enters the marketplace?
We will not be the exclusive demand partner for anybody on Ventura. We want to compete on a level playing field with everybody else.
We’ll judge our success by whether we see spillover into other parts of the ecosystem. Are publishers asking for features on Ventura to be adopted by other operating systems? I think that will help the ad ecosystem broadly and the open internet.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.
