The Trade Desk, a leading advertising technology company, is developing a connected television operating system (OS) that aims to improve the advertising ecosystem on streaming platforms. CEO Jeff Green believes that existing OS providers, such as Roku, Amazon’s Fire TV, and Google’s Android TV, have a conflict of interest due to their ownership of content.
Green stated that The Trade Desk is in a unique position to create a more objective and transparent marketplace for advertisers and publishers. The company’s main competitor, Google, has been criticized by Green for its conflicts of interest, which led to the Justice Department suing the tech giant for antitrust around its ad dominance.
The Trade Desk’s new OS, dubbed Ventura, will be rolled out in the second half of 2025 and is designed to be partner-friendly. The company plans to collaborate with hardware manufacturers and television distributors to bring its OS to their devices.
A key feature of Ventura is The Trade Desk’s privacy framework, Unified ID 2.0, which provides a cookie-less ad-targeting solution for publishers. The company has already adopted this framework by hundreds of publishers worldwide.
Green emphasized that the success of Ventura depends on driving more pricing transparency and stronger measurement for the CTV advertising ecosystem as a whole. He stated that The Trade Desk’s goal is not to directly benefit financially from the OS but rather to create a better marketplace for everyone involved.
The launch of Ventura is significant, given the growing importance of CTV in the US advertising market. Projected to reach $38.3 billion in 2024 and surpass linear television by 2029, CTV represents nearly half of The Trade Desk’s business. Several major companies, including Sonos and Paramount Advertising, have already expressed interest in partnering with The Trade Desk for its new OS.
As Spotify pilots an ad exchange to scale its automated ad offerings, The Trade Desk’s Ventura is poised to shake up the CTV advertising landscape. With a focus on video targeting and partner-friendly design, The Trade Desk aims to create a more transparent and objective marketplace for advertisers and publishers alike.
Source: https://www.axios.com/2024/11/20/the-trade-desk-smart-tv-operating-system-ventura