The Trade Desk is making a bold push to crack open the walled gardens of digital advertising, but the market is far from convinced. A new alliance with Pacvue and Skai promises to consolidate more than 250 retail media networks onto a single platform, giving advertisers direct access to merchant sales data through one unified interface. The move targets the fragmentation that has long plagued programmatic buying, where each online retailer operates its own closed system.
Yet the stock barely flinched on the news, sliding nearly 4 percent to $23.43. The muted reaction underscores a deeper malaise: since April 2025, shares have shed more than 50 percent of their value, trading near the bottom of a 52-week range that stretches from $19.74 to $91.45. A technical indicator, the relative strength index, now sits at 26.5 — deep in oversold territory.
The partnership builds on The Trade Desk’s recently updated Kokai platform, which uses artificial intelligence to optimize bids in real time, with a particular focus on high-growth areas like connected television. The company is also pushing its own user identification standard, Unified ID 2.0, as a cookie replacement that lets advertisers directly measure the sales impact of their campaigns. The retail data products are one of three growth drivers management has flagged for 2026, alongside Kokai and CTV.
But the operational narrative is colliding with a far more bearish one coming from the agency world. On April 28, WPP finance chief Joanne Wilson delivered a pointed critique, describing The Trade Desk as a platform that “operates in the open internet — a potentially smaller segment of the total advertising market.” Another WPP executive went further, calling the open internet a “long tail” that will likely continue to shrink.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying The Trade Desk?
Those aren’t idle comments. WPP, along with Publicis, Omnicom and Dentsu, has reportedly reduced its programmatic bookings through The Trade Desk. The tension is personal: CEO Jeff Green has publicly accused the holding companies of manipulating supply chains in the programmatic market to extract hidden margins from client ad budgets. The structural headwinds are clear — Alphabet, Meta and Amazon are projected to collectively command nearly 59 percent of the global ad market outside China by 2027.
Wall Street remains divided. UBS reaffirmed its “Buy” rating on April 21, forecasting a revenue recovery in 2026, though it slashed its price target from $44 to $31. Overall, 49 percent of covering analysts maintain a buy recommendation, and the consensus target of $30 implies roughly 29 percent upside from current levels. The stock has staged a modest short-term recovery, trading about 7.5 percent above its 20-day moving average, but it remains nearly 19 percent below its 100-day average — a pattern that suggests a bounce within a persistent downtrend.
The company’s financial foundation remains solid. Last fiscal year delivered record revenue of $2.4 billion, and a $1 billion share buyback program is underway. Customer retention has held steady above 95 percent, even as the transition to the new software platform has been bumpy and management changes rattled the C-suite earlier this year.
All eyes now turn to May 7, when The Trade Desk reports first-quarter results after the U.S. market close. Management has guided for at least $678 million in revenue, representing roughly 10 percent year-over-year growth, with EBITDA margins expected to slip to around 28.7 percent. The report will provide the first hard data on how the new AI features and retail alliances are translating into financial performance — and whether the company can prove that the open internet is still a growth story, not a shrinking tail.
Ad
The Trade Desk Stock: Buy or Sell?! New The Trade Desk Analysis from April 30 delivers the answer:
The latest The Trade Desk figures speak for themselves: Urgent action needed for The Trade Desk investors. Is it worth buying or should you sell? Find out what to do now in the current free analysis from April 30.
The Trade Desk: Buy or sell? Read more here...
