Can TTD's Strategies & Innovations Shield Stock in an Uncertain Market?

The Trade Desk, Inc. TTD is focusing on innovation and strategic growth, especially at a time when market volatility is testing the resilience of many ad tech stocks. Notably, the company is benefiting from multiple innovations and strategic collaborations.

One of the key pillars of TTD’s strategy is its ongoing investment in advanced technologies, such as generative AI and data-driven solutions. The Trade Desk has integrated AI across multiple aspects of its platform, delivering significant performance improvements for clients using Kokai. Expanding its use of generative AI, Trade Desk established creative partnership integrations with Rembrand, Nova, Bunny Studio and Spaceback. Additionally, Visa, NIQ and Zepto have all partnered with Trade Desk to enhance data capabilities.

Recently, Trade Desk also expanded partnerships with Instacart and Ocado to provide more detailed consumer purchase data, enabling advertisers to measure campaign performance with greater precision. TTD is focused on securing long-term, high-value partnerships with major advertisers, agencies and publishers. The company currently has nearly 100 joint business plans in the pipeline.

Additionally, the company is implementing several key developments to enhance its platform. Among them is the launch of OpenSincera, a new application that provides deeper visibility into advertising performance and the overall health of the digital advertising supply chain. Through OpenSincera, the company has made a wealth of supply-chain data freely available to the ecosystem. Anyone can log in to evaluate the quality of advertising across thousands of publisher sites.

The Trade Desk Price and Consensus

The Trade Desk price-consensus-chart | The Trade Desk Quote

TTD is also upbeat about Deal Desk, which is currently in the beta stage. Deal Desk leverages AI forecasting to optimize deals and re-route underperforming deals to better open market and premium internet alternatives. Disney is already leveraging Deal Desk.

Despite these strategic moves, intense competition in the ad tech landscape is a major concern. Big players such as Google, Amazon, as well as smaller players like PubMatic PUBM and Magnite MGNI, continue to put pressure on TTD’s market positioning. Moreover, macroeconomic uncertainty poses a significant challenge, as rising inflation, supply-chain disruptions and tighter marketing budgets are likely to impact ad spend. TTD remains cautious about the potential impact of the volatile macro backdrop, especially for large global brands. If these headwinds persist or worsen going ahead, programmatic demand could slow further, creating additional pressure on revenue growth.

Nevertheless, TTD’s strong focus on innovation, strategic partnerships and data-driven solutions positions it well to navigate these challenges and offer resilience amid market uncertainty. For the third quarter of 2025, the company anticipates revenues of at least $717 million, representing 14% year-over-year growth. Excluding the benefit of U.S. political ad spend in the third quarter of 2024, the company projected year-over-year growth for the third quarter to be approximately 18%.

How Rivals Drive Growth Through Innovation and Partnerships

PubMatic has been focusing on enhancing its technological capabilities and expanding its partnerships to foster growth. In September 2025, it launched an AI-driven Monetization Platform designed to give publishers greater control over their yield, data and demand, helping them adapt to the evolving digital advertising landscape. The company’s Activate platform also saw significant growth in 2024, with nearly six times the customer count and five times the campaign count year over year, highlighting its success in supply path optimization and integrating premium data. Additionally, PubMatic has formed strategic alliances with companies such as Spectrum Reach and Overtone to further enhance demand efficiency and contextual intelligence, aiming to improve media alignment and support high-quality journalism.

Magnite has been leveraging strategic partnerships and innovations to strengthen its position in the programmatic advertising space. The company is strengthening its Connected TV (CTV) business through partnerships with Roku, Netflix, LG, Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount.  Additionally, Magnite announced a direct integration with Acxiom, enabling advertisers to activate both first-party and Acxiom’s third-party data through its platform. This collaboration enhances addressable advertising strategies and provides advertisers with deeper insights. For the third quarter of 2025, the company expects total Contribution ex-TAC to be between $161 million and $165 million. For 2025, Contribution ex-TAC is projected to increase more than 10%.

TTD’s Price Performance and Valuation

Shares of TTD have plunged 57% in the past year against the Zacks Internet -Services industry’s growth of 55.1%.

From a valuation standpoint, TTD trades at a forward price-to-sales of 6.81X, higher than the industry’s average of 6.59X.

TTD currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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