In an ecosystem that depends on opacity, those moves are threatening. The backlash should not surprise anyone.
To be fair, the Trade Desk has made it harder on itself. Its fee structure is transparent in principle, but confusing in practice. It has been slow—stubborn even—in response to legitimate concerns about the Kokai interface. And clients face more bureaucracy than they should when trying to access their own data.
The Trade Desk would do well to simplify its fee communication and structure, re-innovate on the user interface, and reduce the hoops clients must clear to access its own data, including allowing third-parties access if signed off on by the contract owner.
Fixing these issues would go a long way toward earning the trust it is asking the market to place in them.
The Trade Desk is the wrong target
Even if the Trade Desk changes none of this, the bigger question remains: why is the industry’s energy focused on the platform trying to make the supply chain more direct, rather than on the dynamics that created the need for schemes in the first place?
If we actually want to change the trajectory, there are three things we can start doing today.
First, brands should ask their agencies a simple question: What would you need to charge us, fully transparently and above board, to stop playing games?
That might feel like career suicide for the person asking it. But they don’t have to take the answer directly to the CFO. It can start with just understanding the gap between what agencies charge on paper and what they need to survive. That conversation alone would be a meaningful step.
Second, the industry should stop supporting vendors whose primary business model is built around enabling opacity.
These companies may deliver short-term results, but they shorten the lifespan of the ecosystem for everyone. They are the ultraprocessed foods of the adtech diet.
