A new front has opened in the ad tech battles between Google and its scrappy rival The Trade Desk, the demand-side platform which officially announced this week that it developed a TV operating system. The TV software move could give The Trade Desk a better position in the future of programmatic advertising, which increasingly is moving to connected TVs, according to ad tech and media experts.

On Wednesday, The Trade Desk and its CEO Jeff Green revealed the full scope of its operating system plans on connected TVs by launching Ventura, which will compete with Google’s Android TV, Amazon’s Fire TV, Apple TV and Roku. (The Trade Desk’s TV software strategy was first spotted in August by streaming TV watchers at newsletter Lowpass, and later confirmed by Ad Age.)

Now, The Trade Desk is giving more details about the operating system, which it billed as a way to better monetize connected TV ad inventory. The CTV development also comes as The Trade Desk’s biggest rival Google is hamstrung by antitrust trials that threaten to break up key parts of its business, including a proposal that was floated this week that the U.S. would force Google to sell its web browser Chrome. While Google defends itself on multiple fronts, The Trade Desk is on the attack, a fact that is not lost on marketing experts.

‘Power and control’

“The theme here is market power and control,” said Ian Trider, VP  of product, at demand-side platform Basis Technologies. “The theme is consolidation and vertical integration, right? We’re seeing that consolidation and vertical integration that Google already had … then you have on the other side, The Trade Desk attempting to build their own empire by vertically integrating on the connected TV side.”

Google is being threatened by the U.S. Department of Justice, which has antitrust cases against the internet giant—one trial already found Google maintained a monopoly position in search. The other trial focused on ad tech, where Google has a dominant footprint on the buy and sell sides of programmatic ad markets. This week, Bloomberg News reported that the DOJ could ask Judge Ahmit Mehta in the search case to break up Chrome, Google’s browser, from its main business. Regulators also want Google to give more advertising transparency and flexibility, perhaps even share search data with more marketers, according to Bloomberg. Mehta is expected to make a ruling in August regarding the search case, and appeals will likely drag an ultimate decision to years down the line.

In the ad tech case, which is even further from a resolution, Google attorneys will be back in court next week for closing arguments. Even if Google continues lengthy appeals, the antitrust heat has already hampered its ability to maneuver while rivals, including The Trade Desk, plow ahead, according to experts.

One of Google’s consistent arguments in its antitrust cases is that it has been unfairly targeted for ad tech practices that other companies also pursue—that it’s not the only platform, and other market players such as Microsoft’s Xandr, Amazon and Meta offer vertically integrated ad stacks, according to Google’s defense. Also, Google has claimed its position in the market has not stymied rivals or innovation, pointing to competitors such as The Trade Desk.

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The Trade Desk’s ability to launch a TV operating system is just another example of advances in ad tech that could turn up pressure on Google.

“The Trade Desk has historically positioned itself as an alternative to Google, and this is reflected in its ability to have media owners adopt its TV OS,” said George Tarnopolsky, VP of programmatic at media buying agency Good Apple. “While media owners see Google as a competitor, The Trade Desk is able to avoid this type of positioning.”

“On the other hand, The Trade Desk has always touted its buy-side focus, all the while continuously expanding to the sell-side with its OpenPath, SP500 and now the Ventura TV OS initiatives,” Tarnopolsky said.

OpenPath and SP500 were two initiatives from The Trade Desk that brought it closer to publishers. One of The Trade Desk’s main propositions to advertisers is that it has been more neutral in ad tech markets, only representing the buy side, delivering a counter-message to Google, which aroused antitrust hackles by sitting on the buy and sell sides. However, The Trade Desk also recently developed more relationships with the supply side, the publishers, to streamline programmatic advertising through its DSP.  Those supply chain moves have put The Trade Desk on a slight tightrope, which it continues to walk with its new TV OS.

With the TV software announcement, The Trade Desk cited support from streaming publishers Disney, Paramount and Tubi. The Trade Desk has not announced which electronics makers will adopt the operating system yet, but it claimed it will hit markets next year.

The Trade Desk and Google did not immediately return requests for comments.

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Connecting to consumers

There are still plenty of questions about the viability of The Trade Desk’s project and how much share it can grab in a fragmented smart TV marketplace. It’s clearly trying to stake its claim in the future of programmatic advertising on connected TV.

“If they’re going to play a role in the future of advertising in any way, shape or form,” said Mark Wagman, managing director of MediaLink and a partner at United Talent Agency, “they need to figure out some direct connection to you and me as the consumer.”

The TV operating system, if successful, builds that direct connection to the consumer, Wagman said. Consumers will get a new TV OS running their streaming apps, and The Trade Desk could offer advertisers and electronics makers favorable ad revenue-sharing terms to spark adoption, Wagman said. In that way, The Trade Desk is trying to transfer its value proposition, which it offers marketers in open web programmatic to connected TVs.

“They can, in theory, recreate much of what they believe to be the CTV supply chain of the future,” Wagman said, “which is fewer hops [from advertiser to publisher], fewer ads, better targeting all the things that they’re talking about.”

With better data links to consumers, and their viewing habits, which is what the operating system provides, The Trade Desk could offer lower ad loads to viewers and higher ad rates with better targeting for publishers. To even get to this point, penetrating the TV software market, The Trade Desk will have to disintermediate significant players, including Google and Roku, Wagman said.

The Trade Desk also has to maintain its message of being a neutral arbiter in ad markets, which it has been trying to do with all announcements around the operating system. “Content objectivity” was mentioned by Matthew Henick, senior VP of The Trade Desk’s Ventura OS, as one of the platform’s strengths in the announcement.

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Perhaps ironically, the new operating system is a low-risk bet for The Trade Desk, because it was able to build it using Google’s open-source Android platform. Third parties can customize Google Android to create their own OS, as Amazon did with Fire OS, Trider of Basis Technologies said. Even though Google developed the platform, it has little leverage over how others use it, and with all the antitrust pressure, that’s unlikely to change.

“Worst case scenario is maybe Google could decide to make Android not open source in a subsequent version,” Trider said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that the prior versions are still fully open source … But closed-sourcing Android would be dramatic and problematic for a variety of reasons, and would have a lot of impacts, so that doesn’t seem at all likely.”