How The Trade Desk is advertising its DSP as a place for brands

The Trade Desk asked “what matters” in its previous ad campaign, and now it’s answering that question with “advertising,” in new commercials that focus on major brand marketers including Coca-Cola, Dove, Ford, Kraft Heinz and Samsung. The “Because Advertising Matters” campaign launching today is an appeal to brands to use The Trade Desk’s demand-side platform. It comes at a pivotal moment for the programmatic advertising stalwart, delivering a message that appears to be tailored to brands after CEO Jeff Green recently announced The Trade Desk’s strategy to solidify those direct relationships. “For the first time, we’re actually embracing our clients in our advertising,” said Ian Colley, The Trade Desk’s executive VP and chief marketing officer, during a recent interview with Ad Age. “We’re able to elevate the message and really talk about how brands, some of the biggest brands in the world, are thinking about digital advertising.” The 15-, 30- and 60-second spots feature companies such as Coca-Cola, Kraft Heinz and Ford, incorporating closeups of their logos and familiar themes from their own marketing. For instance, one moment captures a young couple in a diner booth tapping a Heinz bottle to get the ketchup pour just right. “What exactly is a moment like this worth to your brand,” a voiceover asks at one point. “We say everything.” The Trade Desk developed the campaign with its in-house creative team. The company collaborated with the brands in its ads, getting their approval to appear in the spots, Colley said. The ads will run in the U.S. on connected TV, online video, digital audio, display and out of home. ‘It’s agency leaders, it’s CMOs’ A previous The Trade Desk campaign, “What Matters,” launched in late 2021, identifying principles that drive programmatic decision-making, such as transparency in measurement, objectivity in media placement, and supporting the open web publishing ecosystem. The new campaign is targeted at executives who make decisions at brands and agencies, Colley said. “It’s agency leaders, it’s CMOs, it’s chief brand officers, it’s chief media buyers,” Colley said. The campaign comes on the heels of The Trade Desk’s dramatic stock slide in February. While The Trade Desk reported that its fourth-quarter revenue rose 22% from a year earlier, it was the first time it missed expectations in 33 quarters. That surprise miss led Green, its vociferous CEO, to issue a rallying cry to double down on work The Trade Desk had already been doing, crafting more direct deals with brands. Green also said there was an opportunity for The Trade Desk to compete more forcefully against Google, which has an ad tech empire strained by antitrust rulings that seek to break up its business. More news: How ad tech leaders responded to Google’s antitrust loss The Trade Desk is also dealing with Amazon DSP, which has been offering cutthroat rates to media buyers to use its ad tech pipes with lower fees of late, according to advertising leaders. There are also independent demand-side platforms coming from behind, including Yahoo DSP, Viant Technology and Basis Technologies. In February, boutique market analysis firm New Street Research issued a note cosigning The Trade Desk’s need to forge more direct connections with brands, which control the budgets and channels their agencies use to make programmatic ad buys. New Street wrote: The Trade Desk needs to focus on “re-building go-to-market traction … as The Trade Desk puts more focus on brand-direct [joint-business partnerships].” Joint-business partnerships are long-term contracts that dictate the media-planning terms among ad tech platforms, agencies and brands. The dance between brands and agencies can be delicate, as agencies are possessive of their relationships but ad tech platforms, such as The Trade Desk, need to expand their business relationships, as well. The dynamic has caused tension between The Trade Desk and agencies with which it has traditionally worked closely, according to many ad agency and tech leaders. The Trade Desk still is tightly entwined with the agencies, Colley said, and the campaign is also targeted toward those partnerships. “We will continue to work with the world’s biggest agencies just as much as we always have,” Colley said. “It’s just that there’s more demand from brands to understand what this [programmatic] is.” DSPs try creativity The campaign signals growing competition among demand-side platforms to funnel spending their way, and it was launched in the middle of upfront negotiations. During upfronts, and IAB’s Newfronts, TV studios and internet platforms reveal new ad products and content lineups to secure big ad deals for the next year. Programmatic is an increasingly important channel to spend money, especially on connected TV. There also is a moment of potential upheaval in programmatic as its biggest player Google was just deemed a monopoly in a significant area of ad tech—on the publishing side through its ownership of Google Ad Manager. That ruling came last week and followed an antitrust ruling against Google in search last year. Ad Age’s guide to the DSP marketing battle Amazon has been marketing Amazon Ads in a campaign called “Ads That Work as Hard as You Do.” Meanwhile, independent DSP Basis Technologies launched a new campaign last week called “Seamless.” These B2B ad platform efforts, including from The Trade Desk, Amazon and Basis, are ramping up on creativity, focused on brand-building as much as direct-response goals typical of corporate marketing. Basis’ latest ads, which were timed to the platform’s presence at next week’s Possible media conference in Miami, include online video, display and out of home. The commercials have a nostalgic feel with a 1960s aesthetic, and agency CEO Eleanor is the main character. Eleanor is seen relaxing in the pool and golfing, unfazed by any potential ad crises. “It’s really the first time I would say that we started to invest pretty significantly in the creative,” said Katie McAdams, Basis Technologies’ chief marketing officer. “From my perspective, just looking at a lot of the B2B advertising across the ad tech space, it’s pretty formulaic.” The Basis campaign, done with digital agency Bottle Rocket, is clearly targeted at agencies with the main character hailing from that part of the industry. “Basis works with agencies and brands,” McAdams said, adding that “when you look at all of the automation components of our platform, a lot of those are built to really help drive efficiency for agencies … so that’s really the messaging.” Ad Age’s Data-Driven Marketing Playbook is May 22

How The Trade Desk is advertising its DSP as a place for brands

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