After recent controversy surrounding The Trade Desk, competitors are jumping at the chance to capture dollars from the platform’s potential defectors with new bids for advertiser business.
Two weeks ago, the French advertising giant Publicis advised its clients to stop transacting on The Trade Desk, the largest independent demand-side platform (DSP) on the market, after it failed an audit of its fees and media spend. Publicis claimed, in a memo leaked to ADWEEK, that the platform “improperly applied their DSP fee to other fees” and automatically opted the holding company and some of its clients into fee-based offerings without authorization. Although The Trade Desk denied the allegations, the controversy has stirred enough concern that Omnicom now plans to commission its own third-party audit of the adtech firm.
The Trade Desk’s stock has dropped around 18% since news of Publicis’ audit findings broke.
One of the DSPs taking advantage of the situation, StackAdapt, reached out to one agency media buyer in a direct message reviewed by ADWEEK, asking whether the buyer had considered reevaluating their DSP partnership in light of “TTD changes.” The company did not respond to a request for comment.
Some others are taking a different tact: promoting messages on LinkedIn that include conspicuous allusions to the holdcos’ audits of The Trade Desk.
In one ad that ran last week, Quantcast said: “Recently failed audits in the ad-tech space are a wake-up call. If your DSP is automatically opting you into fees, it’s time to upgrade.”
Asked for a comment, Quantcast did not address the campaign directly. The company’s chief marketer Rebecca Rosborough said: “Our approach centers on delivering high-performing solutions that give marketers confidence in their media investment. Our priority remains supporting our customers with technology that drives real business results.”
Meanwhile, both Tatari and Illumin, two mid-market players, have paid to promote LinkedIn content from their executives.
