• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, February 15, 2023

The Trade Desk (TTD) released Q4 2022 earnings Wednesday, announcing another strong quarter for the company. It also raised guidance for the current quarter.

The company recorded record spend on the platform in 2022 of nearly $7.8 billion. 

Fourth-quarter revenue rose 24% year-over-year (YoY) to $491 million, and 2022 revenue rose 32% YoY to $1.58 billion.  

Jeff Green, CEO of TTD, during the conference call with analysts and investors pointed to contributing factors such as outperforming the ad market and competitors, how advertisers are partnering with TTD to do more with less, how shopper data is fueling media buys with data, and the evolution of the CTV market.  

“More of the world’s leading advertisers are gravitating to fast-growing channels such as connected TV (CTV) and retail media," stated Green. "They are leveraging new identity tools, such as UID2, which allow them to make the most of their first-party data in a privacy-safe manner."

He said the trends will accelerate in 2023 and the company will continue to invest in its platform to help advertisers.

The company saw increased adoption and success of its Unified ID 2.0 (UID2) identity framework, with campaigns on Disney’s UID2-powered audience graph the company says is 12-times more effective in reaching target audiences as consumer privacy becomes more important.

UID2 in the past few years also has been adopted by Paramount Advertising, AWS, and Adobe.

Green also called out the U.S. Department of Justice’s recent antitrust suit against Google that accused it of abusing its power over the digital ad industry.

“Management noted they outpaced the market in nearly all areas of digital advertising in 2022 with its performance highlighting its growing relationship with agencies and brands and showing the value of the open-internet over the ‘limitations’ of walled gardens,” Matthew Swanson, analyst at RBC Capital Markets, wrote in a research note published Wednesday. “Management also noted that more advertisers are gravitating towards fast-growing channels like CTV and retail media as well as using UID2 and expects these trends to accelerate in 2023.”

Guidance moves higher for the first quarter as we will look for more color on the macro expectations on the call. Along with market share gains and expanding into fast growing sectors like CTV and retail media, TTD grew gross spend by 25% in the calendar year 2022, Swanson wrote.

Green believes that CTV will become the “king pin for the open Internet,” that will force many walled gardens to lower barriers, in part, because “CTV is perfectly fragmented, but collectively huge. It's not so fragmented that you need millions of parties to coordinate, but it's fragmented enough that no one has enough power to be draconian and go it alone.”