In November, ad tech giant The Trade Desk offically announced Ventura, a CTV operating system (OS). While the news triggered excitement in the industry, it also sparked questions over how the OS would work and the role The Trade Desk would play, particularly when it comes to protecting the interests of the company’s demand-side clients.
Despite operating systems traditionally being the domain of the sell-side, enabling smart TV operators to sell their own inventory or share revenues with third-party apps, The Trade Desk has positioned the launch as a buy-side proposition. In the interests of making sure advertisers are getting the best value in their CTV buys, The Trade Desk says the business will neither own content, nor sell inventory on Ventura’s home screen.
“The Trade Desk and Ventura will never own inventory,” Matthew Henick, SVP Ventura at The Trade Desk, tells VideoWeek. “We will always maintain our objectivity in guiding our clients’ dollars to that best place, no matter where it is in the CTV ecosystem.”
Conflicts of interest
In addition, Ventura will “not participate” in ad revenue-sharing with content providers, states Henick, in order to preserve The Trade Desk’s objectivity. It will however share in subscription and transaction revenues, but “at a lower take rate than industry norms.”
Henick says this avoids the “conflict of interest” inherent in other OS that are owned by OEMs which also run their own ad-supported streaming services or FAST channels. The move therefore “aligns with The Trade Desk’s core mission to help advertisers find their audience on the open internet,” according to Henick, using its own publisher integration and ID products to increase transparency in the programmatic supply chain.
“Ventura is about offering a cleaner supply chain for streaming TV advertising, minimising supply chain hops and costs to ensure maximum ROI for every advertising dollar,” says Henick. “By incorporating a more direct supply path with OpenPath and identity with Unified ID 2.0, Ventura will enable advertisers to value and price ad impressions across streaming platforms more accurately, while finding relevant audiences with greater precision.”
The neutral zone
The Trade Desk reaffirms its belief that consumers will also benefit from the move, both in terms of the ad experience and for personalised content discovery, again due to neutrality over the content it promotes.
“Many existing OS providers have a conflict of interest by promoting the content they own, so the user experience isn’t solely optimised for the customer,” he comments. “Ventura and The Trade Desk will never have its own content service, so we will always have objectivity in what is shown and recommend to users.”
In terms of the ad experience, Ventura promises “fewer (more relevant) ads”, though the point of comparison is unspecified. But this is where The Trade Desk’s identity solution comes into play, ensuring ads are more relevant to the individual viewer, and therefore driving higher ROI at lower frequency.
“Identity plays a critical role in bringing ads that are relevant to the viewer,” says Henick. “Currently, ads on CTV aren’t necessarily relevant to the person who’s watching them, which affects how advertisers value that ad. The more personalised the ad, the higher the value an advertiser places on it, which should result in a lower ad load in content. By helping to optimise the ads within the content, we can hopefully reduce the number of ads for customers.”
Raising the tide
However, it is currently unclear who those customers will be and where the OS will be available. The only rumoured hardware partner so far is audio equipment manufacturer Sonos. But The Trade Desk is exploring partnerships across global markets, with a view to launch Ventura in the US before rolling out globally. And the response so far from OEMs has been “really gratifying”, according to Henick.
“Manufacturing and selling TVs is a tough business with thin margins, which often forces those companies to consider building a content and advertising business to provide recurring, predictable monetisation,” he observes. “These OEM partners value our mission, objectivity, and strong content provider relationships, which we’ll leverage to build a more lucrative and fair ecosystem that raises the tide for every participant who brings value to the audience experience.”
And while Ventura’s positioning is focused on serving buyers and consumers, The Trade Desk also alludes to benefits to the sell-side, aiming to create a “win-win” situation for the CTV ecosystem.
“Ventura creates a more direct connection between the streamers, who want to manage their own yield effectively, and advertisers, who want as much signal as possible,” says Henick. “An open, competitive marketplace for CTV ads will maximise advertiser campaign performance, help publishers fund a new golden age of TV, and enable a better consumer experience.”
