In November 2024, demand-side platform The Trade Desk announced plans to launch its own CTV operating system (OS) called Ventura, confirming rumours which had begun spreading around the ad tech world during the summer. While a move into the CTV OS space looked at a glance like a significant step outside of The Trade Desk’s core business (and indeed, towards the sell-side of the industry), CEO Jeff Green said the launch fit with his company’s wider vision of creating a more transparent and efficient CTV advertising supply chain.
“We’re at a point in the evolution of streaming TV where we must ensure the supply chain of streaming TV advertising is competitive and transparent, so advertisers can maximise campaign performance, publishers can fund this new golden age of TV, and consumers have a better streaming TV ad experience,” Green said at the time. “This innovation has to come in the OS, and it has to come from a company that brings the objectivity of not owning any streaming TV content.”
The announcement was met with a mix of positivity and scepticism — with the latter mainly focused on whether The Trade Desk would be able to penetrate the competitive CTV OS market. That, indeed, appears to have proven difficult. A rumoured early deal with hardware manufacturer Sonos reportedly fell through this time last year, and the only announcements since then have been a partnership with DirecTV in the US (which has focussed on the ad tech element of Ventura specifically), and a deal with FAST app owner Anoki.
Now, The Trade Desk appears to be taking a different approach. Yesterday, the company unveiled ‘the Ventura Ecosystem’, a collaborative venture which it says will bring “global TV operating systems and streaming platforms together to create a more transparent and revenue-optimised marketplace”.
Crucially, it already has a couple of partners lined up: V (previously VIDAA TV OS), which is used on over 50 million devices globally including TVs made by Hisense and Toshiba, and fellow ad tech outfit Nexxen, which works with V.
Further partnerships pending
The idea with the Ventura Ecosystem appears to be to integrate The Trade Desk’s tools more directly across the CTV OS landscape, as an alternative means to boost transparency and efficiency when buying ads on devices where Ventura itself doesn’t run. It’s not a replacement for the Ventura project, but will act as a complement.
According to the announcement, companies which join the project will have “seamless access” to The Trade Desk’s ad tech solutions, including its direct-to-supply product OpenPath, its twin identity solutions Unified ID 2.0 and EUID, its proprietary auction wrapper OpenAds, and its single sign-on solution OpenPass. Ventura Ecosystem participants will also work together on the development of industry standards, to help facilitate transparency and efficiency.
The fact that Nexxen, which competes with The Trade Desk in the DSP arena, has signed up is interesting. Nexxen’s CEO Ofer Druker said his own company’s vision for the CTV advertising world aligns with The Trade Desk’s. “Leveraging our full-stack ad tech platform, we are innovating in ways that enable CTV OEMs to monetise their inventory, and buyers to seamlessly reach highly engaged audiences at moments of key decision-making,” he said. “In aligning with The Trade Desk’s Ventura, we are intentionally and broadly opening the opportunity. Our agreement represents the next major step in evolving the ways CTV is bought for the better.”
The Trade Desk says that more partners are expected to join the Ventura Ecosystem soon. That will likely be key, if the project is to have the impact The Trade Desk wants it to. When announcing Ventura back in 2024, Jeff Green said that the impact of increased efficiency in the ecosystem would be large enough that it could bring down the cost of streaming for audiences, since streaming services would be making significantly more ad revenue. To drive those sorts of results, Ventura will need to sign up some of the major players in the CTV OS market which each account for large portions of total streaming viewership.
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