This week, Publicis, one of the world’s largest advertising holding companies, told its clients it can no longer recommend The Trade Desk as a demand-side platform. The decision followed an independent audit by FirmDecisions, which found that The Trade Desk had applied its DSP fee to additional charges and billed clients for tools they were enrolled in without clear authorisation. The Trade Desk has disputed the findings, arguing the auditor requested data that would breach partner confidentiality agreements.
Last month, AdWeek reported that both WPP and Dentsu had already stepped back from OpenPath, The Trade Desk’s direct-to-publisher buying initiative, citing concerns about fee visibility and a lack of clarity around where ads were actually running. Three of the five largest agency holding companies in the world are now, in some form, at odds with The Trade Desk.
WHAT OPENPATH IS
OpenPath launched in 2022 as The Trade Desk’s attempt to give advertisers a more direct route to publisher inventory, removing several layers of intermediary from the supply chain. In principle, it is a positive development. Fewer hops between buyer and seller means less friction, less fee extraction at each stage and cleaner signals for both sides. The Trade Desk position it as a meaningful alternative to Google’s infrastructure. For publishers integrated directly into the programme, it represented a genuine step toward a more transparent supply path.
THM was among a small number of early partners globally to be integrated directly with The Trade Desk through OpenPath. That integration gives our publishers direct access to the largest DSP outside Google.
The problems that have emerged are not about OpenPath as a concept. Supply path optimisation benefits everyone, albeit when it works properly. The issue is what happens when a platform controls both the buying environment and the direct supply path simultaneously. It’s a similar claim that Google has come under fire for in the past.
The agency complaints, whether you accept Publicis’s account or The Trade Desk’s rebuttal, centre on the same underlying concern: lack of transparency.
THE PUBLISHER IMPACT
Some publishers have seen a slight drop in programmatic revenue in recent weeks, traceable to reduced spend flowing through OpenPath. Others have seen no meaningful change. The difference largely comes down to how much of their demand mix was concentrated in that specific path.
We believe the revenue impact, for those experiencing it, will be short-term. Advertising budgets do not disappear when a supply path is disrupted. They simply find another route. The most likely beneficiary, in the near term (as usual) is Google. When holding companies redirect spend away from TTD or encourage clients to revert to more familiar buying environments, the programmatic platform that absorbs that spend is predominantly Google’s DV360.
The Trade Desk’s CEO Jeff Green has bought roughly $148 million of company stock in recent weeks and made clear he believes in the platform’s direction. The company posted strong Q4 results, with $847 million in quarterly revenue and 18% annual growth. This is not, in our opinion, a business in structural decline. But the trust issues now being aired publicly will take time to resolve and, until they are, spend decisions will be made cautiously by the agencies involved.
WHAT PUBLISHERS SHOULD TAKE FROM THIS
The specific details of the fee dispute between the holdcos and The Trade Desk are for those parties to resolve. What is worth examining is the broader pattern.
Publishers who experienced a revenue drop when OpenPath spend was redirected have, in effect, received a signal about concentration risk. If a meaningful portion of your programmatic revenue is flowing through a single channel, a single DSP, or a single supply path arrangement, disruptions like this one will affect you more than they should. That is not a criticism of OpenPath specifically. It is a structural observation about any supply path that becomes too dominant in your demand mix.
The practical question is visibility. Do you know, at any given time, how much of your revenue is flowing through each DSP, each SSP or each supply path? Can you see when that distribution shifts? Publishers who have that visibility can respond quickly when something changes. Publishers who cannot see it find out when it shows up in their monthly numbers.
A NOTE ON OUR POSITION
THM’s direct integration with The Trade Desk through OpenPath gives our publishers access to premium demand at a level most independent publishers cannot reach on their own. We continue to believe in direct, transparent supply paths as a meaningful improvement over the open exchange, when they are operated with genuine transparency.
What we also believe (and have built Tradecore around) is that publishers should be able to see exactly what is happening in their stack at any time. Full auction transparency, real-time analytics across every partner and channel and no dependency on any single platform for a disproportionate share of revenue.
The current situation with The Trade Desk illustrates why that visibility is important for the sell side.
If you want to understand how your demand mix is currently distributed (and whether your OpenPath exposure is a concentration risk worth addressing) we are always happy to take a look.