The news: Jeff Green, CEO of The Trade Desk (TTD), said he remains ideologically committed to defending and expanding the open internet during the company’s Q3 earnings call Thursday.

• TTD ended Q3 2025 on solid footing, posting $739 million in revenues, up 18% YoY; adjusted EBITDA climbed 23% to $317 million, a 43% margin.
• For Q4, the company projects at least $840 million in revenues and $375 million in adjusted EBITDA, or 18.5% YoY growth excluding political spend.
• Advertisers using the AI-powered Kokai platform saw 94% higher click-through rates and 26% lower acquisition costs versus the previous system. Green called Kokai the company’s biggest upgrade yet, positioning TTD as an “AI-first DSP” built for the open internet.

Leadership credited durable momentum from connected TV (CTV) and video, now about half of total revenues, and said CTV continues to outpace all other channels.

Yes, but: Despite the beat, shares fell 3.8% in after-hours trading, reflecting investor caution after a volatile year.

Green on growth: Green used the earnings call to restate TTD’s larger mission to position itself as the backbone of the open internet—that phrase was said 48 times on the call—and the independent counterweight to big tech’s ad empires.

• Green argued that TTD’s stewardship of standards like Unified ID 2.0, OpenRTB transaction IDs, and OpenAds has made it essential to programmatic advertising, with “entire categories” of data vendors relying on its infrastructure.
• Green says TTD is now the largest source of third-party demand for most premium publishers (which outperform on purchase intent, per TTD research), including major CTV owners. That stance contrasts with Amazon, Meta, and Google, which he calls “conflicted” since their DSPs mainly serve their own inventory. About 95% of Amazon’s ad revenues, he noted, still come from Sponsored Listings and Prime Video—not the open web.
• That positioning makes The Trade Desk the leading buy-side alternative for the open web. Green also argues that AI will strengthen this model by helping advertisers activate their own first-party data more transparently, in contrast to big tech’s closed ecosystems.
• Green admits the open-internet vision remains more aspirational than factual. Many publishers still face declining ad revenues, but he maintains that independent DSPs will ultimately command most open-web ad spend.