The Trade Desk today reported third-quarter 2026 revenue of $736 million, down 0.5% from $739 million a year earlier, the first year-over-year revenue decline since the demand-side platform listed in 2016. The figure landed $86 million above the floor of at least $650 million the company had set in August, and chief executive Jeff Green said results were "well ahead of our expectations entering the quarter." Profit fell harder than sales. Net income dropped 67% to $38 million, weighed down by a $44.3 million restructuring charge and a provision for income taxes equal to about 64% of pre-tax income. For the fourth quarter, the company guided revenue to at least $755 million, about 11% below the $847 million it reported for the same period of 2025, and its board added $731 million to the share buyback, lifting the amount available to $1 billion.

In Short

The Trade Desk, whose software agencies and brands use to buy ads across websites, apps and streaming TV, took in slightly less money between July and September than a year before, although far more than it had predicted. Profit fell by two-thirds after severance costs from September's job cuts, a much larger tax bill and higher spending on the platform itself. The company expects sales in the final quarter to come in about 11% below last year, which would leave 2026 revenue roughly where it was in 2025.

A beat measured against a lowered bar

Revenue for the three months ended September 30 came to $735.97 million, against $739.43 million in the third quarter of 2025, according to the condensed statements of operations published with the release. A year earlier, the same quarter had grown 18%. Over the first nine months of 2026, revenue reached $2.14 billion, up 4% from $2.05 billion, compared with 20% growth in the first nine months of 2025.

The decline is small. Its significance lies in the trend. When The Trade Desk reported second-quarter results on August 6, revenue had risen just 3% to $715.1 million and the company guided third-quarter revenue to at least $650 million and adjusted EBITDA to about $160 million, a floor roughly 12% below the prior year. Shares fell 24.22% after hours that evening. Before the results, Adweek had noted that any year-over-year fall would be the company's first as a public company, a point PPC Land reported on November 4.

Against that guidance, the quarter came in well ahead. Revenue beat the $650 million floor by $86 million, or 13%. Adjusted EBITDA reached $265.8 million, about $106 million, or 66%, above the roughly $160 million forecast. The size of both gaps says something about the quarter, and something about the August forecast.

The last four quarters of guidance show how unsettled that forecasting has been:

Quarter Revenue guidance Reported revenue Year-over-year change
Q1 2026 at least $678m $689m +12%
Q2 2026 at least $750m $715.1m +3%
Q3 2026 at least $650m $736m -0.5%
Q4 2026 at least $755m reports in early 2027 about -11% at the floor

In the first quarter, The Trade Desk beat its own floor by about $11 million. In the second, it missed by about $35 million. In the third, it beat a sharply reduced figure by $86 million. Within 2026, revenue has still risen from one quarter to the next: $689 million, then $715 million, then $736 million. The year-over-year decline reflects how much slower that climb has been than in 2025, when third-quarter revenue rose 18%.

Green framed the quarter in the release in measured terms. "Q3 represented meaningful progress, with results well ahead of our expectations entering the quarter, but we are still operating below the level of growth we expect from ourselves," he said. "We are moving with greater urgency across the company, strengthening how we engage with our largest customers, improving the platform through innovations such as Zuma, Audience Unlimited, agentic AI, and advancing a new approach to measurement designed to help marketers better understand what is actually driving business growth."

He closed on the long term. "We have more work to do, but I believe the actions we are taking are improving the underlying trajectory of the business and positioning The Trade Desk for stronger, more durable growth over the long term."

Where the profit went

Revenue was almost unchanged. Costs were not. Total operating expenses rose 11.3% to $643.4 million, from $578.2 million, and income from operations fell 42.6% to $92.6 million, from $161.2 million. Operating margin, a PPC Land calculation from the reported figures, narrowed to 12.6% from 21.8%.

The line-by-line breakdown shows where the money went:

  • Platform operations, which covers the cost of running the buying platform and its infrastructure, rose 23.4% to $200.2 million. It now equals 27.2% of revenue, up from 21.9%.
  • Technology and development rose 15.1% to $147.3 million.
  • Sales and marketing rose 8.9% to $170.8 million.
  • General and administrative fell 4.7% to $125.1 million.

Inside those totals sits the cost of September's job cuts. The release discloses restructuring charges of $44.3 million for the quarter, tied to what it calls the "2026 Restructuring Plan," and says they "primarily include severance and other termination benefit costs for affected employees." The nine-month figure is the same $44.3 million, so the entire charge was booked in the third quarter. On September 4, The Trade Desk eliminated about 575 positions, roughly 15% of the 3,843 full-time employees it reported at the end of 2025. At the time, the company gave no cost for those cuts. The $44.3 million is the first figure. Divided across about 575 roles, it works out at roughly $77,000 per position, a PPC Land calculation that rests on an estimated headcount the company has not confirmed.

Strip out the charge and operating expenses rose 3.6%, while operating income would have been about $136.9 million, still 15% below the prior year. Both are PPC Land calculations. The release does not say which expense lines carry the restructuring cost, so it is not possible to tell from the published tables how much of the 23.4% jump in platform operations reflects severance and how much reflects running costs.

Stock-based compensation moved the other way. It fell 21.6% to $95.1 million, from $121.3 million. Of that, compensation tied to Green's long-term performance grants came to $2 million, against $14 million a year earlier; over nine months, the figure dropped to $8 million from $57 million.

A tax rate of 64%

Below the operating line, two further items cut into net income. Other income, mostly interest, fell to $13.8 million from $18.3 million, with net interest income down 21.7% to $12.9 million. And the provision for income taxes rose to $68.4 million, from $64.0 million, even as pre-tax income fell 40.7% to $106.5 million.

That puts the effective tax rate at about 64.3%, against 35.6% in the third quarter of 2025, by PPC Land's calculation. For the nine months, it was 52.3%, against 34.0%. The release offers no explanation. Net income came to $38.05 million, or $0.08 per diluted share, against $115.5 million, or $0.23, a year earlier. Net income margin fell to 5% from 16%.

The company's preferred measures soften the picture without reversing it. Adjusted EBITDA, which excludes depreciation, stock-based compensation, restructuring charges, net interest income and taxes, fell 16.3% to $265.8 million, a 36% margin against 43%. Non-GAAP net income fell 29.6% to $155.3 million, or $0.33 per diluted share, against $0.45.

Fourth-quarter guidance points to a smaller year-end

For the final three months of 2026, The Trade Desk guided to revenue of at least $755 million and adjusted EBITDA of at least $280 million. It gave no outlook for net income, citing the difficulty of forecasting stock-based compensation.

The comparison is with a strong period. In the fourth quarter of 2025, The Trade Desk reported revenue of $847 million, up 14%, and adjusted EBITDA of $400 million, a 47% margin. At the floor of the new guidance, fourth-quarter revenue would be about 10.9% lower and adjusted EBITDA 30% lower. The implied margin at both floors is about 37%.

Added to the nine-month total, the revenue floor would put full-year 2026 revenue at about $2.895 billion. The company reported $2.896 billion for 2025. If the floor holds, revenue for the year would be flat to within about $1 million, by PPC Land's arithmetic.

That would end a long run. The investor presentation published with the results charts annual revenue from $114 million in 2015 to $2.896 billion in 2025, with growth rates of 78% in 2016, 23% in 2023, 26% in 2024 and 18% in 2025. Flat revenue in 2026 would be the slowest year the chart has recorded.

The political question

The guidance does not separate political advertising, and neither does the third-quarter release. That matters for reading both. In the third quarter of 2025, The Trade Desk said revenue grew 18% reported and 22% excluding political spending. In the fourth quarter of 2025, the figures were 14% reported and about 19% excluding political, because 2024 had been a presidential election year.

The 2026 comparison runs the other way. This is a US midterm year, and political spending has lifted results elsewhere in ad tech. Magnite, the sell-side platform, said its third-quarter political revenue came to more than $40 million against a $15 million plan. Today's release says nothing about how much political spending contributed to The Trade Desk's $736 million, or how much is assumed in the fourth-quarter floor. Without that figure, it is not possible to say whether the underlying business shrank more or less than the headline numbers suggest.

Cash, buybacks and the $1 billion authorisation

The cash position strengthened. Cash and cash equivalents stood at $1.23 billion on September 30, up from $658 million at the end of 2025, with a further $420 million in short-term investments. Together, that is $1.65 billion, against $1.30 billion nine months earlier. The balance sheet lists no borrowings.

Cash generation held roughly level. Net cash from operating activities in the third quarter rose 15% to $258.3 million, according to the reconciliation in the investor presentation. Purchases of property and equipment rose 52% to $100.8 million, and capitalised software costs rose 24% to $4.2 million. Free cash flow came to $153.3 million, down 1% from $155.0 million. Over the first three quarters of 2026, free cash flow totalled about $565 million, by PPC Land's addition of the quarterly figures: $276.0 million, $136.0 million and $153.3 million.

The balance sheet also shows the scale of the money The Trade Desk handles on behalf of clients. Accounts receivable stood at $3.08 billion and accounts payable at $2.43 billion, both far larger than quarterly revenue, because the company bills clients for the media it buys for them as well as its own fee. Both balances fell from year-end levels of $3.77 billion and $3.01 billion. Over nine months, the provision for expected credit losses rose to $6.2 million, from $1.5 million a year earlier.

Buybacks slowed sharply in 2026

In the first nine months of 2026, The Trade Desk spent $241.3 million repurchasing Class A shares, according to the cash flow statement, down 75% from $957.5 million in the same period of 2025. In 2025 as a whole, it had repurchased about $1.4 billion of stock at an average of $52.60 a share, and in February its board added $350 million for a total of $500 million.

The company had about $269 million left under that authorisation on September 30, according to the release. That is the same figure it reported for June 30, which indicates little or no buying under the program in the third quarter. Diluted weighted-average shares outstanding fell 4.6% to 470.2 million, from 493.0 million.

The board has now added $731 million, bringing the amount available to $1 billion. In a Form 8-K filed today and signed by chief financial officer Nate Olmstead, the company said the board "authorized and approved" the additional amount in November 2026. The filing adds that the program "does not obligate the Company to acquire any particular amount of Class A Common Stock and may be modified, suspended or terminated at any time at the discretion of the Company's board of directors."

The new authorisation follows Green's own purchase earlier in the year. In March, Green said he had bought approximately $150 million of Trade Desk stock over several days, when the shares had fallen roughly 65% from their peak.

The release also notes that customer retention "remained over 95% during the third quarter, as it has for over a decade."

What the company highlighted

The release lists product and partner announcements from the quarter. Most were public before today. None comes with revenue or spend figures.

Kokai Zuma and agentic AI

First on the list is Kokai Zuma, which the company describes as "the latest release of Kokai, bringing new agentic AI capabilities and a more intuitive user experience designed to help advertisers move faster and drive better campaign outcomes." Kokai is The Trade Desk's buying platform. When Zuma was released on August 27, the company claimed its upgraded optimisation model had cut cost per acquisition by an average of 32% across 62 campaigns, compared with the previous model. At launch, the Koa AI assistant, Koa frequency features and conversion lift enhancements were in closed beta, with no general availability dates. Today's release does not update those dates.

Green's quote also names Audience Unlimited, the data marketplace product The Trade Desk announced on September 29, 2025 with AI scoring of third-party segments and a Control Mode priced at 3.3% and 4.4% of impression costs. The release gives no adoption figure.

Six days before the results, The Trade Desk said co-founder Dave Pickles would return to lead a new CTO Council with direct input into the technology roadmap, including agentic capabilities. Today's release does not mention him.

Healthcare data and HCP reach

Three of the six partnership items concern healthcare. The Trade Desk "expanded its healthcare measurement and optimization integrations with Veeva Crossix and IQVIA Digital," according to the release, "enabling pharmaceutical advertisers to apply campaign learnings in real-time." Separately, OptimizeRx "is bringing authenticated healthcare professional (HCP) reach to The Trade Desk through OpenPath," the company's direct route to publisher inventory.

The emphasis matches the company's spending mix. According to the investor presentation, Medical Health accounted for 14% of spend on the platform in 2025, up from 11% in 2024, moving it from third to second place among verticals behind Food and Drink at 18%. Automotive followed at 13%, then Technology and Computing and Shopping at 9% each.

Connected TV

On connected TV, the release lists three items. Netflix "expanded its integration with The Trade Desk, enabling advertisers beginning in November to use both first-party and third-party data to target audiences on Netflix through Kokai, with in-platform measurement capabilities expected to follow." When Netflix and The Trade Desk announced that change on October 20, the Kokai data marketplace offered more than 4 million segments from over 300 providers, and in-DSP measurement was described as coming soon, with no date. The release gives no date either.

In Italy, The Trade Desk added access to pause ads on HBO Max and Discovery+, "giving advertisers a new programmatic format for reaching viewers within premium environments." Pause ads appear when a viewer pauses a stream. The company opened the format to OpenPath supply in July, after an open beta from May 12 that ran only through private marketplace or programmatic guaranteed deals. The release gives no start date or volume for Italy.

The third item is Gracenote. The Nielsen company announced its first DSP integration with The Trade Desk on August 27, bringing show-level CTV targeting and reporting into the platform. No availability date or pricing was disclosed at the time.

Measurement, agents and marketplace data

LoopMe's brand lift integration, also listed, arrived in The Trade Desk's Measurement Marketplace in early September, with studies feasible from 1 million impressions. Olyzon, the Paris-based company whose agentic orchestration platform the release says has "agents live across DSPs including The Trade Desk," put that platform into commercial release on October 7, with agents that move CTV budgets across four DSPs: The Trade Desk, Amazon DSP, DV360 and Yahoo DSP. That a partner announcement listed by The Trade Desk describes software built to shift budgets between it and its rivals is worth noting.

Kijiji, the Canadian classifieds marketplace, made its first-party consumer intent data available for programmatic activation through The Trade Desk "for the first time," according to the release, across automotive, real estate and home goods.

The "new approach to measurement" in Green's quote is not described anywhere in the release or the presentation.

What the investor presentation shows

The 47-slide presentation published with the results is largely an evergreen description of the company, with the third-quarter financial tables appended at the end. Several slides carry figures worth noting.

Headcount. The "by the numbers" slide lists "3,200+" employees. A later slide on the company's global footprint says "Over 3,800 employees" in "over 35 markets." The second figure matches the 3,843 headcount at the end of 2025. The first is consistent with that total after about 575 job cuts. The same deck carries both.

Geography. About 86% of 2025 revenue came from North America and about 14% from outside it, according to the deck, which cites Magna Global for the claim that about 60% of advertising dollars are spent outside North America.

Retail data. One slide claims The Trade Desk's retail data marketplace "provides access to over 80% of sales from top US retailers," citing the National Retail Federation's 2024 Top 100 list. Kroger, Albertsons, Walgreens, Walmart, Target, The Home Depot, Costco and CVS Media Exchange sit inside a circle labelled The Trade Desk. Amazon, at 14%, and Lowe's, at 5%, sit outside it. A separate slide presents Walmart DSP as "Data from #1 retailer" plus "Tech from #1 independent DSP." The slide does not reflect that Walmart, which built its white-label DSP on The Trade Desk's technology, renewed the partnership without exclusivity, as The Trade Desk confirmed on its August 6 call.

The supply chain. A slide titled "The pie is getting bigger while waste is being pushed out" depicts $1.00 leaving advertisers and $0.58 reaching publishers, with exchanges, ad servers and data platforms in between. The slide cites no source for the $0.58. The figure is relevant to The Trade Desk's own pitch for OpenPath, its direct supply path to publishers.

Market size. The company sizes advertising at "$1+ trillion," split into open internet at about $280 billion, social at about $265 billion, search at about $245 billion and traditional media at about $200 billion, citing Magna's 2025 forecast and its own estimates. The four segments add up to about $990 billion, by PPC Land's addition.

CTV pricing. A slide contrasts "Traditional TV buying" at a $10 CPM with "Connected TV buying" at a $20 CPM, under the heading "Decisioning is better for buyers and increases CPMs for publishers." No source is given for either figure.

What the release leaves out

Some subjects that bear directly on the quarter do not appear in the release or the presentation.

Safari. Apple released iOS 27 on September 14, 16 days before the quarter closed, and Safari began blocking adsrvr.org, The Trade Desk's core ad request and delivery domain, along with UIDAPI.com, the domain tied to Unified ID 2.0. On October 5, an Apple engineer asked The Trade Desk to test an iOS 27.2 beta build that included changes, and ADOTAT later reported that The Trade Desk had seen its domain unblocked in a test build 13 days after Apple's first reply to its bug report. Apple has made no public statement on the block. Neither the release nor the deck mentions Safari or estimates any effect on revenue. The deck's identity slides still describe Unified ID 2.0 as "used by hundreds of advertisers, publishers, DSPs, SSPs."

Platform spend and fees. The release does not disclose gross spend through the platform, its take rate, or the share of spend going to CTV. Those figures matter more than usual. In August, PPC Land reported Guideline data showing Amazon's share of tracked programmatic spend rising from under 10% to just under 20% in roughly 15 months. Without spend figures, it is not possible to say whether flat revenue reflects flat spend, lower fees, or both.

Political advertising. As noted above, neither the quarter nor the guidance separates it.

The release does include an "Industry Recognition" section listing Newsweek and Business Insider rankings and AdExchanger and Cynopsis recognitions for two employees.

How the quarter compares

Elsewhere in advertising, the third quarter produced a split. Amazon's advertising revenue grew 11% to $19.64 billion, slowed by the move of Prime Day into the second quarter, with fourth-quarter ad growth guided to the high teens. Magnite's net income rose 70% to $34 million on the strength of political and CTV. Criteo, the commerce media company, reported a revenue decline of 11% and an 85% drop in net income.

The Trade Desk sits between those outcomes. Its third quarter was far better than it had forecast and roughly level with a year earlier. Its fourth-quarter outlook, at the floor, is a double-digit decline.

The stock market context has also shifted. On September 4, the same day as the job cuts, S&P Dow Jones Indices said The Trade Desk would leave the S&P 500, roughly 14 months after it joined.

Why this matters for marketers

The Trade Desk, which its own presentation calls the "#1 independent DSP," sells the software agencies and brands use to buy display, video, audio and CTV inventory outside the walled gardens of Google, Meta and Amazon. Its revenue is, in effect, a fee on the media its clients buy. A flat year, followed by a fourth-quarter floor 11% below 2025, says less about the health of any single campaign than about how much open-web and CTV spending is flowing through the main independent route to it.

For buyers, the cost side of the release is as telling as the revenue line. Platform operations costs rose 23.4% and technology and development 15.1%, while purchases of property and equipment rose 52%. The company is still spending heavily on the infrastructure that runs bidding and on the AI tooling in Kokai, even after cutting about 15% of staff. Customer retention above 95% suggests that clients have not left in numbers. Whether they are spending as much through the platform is the question the release does not answer.

The partnership list points to where The Trade Desk is concentrating effort: healthcare data and HCP reach, Netflix and other premium CTV supply, and third-party measurement such as Gracenote and LoopMe. Each matters to a specific group of buyers. Pharmaceutical advertisers gain integrations with Veeva Crossix, IQVIA Digital and OptimizeRx. CTV buyers gain first- and third-party data targeting on Netflix from November, with measurement still to come. Several of these items, however, carry no general availability dates, and the Netflix measurement piece remains undated.

The $1 billion buyback authorisation and $1.65 billion in cash and investments show that the company can fund its own shares and its platform at the same time. They do not change the competitive picture described in PPC Land's earlier coverage, in which Amazon's DSP undercuts The Trade Desk on fees and agentic tools from rivals and partners alike promise to move budgets between platforms. Olyzon's agents, listed in today's release, are one example.

For publishers, a flat Trade Desk means a flat stream of demand from one of the largest buyers in programmatic. For agencies, it raises the stakes of the relationships Green referred to when he spoke of "strengthening how we engage with our largest customers." The release does not say what those engagements involve. The conference call scheduled for 2:00 p.m. Pacific time today, the first since Pickles' return was announced, is the next opportunity for the company to fill in what the release leaves out.

Timeline

Summary

Who: The Trade Desk, the Ventura, California-based demand-side platform led by co-founder and chief executive Jeff Green, with chief financial officer Nate Olmstead signing the accompanying Form 8-K. The results affect agencies, brands and publishers that buy and sell inventory through its Kokai platform, as well as its shareholders.

What: Third-quarter revenue fell 0.5% to $736 million, the company's first year-over-year decline as a public company, though $86 million above its own August floor. Net income fell 67% to $38 million on a $44.3 million restructuring charge, an effective tax rate of about 64% and higher platform costs. Adjusted EBITDA fell 16% to $266 million. Fourth-quarter guidance of at least $755 million in revenue and $280 million in adjusted EBITDA is about 11% and 30% below the fourth quarter of 2025. The board added $731 million to the buyback, for $1 billion available.

When: The results, covering the quarter ended September 30, 2026, were released today, November 9, 2026, with a conference call scheduled for 2:00 p.m. Pacific time. The board approved the buyback increase in November 2026.

Where: The release was issued from Los Angeles through Business Wire and furnished to the US Securities and Exchange Commission with a Form 8-K. About 86% of The Trade Desk's 2025 revenue came from North America, according to its investor presentation.

Why: The release attributes the outcome to no single cause. Green said the company was "still operating below the level of growth we expect from ourselves" and pointed to Zuma, Audience Unlimited, agentic AI and a new approach to measurement. The quarter followed slowing growth through 2026, the September job cuts, the S&P 500 exit, Walmart's non-exclusive renewal, Amazon's fee competition and Safari's block of the company's ad domain. Apart from the restructuring charge, the release does not address those factors directly.