Let me preface this by explaining that I don’t understand what the advertising industry is all about, or what Google is considering doing. Not a clue. Let me also disclose that I have a considerable position in TTD. Not a crazy sized position (someone back there said they had 45% of their family fortune in that one stock !), but a solid 11% or so. BUT I follow the numbers. Let’s see:
Criteo started the year at $22.72, was at $25.10 two days ago before Google’s announcement (up 10% YTD) and has dropped 29% in two days to $17.86, which puts it down 21.4% YTD.
Now The Trade Desk, which had had a huge run up YTD, should be down a lot more than that in the last two days, right? Let’s check:
The Trade Desk started the year at $113.14, was at $202.91 two days ago before Google’s announcement (up 79% YTD) and has dropped 7% plus in two days to $187.34, which puts it up 65.6% YTD.
What does that tell me? What Google is doing is perceived as possibly very damaging to Criteo, and it was sold off almost 30% in two days. Robo computers picked up on this and sold off all advertising companies, but The Trade Desk has mightily resisted the slide, probably because those who do understand what is going on see this as a misunderstanding by the Robos and an accumulation opportunity.
And that is my naive take. Do with it what you will.
Agree 100% Saul. What I like most is that Jeff Green is already two (or five steps ahead). He’s got a deep understanding of what it’s going to take to be successful in China and has already rebuilt the platform to work long-term in China.
U.S. will always be a big part of their revenue, but I’m expecting to see international growth pick up quite a bit over the next couple years. Probably ahead of expectations.
Not adding here because I don’t want it to be any larger than 25%. Even that is high, but also not selling.
Agreed Saul.
A similar issue happened when Apple made security/data changes a year or two back…greatly impacted CRTO but was a short-lived FUD event for TTD. CEO Green would later directly call out the apple changes as a non-factor in the ER that came after apple news story broke.
I suspect this is a similar scenario.
TTD is still up 25% since Feb 21st and release of their latest ER…so up to everyone to decide if this is really a material dip or not.
Darth had a great detailed post on this just a few posts back also.
The concern is that Google will block or otherwise impede third party cookies in some way.
Apple with Safari in September 2017 changed third party cookie policy to make it so third party cookies expire after 24 hours. A Trade Desk Cookie normally expires after 1 year.
As we continue to expand globally, we’ve been watching carefully what impact Apple’s Intelligent Tracking is having on our business. Since its launch in September, we have seen no impact in our mobile spend as a result of Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention. In fact, although it has always been a very small portion of spend on our platform, we actually saw desktop Safari INCREASE during the month of October, the first full month of ITP implementation.
Completely blocking third parties is always a possibility and is a threat identied in their S-1. But the internet you’re used to would behave differently and would be a different experience.
Reading the prepared remarks from 2017 is interesting as it relates to a lot of what we are talking about and how about 1.5 years later much of what he was saying there is baring out.