All, I posted this on Seeking Alpha and received a reply from Bert on this. Does anyone else have related thoughts re: my question? I’m hoping there’s more science to this within the TTD platform as opposed to art. Would love to hear thoughts on this pls. It may be that he received his answer from Investor Relations (which would close the matter in my mind) ---- pinging him re: that. Disclosure ---- TTD is my largest position.
From Me:
Bert, I get that TTD does not keep personally identifiable information on the platform. But say that an advertiser wants to market to that same 40 year old golfer in the northern suburbs of Chicago. How do they actually obtain/source the information that a 40 year old golfer lives in the northern suburbs of Chicago (so that a golfing advertiser on TTD’s demand platform can market to that 40 year old in the northern suburbs of Chicago)?
From Bert Hochfeld:
Author’s reply » At this point, I would not suggest that the targeting TTD does is perfect-it is just significantly better than anything else available. There is lots of subjectivity and assumptions that are used in the targeting although gradually AI is being introduced to make the targeting more accurate. Here is the answer to your question from TTD-but stripped of the fact that this is a commercial, this kind of targeting is still as much art as science.
Precision targeting at scale.
The Trade Desk is changing the way advertising is bought and sold through its industry-leading technology platform. Marketers can create personalized experiences across various channels and devices.
Advertising campaigns powered by The Trade Desk use advanced targeting, online & offline attribution, and detailed reporting that capture the consumer journey from initial impression to conversion.
And now the platform is powered by KoaTM, an artificial intelligence engine that automatically surfaces data-driven recommendations in real-time to drive campaign performance.
Do you need to understand how APIs work on Twilio’s platform, or how a GPU is fabricated, or what the code of a search engine algorithm looks like, before investing in companies?
Do you want to know how the meat at Chipotle got there…really truly know each step?
My unsolicited and easily ignorable advice: don’t sweat the details…their clients wouldn’t be there and buying more if the platform didn’t work.
Because The Trade Desk does not transact in directly identifiable consumer data and because we don’t own a
search engine, we can provide a unified open ID that enables advertisers to compare every destination on their
media plan to every other destination objectively. Agencies and brands see this, and it is why, in part, we are
winning spend. In our platform, we don’t even house email addresses, let alone provide hundreds of millions of
people with their own email addresses. Our data, and the data of our third-party partners, cannot be directly
associated with an individual. Data in The Trade Desk platform does not include names, phone numbers, or
Social Security numbers, for example.
This is the centerpiece of many of the discussions we have with agencies and brands today. Our value
proposition has strengthened because of Google’s strategic ID policy change. The choice for marketers could not
be clearer: choose an objective partner with transparent reporting, or choose higher walls where the publisher
largely does the measurement. We have already seen some of the benefit in Q2, and we think this can only lead
to more positive outcomes for our business over the long term.
I believe all you really need to know about TTD and their methods is paying attention to the ads that reach your computer screen, and email account. Regardless of the app, including this one, the ads I see are relevant to what I am researching. I travel a lot, and book my rooms, and transportation myself. I see lot’s of ads about the latest deals for weeks after my latest searches. Someone is clearly capturing this data, and using it personalize the ads I see.