Jeff Green

Jeff Green founded The Trade Desk in 2009 in Ventura, California, after previously co-founding AdECN — one of the first online advertising exchanges, which was acquired by Microsoft. Born in 1977, Green's insight was that programmatic advertising needed an independent, buy-side-only platform that would serve advertisers' interests without the conflicts inherent in Google's vertically integrated ad stack. The Trade Desk's platform enables advertising agencies and brands to programmatically purchase digital advertising across channels: connected TV, audio streaming, display, mobile, and the open internet. Unlike Google's DV360, which is incentivized to steer spending toward Google-owned inventory (YouTube, Search), The Trade Desk is channel-agnostic, optimizing purely for advertiser outcomes. This independence has made it the preferred DSP for the world's largest advertisers and agencies. The biggest growth driver has been connected TV (CTV) advertising, where The Trade Desk is the dominant independent platform. As viewers shift from linear TV to streaming services — many of which now offer ad-supported tiers (Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video) — hundreds of billions of dollars in TV ad spending are migrating to programmatic CTV buying. The Trade Desk is arguably the biggest beneficiary of this secular shift, processing an increasing share of the $200B+ global TV advertising market. Green has also pioneered Unified ID 2.0 (UID2), an open-source identity framework designed to replace third-party cookies as they are deprecated in browsers. UID2 uses hashed email addresses to enable targeted advertising while preserving consumer privacy — positioning The Trade Desk at the center of the post-cookie digital advertising ecosystem. The company's Kokai AI platform uses machine learning to optimize ad spending in real time, further strengthening its competitive position. With consistent 20%+ revenue growth and expanding margins, The Trade Desk has earned one of the highest valuations in ad tech — the risk being that any slowdown in CTV adoption or competitive pressure from Google could challenge the growth narrative.