The Trade Desk Posts Its First Revenue Decline Since Its 2016 IPO While PubMatic and Viant Grow on CTV

For a decade The Trade Desk was the growth story in programmatic advertising. In the third quarter of 2026 its revenue fell. Sales came in at $736 million, about 0.5% below the $739 million of a year earlier, the first year-over-year decline since the company went public in 2016. The same afternoon two smaller ad tech companies, PubMatic and Viant, reported revenue up 17% and 29%.

If you buy media through a demand-side platform, that split is worth understanding.

The Trade Desk: still profitable, no longer growing

The Trade Desk’s net income fell to $38 million from $116 million, and adjusted EBITDA dropped to $266 million, a 36% margin, from $317 million and 43%. The company excluded $44 million of restructuring charges from its adjusted figures. CEO Jeff Green called the quarter meaningful progress but said growth is still below what the company expects of itself.

It guided the fourth quarter to at least $755 million of revenue and at least $280 million of adjusted EBITDA, and added $731 million to its buyback, bringing available capacity to $1 billion. Customer retention stayed above 95%, as it has for more than ten years. So clients aren’t leaving. They’re spending less through the platform.

The new things on the slide are Kokai Zuma, an update to its buying platform with agentic AI features, Audience Unlimited, a new approach to measurement, an expanded Netflix integration and pause ads in Italy. None of it shows up in revenue yet.

PubMatic and Viant: where the CTV money went

PubMatic sells inventory for publishers, the other side of the trade. Third-quarter revenue rose 17% to $79.6 million and adjusted EBITDA more than doubled to $26 million, a 33% margin. Connected TV revenue grew more than 30% globally, and more than 40% in the Americas, to about 21% of sales. Mobile app revenue rose nearly 40%. Its Activate product, which lets buyers deal directly with PubMatic’s supply instead of going through a DSP, saw buying activity rise more than eightfold. PubMatic guided fourth-quarter revenue to $91 million to $93 million and added $150 million to its buyback.

Viant, a smaller DSP that competes with The Trade Desk, grew revenue 29% to $110.4 million. Contribution ex-TAC, the revenue it keeps after paying for media, rose 27% to $67.2 million. CTV made up more than half of advertiser spend on its platform, and more than 80% of that CTV spend ran through Direct Access, its direct pipe to publishers. It guided the fourth quarter to revenue of $130.5 million to $133.5 million. It also bought Waymark, a generative AI tool that makes video ads for CTV, and lets advertisers run campaigns by typing instructions into Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor.

What it means for buyers

The pattern is a shorter supply chain. Activate, Direct Access and similar deals cut out a layer of fees between the advertiser and the screen. When money moves that way, the biggest independent DSP feels it first, because it was the toll booth. PubMatic and Viant gain because they are closer to the inventory or cheaper to route through.

For a media planner, the practical step is to ask every platform for its take rate on CTV, compare it with a direct deal for the same publisher, and test both. The ad tech companies already did the math. Their earnings show it.