The Trade Desk’s Ventura: A Transparent Solution for the Connected TV Industry
In a significant development poised to alter the landscape of connected television (CTV), The Trade Desk is preparing to unveil Ventura, a new CTV operating system set for release in late 2025. This bold initiative positions the company to challenge industry giants like Roku, Amazon Fire TV, and Google’s Android TV, but with a unique focus—ensuring transparency and neutrality in the advertising space.
Speaking to Axios, Jeff Green, CEO and founder of The Trade Desk, explained that the current CTV ecosystem is entangled in a conflict of interest. Companies like Google, Amazon, and Roku not only provide the platforms for streaming but also own a significant amount of content. Green emphasized that this setup distorts the marketplace and leaves both advertisers and consumers with a skewed experience. The Trade Desk’s solution: build a platform that remains neutral, designed to prioritize fairness and transparency in its operations.
Rewriting the Rules of CTV
At the heart of Ventura’s creation is the desire to address the issue of concentration within the CTV market. Existing platforms, Green pointed out, are dominated by a few major players who lack the impartiality needed for a truly open and fair advertising ecosystem. Unlike these platforms, The Trade Desk doesn’t own content, making it well-positioned to develop a system where advertising access is fair and transparent for all.
Instead of being weighed down by internal interests, Ventura will create a level playing field, giving advertisers equal opportunities to premium inventory, while ensuring that publishers’ content is not sidelined by those who also happen to run the operating system. For viewers, this approach means an enhanced experience, where content recommendations are driven by genuine interest rather than platform owners pushing their own shows or movies.
A Strategic Focus on Partnerships
One of the most striking aspects of The Trade Desk’s approach with Ventura is its refusal to enter the hardware business. While competitors like Roku and Amazon are known for producing proprietary devices to support their operating systems, The Trade Desk is choosing to form strategic partnerships with smart TV manufacturers, hotel chains, airlines, and gaming companies. Green noted that this collaboration allows hardware companies to tap into the advertising market without the overhead of developing their own technology from scratch.
For these hardware makers, the competitive streaming environment makes it necessary to adopt advertising solutions that can help them grow and scale. Ventura offers them that opportunity, allowing them to access an advanced ad-tech infrastructure without having to become experts in the space themselves.
Building Privacy and Transparency
Ventura will also integrate Unified ID 2.0, The Trade Desk’s cookie-less ad-targeting framework, into its core system. This framework has already been adopted by hundreds of publishers and is seen as a crucial step toward a privacy-first future in digital advertising. The company aims to further strengthen the CTV ecosystem by prioritizing transparency and user privacy through this initiative.
Green explained that the company’s goal with Ventura isn’t just to profit from creating an operating system but to improve the overall functionality of the marketplace. Success, for The Trade Desk, will be measured by how effectively the platform enhances transparency in ad pricing and performance, providing a clear view into how ads are auctioned and their outcomes predicted.
A History of Innovation and Neutrality
Founded in 2009 and going public in 2016, The Trade Desk has become a major player in the advertising technology sector, recognized for its demand-side platform (DSP) that allows advertisers to purchase ad space across multiple platforms in real time. What sets the company apart from competitors like Google is its decision not to own content or operate a supply-side platform (SSP), allowing it to maintain a neutral stance within the advertising ecosystem.
This neutrality has allowed The Trade Desk to focus on enhancing transparency and fairness, a core principle that is now being carried forward into Ventura. With CTV poised to become the fastest-growing advertising channel in the U.S.—expected to reach $38.3 billion in 2024—The Trade Desk’s move into the operating system space couldn’t come at a more critical time.
The Industry Watches with Anticipation
While details of Ventura’s hardware and distribution partnerships have yet to be revealed, the CTV and ad-tech industries are watching closely. Key figures like Sonos CEO Patrick Spence and Paramount Advertising President John Halley have already voiced their excitement over Ventura’s potential to level the playing field for advertisers and content creators alike.
As The Trade Desk prepares for Ventura’s rollout in 2025, it’s clear that the company is aiming to redefine what’s possible in connected TV. By prioritizing transparency, neutrality, and privacy, The Trade Desk is setting a new standard for how advertising and content discovery should function in a digital age increasingly dominated by streaming platforms. Through this move, Green hopes to encourage greater transparency across the entire CTV ecosystem, benefiting not only advertisers but also publishers and consumers in the process.
By challenging the current structure and bringing forward a neutral, objective platform, The Trade Desk looks set to influence the future of CTV, where the lines between content ownership and advertising are clearer, and where transparency reigns supreme.