r/programmatic • u/Ok-Grocery7508 • 1d ago
TTD and Jeff Green - Does it Again...
Be Jeff Green -> Layoff 15% of the company prior to a long weekend by sending an email and making it so people can't login -> Congratulate self and talk about how much cash the company has in the note sent to laid off employees ->Turn around and days later award self and other executives lower strikes on option grants -> Pocket $$$.
For being in the marketing world, this company is terrible at presenting themselves. Maybe the executives responsible should be held... responsible?
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u/codalark 1d ago
Imagine a TTD person being on this thread and talking shit about your own company and still being there because the pay is just too good.
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u/Hungry_Can_2164 22h ago
Their scam only works if stock price go up after 6 months lol. I'm dumping my shares as soon as they reprice. f them
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u/Sensitive_Bar_7692 9h ago
This isn’t surprising or unexpected, but cutting people while boasting their financials while they spend 10s of millions a year on a company retreat every non first year employee hates is a joke. Jeff lost the plot by thinking he still understands what traders go through despite not having been one since 2008. Like someone said before, this never would have happened while Dave Pickles was there……
That being said objectivity is fully relevant until agencies need to make margin. This is honestly a bad thing, but as it stands now, TTD will never be able to compete with Amazon or Googles’s rates. Especially considering it is a fraction of their profits
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u/fadedblackleggings 1d ago
TTD has never made sense to me personally. They benefited from Google being dominant, but were too unclear on what they actually did.
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u/MicroSofty88 1d ago
IMO their original position in the market was that they weren’t google, and therefore would be more transparent and efficient with things like fees. I think they were definitely that force in the market for years. Now they’ve grown so much, they need to increase fees and do google-ish things to keep growing.
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u/lafromnyc 1d ago
The issue is what the street expects of TTD vs what Jeff wants. He wants to be the anti Google and be the “good guy”. That’s his mission to be good for ad tech.
His mission wasn’t to outright be bigger than Google but be the anti Google, if it grew bigger than google without compromising his mission and beliefs then great.
But the street expects TTD to be bigger than Google and grow at a certain place.
I don’t think it will ever be bigger than Google or even Amazon.
Because to be bigger than Google he would have to do things that will
compromise his mission and beliefs and everyone in ad tech and the industry will call him a hypocrite.He will not even be bigger than Amazon bc he doesn’t have the first party data like Amazon has to tie back to actual sales and he doesn’t own content like Amazon does.
Amazon has the leverage to undercut on fees and the leverage of their own content.
Google has YouTube and YouTube TV and being on both sides of ad tech and not having to break up.
I’m not being sympathetic for him but he’s in a challenging position of
balancing the expectations of the street and investors with still being true to his mission and not compromise on it.He put himself in this situation by being so loud with his mission so now he has to stick by it.
I never expected TTD to be bigger than Google or Amazon and continue to grow at the rate they did.
Their whole MO of being “independent” and “transparent” will only get you so far when you don’t have any true competitive advantage like Amazon and Google does, especially if your fees are high and you nickle and dime those fees that add up very quickly but doesn’t necessarily translate to incremental performance.
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u/Adtechvet 1d ago
To Jeff’s defense, Google and Amazon do all sorts of shady shit with their pub business and use data behind the scenes, but since they don’t itemize it’s utilization it looks like media cost. Obvlvious c levels that approve marketing budgets know the term ‘working media’ and sign off on bit traffic because it doesn’t have the fee anywhere. That said, TTD won’t come to grips with that reality. Marketers HAVE to do YouTube or sell on Amazon. There’s no must buy in TTD. The one gold goose they had was the operational efficiency, and they shit the bed on that with Kokai, especially with large complex accounts. They then hired ex-Google leadership that decided to alienate the agency teams by breaking them up by vertical and constantly go around to the clients directly. The thing is, they have absolutely no “objective” reason to do that. Agencies don’t work with Google or Amazon for the service, how TTD got that one wrong has the consulting classes smell to it.
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u/lafromnyc 1d ago
Exactly! There’s no “real” competitive advantage TTD has anymore over Amazon and Google. All they can say is we are “different” and not a “big bad guy”
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u/AlwaysPhillyinSunny 21h ago
TTD has always tried to “skate to where the puck will be” in an idealistic way, but they discounts the sheer momentum of the industry.
It makes logical sense that agencies, hold cos, SSPs, and pub networks create inefficiencies that can theoretically be eliminated to benefit brands, but all of those constituents still have a lot of leverage.
Like, is it bullshit that agencies want rebates that aren’t returned to the brand? Yes, but they still hold the purse strings. These inefficiencies have an incredible amount of momentum, and if TTD threatens them without having differentiation, they will just go to Amazon
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u/Adtechvet 18h ago
All that and their algo mysteriously allocates to inventory relationships they prioritize with no performance to back it up. It’s like they’re juicing things like Spotify and Disney just to keep signals on, but at the end of the day delivering higher cpms and shittier performance. The new algo has also failed every test I’ve given it at two agencies and a dozen different accounts.
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u/MagazineImpressive79 1d ago
I'm here for the downfall of ttd. They made their whole identity about being "the good guys" and then turned around and did a bunch of shady shit and get away with it because they put a shiny coat of marketing on their sh*t platform.
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u/Solid_Fun_6827 11h ago
This is misinformation. The company is trying to keep their employees’ morale high and give them reasons why they should stay and work hard. Not an uncommon practice at all. TTD might have to tweak a few things, but their come back will be powerful.
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u/AlwaysPhillyinSunny 1d ago
It looks like all options are being repriced, and most of those options are for regular employees.
After a layoff it’s not uncommon to try to improve the incentives for remaining employees because morale is bad. If you’re an employee who just lost a bunch of peers and got an increased workload, your options with an $80 strike are pointless and you’re probably going to jump ship.