Posts for 'The Trade Desk'

Most media and technology companies have now reported Q1 ’23 results. We dig into who’s up, who’s down and who’s pick ‘em, and where they all might be headed. We share all this with the caveat that one quarter’s results are not the final word on a company’s ability to survive and thrive going forward. We hope we’re not in any way contributing to the short-term, quarterly performance myopia so common on Wall Street.

Rather, we’re looking at these companies’ results in the context of prior results, the competitive landscape and their particular products’/services’ positioning. All while trying to do some basic “pattern recognition” - what have we seen before and how is this likely to play out in TV and video. Our discussion is primarily focused on Netflix, Roku, Amazon, AMC, Disney, Comcast, Vizio, YouTube, The Trade Desk, Paramount, Diamond Sports Group, Tegna, Dish and how they’re sorting themselves in the up, down and pick ‘em categories.

Listen to the podcast to learn more (38 minutes,  50 seconds)

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Sports has long been considered the “firewall” for pay-TV subscriptions, with marquee events carried by must-have broadcast and cable TV networks. But new research from The Trade Desk shows that sports viewership is increasing migrating away from linear TV and toward connected TVs and streaming. In its fourth “Future of TV” report, The Trade Desk found that 57% of Americans watch sports at least once per week, and that of these viewers, 44% are watching outside of linear TV. The number rises to 65% for 18-34 year olds.

The viewership levels underscore the degree to which top tier sports have begun “leaking” out of the traditional broadcast/cable TV world and into streaming, and also the existential threat to pay-TV if a big chunk of sports eventually moves into the streaming realm. Importantly, The Trade Desk found that just 19% of TV viewers are returning to their pre-pandemic sports viewing mode, with 44% of fans saying they’re watching sports outside of linear TV (65% for 18-34 year olds).

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Last Thursday’s Q4 and 2020 earnings reports from The Trade Desk and Roku provide further evidence of connected TV advertising’s surge and also viewers’ significant adoption of streaming video. Because the two companies are heavily invested in connected TV advertising and provide lots of thoughtful insights on their earnings calls (transcripts here and here), their results and sentiments are valuable in gauging the state of the market. Together they provide a holistic picture of the market since The Trade Desk operates on the demand side and Roku on the supply side (primarily).

For some time, The Trade Desk has talked about the rising importance of CTV advertising on its overall business, which continued this quarter with the pandemic accelerating key trends. Founder and CEO Jeff Green said that advertisers’ CTV spending on the platform more than doubled in 2020 (total spend, including CTV, was $4.2 billion with Q4 revenue up 48% to $320 million). Green said “more than 1,000 brands spend at least $100,000 on CTV on our platform” and that “those brands spending more than $1 million on our platform in 2020 more than doubled from a year ago.”

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Data released by ad tech provider The Trade Desk from two separate surveys indicates that cord-cutting could increase dramatically in 2021 and that advertisers are shifting budgets to connected TV (CTV) advertising. The Future of TV survey fielded by YouGov for The Trade Desk found that 27% of U.S. cable TV subscribers plan to cut the cord by the end of 2021, compared to 15% who planned to do so in 2020.

With the rise of streaming, there are more alternatives to pay-TV than ever, creating more incentive for consumers to drop their subscriptions. A 27% rate of cord-cutting in one year would be a significant increase from prior periods and would have major industry implications. By comparison, according to MoffettNathanson’s analysis of cord-cutting as of Q3 ’20, the traditional U.S. pay-TV industry contracted at a year-over-year rate of 7.4%.

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These days there’s no shortage of SVOD services to choose from, with each one seeing to grab a slice of viewers’ monthly spending. And with cord-cutting on the rise, undoubtedly there IS some spending freeing up as viewers cancel their pricey pay-TV services.

But two major industry trends should keep SVOD providers from being overly optimistic about replicating anything close to Netflix’s ad-free hockey stick subscriber growth over the past decade: first, the prevalence of password sharing and second, a tolerance for advertising related to “subscription fatigue” that the proliferation of SVOD services is engendering. New data released this week by Hub Entertainment Research and The Trade Desk underscores the extent of both.

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Looking for confirmation of the outsized rewards of being well-positioned in the booming connected-TV (CTV) ad space? Then look no further than the Q4 ’18 and full year 2018 performance of 3 public companies representing 3 different vantage points on CTV ads - Telaria, The Trade Desk and Roku - all of which reported strong results in the past week, powered at least in part by their CTV success.

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Connected TVs like Roku, Chromecast, Fire TV and others were originally used mainly for watching ad-free SVOD services on the big screen. But as the sheer number of ad-supported premium video apps available on CTVs has exploded, consumption has broadened considerably. All of that viewing is creating a growing volume of highly-desirable CTV ad inventory. Monetization of this inventory is starting to show up in public company financials and is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

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