管理層發言
Greetings. Welcome to The Trade Desk, Inc. Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Operator provided instructions. Please note, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Chris Toth. You may begin.
Thank you, operator. Hello, and good afternoon to everyone. Welcome to The Trade Desk Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. On the call today are CEO and Co-Founder, Jeff Green; and our new Chief Financial Officer, Nate Olmstead. A copy of our earnings press release is available on our website in the Investor Relations section at thetradedesk.com. Please note that aside from historical information, today's discussion and our responses during the Q&A may include forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and reflect our views and assumptions as of the date such statements are made. Actual results may vary significantly, and we expressly disclaim any obligations to update the forward-looking statements made today. If any of our beliefs or assumptions prove incorrect, actual financial results could differ materially from our projections or those implied by these forward-looking statements. For a detailed discussion of risks, please refer to the risk factors mentioned in our press release and our most recent SEC filings. In addition to our GAAP financial results, we present supplemental non-GAAP financial data. A reconciliation of the GAAP to non-GAAP measures is available in our earnings press release and investor presentation. We believe that presenting these non-GAAP measures alongside our GAAP results offers a more comprehensive view of the company's operational performance. With that, I will now turn the call over to CEO and Co-Founder, Jeff Green. Jeff?
Thanks, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us. I want to start by sharing some of the same perspectives that I've shared with our team over the past several weeks. Next month, we will celebrate 10 years as a public company. Over that time, we have grown revenue at roughly a 34% CAGR. Our annual net income has increased 20x, and our team has grown from just over 400 people at the time of our IPO to thousands. Over the last 16 years, The Trade Desk has made a number of industry-changing accomplishments. Yet throughout that entire time, we have always tried to learn as much from our mistakes as we do from our successes. We spend a lot of time at Trade Desk reviewing the pivotal decisions that we've made over the years, understanding what worked and what didn't and how we can become a better company. As we continue to map out plans to grow our position and improve our revenue growth, we reflect on what we have learned from past quarters and especially from this last one. Our revenue growth is below our expectations and below the standard we hold ourselves to. These numbers are not a reflection of our company or the long-term opportunity in front of us. We underperformed our own expectations for two main reasons. First, the macro conditions have made it more difficult for some of the world's largest brands to grow. Of course, this is bigger than advertising and it's bigger than our company. In this economic environment, there are pressures on lower income consumers. As a result, some affected advertisers have become more focused on buying cheap media rather than the best media. Secondly, we didn't execute as well as we could have, which I'll elaborate on in just a minute. But first, let's start with the macro. We continue to see a unique blend of macro pressures on several categories of advertising. Of course, our business is very unique among the large advertising-focused platforms. Our business is largely a sophisticated buying platform for the biggest brands and advertisers. Almost all of the spend on our platform comes from large Fortune 500 companies and their brands. Over the long term, our focus on large advertisers is both a strength and a moat. We have partnered with the biggest, most resilient and most loved brands in the world. Nevertheless, some of them are experiencing difficult times right now. All of our customers are operating in a fundamentally different environment than they were even a year ago. CPGs and FMCGs are experiencing unique pressures. These categories were once the biggest in advertising, and they are still one of the biggest. P&G has described the environment as volatile and challenging and recently stated on their earnings call, "We anticipate continued pressure from commodity and related costs to the crisis in the Middle East. If the conflict eases and oil comes down, trade lanes open up, that will help. If it goes the other way, it will hurt." CPGs and autos are two of the sectors of the economy that are most overrepresented on our platform. Around 25% of our business is generated by those two categories alone. Autos and CPG have both been set back by tariffs and oil prices. General Motors described a multibillion-dollar impact from tariffs in addition to plans to onshore production to avoid future tariff risk. Both of these categories of advertisers almost unanimously have described a change in the macro where the consumer wealth bifurcation is creating a squeeze on their customers that is highly uneven consumer behavior, where the high-income consumers are doing well and the lower income consumers are not. For CPGs, this is causing change across everything from packaging to advertising allocation, promotion strategy and, of course, go-to-market. This uneven consumer pressure is impacting autos remarkably. Both Ford and General Motors highlighted in recent earnings reports the growing dependence of auto sales on affluent consumers and industry research from Oxford Economics shows earners in the top 20% of households currently represent more than 50% of new vehicle sales. Both categories are having to create new approaches to advertising. In some cases, budgets have been temporarily reduced as they formulate new plans to go to market. In other cases, some brands are falling prey to low-cost, low-decisioning methods like programmatic guaranteed and fixed price. Doing so essentially means buyers will give away their decisioning in a great buyer's market to the sellers in exchange for lower cost of transactions. This approach is often deliberately shortsighted. Still, we continue to see the growing market leaders in every category optimized for business outcomes, not simply the lowest cost buying platform or the lowest cost media. It is important not to overstate the impact of these dynamics on our business. While these are affecting some of our largest categories and clients, most of our clients are performing well and growing. In fact, many categories are experiencing secular tailwinds. Financial services, some parts of technology and pharma are growing well and thriving. And we are seeing most of the leading brands in those categories deepen their partnerships with us. One of the leading indicators we watch most closely is our joint business plans or JBPs. We had JBPs with 217 clients as of Q2, representing 38% growth year-over-year. Most importantly, revenue under JBPs grew at a rate of 6x higher than overall revenue. JBPs are much more than commercial agreements. They create a structured framework for brands, their agencies and The Trade Desk to plan, innovate and measure success together. These partnerships grow faster than the rest of our business because they're built on long-term alignment rather than just individual campaigns. Additionally, the majority of our top 100 accounts are growing double digits year-over-year. Outside of our top 500 advertisers, the remainder are growing over 50% year-over-year, year-to-date, which represents green shoots from smaller up-and-coming and challenger brands. Our EMEA and APAC regions both have grown almost 30% year-to-date. China is growing over 100% year-to-date. Some of our clients are experiencing headwinds, but the majority are growing. Even in CPGs and autos, about half of them are growing very well with us, even if they are all experiencing cyclical pressures. While there are unique macro pressures, we are very focused on the things that we can control, and we continue to grow our customer base, including high growth among midsized businesses and agencies. Starting with our product, I'm extremely excited about our roadmap and the innovations we are building to make media buying better. We say all the time that every product we ship has to be better for our clients, has to be better for us and our shareholders, and it has to be better for the ecosystem. Through that lens, let me share a few of our plans, starting with the products that we are pointing at what might be the biggest problem in our industry, measurement. Real brand building, which is required for categories like autos and CPGs cannot thrive while measurement standards are broken. As long as last click and last view are the standard of measurement, brands will struggle to understand what drives their growth and the most premium parts of the open Internet will always look expensive and ineffective. Our new measurement framework, which is currently in alpha, is designed to more fairly assign value across the entire customer journey, giving marketers greater confidence in where the advertising is creating incremental business results, whether that's in the top of the funnel or at the bottom. This is not a problem we can tackle alone, which is why we're working in close partnership with some of the largest media companies, the largest measurement companies and the largest data companies to bring it to life. Secondly, we are ramping up Audience Unlimited. Audience Unlimited dramatically simplifies how marketers discover and activate third-party data. Instead of navigating millions of segments and manually analyzing potential impact, marketers leverage AI models with their own proprietary data to select data. Our new pricing approach with this product makes it so that price becomes a nonissue. We are essentially doing to data what Spotify has done to music. We are creating an all-you-can-eat system that makes it easier to apply more data for a simple subscription percentage. As Audience Unlimited moves to open beta, we are seeing very encouraging results. In a recent campaign, a global advertiser used Audience Unlimited to reach incremental households more efficiently. Compared with a prior campaign, the advertiser reduced its cost per unique household and also reduced its data CPM. Both reductions were more than 25%, demonstrating the potential of Audience Unlimited to improve efficiency as we roll this out to new customers. Lastly, on the product front, later this month, we will launch a significant upgrade focused on platform usability. We're calling this version Zuma. We are enhancing navigation, streamlining workflows and troubleshooting and delivering a more intuitive user experience from end to end. This upgrade improves workflow efficiency, leverages even more AI, enhances design and improves the dialogue between human and machine. We are listening to our clients and responding with innovative upgrades at a faster pace than we have been in years. Ultimately, with success in measurement and Audience Unlimited and Zuma's upgrades, it will be easier to demonstrate the value of decision buying, which directly drives revenue growth. Furthermore, we will win more hearts and minds among CMOs in the upper ranks of the largest advertisers and agencies. This is how we help create universal understanding at every level of our clients' company about the difference between buying based on price and buying based on value. Some of our competitors, big and small, have been focused on producing products for programmatic guaranteed, fixed price transactions and simple deals with approaches that do not leverage buyer decision. Some are even wrapping these in agentic technologies. They argue that their cheap fee will compensate for their lack of objectivity and their decisions that favor publishers rather than the buyer who is footing the bill. These approaches look more like ad networks of 2006 than reflect the progress that our industry has made in the last 20 years. Decision buying and programmatic guaranteed are fundamentally different products. Programmatic guaranteed can solve for certainty, simplicity and upfront price, but decision buying optimizes for the highest business outcomes utilizing data, measurement and real-time optimization. We are focused on the latter. The encouraging part is that periods like these create opportunities for change. The world's most sophisticated marketers don't simply look for lower prices. They become more deliberate and they ask better questions. They demand better measurement. They focus on outcomes rather than inputs. And when marketers become more data-driven, The Trade Desk creates even more value for our customers, which are the biggest brands and the biggest agencies in the world. The success of our platform is in our control, and we are in the lead. We have the most premium and sophisticated buying platform in the space. Our goal isn't simply to support media execution. It's to continue being a strategic business partner to the world's leading marketers. Lastly, we brought in a number of new leaders to help take this company to the next level: leaders like Vivek Kundra, our COO; Nate Olmstead, our CFO; Kristi Argyilan, our Chief Commercial Officer; Ron Lamprecht, our Chief Business Development Officer; Sarah Gavin, our CMO; and Vinny Rinaldi, our VP of Client Strategy and Growth. We've also added some amazing industry leaders to our Board. We have enhanced dramatically our company's leadership in the last few quarters, especially this last one. These leaders have built and scaled organizations much larger than ours. They bring operational discipline, fresh perspectives and deep experience partnering with senior business leaders around the world. Just as importantly, they bring a willingness to challenge assumptions, including my own. But building a better company doesn't stop with our executive team. Over the past year, we have also invested heavily in strengthening the leaders throughout our commercial organization. We've recruited hundreds of experienced general managers, vice presidents and customer-facing leaders who know how to build strategic relationships with the world's largest brands and agencies. That reflects an important evolution in how we go to market as marketing decisions increasingly move higher up in the organizations, at times even into the C-suite and executive ranks of global advertisers. And of course, we have to meet our customers where those decisions are being made. Before I conclude, I want to spend a minute talking about why I remain so excited about the opportunity in front of us. Today, we estimate the global advertising market approaches $1 trillion annually. Even after everything we've accomplished, we believe we participate in only about 1% of that opportunity. What makes me most excited isn't simply the size of the market or the TAM that remains. It's how the market itself is changing. For years, search has largely been defined by a single dominant platform. That is beginning to change as large language models reshape how consumers discover information, and we expect a much more competitive landscape to emerge. Just as connected TV expanded opportunity by creating more premium inventory and more choice, AI has the potential to expand the addressable market for digital advertising by creating entirely new surfaces for marketers to engage consumers and give more competition to market share that was once lost in traditional search marketing. AI is creating exponentially more data, more choices and of course, more complexity. In the new AI world, our decisioning capabilities are better than ever. They're fueled by AI and objective decisioning is even more valuable. Brands don't need another platform trying to sell them media. They need a platform that can evaluate the millions of opportunities available every second on the Internet and objectively help them make better decisions. That's exactly what we've been building since the day we founded The Trade Desk. Our objectivity also makes us a better partner. As more of our competitors prioritize their own owned and operated inventory, our independence becomes even more valuable to advertisers, publishers, retailers and technology partners alike in the long term. That's one of the reasons why our partnerships continue to deepen. Today, we work with many of the world's leading media companies, including Disney, Netflix, NBCUniversal, FOX, Paramount, Spotify and News Corp. We also partner with the infrastructure of the open Internet through companies like Snowflake, Databricks, LiveRamp and Hightouch, helping brands activate their data wherever it creates the most value. For most of them, we are among, if not the largest, programmatic partner. We got to this place by minimizing the conflict of interest and creating clear, mutually beneficial partnerships. The same is true in retail media. Participating retailers on our platform now represent more than 80% of U.S. retail sales. This includes our recently renewed partnership with Walmart, the largest retailer in the world. We believe our objectivity uniquely positions us to help retailers collaborate with brands in ways that vertically integrated competitors simply cannot. We are also seeing this modernization play out globally. Our investments across Europe and APAC and other major international markets are creating new opportunities as global brands increasingly adopt data-driven decisioned advertising. Most importantly, our customers are telling us that this strategy is working. General Mills is a great example. They recently ran a campaign for its Nature Valley brand in the U.K. They were interested in pairing retail data and real-time optimizations to measure the impact on sales and return on ad spend. The campaign used retail data from Tesco, Sainsbury's and Ocado as well as in-flight Koa AI optimizations, predictive clearing and cross-device targeting. Over four months, the campaign drove a 5x uplift in sales, a 92% lower CPM compared with the benchmark and a 2x ROAS improvement versus without using retail data. This is a great example of a leading global brand embracing AI and decisioning to drive more outcomes for their business. When I think about everything that we've discussed today, that's ultimately what gives me confidence. The market opportunity is expanding. Our competitive advantages are becoming more relevant. Our partnerships are becoming deeper and our customers increasingly choose to build their brands for the long term using our platform. In a market with more pressures, objectivity matters more. Let me conclude by saying this. While we have some near-term challenges, my conviction about The Trade Desk has never been stronger. Our team, our business model and our partners keep getting better for the opportunity ahead. Digital advertising continues to gain share globally. Connected TV continues to shape the largest media market in the world. Retail media continues to mature and expand. AI will create entirely new ways for marketers to use data and drive growth. And as advertising becomes more measurable, more open and more data-driven, the value we deliver becomes even greater. None of that changes today's results, but it enforces my confidence that we're focusing on the right opportunities and making the right long-term investments. Over the rest of the year and into 2027, we're going to be more disciplined than ever about where we invest. We'll focus our resources on a small number of high-priority growth initiatives where we believe we can create the greatest long-term value for our clients and our shareholders. That means some teams will continue to grow while others will not. Every investment we make will be measured against a simple question: does it strengthen our ability to serve our customers and drive long-term growth? If the answer is yes, we'll invest aggressively. If not, we'll reduce those resources to higher impact opportunities. Over the coming quarters, you'll see these priorities reflected in how we execute. You'll see us continue to make our platform easier to use while expanding its capability through agentic workflows. You'll see Audience Unlimited and our measurement framework help advertisers connect more of their spending to business outcomes. And you will see our commercial strategy mature as deeper relationships and joint business plans with the world's largest brands and agencies translate into stronger, more durable growth. With that, I'm very pleased to introduce our new CFO, Nate Olmstead. Nate joined us last month and brings with him extensive experience as a finance leader from his career at Penguin Solutions, Logitech and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. I could not be more excited to have him on our team and for you all to get to know him. With that, over to Nate.
Thank you, Jeff, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm excited to be joining The Trade Desk. While I'm still early in the process of learning the business, part of what attracted me to The Trade Desk was its large market opportunity, its reputation for innovation and its long track record of helping advertisers achieve better business outcomes. As CFO, my focus is straightforward, ensuring we invest behind our highest priority opportunities, allocate capital with discipline and build the operational rigor needed to scale effectively. With that, on to our results. In Q2, we delivered revenue of $715 million, up 3% year-over-year. We generated $241 million of adjusted EBITDA during the quarter, representing a 34% margin. CTV and audio exhibited double-digit growth once again in Q2. Video, which includes CTV, represented a low 50s percent share of our business in Q2. Mobile represented a high 20s percent share of the business during the quarter, while display represented a low double-digit share. Audio represented around 7% of the business and grew year-over-year at a higher rate than any other channel as it has for the past four quarters. Geographically, the United States represented approximately 83% of our revenue in Q2 and international represented approximately 17%. Our strong momentum in both EMEA and APAC reflects the investments made in these regions over the last several years, and we delivered over 50% CTV growth year-over-year in each region during Q2. Among verticals that represent at least 1% of our business, we saw strong growth in medical, health, automotive and travel. We continue to see pressure in the food and drink and home and garden sectors as CPG brands navigate geopolitical uncertainty, consumer softness and input cost inflation. Automotive remains an area of strength overall, though we believe this business could be growing faster absent the impact of increased tariffs on the industry. We also benefited from political spending related to the U.S. midterm elections during Q2. Q2 operating expenses were $613 million, up 6% from a year ago. Excluding stock-based compensation, Q2 operating expenses were $504 million, up 12% from a year ago. The increase in Q2 was driven primarily by platform operations as we optimize platform infrastructure, implement more AI-powered tools on our platform and continue to evolve our various decisioning and data offerings. Over the past two years, we've transitioned critical workloads from third-party public cloud environments to owned data centers. This has strengthened our platform infrastructure, reduced our reliance on external cloud providers and provides us with greater flexibility to support AI and machine learning workloads. While this transition creates an increase in platform operations expense in 2026, it positions us to benefit from greater efficiency and operating leverage over time. Income tax expense was $49 million in the second quarter, driven primarily by our pretax profitability and the impact of stock-based awards. Net income for the quarter was $64 million or $0.14 per diluted share or about 9% of revenue. Adjusted net income for the quarter was $158 million or $0.34 per diluted share. Net cash provided by operating activities was $154 million and free cash flow was $136 million in Q2. We ended the quarter with a strong cash and liquidity position. Our balance sheet had about $1.5 billion in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments at the end of the quarter. In Q2, we used $78 million of cash to repurchase our Class A common stock via our share repurchase program. At the end of Q2, we had $269 million remaining on our program authorization. Turning to our outlook for the third quarter. For Q3, we expect revenue to be at least $650 million. We estimate adjusted EBITDA for Q3 to be approximately $160 million. Before I wrap up, I'd like to provide additional context on how we are thinking about our investment priorities for the remainder of 2026. Looking ahead, we'll continue investing with conviction in our highest priority opportunities while building a more disciplined and scalable operating model. By improving how we operate, we can move faster and create additional financial capacity to reinvest in those opportunities. We believe that combination of focused investment and improved execution will position The Trade Desk to deliver stronger, more durable growth and improved profitability. We look forward to updating you on our progress. That concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, please open up the call for questions.
分析師問答
Operator provided instructions. And our first question comes from Shyam Patil with SIG.
Jeff, you described well the factors that you're seeing put pressure on the business from macro, pricing pressure, your own execution. If we shift to thinking about the remainder of this year, what are the top two or three priorities that you guys have to stabilize the business?
Thanks for the question, Shyam. Let me first acknowledge that what we've shared in terms of our performance as well as our guide is below our expectations, and we don't think it's a reflection of the long-term potential. I worry that we don't want to overstate that while there are a couple of pockets that are under some amount of pressure, overall, the business is growing and most divisions and sectors that we represent are doing very well. Of course, we can't control the macro, but we're overall very positive. In terms of the things we can control and that we have to get right going forward: First, we have to upgrade Kokai, and we'll launch Zuma later this month. This represents substantial platform usability upgrades and helps us get the best out of AI, which we've already added. Second, we want to continue to innovate in some of our key products — particularly measurement, which helps the biggest brands see where incremental business outcomes are truly coming from. This will help us ascribe much better credit for what we're actually producing, which in most cases is dramatically understated today. We'll also ramp up Audience Unlimited. This has been in early phases, but the early results have been remarkable. Getting it into the hands of more customers should accelerate our flywheels. Measurement will spin everyone's flywheel faster on the platform. Audience Unlimited will do the same, and both are only in the hands of very few customers today, with extremely positive results. We're also introducing the concept of enterprise Kokai, where we have some massive growth rates with companies that negotiate features upfront and then use many of our products. We sometimes do this through JBPs — we have signed over 200 JBPs through Q2, representing 38% year-over-year growth. JBPs are growing at a rate 6x higher than overall revenue, which is an important indicator. To that end, we have a team dedicated to growth that in some cases is winning back customers we've lost. That team has grown their book of business over 250% year-over-year and is the fastest-growing individual team in our business development group. Of the top 100 accounts, the majority are growing double digits, underscoring that most parts of our business are healthy. Lastly, and I can't overstate this, we've added an amazing number of industry leaders to our leadership team. Most of them have been here a short period of time, and we're giving them room to get up to speed and accelerate our growth. Helping them ramp is as important as any of the product initiatives I've mentioned. We believe that all of these together, regardless of the macro environment, will position us to be stronger and get back to more durable growth when conditions change. Thanks for the question, Shyam.
The next question comes from Matt Swanson with RBC.
Jeff, I wanted to get your thoughts on something maybe a little more high level, kind of an existential question that I think is top of mind for a lot of investors right now in the age of AI. As AI is reshaping the digital advertising landscape, can you give us some insight on what gives you confidence in the DSP business model remaining relevant over the next several years? Or what needs to happen to stay relevant?
I appreciate the question. To talk about AI, let me remind you of the backdrop. Supply outpaces demand now more than ever, making it a buyer's market. To take advantage of that buyer's market you have to compare every ad opportunity to all the others, and that's exactly the job AI can do because we're looking at millions of ad opportunities every second. The job of a DSP is to decide which of those impressions you buy and which you don't, and that decisioning is enhanced by AI. We've been investing in AI for years. I wouldn't say AI will disrupt the DSP model; AI is the DSP's core. What's critical is that you must earn the trust of the biggest advertisers so they share first-party data and know you'll preserve it and use it exclusively for them. Most large platforms do not preserve or protect advertiser data in that way; they aggregate and reuse it. The injection of AI is not a disruption — it's the essence of what it means to be a DSP. Additionally, agentic technologies are one of the biggest opportunities for advertising, and they can be a huge advantage for us. Some competitors are using agentic tools to replicate older ad network models, which won't succeed because they don't leverage the best decisioning. AI won't displace DSPs; the winners will be platforms that leverage AI to improve decisioning, protect client data, and deliver measurable business outcomes.
The next question comes from Vasily Karasyov with Cannonball Research.
My question is for Nate. Given the outlook for Q3, which I think also means that weakness will persist into Q4 at least as well, how should we now think about your long-term profitability framework and how you approach that side of the business given the revenue trajectory? What's your philosophy in terms of internal investment?
Thank you for the question. We have a very long-term focus and continue to see great opportunity to drive long-term growth and profitability. In terms of investment philosophy, as mentioned in the prepared remarks, we're going to invest with conviction in areas where we see attractive returns. Equally important, we will be disciplined everywhere else. We'll apply rigor to how we evaluate investments and allocate resources. If we do that well, we believe we can drive stronger long-term growth and profitability. Stay tuned as this work progresses; we'll keep you updated on our long-term profitability framework and overall operating objectives.
Next question comes from Justin Patterson with KeyBanc.
Great. Jeff, I know you don't disclose take rate, but I'm curious how your pricing philosophy is changing in response to brand advertiser needs in the environment. As we look at stabilizing the business, how are you thinking about the right level of pricing and take rate from here?
Thanks for the question, Justin. A bit of history will help. When we first brought all employees together, we stated it is not our goal to be the cheapest platform; it's our goal to be the best. That has been our mantra for more than a decade. If you look at our take rate over the last ten years, it has gone up in five years and down in five years, staying within a few points of a middle line. Our approach has always been that every product must earn its keep, both relatively and absolutely. If our product costs a certain percentage, it better add at least that much more value in outcomes. We've done well with that approach. We will always consider price adjustments if they help us grow or win business, but we've tried to avoid volatility by ensuring our product delivers clear value. Over the years we've introduced new products like Next Wave, Solimar, Kokai, and added AI capabilities. The price hasn't changed much since introducing things like UID2 and OpenPath, and these innovations have created efficiencies and enhancements for customers. We'll keep looking for opportunities and ways to simplify pricing, but we don't believe the net number needs to change dramatically because we're confident we're adding more value than we cost.
The next question comes from Youssef Squali with Truist.
Jeff, there seems to be somewhat of a disconnect between the opportunity you presented in terms of growth across various modalities and at least the short-term guide, which implies about a 12% decline year-on-year for Q3. I'm assuming that might sustain into Q4. Is there a way to parse out the impact of what you control versus what you cannot? In your prepared remarks you talked about macro and execution. Any way to quantify both to see what you can turn around even if the macro continues? And very quickly, provide an update on the status of your relationship with some of the big agencies, maybe Publicis in particular.
There is a lot to unpack. To parse control versus macro: we can control the products we ship, our team, operations and how we allocate resources. We've enhanced both product and team and are scrutinizing everything to ensure it's pointed toward growth. On the macro side, there are parts of the market with strong secular tailwinds — parts of technology and pharma are doing very well. The pressures we're seeing are concentrated in a few categories where consumer bifurcation affects lower income consumers more, which shows up in some CPGs and autos. But many other categories are strong. Regarding agencies, we built this business on agency relationships; they've been phenomenal partners. They're all in periods of transition, but overall our partnerships remain strong, including with Publicis. There were public disputes tied to negotiation, but that's behind us. Joint Business Plans are not mutually exclusive with agency partnerships; many JBPs are developed collaboratively with agencies. We're also working with agencies on white-label products for Audience Unlimited and agentic AI. These efforts will take time to pay off, but they strengthen our long-term positioning.
The next question comes from Tim Nollen with SSR.
Jeff, you've had a lot of announcements about management additions over the last year, especially in the last month or so. You mentioned this a bit in the prepared remarks. Could you give more color on what these people bring to The Trade Desk? What skills and capabilities might they add, and how might they affect change?
It's hard to be brief because there are so many people with diverse expertise. I'll highlight a few who directly impact go-to-market. Kristi Argyilan joined as Chief Commercial Officer and leads our data partnerships. She has a history building retail media networks and most recently ran advertising at Uber, managing a go-to-market team similar in size to ours. Her work will enhance Audience Unlimited and our measurement products. Ron Lamprecht joins as Chief Business Development Officer; many conversations are now at more senior levels and enterprise Kokai requires senior-level engagement and new deal structures. Ron had a role at Amazon looking across large assets to create holistic partnerships; he's exceptional at that. Vinny Rinaldi joins from Hershey's as VP of Client Strategy and Growth. He has been an advocate for premium internet buying and has shown that cheap reach often doesn't move the needle for brands like Hershey's. He understands how to promote premium buying and better measurement from within brands, and he'll help us communicate that to the largest advertisers. These hires bring experience, credibility, and the ability to sell at higher levels of organizations. We're giving them runway to ramp and are confident they'll make meaningful contributions.
Next question comes from Dan Salmon with New Street Research.
Okay. I have one for Jeff and one for Nate. Jeff, can you talk more about why you're confident that an independent premium platform focused on objective decisioning can continue to win market share when walled gardens are combining exclusive live sports inventory or offering simple programmatic guaranteed transactions with low pricing? Why does your independent premium platform continue to win share? And Nate, can you provide more context around the assumptions in your Q3 outlook and a bit more on your guidance philosophy?
Thanks, Dan. There will be many winners — the ecosystem needs multiple participants. An auction with only one bidder isn't an auction. A few players have reached meaningful scale, and there's a lot of TAM ahead. We have the highest market share in the programmatic open internet space. When you compare platform economics, it's important to look at total cost to advertisers and the incentives platforms have. If Trade Desk charges 8% and a competitor charges 4% but also favors their own inventory, the comparison changes when you look at the combined media and platform economics. Platforms that own inventory have different incentives: they can favor owned inventory because margin dynamics differ across inventory types. Objectivity and trust become more important in an AI-fueled world because models require first-party data and advertisers need to be confident their data is protected and used for their benefit. I believe the premium on trust is increasing, not decreasing. Decisioning that leverages AI, protects client data, and delivers measurable incrementality is what matters most. We've missed a bit on measurement in recent years, which is why we're focused on it now. I'm bullish on our future because of objectivity, our partnerships, product investments, and our focus on measurement and Audience Unlimited, even though we need time to get leaders and products up to speed.
Dan, on guidance and philosophy: there's no change in our approach to guidance. It's very data-driven and reflects the trends we see in the business today. Visibility is somewhat more limited than in recent history, and given that, we're not assuming any meaningful improvement in the environment during the quarter. Our goal is to be credible; we'll call it like we see it and then execute with rigor and discipline.
Our final question comes from Jason Helfstein with Oppenheimer.
I'll try to ask two things. First, when you think about the business change from 1Q to 2Q and now to the Q3 guide, is there a way to unpack it into buckets like macro issues from autos/CPG, agency risks, and another bucket of execution or related issues such as clients making poor buying decisions but who could be convinced to see your way? Help folks break it down. Second, thinking two or three years out, could we be looking at a smaller organization that relies much more on automation tools to accomplish goals?
Good question, Jason. We've tried to emphasize that most of our customers and most of our business are doing well. We do have some customer concentration by nature, servicing the top 500 advertisers, and a handful of large customers are under pressure. When customers are under pressure they may pursue cheaper tactics to get through a cycle, which can hurt long-term outcomes. We've isolated those that are struggling from those doing well. The bigger takeaways: we signed over 200 JBPs through Q2 (38% year-over-year growth); JBP revenue is growing at 6x overall revenue; the majority of our top 100 accounts are growing double digits; CTV and audio grew double digits in Q2; audio is now our fastest-growing channel at over 7% of business; EMEA and APAC have both grown almost 30% year-to-date; China is growing over 100% year-to-date; and we delivered over 50% CTV growth year-over-year in both EMEA and APAC. These are green shoots across many areas. The pressures are concentrated in a few large customers and certain categories, but they're not systemic across our business. Regarding automation and organizational size two to three years out: we are already using automation and AI extensively to improve decisioning and workflows. We'll continue to automate where it creates value, but our focus remains on building products, measurement, and relationships that deliver measurable business outcomes. People who understand brands, strategy, and data will remain essential. We also have a strong new leadership team; most are new and need runway to ramp to make substantial contributions. We're convinced they will, and that will help drive the comeback and future growth.
Thank you. This concludes the question-and-answer session. This concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.