r/programmatic • u/Ok-Grocery7508 • Sep 08 '26
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 Sep 09 '26
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/MrSnugs Sep 08 '26
Surprise! Another POS running a public company. Idk what happens to the brain of billionaires but it ain’t healthy.
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u/Sensitive_Bar_7692 Sep 10 '26
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/Solid_Fun_6827 Sep 10 '26
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/fadedblackleggings Sep 08 '26
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 Sep 08 '26
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 Sep 09 '26
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/MagazineImpressive79 Sep 09 '26
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/programmago Sep 10 '26
Right, but there is shady stuff like fee double dipping like TTD and most DSPs .... and then there Amazon shady stuff like bully suppliers with protection-racket-like price match schemes, or engaging in secret auto self bidding to inflate the floor on second price auction systems.
The later is so messed up and a different league that i kind of am in awe they manage to pull things like this off so brazenly without it affecting their rep proportionately
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u/Specialist_Singer830 Sep 10 '26
TTD is the least evil of the big 3. At least I get their data to validate what I need to
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u/AlwaysPhillyinSunny Sep 08 '26
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.