Travis Hoium

Then at the same time, it seems that CEO Jeff Green maybe is...

Maybe not handling it the same way I would handle it, is how I would phrase that.

Obviously, I'm not there behind the scenes, but the Trade Desk got a relatively recent CFO who, over the course of the past week, was actually terminated from the company.

It's not exactly clear why.

There wasn't a lot of language provided.

The CFO is going to be staying on the board, I believe, through the remainder of his term.

But it's possible that that has to do with disagreements in the management team.

And this is a company that is run effectively wholly by Jeff Green, who owns the majority of the voting stake in the business.

But despite all these headwinds, here's what I'll say.

A rising tide lifts all boats.

And we're heading into 2026, or we're into 2026.

This is a midterm year.

Typically is pretty good for ad spending.

The Trade Desk is one of many companies that is well-positioned to manage the ad tech markets.

With the rising industry, even if they don't have their ad tech completely figured out this year, which I don't fully expect that they will, especially given their leadership turnover, I actually think the trade desk, with these lowered expectations, is maybe poised for outperformance.

Certainly is.

And that's because the trade deck was effectively the only game in town for a long time.

And then they realized that while they were talking down the presence of walled gardens and how great it was to be the independent partner for demand side platforms, and they realized, hey, actually, maybe there is competition out there and they need to be better about their partnerships and showing how they have, I guess, in terms of the market share here,

in comparison to companies like Amazon, who is launching their own ad tech solution.

So competition is substantially different today than it was, I would say, a decade ago, but even just a year ago or two years ago.