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The Trade Desk says YouTube's brand-safety snafu is its gain as brands like McDonald's and AT&T pull ads from the video platform

The Trade Desk continues to be an outlier among ad-tech companies that struggling to grow ad revenue as more of those dollars go to Facebook and Google.

The company reported $160.6 million in fourth-quarter 2018 revenue on Thursday, primarily boosted by growth in programmatic ad dollars flowing to connected TV devices and audio.

The programmatic advertising firm reported a total of $477 million in revenue during 2018, up 55% from $308.2 million in 2017. The Trade Desk's technology plugs into agency trading desks to power programmatic advertising.

In 2019, The Trade Desk said that it expects to grow faster than the rest of the programmatic industry, making at least $637 million with gross spending on its platform hitting at least $3.2 billion, said Jeff Green, The Trade Desk's CEO, during the earnings call.

Programmatic firms are making connected TV gains

The Trade Desk saw the biggest growth from connected TV, where spending grew 525% year-over-year. Mobile spend jumped 69%. while programmatic audio spending grew 230%.

During the fourth-quarter, more than 160 advertisers spent more than $100,000 each on connected TV advertising, Green said. In 2018, the company's inventory for streaming TV ads grew sixfold, with the bulk of new inventory coming from networks like NBCUniversal, A+E Networks and CBS that are building their own streaming services.

Read more: Ad-tech companies and networks are pinning hopes on streaming TV, but OTT is full of headaches for marketers

He added that inventory is also coming from digital players like Hulu, which works with The Trade Desk to power programmatic advertising.

But streaming TV ads are significantly more expensive with higher cost-per-impressions (or CPM) prices than display ads. Over time, prices will come down as more premium content becomes available, Green said.

"I don't think it will have any big, long-term effect on our fee structure because we add so much more value by bringing data to the table," he said. "Time will tell there but I think we're in a really strong position."

This week, big brands like McDonald's and AT&T pulled their YouTube ads after it was revealed that ads ran alongside videos with inappropriate comments. Asked about what the pushback against YouTube means for The Trade Desk, Green said that he expects to see a short-term increase in spending from big advertisers over the coming weeks.

"There's a bunch of dollars that need to find a new home," he said. "I do think it represents an opportunity for us, but I think it's hard for all those advertisers to move away from YouTube."

China holds a lot of potential

The Trade Desk's move into China was another big topic on the earnings call. The Trade Desk has long eyed Asia as a source for growth and analysts repeatedly asked Green for details on the company's plans, particularly in China. According to Green, 86% of the firm's revenue comes from the US, with the goal to get two-thirds of revenue from international markets.

"The fastest-growing and largest middle class in the history of the world is emerging here in Asia, and global brands want to reach these new consumers," Green said.

Specifically, Green mentioned Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent as critical media partners in Asia. However, the Chinese market is notoriously difficult for marketers to crack. Green emphasized that the country is a "long-term investment."

Because the Chinese companies have been slower to ramp up advertising, Green said that they have a benefit from learning from Facebook, Google and Amazon's measurement mistakes and walled gardens.

"There's actually clearer lines with Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent than there is with Google, Amazon and Facebook, which makes it much easier to have conversations about activating data," he said. "I don't think we're going to have the same debates and evolution that we had in the rest of the world."

The Trade Desk Train Is Still Picking Up Speed With 55% Revenue Growth

The Trade Desk’s growth streak shows no sign of diminishing, with revenue of $477 million in 2018, a 55% increase from the year before, according to the company’s earnings report on Thursday.

Shares of The Trade Desk were up more than 10% in after-hours trading. The company raised eyebrows last year when its stock went from a plateau of $50 per share to trading around $90 as GDPR went into effect. Following its earnings report, shares jumped to more than $165.

The Trade Desk forecasts revenue of at least $637 million in 2019. And the company laid out some of the emerging categories that will help it sustain high growth rates and justify a market cap growing above $7 billion.

Connected TV

After years of being the shiniest of shiny objects in programmatic, connected TV sales are now “measurably helping the business,” said Jeff Green, The Trade Desk’s founder and CEO. The company doesn’t break out its revenue by category, but Green said CTV sales grew more than nine times from 2017 to 2018 and a double-digit number of brands spent at least $1 million in 2018.

The fastest-growing inventory sources are large networks like Fox, NBC and ESPN adding direct-to-consumer channels, he said. But Hulu is the “tea leaf” company to watch for clues to what data-driven TV companies will do, since it has both an ad-supported tier and an ad-free subscription offering.

“Hulu makes more money on those users that request ads than those that pay not to,” Green said.

Many broadcasters and media companies will follow Hulu’s model, with an ad-supported tier and ad-free subscriptions, and when they do programmatic tech will prove its worth compared to traditional direct ad sales.

The runaway growth rate of CTV advertising will taper off moving forward, Green said, since the company “has already done so much land-grabbing in CTV.”

Identity

One of The Trade Desk’s long-term initiatives is its unified identity program.

The overabundance of cookie-based IDs – most ad tech companies have their own ID – slows down site pages. And when cookies don’t sync, it diminishes audience match rates and measurement, Green said.

The Trade Desk is trying to make its cookie pool a default option for programmatic companies. The initiative is popular with SSPs and data companies, many of which count The Trade Desk as a critical partner because it directs so much ad spend and has a much larger data marketplace than other DSPs.

He called Google’s plan to remove its ID, and Facebook reducing the use of third-party data, “an amazing gift.” Without the Google ID in particular, advertisers are losing wide swaths of campaign reporting data, and The Trade Desk hopes to seize customers reconsidering Google as a vendor.

Product updates

A new product suite The Trade Desk launched last year could also be a major growth driver.

The company’s predictive targeting tool, called Koa, and the new user interface helped increase cross-device campaigns by 300% in Q4 2018 and accelerated the growth of data sales on the platform above the growth of media.

Data marketplace revenue grew by 92% in Q4 2018 compared to 2017, Green said. And the number of data elements per impression is now at 2.5, doubling from a year ago.

The Koa product also “counteracts the effects of publishers’ moves to first-price auctions,” Green said. Switching to first-price bids drove up CPMs, but advertisers using Koa have seen a 20% reduction, since it bids based on the expected floor without overbidding like a traditional second-price auction.

What Happened To Steve Irwin? Google Doodle Celebrates Crocodile Hunter’s 57th Birthday

On Friday, Google released a Doodle celebrating the legacy of wildlife conservationist Steve Irwin on the occasion of his 57th birthday.

“Today’s slideshow Doodle celebrates and explores the life and legacy of wildlife conservationist and television personality Steve Irwin, who inherited a love of large reptiles early on in life and shared it with the world through his work at the Australia Zoo and his popular TV series The Crocodile Hunter. Irwin and his family dedicated their lives to the preservation and appreciation of earth’s wildlife and wild places,” the Google Doodle blog post said.

The doodle featured Irwin in an animated slideshow where the animal lover was seen posing with a crocodile, hunting for deadly reptiles in the thick or forest, entertaining the crowd by showcasing crocodile stunts, and managing the Australia Zoo with his family by his side.

Irwin died on Sept. 4, 2006, while filming a documentary on the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland, Australia, when an eight-foot-wide stingray stabbed him multiple times. Cameraman Justin Lyons who accompanied Irwin and was recording at the time, spoke out in 2014 about the incident which was captured on video.

"I had the camera on, I thought this is going to be a great shot, and all of sudden it propped on its front and started stabbing wildly, hundreds of strikes in a few seconds," Lyons said, adding that the original idea was to capture the stingray swimming away from him, the Telegraph reported.

"I panned with the camera as the stingray swam away and I didn't know it had caused any damage. It was only when I panned the camera back that I saw Steve standing in a huge pool of blood that I realized something had gone wrong,” he said. The last thing that Irwin said to him was “I’m dying.” The footage of Irwin’s death was never made public and was destroyed.

Irwin is survived by his wife Terri Irwin, daughter Bindi Irwin and son, Robert Irwin, all of whom continued his legacy of doing animal conservation work, including fundraising events to benefit the Australia Zoo’s Wildlife Warriors program.

Steve became a household name after his show “The Crocodile Hunter” became a huge hit, and was seen in more than 100 countries by over 500 million people. People loved his enthusiasm for saving endangered animals like saltwater crocodiles and his catchphrase “Crickey!” which he said meant “gee, whiz, wow!”

'The Crocodile Hunter', Steve Irwin, poses with a three-foot-long alligator at the San Francisco Zoo in San Francisco, California, June 26, 2002. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

“Steve Irwin was a loving father and husband who dedicated his life to protecting wildlife and wild places. He accomplished this life mission through his wildlife documentary series The Crocodile Hunter, his world famous Australia Zoo, and his charity Wildlife Warriors. He was best known for his rescue and research work with endangered saltwater crocodiles, the closest living relative of the dinosaurs, now the largest reptiles on earth. Today we continue his mission by working to overturn recent legislation in Queensland which allows crocodile egg harvesting from vulnerable crocs in the wild to support the commercial leather trade. Steve’s legacy will definitely live on,” Terri wrote on Google’s blog post.

Here are a few famous quotes by Steve, courtesy Brainy Quote: 

“I have no fear of losing my life - if I have to save a koala or a crocodile or a kangaroo or a snake, mate, I will save it.”

“You know, you can touch a stick of dynamite, but if you touch a venomous snake it'll turn around and bite you and kill you so fast it's not even funny.”

“Snakes are just very instinctive to me. I've been playing with snakes since before I could walk. It doesn't matter where or what it is, from the biggest to the most venomous.”

“I sincerely believe that there's room for cutting down trees for forestry and grazing, so as we all get to eat. Everyone has to compromise.”

“Since I was a boy, from this house, I was out rescuing crocodiles and snakes. My mum and dad were very passionate about that and, I was lucky enough to go along.