The Trade Desk Puts Advertiser Data Inside Netflix

The Trade Desk is opening its advertisers’ data to Netflix, a step that pushes connected-TV buying from selling inventory to selling audiences.

Starting this month, advertisers can use both first-party and third-party data to target audiences on Netflix through The Trade Desk’s Kokai platform. The company says more than four million third-party audience segments from over 300 data providers are now available. In-platform measurement is coming later, but the targeting capabilities are live now.

The announcement arrived with The Trade Desk’s third-quarter results, and the two stories point in different directions. Revenue fell 0.5% year over year to $736 million. Net income dropped to $38 million from $116 million a year earlier, and adjusted EBITDA narrowed to $266 million from $317 million, with the margin slipping to 36% from 43%. Customer retention stayed above 95%.

Despite the thinner results, the stock closed up about 15.5% to $14.93 as the company guided to at least $755 million in fourth-quarter revenue and at least $280 million in adjusted EBITDA. The market read the Netflix integration as the stronger signal.

That read is not guaranteed to hold. Netflix separately cut its 2026 ad-revenue forecast by roughly $300 million to about $2.7 billion, blaming a slower-than-expected rollout of its ad technology. So the platform The Trade Desk is selling against is still building the pipes it needs to make those impressions valuable.

The bigger picture: CTV advertising has spent years selling cheaper impressions. The Trade Desk’s Netflix move is an early bet that what advertisers will pay for next is the ability to aim — using their own data, inside a premium streaming walled garden.