The Trade Desk’s announcement of its new streaming TV operating system Ventura represents a bold move in the rapidly evolving connected TV (CTV) landscape. While it reveals the ambition The Trade Desk has to deepen its foothold in the CTV space, this initiative raises significant questions about its adoption, the impact on content distributors, and whether it risks becoming another cautionary tale of ad tech firms overreaching outside their core competencies for the shiny new object that excites shareholders.
For The Trade Desk, adoption and scale is the linchpin of success — and one of the steepest hill to climb. Competing with entrenched players like Roku, Google, Amazon and Samsung, requires more than just ambition. These companies have spent years building ecosystems of content, hardware, and user bases, making it hard to identify who, in fact, will use a new operating system and give up all of that control.
Adoption and Scale: A Massive Mountain to Climb
Ventura’s prospects hinge on its ability to persuade TV manufacturers, airlines, and hospitality players to adopt its operating system at scale. While partnerships with industries like travel and hospitality could differentiate Ventura, and where they may actually gain adoption, the user bases in these environments are inherently transient, making it harder to achieve the persistent reach that advertisers crave. Scaling to compete with the massive install bases of Roku or Fire TV for example, which each pushing into the hundreds of millions, feels aspirational at best.
The Trade Desk understands the need for volume, as it’s a cornerstone to their direct supply partnership solution, OpenPath. The irony here, is that unless Ventura rapidly amasses significant market share, advertisers may be reluctant to prioritize it, creating a chicken-and-egg problem: no users without advertisers and no advertisers without users.
Impact on Content Distributors
For content distributors, Ventura presents a double-edged sword. On one hand, a new operating system with a focus on advertising could create more competition for streaming platforms and drive innovation in ad-tech integrations, potentially leading to more revenue opportunities. The Trade Desk’s expertise in programmatic advertising could theoretically provide distributors with enhanced tools to monetize their content, effectively.
However, the flip side is more concerning. Distributors may balk at integrating with yet another OS, especially one that may lack the scale and credibility of established players. Smaller platforms may feel stretched thin, trying to accommodate multiple operating systems, potentially diluting their resources and focus. Moreover, Ventura’s focus on advertising might conflict with platforms that care as much about control and user-friendliness as they do about their ad-supported models.
A Risk of Overreach?
The Trade Desk has been remarkably successful in its core domain: programmatic advertising. However, creating a consumer-facing OS is an entirely different challenge, requiring expertise in areas far removed from that core domain. The venture brings to mind Amazon’s ill-fated Fire Phone, a bold, but misguided attempt to enter the smartphone market in 2014. Amazon’s failure stemmed from its inability to offer meaningful differentiation in a market dominated by Apple and Android, despite its own dominance in e-commerce
Ventura risks a similar fate, unless it can demonstrate why advertisers, TV manufacturers, and ultimately consumers should care. Unlike Roku or Fire TV, which are built on ecosystems designed to meet users where they already are, The Trade Desk will need to engineer an entirely new ecosystem — an incredibly costly and complex undertaking.
The Verdict: Ambitious, but Unrealistic
Ventura reflects The Trade Desk’s recognition of the growing importance of owning the CTV user in the advertising landscape. The challenges of adoption and scale are going to be enormous – one of the large incumbent players in the space will have to ditch their own current operating system, where they own all the data and where they have all the control. Do you see Apple, Roku, Google, Amazon, Samsung or Vizio/Walmart doing that? That’s where all of the audiences currently are.
For The Trade Desk, this effort may end up serving as more of a strategic experiment to deepen its CTV ad supply rather than a direct assault on the incumbent giants. If executed poorly, it risks diverting resources and focus away from its core advertising business, potentially alienating its partners in the process.
While the streaming OS wars are far from over, The Trade Desk’s move with Ventura may prove that some battles are better fought through partnerships and integrations (i.e. partnerships with the hundreds of content distributors eager for better ad monetization on their content) than with proprietary solutions. As history has shown, domination in one area doesn’t guarantee domination in another.