The Trade Desk, an advertising technology company, is building a connected television operating system called Ventura. The Trade Desk has been quietly working to build the operating system for three years. The world apparently really needs another television operating system.
The Trade Desk operates what is called a demand-side advertising platform that allows advertisers to place adverts across multiple publishers in real time.
The company has no intention of getting into the low-margin television hardware business. Instead, it aims to partner with manufacturers to bring its operating system to their devices. No manufacturer or distributor partners have been announced yet, although the company says it will be deployed by manufactures and other streaming television aggregators as early as 2025.
It will bring it into potential conflict with companies like Roku, with which it has an advertising partnership.
The Trade Desk says that Ventura will offer a more intuitive, engaging user experience, including cross-platform content discovery, personalization, subscription management, and ultimately fewer and more relevant adverts. It says that it will offer a cleaner supply chain for online video advertising. It will use ideas developed by The Trade Desk, such as OpenPath and Unified ID 2.0.
Asked why the company did not form a joint venture with another company or invest in a different company to build a new OS, the founder and chief executive Jeff Green said he believed the market would be more likely to adopt a solution from The Trade Desk, because of its resources and reputation.
“We’re at a point in the evolution of streaming TV where we must ensure the supply chain of streaming TV advertising is competitive and transparent, so advertisers can maximize campaign performance, publishers can fund this new golden age of TV, and consumers have a better streaming TV ad experience,” he said.
“This innovation has to come in the OS, and it has to come from a company that brings the objectivity of not owning any streaming TV content. At The Trade Desk, all we want is a fair marketplace, where supply chain costs are minimized, and advertiser trust can thrive.”
Matthew Henick, who heads the Ventura initiative at The Trade Desk, said: “Everyone from OEMs to airlines and hotel chains are now in the streaming TV aggregation business, and they’re all trying to figure out the advertising business model while improving the viewer experience. With our content objectivity and our scaled streaming TV advertising demand, The Trade Desk is uniquely positioned to drive innovation at this key moment.”
The initiative was able to cite support from companies like Disney, Paramount and Fox.
Paul Cheesbrough, the chief executive of Tubi Media Group, which is owned by Fox, said: “As viewers shift to streaming, it’s imperative that advertisers can find their audiences with precision and put as much of their campaign spend to work as possible. We look forward to building upon our existing partnership with The Trade Desk to bring this vision of a better CTV supply chain to life across our portfolio alongside other industry leaders.”
Ventura is named for the coastal city in California where The Trade Desk is based. It was coincidentally the name for the 2022 release of the Apple MacOS and some may recall the name from an early desktop publishing package. So, not an entirely original name then.