Future of TV Briefing: How Amazon and Google are trying to undercut The Trade Desk’s CTV ad business
This Future of TV Briefing covers the latest in streaming and TV for Digiday+ members and is distributed over email every Wednesday at 10 a.m. ET. More from the series →
This week’s Future of TV Briefing looks at how Amazon and YouTube are dangling incentives to get advertisers to buy more CTV inventory through their respective demand-side platforms.
Forget about the streaming wars; let’s talk about the connected TV ad battle. Specifically how Amazon and Google are looking to lay siege to The Trade Desk’s CTV ad business.
“Everyone’s trying to undercut The Trade Desk,” said one agency executive.
Amazon’s and Google’s respective demand-side platforms have already secured footholds in advertisers’ CTV spend allocations thanks to Amazon’s DSP and Google’s Display & Video 360 being the primary paths to purchasing Amazon Prime Video and YouTube inventory programmatically. But both Amazon and Google have also been pushing advertisers to use their respective DSPs to buy ads across third-party CTV apps.
Amazon offers discounts on its DSP’s fees to advertisers who use it to buy third-party CTV inventory, according to agency executives. Meanwhile, Google provides credits back to advertisers who use DV360 to do the same, the executives said.
“Amazon Ads is focused on making the Amazon DSP the best place to buy advertising with our north star being to invent ways that we increase efficiency and lower the cost of managing campaigns — all backed by AI,” said an Amazon spokesperson in an emailed statement.
In a recent interview, Google president of Americas and global partners Sean Downey confirmed that the company will offer the credits to advertisers in this year’s upfront market.
“We’re trying to make sure people can get a ton of value out of both YouTube and DV[360]. People want to manage their frequency. They want to manage their video buys. And that just made sense for someone that was going to invest in Google. So just another semblance of flexibility for folks,” he said.
The discounts and credits are not monumental. Amazon typically discounts its DSP’s fees by 3 percentage points, and Google’s credits usually amount to 0.5% to 2.5% of the spend an advertiser funnels through DV360 for third-party CTV inventory, the executives said. The Amazon spokesperson declined to comment on the discount amounts. A Google spokesperson did not return a request for comment.
“It’s not a lot,” said a second agency executive of the incentive amounts.
“I don’t think it’s enough to make somebody change their DSPs,” said a third agency executive.
Not only that, agency executives are wary of moving too much money to Amazon’s and Google’s DSPs and away from the Trade Desk. Their primary concern is that Amazon and Google own Prime Video and YouTube and could press their programmatic advantage to push more money toward their respective properties rather than simply securing the most cost-effective and/or performant inventory across the CTV ad market. By contrast TTD remains an independent DSP that does not also own inventory.
“I’m leery of Trade Desk going away and being reliant on DSPs owned by sellers,” said the first agency executive.
That being said, ad buyers aren’t seeing TTD entirely through rose-tinted glasses. While they want to preserve independent competition for Amazon and Google, they are also seeking to secure maximum flexibility at the moment and are chafing under what they consider to be TTD’s stringent spending requirements.
TTD offers its own version of endeavor-style upfront deals, in which an agency can commit to spend X dollars through the DSP over the coming year and receive discounts as it hits quarterly spending thresholds while being able to cancel the commitment in full. The issue, however, is that those quarterly spending thresholds are fixed. For example, an agency who is pacing below the threshold in the first quarter cannot roll over the remaining spend to the following quarter and would instead effectively nullify the deal and lose out on the discounts, according to agency executives.
A spokesperson for The Trade Desk did not respond to a request for comment.
“The problem is you have to sign a contract with them even though it’s an endeavor. No client wants to sign a contract knowing they’re going to cancel. It still feels binding even though it’s not,” said the third agency executive.
Of course, agencies are similarly signing contracts with Amazon and Google through annual upfront deals. But they’re all but guaranteed to spend that money given that Prime Video and YouTube are fixtures in advertisers’ CTV budgets. Which, yes, kinda undermines the value of TTD not owning inventory. But for some advertisers, the bottom line is the bottom line, and for them, Amazon’s and Google’s incentives could be enough to sway spending.
“Some clients who are more efficiency-driven might look more closely at Amazon and DV360,” said the second agency executive.
What we’ve heard
“Amazon might have been the best. Even though NBC was long, I found it to be entertaining. Nothing was like ‘wow.’”
— Agency executive on this year’s Upfront Week presentations
Numbers to know
40%: Percentage share of TV writers in the 2023-24 who identified as BIPOC.
2027: Year when Disney will take over streaming rights to “CoComelon” from Netflix.
43%: Percentage share of advertisers’ YouTube ad dollars that went to its CTV inventory in the first quarter of 2025.
5: Number of years that Disney+ will reportedly stream Women’s Champions League matches in Europe under a new deal that starts next year.
What we’ve covered
WTF is clipping? The low-lift creator strategy grabbing advertisers’ attention:
- Clipping is the practice of paying people to share shorts clips from longer content, like YouTube videos and livestreams, to promote that original content.
- Brands can pay $1 to $5 per 1,000 views generated from the short clips.
Read more about clipping here.
Marketers plan less upfront spending this year:
- 36% of surveyed marketers said they plan to spend in this year’s TV and streaming upfront market, down from 51% last year.
- Digiday+ Research surveyed nearly 80 marketer professionals.
Read more about upfront spending here.
Virtual-world creators gaining traction beyond Roblox and Fortnite:
- Roblox and Fortnite creators are turning to smaller gaming platforms like Highrise.
- These creators make money by selling virtual goods and attracting sponsorship deals.
Read more about virtual-world creators here.
What we’re reading
The Google-owned video platform has nabbed Disney’s platform distribution head oversee YouTube’s global media and sports division, according to Bloomberg, though Disney isn’t letting Justin Connolly leave without a legal fight.
Having re-secured NBA rights, the Comcast-owned conglomerate is looking to add MLB to its sports portfolio by seizing the rights that ESPN is letting expire, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Google’s generative AI moviemaker:
YouTube’s parent company unveiled a generative AI tool called Flow that people can use to create multi-shot videos complete with dialogue and sound effects, according to Business Insider.
Everyone wants to be the Pixar of the AI era:
A company called Toonstar is among the animation studios employing generative AI tools in a bid to cut down on the time and money it takes to make animated programming, according to The New York Times.
ABC News and its parent company would like “The View” hosts to talk less about politics, according to Daily Beast, likely in hopes of avoiding raising more ire from President Donald Trump, to whom ABC News paid $15 million in December to settle a defamation lawsuit.
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