Ad-tech specialist The Trade Desk (TTD 0.85%) shocked the Street this week with quarterly revenue and earnings far beyond what analysts were expecting. The news sent shares soaring.
While the company's financial results were certainly impressive, the biggest news may have been buried in its third-quarter earnings call. The Trade Desk will launch a massive upgrade to its data-driven ad-buying platform next year, management revealed during the call.
Image source: Getty Images.
The next Next Wave?
If you've been following the tech company for a few years, you'll likely recall when it overhauled its platform in 2018. Management referred to the effort as Next Wave -- and it was no small undertaking.
"We invested almost 40% of our engineering resources for almost two years to launch Next Wave," said CEO Jeff Green during The Trade Desk's fourth-quarter 2018 earnings call. "We overhauled the entire user experience and made decisioning even easier for the tens of thousands of people who use our platform."
The upgrade to its platform proved to be a major catalyst for the company, helping it increase its technology lead over competition and gain market share.
As it turns out, The Trade Desk hasn't been resting on its laurels since then.
"In 2021, we will launch one of the biggest upgrades to our system in company history," Green explained during the company's earnings call this week. "The release is called Solimar." The Motley Fool confirmed the spelling of the name with The Trade Desk's media relations team.
The overhaul will include an improved user interface, bringing customers' buying and planning tools together in one space. It will also feature easier integration of first-party data, better data management, big updates to its machine learning and artificial intelligence engines for powering ad campaigns, and more.
"We are still relentlessly committed to innovating and staying on the leading edge of our industry," explained Green. "We never take leadership for granted, and we are always looking to improve our platform and deepen our relationships with our customers."
The future looks bright
Despite continued elevated levels of economic and political uncertainty, Green was extremely bullish about the future during the call. The upcoming launch of Solimar, combined with the powerful tailwinds of programmatic advertising and marketers' rapid adoption of connected TV (CTV) ad spots, shows there's good reason for Green to be excited.
"The team has done so much to set up our future, and the future of the open internet," explained Green when summarizing his opening remarks in Thursday's earnings call.
Strong tailwinds and the tech company's relentless execution suggest these are still early days for The Trade Desk.
