This has been an incredibly rough year for growth stock investors. The Nasdaq Composite index, which contains lots of fast-growing tech stocks has fallen more than 32% since the end of 2021.
Many of the Nasdaq's Composite's biggest components are growth stocks that are getting hammered because interest rates are on the rise. Some of these stocks have particularly strong underlying businesses but they're getting pummeled anyway.
For example, shares of The Trade Desk (TTD -0.54%) and Pubmatic (PUBM -2.27%) have been hit hard this year even though their digital advertising services are increasingly in demand. In fact, global spending on advertising is expected to rise from $772 billion in 2021 to more than $1 trillion by 2026.
These ad tech stocks have fallen so far this year that you can add multiple shares of both to your portfolio with less than $150 right now. Here's why they look like great places to put your money to work, provided you don't need that cash to pay bills and you already have plenty saved to cover unforeseen emergencies.
The Trade Desk
Shares of The Trade Desk have been pummeled 44.8% this year even though its demand-side advertising technology platform is more popular than ever. Second-quarter sales soared 35% year over year. That's slower than usual for The Trade Desk, but still much faster than the largest player in the digital advertising industry, Google's parent company, Alphabet.
The Trade Desk's independent platform for ad buyers has an inherent advantage over companies marketing their own ad inventory such as Alphabet and Meta Platforms. The smaller company's advantage is really starting to show too. In the second quarter, Google advertising revenue grew just 11.6% year over year.
One particularly bright spot for The Trade Desk these days is the connected television (CTV) in your living room. One of its larger clients, Comcast, now has fully biddable ad inventory on the Peacock app and its peers are following suit. This year the company expanded its partnership with Walt Disney and Amazon Web Services in ways that ensure its method for replacing third-party cookies becomes the industry standard.
Spending on traditional television advertising is still a $230 billion annual market. As the company leading the ongoing transition toward a more data-driven approach, the next chapter of The Trade Desk's growth story could be the most exciting one yet.
Pubmatic
Pubmatic (PUBM -2.27%) is another independent ad-tech pioneer that doesn't own any content. While The Trade Desk caters to the demand side of advertising transactions, Pubmatic partners with publishers who want to get top dollar for their ad inventory.
Like The Trade Desk, demand for Pubmatic's services is stronger than ever but this isn't reflected by its stock price. Shares of Pubmatic have crashed by about 48% in 2022.
Pubmatic looks like a buy now because it's retaining and upselling clients that can't seem to get enough. The company reported a net dollar retention rate of 130% during the trailing twelve months that ended June 30, 2022.
Growth stocks have been getting beaten severely partly because rising interest rates could make it hard to access the capital their underlying businesses need to continue growing. This won't be a problem for Pubmatic.
PUBM Net Income (Quarterly) data by YCharts
Unlike its biggest competitor in the supply side programmatic advertising industry, Magnite, Pubmatic has built its ad technology infrastructure from the ground up without relying on acquisitions. This strategy has allowed the well-run company to report positive earnings on a GAAP basis every quarter since it began trading publicly.
In the CTV arena, Pubmatic is making gains that Magnite can't seem to match. Second-quarter CTV revenue at Magnite rose 43% year over year. Pubmatic didn't make any big acquisitions and it was able to report second-quarter CTV revenue that jumped 150% year over year
With ad platforms that are carving out leading shares of the rapidly growing CTV market, Pubmatic and The Trade Desk have a very good chance to outperform for patient investors.
