The Trade Desk Organic Growth Opportunities
1. Readiness Assessment
1. Readiness Assessment
2. Competitive Analysis
2. Competitive Analysis
3. Opportunity Kickstarters
3. Opportunity Kickstarters
4. Appendix
4. Appendix
Readiness Assessment
Current Performance
- You are driving approximately 50k monthly organic visits, valued at $461k in equivalent ad spend.
- Brand-related searches like "the trade desk" and "ttd" account for over 65% of your traffic, demonstrating strong brand recognition among your current audience.
- Your homepage is the primary entry point, capturing over 76% of all organic traffic, with other top pages relating to careers and investor relations.
Growth Opportunity
- A significant gap exists between your traffic and that of key competitors like Amazon, which attracts 564m monthly visits, indicating a massive addressable market.
- High-volume, non-branded keywords like "ttd stock" (201k monthly searches) and "programmatic advertising platforms" (1.3k monthly searches) represent a major untapped opportunity, currently driving less than 1% of your traffic.
- Your 9.5k referring domains and an Authority Score of 48 provide a solid foundation to expand your content strategy and target more top-of-funnel, informational keywords.
Assessment
You have a strong brand-driven foundation with a clear path to meaningful traffic growth. Data reveals a systematic opportunity to expand beyond branded queries and capture high-intent search terms related to your platform, industry trends, and investment topics. AirOps can help you execute this content strategy systematically at scale to build authority and attract new audiences.
Competition at a Glance
An analysis comparing The Trade Desk to 2 key competitors—Google (for DV360) and Amazon (for Amazon DSP)—shows that thetradedesk.com currently ranks 3rd in organic search performance. The domain generates approximately 50,000 monthly organic visits from over 12,000 ranking keywords.
In stark contrast, the top-performing competitor's domain, Amazon, attracts 564 million monthly organic visits from over 101 million keywords. This highlights a significant gap in online visibility and audience reach when compared to the vast digital ecosystems where your key competitors operate.
This performance disparity underscores a substantial untapped opportunity for The Trade Desk. While competitors benefit from the immense domain authority of their parent sites, there is a clear opening to build greater brand awareness and capture a larger share of the available audience by strategically growing your online presence.
Opportunity Kickstarters
Here are your content opportunities, tailored to your domain's strengths. These are starting points for strategic plays that can grow into major traffic drivers in your market. Connect with our team to see the full traffic potential and activate these plays.
Create data-driven benchmark pages that are automatically refreshed, covering key performance indicators like average CPM, CPA, and ROAS. This content is segmented by channel, region, vertical, and season to provide granular insights.
Example Keywords
- "average ctv cpm 2025 us"
- "display viewability benchmarks apac retail"
- "programmatic advertising cost uk 2024"
- "audio advertising cpa benchmarks"
Rationale
Marketers and media buyers constantly search for pricing and performance benchmarks to plan campaigns and justify budgets. By publishing this data, The Trade Desk becomes the objective market standard, attracting high-intent users who are actively planning media buys.
Topical Authority
The Trade Desk processes trillions of impressions daily, giving them unparalleled access to real-time market data. No other entity is better positioned to publish authoritative, accurate, and up-to-date benchmarks on programmatic media costs and performance.
Internal Data Sources
Utilize real-time log-level data from the platform, summarized by the Kokai AI. Incorporate proprietary metrics like the Quality Reach Index and cross-device ID graphs to provide unique frequency and quality metrics that competitors cannot replicate.
Estimated Number of Pages
~6,000
Develop an expansive library of individual definition pages for every ad-tech, mar-tech, and data measurement term, including common synonyms and comparisons. This play transforms a basic glossary into a comprehensive knowledge hub.
Example Keywords
- "what is supply path optimization"
- "header bidding definition"
- "dynamic creative optimisation"
- "frequency capping advertising"
- "programmatic guaranteed vs private marketplace"
Rationale
The digital advertising landscape is filled with complex jargon. Owning the educational search queries for these terms captures a wide, top-of-funnel audience of students, junior marketers, and decision-makers, nurturing them into future buyers.
Topical Authority
The Trade Desk's existing thought leadership and Edge Academy content establish a strong foundation. Expanding the single-page glossary into thousands of term-level pages will solidify their position as the definitive educational resource in the programmatic space.
Internal Data Sources
Leverage internal product documentation for features like SPO and UID2. Use scripts and content from the Edge Academy courses to create authoritative definitions, and pull insights from engineering wikis that explain core algorithms like OpenPath and Kokai.
Estimated Number of Pages
~2,000 - 3,000
Create publisher-specific readiness dashboards that track the adoption of cookieless identity solutions like UID2, PPID, and MFA compliance. These pages serve as a live resource for the entire industry navigating the deprecation of third-party cookies.
Example Keywords
- "buzzfeed uid2 adoption status"
- "cookieless readiness financial news publishers"
- "ppid implementation guide usa today network"
- "chrome cookie deprecation publisher impact"
Rationale
The transition to a cookieless world is the single biggest topic in digital advertising, creating massive search demand from publishers, agencies, and brands. Providing a live, data-backed tracker positions The Trade Desk as the central authority and guide through this industry shift.
Topical Authority
As the creator of UID2, The Trade Desk has the most credible and direct data on its adoption. This gives them an unassailable advantage in owning the narrative and search results related to cookieless readiness, making their content the source of truth.
Internal Data Sources
Use on-platform signals showing the percentage of inventory transacting on UID2/PPID for each publisher. Incorporate data from OpenPath supply-chain audits and legal team notes on regional privacy frameworks to add layers of unique context.
Estimated Number of Pages
~3,000
Generate a scorecard for every supply-side partner and publisher path, grading them on critical metrics like bid density, match rates, cleared CPMs, and UID2 readiness. This creates an objective, data-driven resource for media buyers to optimize their supply chains.
Example Keywords
- "magnite supply-path efficiency"
- "ssp transparency score programmatic"
- "openpath versus exchange win rate"
- "best supply path for ctv in germany"
Rationale
Programmatic traders are under immense pressure to drive efficiency and eliminate waste in the ad supply chain. These report cards directly answer their need for transparent, comparative data, attracting a highly specialized and valuable audience of power users.
Topical Authority
The Trade Desk is one of the few platforms with access to both bid-request and clearing data across thousands of paths. Leveraging this proprietary data, especially from its OpenPath product, allows them to publish unique, authoritative insights that competitors and blogs can only speculate about.
Internal Data Sources
Feed the content generation process with real-time log-level data on win-rates and bid shading. Use data from OpenPath audits, fraud detection partners, and UID2 transaction logs to build a multi-faceted and defensible scorecard for each partner.
Estimated Number of Pages
~5,600
Develop dedicated landing pages for every certified partner integration, including data providers, measurement vendors, CDPs, and SSPs. These guides will serve as the canonical resource for connecting third-party tools to The Trade Desk platform.
Example Keywords
- "trade desk integration with snowflake"
- "how to connect liveramp to trade desk"
- "trade desk api create campaign"
- "[partner name] and the trade desk"
Rationale
Users searching for how to connect specific tools to The Trade Desk are high-intent implementers and active customers. Owning these bottom-of-funnel SERPs captures valuable traffic, short-circuits competitor guides, and reduces the burden on customer support teams.
Topical Authority
While partners have their own documentation, The Trade Desk is the ultimate authority on how its own platform works. By creating a centralized hub, they can provide the most accurate, up-to-date, and comprehensive integration guides, establishing their site as the go-to resource.
Internal Data Sources
Use internal integration specifications and partner onboarding documents as a factual basis. Leverage developer portal API documentation (swagger files) and partner marketing one-sheets to enrich the content with code examples and joint value propositions.
Estimated Number of Pages
~1,000 - 1,500
Improvements Summary
Expand and optimize mid-funnel DSP product and feature pages targeting high-potential, low-share commercial keywords. Strengthen on-page SEO, add supporting content, and improve internal linking to move pages from page 2 to top-5 rankings.
Improvements Details
Rewrite title tags and H1s to include primary keywords like 'trade desk dsp' and 'OTT CTV advertising.' Expand each page to at least 1,200 words with educational sections, comparison tables, FAQs using schema, and keyword-rich headings. Add new supporting resources (blog, guide, whitepaper, interactive tool) and implement contextual internal links across the cluster. Optimize images, meta descriptions, and technical SEO elements such as breadcrumb schema and canonical tags.
Improvements Rationale
Current pages are thin, product-heavy, and miss out on ranking for valuable commercial-intent keywords due to lack of depth and supporting content. By targeting specific keywords, improving content structure, and interlinking, the cluster can capture more organic traffic and increase demo/lead form completions. These tactical changes are expected to drive higher CTR and move rankings into the top search positions within 90 days.
Appendix
| Keyword | Volume | Traffic % |
|---|---|---|
| best seo tools | 5.0k | 3 |
| seo strategy | 4.0k | 5 |
| keyword research | 3.5k | 2 |
| backlink analysis | 3.0k | 4 |
| on-page optimization | 2.5k | 1 |
| local seo | 2.0k | 6 |
| Page | Traffic | Traffic % |
|---|---|---|
| /seo-tools | 5.0k | 100 |
| /keyword-research | 4.0k | 100 |
| /backlink-checker | 3.5k | 80 |
| /site-audit | 3.0k | 60 |
| /rank-tracker | 2.5k | 50 |
| /content-optimization | 2.0k | 40 |
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