Audio Leads All Ad Channels At The Trade Desk In Q3.

Digital audio is proving to be a bright spot in the programmatic advertising business. The Trade Desk, one of the world’s largest independent advertising buying platforms, says audio outperformed every other advertising channel during the third quarter, delivering substantially stronger year-over-year growth even as the company’s overall revenue remained essentially flat.

“Audio represented around 7% of the business and posted much stronger year-over-year growth than any other channel,” CFO Nate Olmstead told analysts during the company’s quarterly earnings call Monday.

The performance is an encouraging signal for streaming audio and podcast publishers looking to capture more advertising dollars through automated buying platforms. The Trade Desk works with major audio services, including iHeartRadio, Pandora and Spotify, giving advertisers access to digital audio inventory alongside video, mobile and display advertising.

Based on the company’s $736 million in third-quarter revenue, audio’s approximately 7% share translates to roughly $52 million. That is an estimated contribution to The Trade Desk’s revenue, rather than the total amount advertisers spent on audio through its platform. The company didn’t disclose audio’s specific growth rate or break out podcast advertising separately from streaming music and other digital audio.

The results stand out against a more challenging overall quarter. The Trade Desk reported revenue declined 0.5% from a year earlier, while video, including connected television, continued to account for slightly more than half of its business. Mobile represented a high-20s percentage share, followed by display in the low double digits.

Beyond audio’s growth, The Trade Desk is betting that a new approach to advertising measurement will help brands recognize the value of media that influence consumers long before they make a purchase. That could have implications for podcast and streaming audio advertising. CEO Jeff Green told analysts that traditional digital advertising measurement often gives too much credit to the final advertisement a consumer sees before making a purchase, while overlooking earlier advertising that helped build awareness and preference.

“What last click and last view attribution do a poor job of is recognizing all the advertising that created awareness, preference and the brand in the first place,” Green said.

He argued that the current approach can leave premium media undervalued, specifically pointing to music alongside connected television, sports, movies and news as important environments for brand advertising.

“Branding will always suffer and be underfunded when last touch attribution is the default because the heavy lifting of branding is done in the premium media,” Green said.

The Trade Desk plans to introduce a new open measurement product by year-end that will help advertisers better understand which investments generate incremental business results. The initiative is designed to move beyond traditional last-click attribution and provide a more complete picture of how advertising influences purchases. For audio publishers, the potential benefit is a measurement system that gives greater recognition to advertising’s role in building consumer awareness, rather than focusing primarily on the final interaction before a sale.