Amazon DSP vs The Trade Desk: Reach, Fees, Data and the Open Web

The table compares the three platforms on the points buyers ask about most. Every cell is sourced; "n/d" means we found no public figure. It is not a ranking.

Share figures: PPC Land on Guideline, 10 May 2026. Company views are on the Amazon DSP, The Trade Desk and Google DV360 profiles.

The fee gap is real, but the two numbers measure different things. Amazon's reported 0% and 1% rates describe guaranteed deals (Digiday, 30 May 2025). The Trade Desk's 21.6% blends its platform fee with data and feature revenue across all clients (10-K, FY2025). Neither figure is your contract.

Jeff Green, The Trade Desk's chief executive, made the comparison himself in August 2026. On $1 of media, an 8% fee costs $1.08 and a 4% fee costs $1.04 (PPC Land, 7 August 2026). His argument was that better decisions can recover a few cents of fee.

Fee arithmetic. A take rate of 21.6% of gross spend equals a markup of about 27.6% on the money passed to suppliers, because 21.6 divided by 78.4 is 0.276. On Green's terms, $1 of supplier cost then becomes about $1.28. The same dollar at a reported 1% guaranteed-deal fee becomes $1.01. So the buy through the independent platform must deliver about 26% more value to break even. All of this is our arithmetic on the 10-K, FY2025 and Digiday, 30 May 2025. It overstates the gap for buyers who use no data, because the 21.6% includes data revenue.

Green also argued that low fees on owned media are not free. "When things come out as free, they are not really free. They're just moving the cost somewhere else," he said on the Q2 2026 call (PPC Land, 7 August 2026). That is a competitor's view. Amazon's answer is its own: it reports advertising revenue of $19,637 million in Q3 2026 and keeps building supply (Amazon 10-Q, Q3 2026).

Amazon's main asset is first-party data from shopping, streaming and entertainment. DVA+ is "informed by Amazon's authenticated graph" (company claim) (Amazon Ads Agent). Analysis runs inside Amazon Marketing Cloud, where Amazon's own paid features are free to query through 31 December 2026 (PPC Land, 2 June 2026).

The Trade Desk's model is a marketplace. It connects more than 370 third-party data vendors and promotes UID2, an open-source identifier built from emails or phone numbers (10-K, FY2025). Retail data comes from partners. In Q2 2026 the company added travel and mobility data from Booking.com, Marriott, Uber and United Airlines (Q2 2026 release).

The practical difference is portability. Amazon data is strongest inside Amazon. Marketplace data can follow a buyer across supply, but each segment carries its own price.

Amazon sells inventory no one else can: Prime Video, Fire TV, Twitch and Thursday Night Football (Amazon Ads). In 2025 it added deals with Roku, Disney, Netflix, Spotify and SiriusXM. Amazon inventory plus Roku covered 80 million US CTV households, according to Digiday (Digiday, 7 October 2025).

The Trade Desk reaches supply through more than 430 integrations (10-K, FY2025). In 2026 Netflix joined its Sellers and Publishers 500+ marketplace and Samsung opened home-screen inventory to it (Q2 2026 release). Green's counter-argument is that a platform owning media has a reason to steer spend to it. On the Q2 2026 call he said Amazon "buys a lot of Amazon Prime and sponsored listings" (PPC Land, 7 August 2026).

Microsoft left the DSP market. Microsoft Invest shut on 28 February 2026 (MediaPost). Its advertisers were offered onboarding to Amazon, and Microsoft Monetize joined Amazon's Certified Supply Exchange program (Digiday, 7 October 2025). The migration steps are in life after Microsoft Invest.

Walmart opened its data to a second DSP. Walmart's four-year exclusive DSP deal with The Trade Desk ended in autumn 2025, and Walmart DSP still runs on its technology (Marketing Dive, 1 June 2026). On 28 May 2026 Walmart Connect announced its audiences in Yahoo DSP, starting with VIZIO inventory through Magnite, as a closed proof of concept (Walmart Connect, 28 May 2026). See the Walmart Connect profile and the Yahoo DSP profile.

Agency pressure hit both sides. Publicis paused its recommendation of The Trade Desk from March to June 2026 over fees, then settled (PPC Land, 13 June 2026). Amazon faces an FTC case over pricing in its sponsored ad auctions, which it disputes (Amazon 10-Q, Q3 2026). Neither matter has produced a finding against the company.

The second comparison buyers search is between the two largest platforms by tracked spend. Both charge a percentage, and neither publishes a rate card. They differ in three documented ways.

1. Rate structure. DV360 has a lower fee band for YouTube & partners, Demand Gen and programmatic guaranteed (DV360 Help). The Trade Desk's filing describes one fee on total spend, adjusted by contract (10-K, FY2025).
2. Owned inventory. Google sells YouTube through DV360; The Trade Desk owns no media. Buyers in 2024 reported paying about 15% on Google's DSP and 20% on The Trade Desk (Digiday, 6 November 2024).
3. Regulatory exposure. The court in US v. Google found the advertiser tools lawful, and the remedies place no restriction on DV360 (AdExchanger, 16 September 2026).

These criteria follow from the table. They describe fit, not quality.

Amazon DSP tends to fit when:

• You sell on Amazon and want ads tied to Amazon sales.
• Prime Video, Fire TV or Thursday Night Football carry a large share of the plan.
• Most buying is guaranteed deals on Amazon media, where reported fees are lowest.

The Trade Desk tends to fit when:

• You buy across many publishers and CTV apps and want one platform that does not sell its own media.
• You bring your own data or retail partners and want them portable across supply.
• You need a long list of third-party data and measurement vendors.

DV360 tends to fit when:

• YouTube is central to the plan, or you already run Google Marketing Platform tools.
• Much of the budget is in the lower fee band: YouTube, Demand Gen and guaranteed deals (DV360 Help).

Many large buyers use two or three platforms at once. The questions to send each vendor are in the in-house programmatic hub.

1. The Trade Desk, Inc., Form 10-K for fiscal year 2025 (27 February 2026). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1671933/000167193326000014/ttd-20251231.htm
2. The Trade Desk, Inc., "The Trade Desk Reports Second Quarter 2026 Financial Results", Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K (6 August 2026). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1671933/000167193326000085/ttd-20260806x8kexx991.htm
3. The Trade Desk, Inc., Form 8-K, Item 2.05 (filed 4 September 2026). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1671933/000119312526382690/d118889d8k.htm
4. Amazon Ads, "Amazon DSP" (accessed 9 November 2026). https://advertising.amazon.com/solutions/products/amazon-dsp
5. Amazon Ads, "Amazon Ads Agent" (accessed 9 November 2026). https://advertising.amazon.com/adtech-solutions/amazon-ads-agent
6. Amazon Ads, "Display, Video, and Audio" (DVA+) (accessed 9 November 2026). https://advertising.amazon.com/products/display-video-audio
7. Amazon.com, Inc., Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 September 2026 (30 October 2026). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000101872426000040/amzn-20260930.htm
8. Google, Display & Video 360 Help, "Partners in Display & Video 360" and related billing pages (accessed 9 November 2026). https://support.google.com/displayvideo/answer/7622449?hl=en
9. AdExchanger, "Google Opens Its Black Box And Shares Fees Across DV360, Google Ads And Google Ad Manager" (23 June 2020). https://www.adexchanger.com/platforms/google-opens-its-black-box-and-shares-fees-across-dv360-google-ads-and-google-ad-manager/
10. Digiday, "Advertisers grow spending in Amazon DSP as adoption increases" (6 November 2024). https://digiday.com/marketing/advertisers-grow-spending-in-amazon-dsp-as-adoption-increases/