{"page":"/tco/methodology","modified":"2026-10-18","license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","columns":["Default","Value","Source or label"],"rows":[["DSP platform fee, dsp_fee_pct","21.6% of gross spend","Our calculation from The Trade Desk FY2025 revenue and gross spend (10-K); 20.3% for FY2024. Gross spend includes the platform fee, so this is a ceiling for a pure media-based fee"],["Alternative DSP fee reference","8% of spend","ISBA/PwC 2020, UK, DSP line only (Marketing Dive, 7 May 2020); the calculator offers it as a preset labelled \"ISBA 2020 DSP line\""],["Data and demand-side technology fees, data_fee_pct","10% of spend","ISBA/PwC 2020 \"demand-side technology fee\" (Marketing Dive, 7 May 2020); editable"],["SSP fee, ssp_fee_pct","8% of spend","ISBA/PwC 2020 SSP line (same); shown for completeness"],["Transaction cost cross-check","29% (2023), 29.8% (2024) of each DSP dollar","ANA, 17 June 2024; ExchangeWire, 16 September 2026"],["White-label fee, wl_fee_pct","10% of spend","Editable assumption; no white-label vendor publishes a rate"],["White-label minimum and license","$0","Editable assumption"],["In-house license, licence_annual","$500,000","Editable assumption; 0 for an open-source stack"],["Instance price","$0.145 per hour, c7g.xlarge, 4 vCPU","Vantage, 17 October 2026"],["Egress","$0.09 / $0.085 / $0.07 / $0.05 per GB by tier; 100 GB free","CloudZero, updated 1 May 2026; AWS, accessed 17 October 2026"],["CPU per request, utilization, regions, redundancy","2 ms, 60%, 2, N+1","Editable assumptions shared with the bidder capacity planner"],["Peak QPS per $1M of annual spend","1,000","Editable assumption used only to derive Q_peak when the user has no measurement"],["Wage","$135,980","Software developers, median, May 2025 (BLS); used for all roles for lack of a comparable public ad-ops wage series"],["Loading factor","1.3","Editable assumption (employer taxes, benefits, overhead)"],["FTEs: rented / white-label / in-house","2 / 4 / 6","Editable assumptions"],["Migration person-months: rented / white-label / in-house","0 / 3 / 12","Editable assumptions"],["Parallel run months","0 / 1 / 2","Editable assumptions"],["Exit: export person-months, notice months","1, 3","Editable assumptions"],["Horizon","3 years","Convention"]],"sourceUrls":[["https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1671933/000167193326000014/ttd-20251231.htm"],["https://www.marketingdive.com/news/15-of-programmatic-ad-spend-disappears-in-the-supply-chain-study-says/577525/"],["https://www.marketingdive.com/news/15-of-programmatic-ad-spend-disappears-in-the-supply-chain-study-says/577525/"],["https://www.marketingdive.com/news/15-of-programmatic-ad-spend-disappears-in-the-supply-chain-study-says/577525/"],["https://www.ana.net/content/show/id/pr-2024-06-tag","https://www.exchangewire.com/blog/2026/09/16/the-ad-tech-toll-road/"],[],[],[],["https://instances.vantage.sh/aws/ec2/c7g.xlarge"],["https://www.cloudzero.com/blog/aws-egress-costs","https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on-demand/"],[],[],["https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/software-developers.htm"],[],[],[],[],[],[]]}