First AI Attacks, Now This: Should You Avoid The Trade Desk?

The past year has not been kind to The Trade Desk (NASDAQ:TTD). Its stock has lost 75% of its value from its 52-week high. Despite management insisting AI would serve as a powerful tailwind — and rapidly deploying its own Kokai AI platform — the technology’s advances, deeply integrated into “walled gardens” at Google, Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META | META Price Prediction), and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), have created tremendous pressure on the company to prove it can still win on the open internet. 

Now a new threat to its business has emerged, forcing a double-digit decline over the past two days. Has The Trade Desk become a stock to avoid at all costs, even at its lowest price in six years?

AI’s Walled-Garden Onslaught

For years The Trade Desk positioned itself as the neutral, transparent alternative to closed ecosystems. Yet generative AI changed the game. Google, Meta, and Amazon embedded powerful automation directly into their platforms, delivering seamless targeting, bidding, and measurement that many advertisers now treat as table stakes. Analysts warned of “AI disintermediation” — brands and agencies bypassing independent demand-side platforms (DSPs) entirely. 

The Trade Desk’s response — Kokai — delivered real wins for some clients (lower cost per action (CPA), better reach), but rollout hiccups, reduced visibility into AI decisions, and questions about whether its advantages were durable versus converging walled-garden tools left investors skeptical. Revenue growth slowed into the high teens, margins faced short-term AI infrastructure costs, and the stock became one of 2025’s worst performers. 

Management’s repeated optimism that AI would ultimately favor the open web felt increasingly like whistling past the graveyard.

The Publicis Bombshell

Then came the latest blow. Yesterday, Publicis Groupe — the world’s largest ad holding company — told select clients it could no longer recommend The Trade Desk after a third-party audit by FirmDecisions uncovered multiple alleged violations of their Master Services Agreement. The audit flagged improper fee layering on DSP charges, unauthorized auto-enrollment of clients into paid features (some tied to Kokai behaviors), and insufficient proof that media and data costs were truly at-cost with no markups. 

Publicis said The Trade Desk’s proposed fixes fell short. The news triggered an immediate 12.5% stock plunge over two days, wiping out earlier gains and underscoring how quickly trust in the ad platform’s core “transparency and neutrality” motto can evaporate.

The Trade Desk pushed back hard, insisting no audit had ever “failed,” that the auditor’s data demands violated confidentiality, and that it remains committed to industry-leading transparency. CEO Jeff Green even bought $148 million of shares personally in recent weeks. Yet the damage was done — especially coming atop earlier agency friction over tools like OpenPath.

Key Takeaway

OpenAI threw The Trade Desk a potential lifeline earlier this month. Reports revealed early-stage talks for the DSP to power ad placement on ChatGPT until the AI giant builds its own in-house operations — news that briefly sent shares soaring more than 20%. It was a rare validation that premium open-web/CTV inventory and independent infrastructure still matter in an AI world. 

Yet the fundamental competitive pressures remain, and this new report directly attacking The Trade Desk’s mantra of transparency and neutrality indicates the company’s pains are far from over. At these depressed levels, The Trade Desk may look like a bargain to contrarian investors who believe in the long-term open-internet thesis, but for most others, the combination of AI-driven disintermediation risks, agency defections, and persistent execution questions makes caution the wiser stance. The Trade Desk is not dead, but it is on probation.