Top 5 Gains After Moving to The Trade Desk DSP

RIP Microsoft Invest.

Over decades in digital media, we’ve become accustomed to navigating major industry shifts: from the dot-com collapse to the rise of social, from the emergence of programmatic to today’s AI frenzy.  Still, like many in the industry, we were surprised when Microsoft announced it would sunset Xandr Invest, one of the original independent programmatic DSP platforms.  Beyond its AppNexus legacy, Xandr’s unique position as both a DSP and SSP gave us closer access to inventory and greater control on behalf of our clients. The announcement marked the end of an era, but also created an opportunity to reassess our programmatic stack and better align with where the market is headed.

After months of evaluating alternative platforms, including highly automated, AI-first DSPs, one priority remained constant: preserving trading control to maximize ROI.

In our experience, fully turnkey platforms can deliver acceptable results, but often at the cost of higher CPMs, reduced transparency, and limited optimization flexibility. When you give up the levers, you eventually pay for it.

Now, a few months after shifting programmatic advertising campaigns to The Trade Desk, while navigating the high-pressure holiday sales season, the results are already validating that decision. Stronger objective-based optimization, deeper access to premium inventory, and improved cost efficiency are reshaping how we drive measurable performance.

Here are the top five reasons we’re glad we made the switch.

1. TTD Optimizes Toward the Objective, Not Just Traffic or Clicks

CTRs are down, but performance is way up.

With sophisticated platforms capable of optimizing toward a wide range of primary and secondary metrics, it’s often difficult to balance everything without making trade-offs. The Trade Desk is clear: the platform performs best when it is fundamentally aligned to a single primary objective.

While a benchmark CTR of 0.10% used to mean something, since running campaigns on TTD, we’ve seen lower CTRs across several campaigns, yet performance is WAY up. Instead of chasing clicks, the platform prioritizes actions tied to real business outcomes.  

As Gigawatt continues to support clients with critical ecommerce and customer acquisition goals, this shift has been especially noticeable in mid- and lower-funnel campaigns where conversions, leads, and bookings are the true scorecard. The Trade Desk consistently identifies the patterns that matter and pushes budget toward activity that actually advances the goal.

2. KOA Helps Accelerate Early Performance Wins

Early in a campaign’s flight, The Trade Desk’s optimization engine, KOA, tests, learns, and identifies quick wins–surfacing top-performing ad groups, high-value inventory, effective dayparts, and other strategies that consistently outperform.

One of the most meaningful differences is that KOA allows you to place higher value on what’s working without completely discarding other tactics. In contrast, Xandr optimizations were finite—once something was deprioritized, it was largely removed from learning rather than continuing to evaluate whether it might regain value based on changes in consumer sentiment, seasonality, creative fatigue, or market conditions.

From there, we step in and refine. We take KOA’s early signals and shape them into a more strategic optimization path. The partnership between machine learning and human judgment is where the real lift happens.

Think of it like an algorithm placing values on stocks: while market decisions are driven by sophisticated financial tech, people still decide when to buy, sell, or adjust strategy.

3. Premium Inventory Access, Especially Live Sports and Events, Is Outstanding

The Trade Desk’s position as the leading independent DSP is most evident in its access to premium inventory, especially live sports. While Xandr was an early pioneer in premium video, including being the first to onboard Netflix ads, the breadth of supply that Trade Desk makes accessible across major streaming platforms, networks, leagues, and high-demand moments is on an entirely different level.

That scale doesn’t just unlock reach: it unlocks leverage. Combined with curated PMPs, IAB integrations, smart SPO paths, and high-impact Live Sports deals, we’re consistently securing premium placements at more efficient CPMs.

Yes, it still requires hands-on management, but the combination of premium inventory and operational control gives our campaigns a meaningful competitive edge.

4. Support is SOOOO Much Better

Compared to other platforms we’ve used, the level of partner support from The Trade Desk is exceptionally strong. Their team is proactive, accessible, and genuinely invested in helping solve problems and improve performance.

This attention also helps accelerate technical integrations, getting campaigns live faster and with fewer roadblocks. Just as important, we’re gaining deeper visibility into upcoming product enhancements and new inventory opportunities (hello, 2026 Winter Olympics), allowing us to proactively bring new ideas to clients.

That said, many day-to-day questions still center around navigating The Trade Desk’s “periodic table” style UI, a common frustration for TTD users and one that makes us occasionally miss the clean, organized structure of Xandr. Still, the strength of the support team, paired with the performance we’re seeing, more than makes up for it.

5. It Still Needs Humans.

The technology is powerful, but it doesn’t know our advertisers, their seasonal dynamics, their conversion cycles, their thresholds for CPMs, or their brand nuances. It doesn’t know which inventory is contextually the best fit for their audience, or when frequency needs to be pulled back to protect efficiency.

The past three months have reinforced that human-led strategy, paired with Trade Desk’s capabilities, creates something far more powerful than either force on its own.

The platform helps us scale smarter. We help the platform understand what “smart” actually means for each client.

Built for 2026 and Beyond…

Looking ahead, our deeper commitment to The Trade Desk DSP is about leveraging our programmatic expertise to create more value for our clients on the most advanced independent DSP in the market. With more than 4 years of experience already buying through the platform, the transition from Xandr allows us to centralize our programmatic strategy around one of the strongest performance ecosystems available today.

That clarity and focus has immediate benefits: faster optimization cycles, deeper access to premium inventory, smarter automation, and more consistent cost efficiency. The advantage isn’t just the platform: it’s what happens when experienced hands are given the best tools to operate at full speed.

For brands serious about performance, that combination is hard to beat.