Amazon Ads compounds while The Trade Desk stumbles
A widening gap between commerce media and the open web is forcing marketers to rethink where measurement dollars go.
Mariano De Vitto · August 2026
Amazon Ads keeps compounding while The Trade Desk shows cracks, and that divergence is the clearest signal yet that programmatic budgets are migrating toward commerce media. According to Matterfact's August 2026 newsletter, Amazon's advertising business continues to grow steadily on the strength of its retail data and closed loop measurement, while The Trade Desk, long seen as the open web's independent champion, has stumbled as growth slows and investor confidence wavers.
For marketers, this is not just a stock story playing out on quarterly earnings calls. Amazon Ads has spent years building demand side tools, most notably Amazon DSP, alongside sponsored product formats that connect directly to purchase data. That combination gives brands something rare in digital advertising: a straight line from impression to sale, verified inside the same ecosystem where the transaction actually happens.
The Trade Desk, by contrast, built its reputation on independence from walled gardens. Its pitch to marketers was always about optionality, access to the open web through publishers, CTV inventory, and identity solutions like Unified ID 2.0 that let brands target and measure audiences without ceding control to a single platform. That model has powered years of growth, but it depends on stitching together data from many partners rather than owning the full purchase loop.
The Measurement Divide
The shift matters because measurement has become the deciding factor in budget allocation, not creative quality or raw reach. Amazon's advantage is closed loop attribution that finance teams trust, a system where the ad exposure and the sale sit inside the same walled garden and can be reported with confidence. The Trade Desk's challenge is proving similar clarity across a far more fragmented and less controlled inventory landscape, where every publisher, device, and identity signal adds a layer of uncertainty.
That uncertainty is exactly what finance and procurement teams have grown less tolerant of. As marketing budgets face more scrutiny, the platforms that can show a clean, defensible path from spend to revenue have an inherent edge, regardless of how open or flexible their inventory sourcing might be.
Retail Media Expands
This dynamic is compounded by the broader growth of retail media networks. As commerce platforms beyond Amazon expand, from Walmart Connect to Kroger Precision Marketing, the open web's share of attention and budget is shrinking relative to commerce platforms that can prove outcomes. Each new retail media network adds another closed loop option for marketers, further tilting the competitive landscape away from the model The Trade Desk has championed for so long.
None of this means the open web disappears or that identity solutions like Unified ID 2.0 stop mattering. Publishers, CTV inventory, and independent measurement still play a role in reaching audiences that walled gardens cannot fully cover. But the burden of proof has shifted, and platforms built on openness now have to work harder to demonstrate the same level of confidence that commerce media offers almost by default.
What Marketers Should Do
Why it matters: marketing teams should treat this as a signal to rebalance testing budgets toward retail media platforms with transparent attribution, while still pressuring open web partners like The Trade Desk to sharpen measurement standards. Shifting spend entirely to commerce media would sacrifice reach and diversification, but ignoring the measurement gap would be equally shortsighted given where finance teams are placing their trust.
The winners in programmatic will be the platforms that turn impressions into provable revenue, not just reach. For brands and agencies planning the rest of 2026, that means treating attribution clarity as a core evaluation criterion alongside inventory quality, and pushing every partner, walled garden or open web, to close the gap between exposure and proof.
The Signal Brief · Mariano De Vitto — Head of Marketing, Barcelona