The Trade Desk stays dominant but advertisers test Amazon DSP
A new Digiday report shows brands quietly diversifying programmatic spend beyond The Trade Desk.
Mariano De Vitto · August 2026
The Trade Desk remains the largest independent demand-side platform in programmatic advertising, but a new Digiday report shows advertisers are increasingly allocating test budgets to Amazon DSP, signaling the first real cracks in The Trade Desk's near-monopoly on agency and brand spend outside the walled gardens.
Advertisers testing Amazon DSP
According to Digiday, media buyers describe The Trade Desk as still the default choice for cross-channel programmatic campaigns, citing its data partnerships, inventory reach and reporting tools. But those same buyers are now running parallel tests on Amazon DSP, drawn by its access to Amazon's retail data, its lower entry costs for experimentation, and growing pressure from clients to diversify platform risk rather than concentrate all programmatic spend with one vendor.
Why this shift matters
This shift matters because it reflects a broader anxiety among marketers about dependency on a single DSP, especially as identity signals fragment and cookie deprecation reshapes targeting options. Amazon DSP's retail media data gives it a distinct advantage that The Trade Desk cannot fully replicate, even as The Trade Desk continues to invest in its own identity solutions like Unified ID 2.0 to defend its position.
What marketers should do
Why it matters: marketing teams should treat this as an early signal to revisit platform allocation strategy now, before diversification becomes a competitive necessity rather than a choice. Growth leaders running programmatic budgets should start small tests on Amazon DSP alongside existing The Trade Desk campaigns, benchmark performance using consistent KPIs, and build internal reporting frameworks that can compare walled-garden retail data against The Trade Desk's open-web reach. Waiting for the market to fully settle risks losing negotiating leverage and missing early efficiency gains that come from healthy platform competition.
The Signal Brief · Mariano De Vitto — Head of Marketing, Barcelona