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The Trade Desk is bringing co-founder and former CTO Dave Pickles back into a more prominent role. Since 3 November 2026, it has been clear that Pickles is to build a new CTO Council and help shape the technical direction of the advertising platform. On the agenda are AI agents, the platform's architecture and more efficient processes in programmatic media buying. For advertisers, this is more than a personnel move: after a difficult growth phase, The Trade Desk is trying to make its software a compelling tool for media teams once again.
A technology council rather than an ordinary CTO change
Pickles co-founded The Trade Desk with CEO Jeff Green and was responsible for the technology for years. In September 2023 he gave up the CTO post and his seat on the board of directors but remained as an adviser. Now he is moving closer again to product and engineering decisions. The new council is to oversee technical architecture, investments and the product roadmap. The company has not announced an appointment as operational CTO.
A tangible business problem lies behind this move. In the second quarter of 2026, The Trade Desk generated 715 million US dollars in revenue, only three percent more than the previous year. A year earlier, the corresponding quarterly growth had still been 19 percent. In September, a reduction of around 15 percent of positions followed. After the organisational restart, product development is now also to gain more direction.
The decisive construction site is called Kokai Zuma
That the CTO Council explicitly names AI workflows fits the product course. As early as August, The Trade Desk unveiled Kokai Zuma: a revised interface, additional measurement tools and the AI assistant Koa with specialised agents. They are meant to, for example, develop audiences, analyse campaigns, detect errors or optimise frequency settings.
The added value does not come from a chatbot in the dashboard but from reliable linking with forecasts, campaign data and the actual booking workflows. For large media buyers in particular, what counts is whether automation also works across many channels, client accounts and approval processes. Some Zuma functions are still in closed tests; The Trade Desk is rolling them out step by step. The functions of Kokai Zuma and the development of agentic advertising systems show how strongly the programmatic market is changing right now.
What matters for German advertisers
The Trade Desk is a demand-side platform for advertising inventory on the open internet, including connected TV, video, audio and display. For marketing teams, the real question is therefore whether campaigns can be controlled and measured better with less manual work. Three points deserve special attention in the next product versions: traceable decisions by the AI agents, useful conversion lift reports and transparent costs along the buying chain. The latter is already a topic with the DSP fees for agencies.
The next reality check comes quickly: On 9 November 2026 The Trade Desk publishes its figures for the third quarter. Then it will become clearer how the advertising business is developing. Pickles' return is above all a signal that Jeff Green is again placing technological execution more centrally in the company's strategy.