Jeff Green is betting that the open internet is on the verge of a renaissance—and that 2026 will be the year it shows up most clearly in the ad market. For out‑of‑home buyers watching AI upend search and squeeze the walled gardens, his argument boils down to a simple thesis: as generative AI changes how people find information, brands will put a premium on trusted, richly contextual environments across screens—and that includes premium open‑web inventory alongside digital OOH.
Green, CEO of The Trade Desk, has spent the past year positioning his company as the neutral allocator of spend across the open internet, in contrast to platforms that primarily exist to monetize their own media. His message to investors and marketers has been consistent: Amazon, Google and the large social platforms are increasingly about owned‑and‑operated environments, while The Trade Desk’s sandbox is the rest of the web—connected TV (CTV), premium publishers, streaming audio and the broader programmatic ecosystem. In that world, 2026 is framed as an inflection point, not a plateau.
The tension, of course, is that AI search appears ready to siphon off a meaningful share of traditional search queries. Green has been explicit that this battle is not his to fight. Amazon’s ad growth, he has argued, is overwhelmingly in sponsored listings that compete with Google Search and “emerging AI search,” not with open‑internet display and video. By his back‑of‑the‑napkin math, roughly 90% or more of Amazon’s advertising sits in those formats, with only a sliver flowing through a true DSP aimed at decisioned open‑internet buying. If AI search compresses margins and rewrites the rules for performance budgets inside those walled gardens, Green’s contention is that brand and upper‑funnel dollars will need new, scalable homes.
That is where premium open‑web inventory enters the picture. Even skeptics of the open‑internet narrative concede that CTV and video have been “durable momentum” drivers for The Trade Desk and now account for about half of its revenue. Marketers chasing incremental reach beyond broadcast and the major subscription streamers are leaning into ad‑supported services, free ad‑supported streaming TV (FAST) channels and broadcaster‑owned streaming apps—all of which transact heavily through open‑internet pipes. For OOH specialists used to selling attention in high‑impact, real‑world environments, the CTV boom represents a complementary canvas: a chance to extend campaigns across living rooms while maintaining control over context and frequency.
Green’s “best year yet” rhetoric also stems from structural changes in how the open internet is monetized. He has spent the past several years railing against opacity in the programmatic supply chain and championing tools like UID2 and publisher‑friendly monetization frameworks. The logic is that if identity, measurement and supply‑path optimization continue to mature, the open web starts to look less like a bargain bin of remnant inventory and more like a transparent, high‑value marketplace. That’s when brand advertisers—often the same ones driving OOH growth—feel confident shifting larger budget slices away from last‑click metrics and into multi‑touch, cross‑screen strategies.
The stakes in 2026 are high precisely because 2025 was wobbly. Business Insider described The Trade Desk’s year as one where a long‑time ad‑tech star suddenly found itself under pressure, with its stock hammered amid fears that it was too dependent on a “fragile open web” and facing tough competition from Amazon. At the same time, Wall Street models have built in a revenue deceleration, assuming that the competitive squeeze will intensify rather than ease. Green’s counter‑narrative is that many of those headwinds are cyclical—macro uncertainty, product transitions, tougher comps—rather than structural, and that the company can re‑accelerate growth above 20% if the broader economy cooperates.
For the OOH world, what matters is not The Trade Desk’s share price but the directional signals. Multiple 2026 outlooks point to media spending growth in the mid‑ to high‑single digits, with commerce, social and search still capturing a large share of incremental dollars. Yet the same forecasts also flag that CTV, retail media and open‑internet video are increasingly central to omnichannel plans, particularly around global tentpoles like the Winter Olympics and the men’s World Cup in North America. Those are precisely the moments when brands push for synchronized storytelling across stadium signage, city‑center screens, CTV, mobile and desktop. Demand‑side platforms that sit firmly in the open‑internet camp have a structural advantage in orchestrating that convergence.
AI only increases the urgency of this coordination. If AI‑driven answer engines reduce the volume of keyword‑based queries and compress the available surface area for classic search ads, brands will have to rebuild their upper‑funnel playbooks. Green’s view is that those dollars will not disappear; they will migrate to environments where attention is earned rather than intercepted—premium streaming, quality news and lifestyle publishers, and high‑impact digital formats including large‑screen OOH. In that context, the “open internet” is less a technical term and more a planning philosophy: don’t let a single gatekeeper determine how, when and where you reach your audience.
Ad‑tech insiders expect Green to “take a big swing” in 2026, whether through acquisitions, deeper integrations with retail and measurement partners, or bolder moves in TV and commerce. Whatever form that swing takes, it will likely be framed as another step toward making the open internet work more like a coordinated, high‑value network and less like a patchwork of disconnected impressions. For OOH buyers, that evolution could mean tighter programmatic pipes into digital inventory, more sophisticated identity and measurement overlays, and a clearer story about how a moment on a street‑level screen translates into outcomes across the rest of a campaign.
Green’s optimism about 2026 may or may not prove prescient. What’s clear is that as AI reshapes search and the giants double down on their own ecosystems, the battle for brand budgets will hinge on who can offer scale without sacrificing neutrality. If his open‑internet bet pays off, the winners will be the premium environments—on the web, on TV and out in the real world—that can prove their value in a marketplace no longer ruled by a search box.
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