The press release version goes like this: Google and Amazon are lowering DSP fees to help agencies buy media more efficiently. The Trade Desk, meanwhile, says its objectivity is more valuable than ever. Everybody wins.
Here's what actually happened: Amazon started a price war, Google followed, and The Trade Desk spent the last 12 months insisting it didn't need to compete on price while quietly doing exactly that.
The fee war nobody wants to call a fee war
The opening salvo came from Amazon. Starting in early 2025, Amazon's DSP team began courting agencies with a combination of reduced tech fees, free media credits, and CTV inventory bundles. According to Digiday, one agency reported Amazon had cut its tech fees to 10%. For video investments from new advertisers, Amazon offered an additional 10% of the client's buy, up to $250,000. Classic loss-leader economics: cut the price on the thing that gets them in the door, then make it back on the rest of the stack.
Google moved next. According to Ad Age and Seeking Alpha, Google began lowering DV360 fees, especially on programmatic guaranteed deals, to match Amazon's near-zero rates and stay competitive for agency budgets. Google already had the advantage of YouTube inventory locked behind its own DSP. Cutting fees on top of that captive inventory made DV360 suddenly harder to ignore.
The Trade Desk's official position was that none of this mattered. CEO Jeff Green told investors on the company's February 2026 earnings call that the "complexity of the global advertising market is not a weakness for The Trade Desk. It is a moat." He pointed to a bake-off where TTD reached 70% more unique households than Amazon's DSP at 30% lower total cost for an unnamed consumer electronics brand.
But behind the earnings call talking points, something else was happening.
The quiet concession
By December 2025, agencies started telling Digiday that The Trade Desk was, for the first time in years, willing to negotiate on fees. One programmatic lead said bluntly: "It's the first time I've seen The Trade Desk actually be willing to negotiate rates. We've had the same rates for several years."
The concessions came in various forms. One buyer at a large independent agency secured 1-2% tech fee reductions in exchange for hitting a $500,000 incremental spend threshold in Q4. Another negotiated post-auction discounts tied to $750,000 in incremental Q4 spending. A holding company exec reported receiving "development credits," meaning free engineering time from TTD's internal team to build tailored programmatic solutions.
