What Is The Trade Desk?

The Trade Desk is a demand-side platform (DSP) that allows advertisers to programmatically purchase digital advertising across various channels. It provides advanced audience targeting, real-time bidding, and robust data integrations to help marketers reach the right users at the right time. The platform is designed for transparency and control, offering detailed reporting, custom algorithm tools, and support for first-party data. With integrations into a wide range of inventory sources and identity solutions, The Trade Desk helps advertisers maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of their ad spend.

Product Type: Advertising

Integration Type: Starter Kit & ID Sync

Event Source Type: Web

Event Scope: Behavioral Events

Capabilities

• Sends server-side first-party advertiser data for audience building.
• Supports flexible segment naming based on event type, page metadata, product attributes, and order totals.
• Applies configurable TTLs per segment using the TTL_IN_MINUTES parameter.
• Uses ID sync to resolve and attach the The Trade Desk ID (TDID) to events.
• Handles single-product and multi-product events, including order-value bucketing.
• Filters events to ensure only those with TDID are transmitted.
• The Trade Desk First-Party Advertiser playbook uses a single global Data expression that processes all incoming events automatically. The expression inspects the event payload (event name, type, products, totals, etc.) and generates one or more segment records without needing per-event configuration. Even though the UI allows adding Event Specific mappings, they are not used for this starter kit.

Considerations

• When event is null, the logic treats it as a page view and constructs segment names using event type and page title.
• Product events generate one segment per product plus an optional total-value segment when properties.total is available.
• Order totals are bucketed (for example, < 100, < 200) instead of using exact numeric values.
• Cookie Lifetime controls how long a TDID remains stored before the sync triggers again.
• Customers not using TCF must request allowlisting from The Trade Desk to omit consent strings for GDPR mode.
• URL-encoding and pipe-delimited arrays apply only to the ID sync GET request. The advertiser first-party data upload uses POST JSON and does not require URL encoding or pipe-delimited arrays.
• The ID sync endpoint does not support batching (one GET request per sync). The advertiser data upload does batch events based on the configured batch size (default 100).
• Pipe-delimited arrays apply only to the GET-based sync endpoint. Product arrays in advertiser uploads remain as JSON arrays and do not require pipe delimiting.
• The Trade Desk enforces a maximum request size of 2.5 MB per upload, which is typically equivalent to approximately 10,000 IDs. If your traffic volume exceeds this threshold, The Trade Desk recommends splitting data into smaller batches.
• Multiple user IDs may be included in the same request by providing separate objects within the Items array. Only one ID type may be provided per object, though different ID types may appear across different objects in the same array.
• Data originating from GDPR regions (EEA, UK, Switzerland) may be subject to additional policy restrictions enforced by The Trade Desk. If your organization processes users in these regions, confirm your compliance requirements with your TTD representative.

Limitations

• This integration sends advertiser first-party data only; it does not configure campaigns, creatives, or pixels.
• It does not transmit viewability or impression tracking tags.
• Requires a successful TDID sync; without it, no events will be sent.
• Does not support offline or mobile-app-only identifiers.

Identity Sync

• Sync Available: Yes
• Required for Starter Kit: Yes
• Prerequisites: None
• Documentation: The Trade Desk Sync

Sync Details

• The Trade Desk cookie sync captures the Trade Desk ID (ttd_id) using a fetch request to the Match API.
• The ttd_id is required for conversion attribution and is automatically included in all server-side events once synced.
• The ID is stored in first-party storage for up to 365 days by default.
• A temporary failure flag is stored for 1 day if the sync request fails.

Starter Kit Setup Guide

1. Deploy the The Trade Desk Sync

• To collect the sync values (e.g., ttd_id), you must implement The Trade Desk ID sync. Refer to the following documentation to complete the setup: The Trade Desk - ID Sync Guide.

2. Gather Credentials

• Advertiser ID - You can look this up on the advertiser preferences page in the platform UI.
• Please ask your TTD representative for the following:

  Note: The Trade Desk issues two different types of authentication secrets.

  • Secret Key identifies you as the advertiser uploading first-party data into your own seat.
  • Secret Key Data Provider is used when your organization is registered as a data provider or is sending data on behalf of multiple advertisers.

  
  

  Your TTD representative will confirm which key(s) your account requires for this integration.

3. Add a The Trade Desk - First Party Advertiser Integration

4. Configure Event Mapping

MetaRouter provides all event mappings needed for The Trade Desk integrations.

5. Deploy to Pipeline

• Add the integration in the Pipelines tab.
• Select the correct revision.
• Click Add Integration.

Event Mappings

Global

Required & Recommended Identifiers

Integration Validation

To validate that the integration is working, send a few test events and then confirm with your The Trade Desk representative that first-party data uploads are being received for your advertiser. Your TTD rep can verify that segment records are flowing, that TDIDs are resolving correctly, and that the uploaded data is populating your advertiser’s first-party graph.

Additional The Trade Desk Documentation

• https://partner.thetradedesk.com/v3/portal/data/doc/post-data-advertiser-firstparty