Jeff Green | $1B+
Get in touch with Jeff Green | Jeff Green, cofounder and CEO of The Trade Desk, has become one of the most influential leaders in digital advertising by building the world’s leading independent programmatic ad platform. Since launching the company in 2009, he has championed transparency, data-driven buying, and an open internet—positioning The Trade Desk as a counterweight to walled gardens like Google and Meta. Under his leadership, the company has grown into a multibillion-dollar powerhouse serving major brands, agencies, and media companies across the globe. Known for his strategic clarity and outspoken industry perspective, Green has reshaped how digital ads are bought, measured, and optimized.
Jeffrey T. Green is an American businessman who co-founded The Trade Desk in 2009 and serves as its chief executive officer and chairman, leading the company as the world's largest independent demand-side platform for programmatic media buying.[1][2]
Green previously founded AdECN, the first online advertising exchange, where he served as chief operating officer before its acquisition by Microsoft in 2007.[3] After two years at Microsoft, he established The Trade Desk to empower advertisers with greater control and transparency in digital ad purchases, countering the dominance of walled-garden platforms like Google and Meta.[2][4]
Under Green's leadership, The Trade Desk went public in 2016 and achieved $2.4 billion in revenue for 2024, reflecting 26% year-over-year growth, with operations spanning 24 global markets.[2][1] The company has pioneered technologies for privacy-compliant advertising, such as Unified ID 2.0, amid increasing regulatory scrutiny on data usage.[5]
Green, with an estimated net worth of $6 billion as of 2023, signed the Giving Pledge in 2021 to donate 90% of his wealth to philanthropy, while publicly resigning from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, citing concerns over its financial practices and stances on social issues.[2][6][7]
Early life and education
Family background and upbringing
Jeffrey Terry Green was born on March 15, 1977, and grew up primarily in Salt Lake City, Utah, though his family relocated frequently during his childhood, including periods in Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota, and Rhode Island.[8] Green's upbringing was marked by financial instability, including experiences of worrying about money and accompanying his mother to wait in lines for government food distributions.[9] His grandfather, a mechanic who labored extensively to provide opportunities for the family, exemplified hard work and integrity in Green's family background.[9]
These circumstances contributed to a non-ideal home life, which Green later reflected fostered his deep curiosity about human motivations and life trajectories.[10] At age 17, while in Denver's Five Points neighborhood, he encountered a homeless man named James, an experience that highlighted themes of luck, opportunity, and societal barriers in his early worldview.[9] Raised in a devout Latter-day Saint (LDS) family environment prevalent in Utah, Green's childhood instilled values of community and perseverance amid economic challenges.[11]
Academic and early influences
Green attended Brigham Young University, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree, prior to continuing his education at the University of Southern California, focusing on marketing communications.[12][9] His studies at USC emphasized practical aspects of advertising and media strategy, aligning with the foundational knowledge that later informed his career in digital advertising technology.[2][13]
Green's early influences were profoundly shaped by his Mormon upbringing, in which he participated actively for the first 20 years of his life, including service as a missionary.[14] This environment instilled values of discipline and community during his formative period in Utah, contributing to a structured worldview amid his academic pursuits.[15] Although Green later resigned from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in December 2021 alongside family members, citing doctrinal disagreements, he has acknowledged positive elements of his childhood faith experience.[16]
Early career and AdECN
Founding AdECN
AdECN was co-founded in October 2003 by William Urschel and Jeff Green in Carpinteria, California, establishing the world's first online advertising exchange.[17][18] The company emerged amid a fragmented digital advertising landscape dominated by over 350 ad networks, lacking a neutral platform for efficient inventory trading. Urschel served as CEO, while Green took on the role of chief operating officer, drawing from Green's prior experience as a technical account manager at Microsoft.[19][20]
The founders' vision was to replicate the New York Stock Exchange model for advertising, creating a centralized hub for real-time auctions of ad impressions on a cost-per-mille (CPM) basis. This addressed inefficiencies in manual negotiations between buyers and sellers, introducing programmatic trading to digital ads years before it became mainstream. AdECN's platform enabled auctions completing in under 100 milliseconds, supported over a dozen targeting criteria such as demographics, geography, and interests, and included ad serving and accounting infrastructure.[20][21][20]
Leveraging technology salvaged from the bankrupt Expertelligence, AdECN positioned itself as a demand-side exchange, empowering advertisers and networks with transparent, liquid markets free from publisher or agency control. This innovation laid foundational principles for modern programmatic advertising, emphasizing neutrality and efficiency over opaque networks.[20][22]
Technological innovations in ad exchanges
AdECN, co-founded by Jeff Green in 2003, introduced the world's first online advertising exchange in 2006, pioneering a neutral, centralized platform modeled after the New York Stock Exchange to facilitate real-time trading of display ad inventory.[23] [21] This system connected publishers offering ad impressions with advertisers via intermediary "seat-holders" such as ad networks, enabling automated auctions that replaced fragmented, upfront bulk negotiations common in early online advertising.[23] By processing bids on a cost-per-mille (CPM) basis, the exchange ensured the highest bidder secured each impression, with transactions completing in under 100 milliseconds to match the speed of web page loads.[20] [23]
The core innovation lay in its real-time, single-pass auction mechanism, triggered upon a user's page visit, which dynamically priced individual impressions based on contextual factors like user demographics, location, weather, site content, and over a dozen other targeting variables.[20] [23] Unlike prior fixed-rate or negotiated deals, this value-based pricing—supported by tools like SpotBot to cap bids and prevent overpayment—introduced liquidity and price discovery akin to financial markets, aiming for scalability up to 10 billion daily auctions by aggregating supply and demand across participants.[23] The platform integrated ad serving, auction execution, and accounting functions, reducing operational silos and enabling continuous, data-driven trading year-round rather than seasonal upfront buys.[20]
In 2008, AdECN advanced interoperability with its federated exchange model, which permitted ad networks to retain proprietary technologies for behavioral targeting, optimization, and sales while plugging into the central auction hub.[24] This hybrid approach provided transparent, per-transaction pricing and detailed inventory attributes, minimizing inefficiencies from undervalued or overvalued impressions and fostering broader industry participation without mandating full platform adoption.[24] Piloted with select networks including Microsoft's own, the model emphasized neutrality, charging fixed fees per auction (e.g., $0.05–$0.15 CPM) while splitting commissions among seat-holders, publishers, and the exchange.[24] [23] These features laid foundational groundwork for programmatic advertising by prioritizing empirical auction outcomes over opaque negotiations, though adoption was limited by the era's nascent digital infrastructure.[20]
Microsoft tenure
Acquisition by Microsoft
Microsoft announced on July 26, 2007, that it had agreed to acquire AdECN, Inc., a pioneering online advertising exchange platform co-founded by Jeff Green in 2003.[25] AdECN operated as a neutral, web-based marketplace enabling real-time auctions of internet display ad inventory, processing buys and sells within milliseconds via a demand-side platform that connected publishers, agencies, and advertisers without favoring any party.[26][27] The company, headquartered in Carpinteria, California, employed around 30 people and represented an early innovation in programmatic advertising exchanges, predating widespread adoption of such technologies.[26]
The acquisition aligned with Microsoft's strategic push into digital advertising amid intensifying competition, following Yahoo's $680 million purchase of rival exchange Right Media in April 2007.[26] Financial terms were not publicly disclosed, though industry estimates later speculated a valuation in the $50-75 million range based on comparable deals and AdECN's scale.[25][28] Microsoft cited shared commitments to developing open platforms for ad ecosystems, intending to integrate AdECN's technology to enhance its own ad serving capabilities without immediately altering operations.[25]
As COO of AdECN prior to the deal, Green transitioned to Microsoft to oversee the AdECN Exchange unit, focusing on reseller partnerships and channel business alongside core exchange operations.[2] This acquisition provided Microsoft with foundational real-time bidding infrastructure, though Green departed in 2009 amid shifts in the company's ad strategy.[29]
Role and contributions (2007-2009)
Following the acquisition of AdECN by Microsoft in August 2007, Jeff Green joined the company as chief operating officer (COO) of the AdECN Exchange, continuing in a leadership role over the integrated ad exchange operations.[30] [21] In this capacity, Green oversaw the day-to-day management of the AdECN exchange business, which focused on facilitating real-time programmatic buying and selling of online display advertising inventory through an open exchange model.[21] [31]
Green's contributions included directing the integration of AdECN's technology into Microsoft's broader online services ecosystem, particularly within the Online Services Division, where he influenced strategic decisions on ad exchange scalability and partnerships.[32] [13] He managed reseller and channel partner relationships, expanding the exchange's reach by handling monetization of third-party inventory, such as early efforts with Facebook's ad supply.[21] This work advanced Microsoft's position in the emerging real-time bidding (RTB) space, building on AdECN's pioneering auction-based system to support higher-volume, transparent transactions between advertisers and publishers.[22]
A key initiative under Green's oversight occurred in November 2008, when AdECN launched a pilot program inviting ad networks to test a federated exchange model.[24] This approach emphasized interoperability, allowing participating networks to retain their proprietary technologies while connecting to the central exchange for automated buying and selling, thereby reducing friction in the ad supply chain.[24] Green highlighted the model's potential to streamline operations, stating it would "allow ad networks to use their own technology to manage their inventory and pricing while benefiting from the efficiency of a centralized auction."[24] These efforts laid groundwork for broader adoption of open exchanges amid competition from walled-garden platforms.
Green departed Microsoft in October 2009 after approximately two years, having helped shape the company's early programmatic advertising infrastructure during a transitional period for digital ad tech.[30] [31] His tenure focused on operational execution and innovation in exchange mechanics rather than large-scale revenue transformation, as Microsoft's ad business at the time grappled with integrating acquired assets into its MSN and search-driven ecosystem.[22]
Founding The Trade Desk
Inception and initial vision (2009)
In November 2009, Jeff Green co-founded The Trade Desk with David Pickles shortly after departing Microsoft, where they had previously contributed to the ad.aTech division following Microsoft's 2007 acquisition of their earlier venture, AdECN.[33][21] The inception stemmed from Green's recognition of persistent inefficiencies in digital advertising, particularly the lack of transparency and buyer empowerment in media transactions. Drawing from his experience in ad exchanges, Green envisioned a demand-side platform (DSP) that would operate independently, prioritizing data-driven decision-making for advertisers over traditional bundled or opaque deals.[34][35]
The initial vision centered on modeling the platform after public stock exchanges, such as the New York Stock Exchange, to enable real-time bidding (RTB) with mechanisms for price discovery, liquidity, and efficiency akin to financial markets.[21][35] Green articulated this as creating "the new trading floor of Internet advertising," addressing the "Wild West" opacity of web ads by fostering transparent, year-round programmatic buying rather than reliance on upfront negotiations or seller-dominated systems.[21] This approach aimed to optimize for advertisers' needs, including precise targeting and measurable outcomes, while avoiding the constraints of integrated corporate ecosystems.[20]
At launch, The Trade Desk positioned itself as a self-service, cloud-based tool to democratize access to programmatic media buying, with an emphasis on independence from major platforms to mitigate conflicts of interest and promote an open internet ecosystem.[34][36] Green's motivation included building a durable business in the burgeoning $700 billion advertising sector, leveraging RTB innovations to shift power toward buyers and enhance overall market liquidity.[20] This foundational principle of transparency and buyer-centricity distinguished the company from contemporaries, setting the stage for its focus on long-term scalability in digital media.[21]
Early growth and product development
The Trade Desk, founded in November 2009, prioritized the development of a self-service demand-side platform (DSP) to enable programmatic advertising purchases, focusing on real-time bidding (RTB) for digital display inventory. This initial product emphasized buy-side control, data integration from first- and third-party sources, and transparency in auction dynamics, addressing limitations in prior ad exchanges like opacity in pricing and inventory quality.[37][38]
In March 2010, the company raised $2.5 million in seed funding led by Founder Collective and IA Ventures, providing capital for platform refinement, hiring, and early client onboarding. This funding facilitated enhancements such as API integrations for custom campaign management and scalable access to millions of ad impressions across RTB exchanges, positioning the DSP as a tool for agencies to optimize targeting without reliance on seller-dominated systems.[39][37]
Early growth mirrored the nascent RTB sector's expansion, with revenue tied to managed service agreements for display campaigns; by aligning platform capabilities with emerging data-driven bidding, The Trade Desk achieved steady client adoption amid a market projected to reach $4 billion by 2016. Product iterations during this period introduced basic fraud detection and performance reporting, prioritizing empirical metrics like viewability and conversion rates to build advertiser trust.[40][37]
Leadership at The Trade Desk
Pre-IPO expansion (2010-2015)
Following its founding in 2009, The Trade Desk, under CEO Jeff Green's direction, focused on scaling its demand-side platform (DSP) through strategic funding, platform enhancements, and market penetration. In March 2010, the company raised $2.5 million in seed funding from investors including IA Ventures and Founder Collective, enabling early product development and team expansion.[41] This capital supported initial growth in programmatic advertising capabilities, emphasizing transparency and buyer control in real-time bidding. By 2014, the firm secured $45 million in debt financing from partners including Microsoft Ventures and RGM Capital, which fueled further infrastructure investments amid rising demand for omnichannel ad solutions.[42]
Revenue accelerated markedly during this period, reflecting adoption by agencies and brands seeking independent DSP alternatives to walled-garden platforms. In 2014, annual revenue reached $44.5 million, surging 156% to $113.8 million in 2015, outpacing broader programmatic market growth and yielding net income of $15.9 million that year.[37] Employee headcount grew to 227 by mid-2015, with 46 positioned internationally to support client acquisition beyond the U.S.[37] Platform iterations emphasized scalability, including 46 software releases in 2015 alone, integrating display, video, mobile, and connected TV formats, alongside cross-device targeting partnerships with firms like Adbrain and Tapad.[37][43] International revenue contributed 7% of gross spend by 2015, with sales presence established in markets like the UK, Australia, and Asia-Pacific.[37]
Green's emphasis on open-ecosystem advocacy drove these expansions, positioning The Trade Desk as a counterweight to dominant players by prioritizing data-driven transparency. The company's trajectory earned accolades, including Forbes' ranking as the 9th Most Promising Company in America in 2015 (citing 142% revenue growth) and #34 on Inc.'s 5000 Fastest-Growing Private Companies list.[44][45] These milestones solidified its pre-IPO foundation, with adjusted EBITDA climbing from $5.7 million in 2014 to $39.2 million in 2015.
IPO and scaling (2016-2020)
The Trade Desk completed its initial public offering (IPO) on September 21, 2016, listing on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol TTD.[46] The company issued approximately 4.7 million shares priced at $18 each, raising about $84 million in gross proceeds, with shares opening at $28.75 and closing the first day at $29.75, reflecting a strong market reception for its independent demand-side platform (DSP) model in programmatic advertising.[47][48] As co-founder and CEO, Jeff Green emphasized the IPO's role in fueling further innovation and independence from walled-garden platforms, stating in post-IPO interviews that public markets would enable sustained investment in technology and global expansion without reliance on venture capital constraints.[49]
Post-IPO, The Trade Desk under Green's leadership achieved rapid scaling, with annual revenue growing from $203 million in 2016 to $836 million in 2020, representing a compound annual growth rate of approximately 42%.[50] This expansion was driven by enhancements to its cloud-based DSP, including improved real-time bidding capabilities and integrations for connected TV (CTV) and audio advertising, alongside organic client acquisition from agencies and brands seeking transparency in ad buys.[51] By 2020, the platform facilitated $4.2 billion in total ad spend, doubling CTV investments year-over-year, as advertisers shifted toward addressable, data-driven channels amid rising digital media fragmentation.[51]
International operations expanded significantly during this period, with offices established or strengthened in Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America, contributing to diversified revenue streams beyond North America.[1] Green directed strategic hires, such as appointing Jonathan Carson as Chief Revenue Officer in 2019 to bolster sales infrastructure, supporting client retention above 95% and enabling the company to serve over 1,000 active clients globally by 2020.[52] This growth maintained profitability, with gross margins consistently above 80%, underscoring the platform's efficiency in a competitive ad tech landscape dominated by larger players.[50]
Recent challenges and strategies (2021-2025)
In the early 2020s, The Trade Desk faced significant headwinds from evolving privacy regulations, including Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework introduced in 2021, which limited access to the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) on iOS devices, and the ongoing deprecation of third-party cookies by Google Chrome.[53][54] These changes disrupted traditional mobile ad targeting and attribution, rendering a substantial portion of users—estimated at up to 50% opt-out rates—less addressable and prompting industry-wide signal loss.[55] The Trade Desk, with its programmatic focus on demand-side platforms, mitigated some impact by reducing reliance on IDFA-heavy mobile inventory, but broader signal erosion challenged measurement accuracy and return on ad spend (ROAS) for clients.[55]
By 2025, additional challenges emerged from macroeconomic pressures and internal execution issues, including weaker ad demand amid economic caution and intensified competition in connected TV (CTV) and programmatic spaces.[56] The company's stock (TTD) plummeted approximately 55% year-to-date through October 2025, exacerbated by sales restructuring that delayed short-term revenue recognition and broader ad market slowdowns.[56][57] Despite Q1 2025 revenue growth of 28% to $491 million—surpassing estimates—the shares fell nearly 60% over the year due to perceived product missteps and strategic pivots amid a $1 trillion addressable market.[58][59]
To counter these pressures, Jeff Green steered The Trade Desk toward privacy-resilient technologies, prominently advancing Unified ID 2.0 (UID2), an open-source identity solution enabling pseudonymized, consent-based targeting without cookies or device IDs.[60] UID2 adoption accelerated in CTV, with projections for over 50% of impressions linked by Q4 2024, supporting cleaner data flows and improved attribution in a post-cookie era.[60] Complementing this, the 2023 launch and 2025 upgrades to the Kokai platform integrated AI-driven tools for creative optimization, predictive bidding, and contextual targeting, aiming to rival walled garden efficiencies while preserving open-web transparency.[61][62] Kokai's agile development—via over 100 weekly product scrums—facilitated rapid iterations, including generative AI partnerships, to enhance ROAS and scale programmatic buys across formats like CTV and retail media.[63][64] Green emphasized these as defensive strategies against monopolistic platforms, framing 2025 as a pivotal year for open-internet innovation amid regulatory flux.[65]
Business philosophy and industry advocacy
Critique of walled gardens and monopolies
Jeff Green has consistently criticized "walled gardens"—closed ecosystems operated by companies such as Google, Meta (formerly Facebook), Amazon, and Apple—for restricting advertisers' access to data, limiting transparency in ad auctions, and enabling monopolistic control over digital advertising inventory. He argues that these platforms prioritize their own interests over advertisers' needs, often inflating costs and obscuring performance metrics, which hinders accurate return on investment (ROI) measurement.[66][67] In a February 2024 essay, Green contended that walled gardens lack incentives to improve open web advertising efficiency, as their proprietary systems benefit from maintaining silos that capture the majority of ad spend—estimated at over 50% of global digital advertising in recent years—while providing inferior targeting and attribution compared to independent demand-side platforms (DSPs).[68]
Green's advocacy positions The Trade Desk's open programmatic platform as a counterforce, emphasizing first-party data integration and unified ID solutions to bypass walled garden dependencies. During The Trade Desk's Q4 2022 earnings call on February 15, 2023, he highlighted how the open internet allows marketers to achieve verifiable ROI through transparent bidding, contrasting this with walled gardens' "black box" auctions where platforms like Google control both supply and demand sides.[69] He has predicted the decline of walled gardens, likening them to dinosaurs in a March 2024 analysis, asserting that shifts toward connected TV (CTV) and streaming—where open platforms can compete more effectively—will erode their dominance as advertisers reallocate budgets; by mid-2025, he forecasted that open internet ad spend could surpass walled gardens.[70][66]
On monopolies, Green has linked walled garden critiques to broader antitrust concerns, particularly Google's ad tech practices. In September 2024, amid the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust trial against Google, he called for the company's breakup, arguing that its integration of search, display auctions, and publisher tools creates an unfair market where competitors like The Trade Desk face barriers to entry.[71] Green proposed in January 2025 that Google exit the open web entirely to focus on YouTube, claiming this would remedy its monopoly status—evidenced by a federal ruling on April 18, 2025, affirming Google's monopolistic tactics in search advertising that squeezed publishers and stifled innovation.[72][73] He extended similar rebukes to Amazon in May 2025, stating that a "fair market" without such closed systems would unlock greater efficiency, as evidenced by Google's role as "defendant, plaintiff, judge, jury" in ad auctions, per internal DOJ evidence from the trial.[74][75] These views align with Green's longstanding mission, articulated since The Trade Desk's founding, to foster an open internet where advertisers retain control and data flows freely, rather than being funneled into proprietary monopolies.[67]
Promotion of open internet and transparency
Jeff Green has positioned The Trade Desk as a proponent of the open internet, arguing that it enables advertisers to achieve greater control, measurement, and return on investment compared to closed platforms. In opinion pieces published in September and October 2025, Green outlined a vision for programmatic advertising reforms, emphasizing innovations to eliminate opacity in bid requests and auctions caused by resellers and supply-side platforms.[65][76] He contended that such transparency would foster competition and efficiency, allowing buyers to innovate without artificial barriers.[77]
A key initiative in this advocacy is OpenAds, launched by The Trade Desk in October 2025, which Green described as creating "the most fair and transparent auction the industry has ever seen" by standardizing and verifying supply chain data.[78] This product addresses issues like bid duplication and obfuscation, providing publishers with tools to monetize open web inventory while giving advertisers verifiable insights into ad placements.[79] Green has promoted OpenAds through public channels, including LinkedIn posts, where he stressed open-sourcing elements to ensure a level playing field rather than proprietary control.[80]
Green's efforts extend to policy recommendations and industry commentary, such as his January 2025 suggestion that Google exit the open web to resolve antitrust concerns and concentrate on YouTube, thereby reducing conflicts in ad tech auctions.[72] In earnings calls and events like the IAB conference in December 2024, he highlighted the open internet's advantages for data-driven advertising, including better ROI tracking unavailable in walled gardens.[81][69] These positions align with The Trade Desk's platform design, which prioritizes independent demand-side capabilities over reliance on integrated ecosystems.[67]
Controversies and criticisms
Securities litigation and stock performance issues
In 2025, shares of The Trade Desk declined sharply, dropping over 55% year-to-date by early October amid investor concerns about decelerating revenue growth, execution missteps in platform transitions, and softening demand in the digital advertising market.[56][59] The stock fell 28% in after-hours trading following the August 7, 2025, Q2 earnings release, which included revenue that beat estimates but forward guidance signaling lower growth rates and the abrupt departure of the CFO.[82] Earlier, a February 12, 2025, disclosure of delays in customer adoption of the Kokai platform—intended as a successor to the legacy Solimar system—triggered a 30% single-day drop, exacerbating scrutiny over operational challenges.[83] An August 7 revelation of further revenue shortfalls and platform deficiencies contributed to an additional 39% decline.[83]
These performance issues prompted multiple securities class action lawsuits alleging violations of Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, with plaintiffs claiming that The Trade Desk and executives, including CEO Jeff Green, issued false or misleading statements about Kokai's development, functionality, and revenue contributions while concealing self-inflicted delays, underdeveloped features, and manipulated adoption metrics.[83][84] Class periods varied across filings, such as November 15, 2023, to August 8, 2025, in one action led by Cohen Milstein, and May 9, 2024, to February 12, 2025, in a Rosen Law Firm case, encompassing periods of promotional statements about rapid Kokai rollout contradicted by subsequent admissions of execution problems.[83][85] Plaintiffs further alleged scienter through suspicious insider trading, noting total sales exceeding $465 million during the relevant periods, including over $443 million by Green personally and $48 million by him one day prior to the February 12 disclosure.[83] The company has denied these claims, characterizing them as typical post-earnings litigation without merit.[86]
Separately, a shareholder derivative suit challenged a October 2021 performance-based equity award to Green, potentially worth up to $5 billion in stock options tied to ambitious growth targets, alleging that the board—allegedly dominated by Green's influence as controlling stockholder—breached fiduciary duties by approving excessive compensation without adequate independence or fairness analysis.[87][88] The Delaware Court of Chancery dismissed the case in February 2025, ruling that plaintiffs failed to plead demand futility on the board, despite acknowledging Green's sway, as the complaint did not sufficiently show a "controlled mindset" precluding impartial review.[89][90] Plaintiffs appealed, with oral arguments before the Delaware Supreme Court in October 2025 focusing on whether the trial court erred in assessing board loyalty and bad faith in the award process.[91] Such derivative challenges to executive pay are common in high-growth tech firms but often face high dismissal bars under Delaware law emphasizing business judgment deference.[92]
Public resignation from LDS Church and social positions
In December 2021, Jeff Green, the founder and CEO of The Trade Desk, publicly resigned his membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), citing the organization's amassed wealth and its positions on various social issues as incompatible with his views.[16] In a letter addressed to church president Russell M. Nelson, Green argued that the LDS Church had accumulated over $100 billion in assets while contributing minimally to global humanitarian efforts relative to its resources, estimating that even a modest annual allocation of 5% could eradicate world hunger.[7] He further contended that the church had impeded advancements in women's rights, civil rights, racial equality, and LGBTQ rights, asserting it was "actively doing harm in the world" through its doctrines and political advocacy.[93] Green, a Utah native raised in the faith, graduate of Brigham Young University, and former LDS missionary, emphasized his enduring affection for many church members but stated that continued association would contradict his principles.[16] [7]
The resignation involved Green and 11 family members, along with one friend, who collectively requested formal removal from church records via the church's quitmormon.org portal, a mechanism established for such exits.[94] Green's letter, which he shared publicly, highlighted specific grievances including the church's historical opposition to same-sex marriage and its support for policies perceived as discriminatory against LGBTQ individuals, such as California's Proposition 8 in 2008.[95] Following the announcement, Green donated $600,000 to Equality Utah, an advocacy group focused on LGBTQ rights in the state, framing the contribution as a direct response to the church's stances on these matters.[96] [97]
Green's social positions, as articulated in the resignation and related statements, prioritize empirical measures of societal progress, such as expanding civil liberties and reducing institutional barriers to equality across demographics, while critiquing religious organizations for leveraging tax-exempt status to influence policy without proportional charitable output.[2] He has expressed support for data-driven philanthropy over doctrinal adherence, aligning his views with broader secular advancements in human rights, though he has not publicly detailed positions on other contemporary social debates beyond those tied to the church critique.[14] The public nature of the resignation drew coverage from major outlets, underscoring Green's status as one of Utah's wealthiest residents, with an estimated net worth exceeding $5 billion at the time, derived primarily from his stake in The Trade Desk.[95]
Philanthropy and affiliations
Giving Pledge commitment
In November 2021, Jeff Green, founder and CEO of The Trade Desk, signed the Giving Pledge, committing to donate the majority of his wealth to philanthropic causes.[98] [99] Specifically, Green pledged to give away at least 90 percent of his fortune, either during his lifetime or upon his death, emphasizing a "data-driven" approach to philanthropy that prioritizes empirical evaluation of charitable impact over traditional giving models.[10] [99]
In his pledge letter, Green articulated a focus on leveraging data analytics—drawing from his ad technology background—to identify and support high-impact interventions, stating, "I will give away the vast majority of my wealth through data-driven philanthropy before or at my death."[100] This commitment aligns with Green's broader philosophy of applying rigorous, evidence-based metrics to decision-making, extending principles from his professional expertise in programmatic advertising to charitable allocation.[101] As of his signing, Green's net worth was estimated in the billions, positioning the pledge as a significant potential infusion into effective altruism-oriented causes, though specific grantmaking details remain channeled primarily through the Jeff T. Green Family Foundation.[102] [1]
Charitable donations and board roles
Green operates the Jeff T. Green Family Foundation, which supports data-driven philanthropic initiatives, including education and scalable nonprofit programs measured by key performance indicators.[103] Through this foundation and its giving arm, Data Philanthropy, he has funded over 20 nonprofits, emphasizing rational capital deployment and empirical outcomes over traditional giving models.[103]
Specific donations include $250,000 in 2020 to California State University Channel Islands (CSUCI) for peer mentorship programs aiding students during the COVID-19 pandemic.[104] In 2023, the foundation donated $5.2 million to CSUCI to expand a four-year scholarship program, providing $20,000 per recipient to support access to higher education based on data indicating improved retention and graduation rates.[105] Following his resignation from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 2021, Green donated $600,000 to Equality Utah, an organization advocating for LGBTQ+ rights in the state.[106]
Green serves on the boards of several nonprofits aligned with his focus on data utilization, transparency, and social impact: Data.org, which promotes data for global good; the Charity Defense Council, defending nonprofits against regulatory overreach; Thorn, combating child sexual exploitation through technology; and Not Impossible, developing assistive technologies for disabilities.[107] He also acts as president of the Jeff T. Green Family Foundation, overseeing its grantmaking, which totaled over $3 million in 2023.[108]
Personal life and public engagements
Family and lifestyle
Green is divorced and has three children, including two sons and a daughter.[12]
He resides in Newbury Park, California, in Ventura County.[2]
In March 2024, Green acquired an oceanfront property in western Malibu, marking a notable expansion of his real estate holdings in the region.[109]
Speaking appearances and media influence
Jeff Green, as CEO of The Trade Desk, regularly participates in high-profile industry events, delivering keynotes and participating in panels that address the evolution of digital advertising, programmatic buying, and the open internet. His appearances often emphasize transparency, competition against platform monopolies, and advancements in connected TV (CTV) and AI-driven media.[110]
Notable speaking engagements include a keynote at the OMR Festival in Hamburg on June 24, 2019, where he discussed the future of media and The Trade Desk's role in ad tech innovation.[111] In June 2023, Green presented at the Kokai event, advocating for novel approaches to advertising supply chains.[112] He joined a fireside chat at ATS London on September 16, 2024, highlighting programmatic advertising's potential.[113] More recently, on May 19, 2025, he spoke at DMS BY LUMA on digital media evolution, data's role, and AI's advertising impact.[110] Green also featured in a Needham Conference fireside chat on May 13, 2025, focusing on company strategy and market dynamics.[114]
Green's media presence amplifies his influence, with frequent interviews on outlets like CNBC, where he argued on June 21, 2023, that internet advertising was at its best amid shifts away from Google dependencies.[115] In December 2023, he described CTV as the world's most effective advertising medium, citing advertiser shifts from social platforms.[116] Podcasts and publications, such as an AdExchanger interview on January 28, 2025, showcase his critiques of Google's open internet monetization and endorsements of independent supply paths.[5]
Through these channels, Green shapes ad industry discourse, positioning The Trade Desk as a proponent of buyer empowerment and open ecosystems; his forthright views on competition and technology have earned recognition as thought leadership in programmatic markets.[8
Disclaimer: This profile is based on publicly available information. No endorsement or affiliation is implied.
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