Senior Appointments and Q2 Growth for The Trade Desk

Independent ad tech company The Trade Desk has reported an impressive quarter, with revenue up 19% to $694 million; while appointing Salesforce veteran and investor Alex Kayyal as CFO and adding BlueKai founder Omar Tawakol to its Board of Directors.

The firm offers a self-service, cloud-based platform enabling ad buyers to create, manage and optimize campaigns across formats and devices, and tapping integrations with major data, inventory and publisher partners. Headquartered in Ventura, CA, it has offices across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. Three months ago it launched a free insights product, OpenSincera, building on a January acquisition and giving clients, partners - and competitors - access to its detailed advertising metadata. In April it struck a deal with consumer intelligence groups NIQ and MRI-Simmons, launching a new brand called Consumer Canvas.

According to this week's announcement, the quarter was also profitable: adjusted EBITDA rose 11.9% to $270.8m. CEO and co-founder Jeff Green says the first half of the year was 'defined by meaningful innovation across the platform,' with the firm's Kokai and OpenPath solutions developing and expanding, and new and extended industry partnerships.

Kayyal (pictured) brings more than two decades of experience as an investor, operator and board member for global tech companies, and has been an investor in The Trade Desk since 2014. He will remain on the firm's Board of Directors, which he joined in February. Most recently a Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, he previously spent nearly a decade at Salesforce, including as SVP and Managing Partner of Salesforce Ventures. He replaces Laura Schenkein who has spent more than a decade in finance leadership positions with the company, and will remain until the end of the year to support a smooth transition. Green comments: 'Having worked closely with Laura for almost 12 years, I have nothing but admiration and respect for her many contributions to the company's success.'

Tawakol is the founder and CEO of AI-based product placement software firm Rembrand, and previously founded Voicea, a voice collaboration platform using AI to generate meeting summaries and insights, and sold to Cisco in 2019. Earlier in his career he founded data management platform BlueKai, sold to Oracle in 2014 - he subsequently served as SVP and GM of Oracle Data Cloud, where he oversaw data and measurement solutions for major brands. He is currently on the board of directors at LiveRamp.

The company is on the web at at www.thetradedesk.com .