The rollout of OpenAds is evidence of a larger mission, however, Green contended. 

“I don’t care if OpenAds itself is successful. I’m very happy if Prebid and/or others innovate and do something similar and are even better than what we are doing,” he said, adding: “Many people said to me, ‘Jeff, it would have been less contentious if you’d done this another way’….And my response to that is, yes, but this is faster.”

Green continued: “This is facilitating the dialogue that we need to be having. It is not buy side versus sell side. It is [about] quality publishers who are taking home less than they should be, and [other] publishers that are taking home more than they should be.”

Finally, Green tossed in a jab at Google, whose adtech stack is at risk of unravelling as a federal judge considers how to remedy what earlier this year was determined to be an illegal monopoly in ad exchanges and ad servers. “And let’s not perpetuate the legacy that Google started, which is, ‘Let’s fuck with the auction as much as the law will allow, and even maybe a little beyond that.’”

The Trade Desk’s stock is down 56% since the start of the year amid a handful of platform changes. Last month, The Trade Desk sunset part of its divisive Kokai interface.

Correction Oct. 15 at 9:18 am: A previous version of this story incorrectly said that the Auction Audit feature, could be accessed via sellers.json—it can be accessed via JSON files. Additionally, Mike O’Sullivan’s title was incorrectly listed as vice president of product, but he is general manager of product.