The Trade Desk hires Jonathan Carson as its first CRO

NelsonG · May 21, 2019

Adtech company The Trade Desk is announcing that it’s hired its very first chief revenue officer, Jonathan Carson.

Carson’s past roles include serving as president of Mic, chief revenue officer at Vevo and CEO of digital for Nielsen.

He told me he was excited to join The Trade Desk because it’s “a spectacular story” of “a relatively young company that has grown to scale remarkably quickly.” (It was founded in 2009 and in its most recent quarter grew revenue 41 percent year-over-year, to $121 million.)

“If you look at the mission of The Trade Desk, it’s essentially to fund media, and if you look at what that really means, it’s the journalism, the pop culture, the music that we all love,” Carson said. “It was built to make the economics of those individual creators and the companies … feasible, and to help them thrive in a moment where digital media has turned a lot of those business models inside out.”

By coming on as The Trade Desk’s first CRO, Carson said his role will be serving as the member of the executive team who’s “singularly focused” on driving revenue growth. And he pointed to two “really big growth levers” that the company is focused on currently — video and connected TV, and international growth, particularly in China, where the company launched its programmatic ad platform in March.

We are thrilled to add Jonathan’s deep experience in digital media to our executive leadership team as we continue our rapid growth,” said Trade Desk founder and CEO Jeff Green in a statement. “Jonathan’s focus on revenue generation and client acquisition will help us continue to gain share in the global digital advertising market, including new channels such as Connected TV, and massive emerging consumer markets, such as China.”