Business & finance · also called gross billings, gross spend on platform, GMV
Gross spend (gross billings)
Gross spend is the total amount of advertising money that flows through a platform, including the portion paid on to publishers and partners, rather than just the platform's own revenue.
Gross spend, or gross billings, tells you the size of the river flowing through a company, not the part it keeps. For a DSP, it is the total that advertisers spent through the platform; for an SSP, the total paid by buyers for inventory it sold; for an agency, the media it bought on clients' behalf.
Companies that report net revenue often disclose gross spend so investors can see scale and calculate take rate (revenue ÷ gross spend). The Trade Desk, for example, has discussed the gross spend on its platform alongside its net revenue. In e-commerce this idea is called gross merchandise value (GMV).
Gross spend is usually a non-GAAP or operational metric, so definitions vary: whether it includes data and third-party fees, how currency is handled, and whether some deals are excluded. Growth in gross spend with a stable take rate indicates growing market share; growing revenue with flat gross spend indicates a rising take rate.
Think of it like this
Gross spend is like the total value of all the goods sold at a weekly market, while the organiser's revenue is only the stall fees it collects.
An example
A DSP handles US$4 billion of gross spend and reports US$800 million of revenue, implying a 20% take rate.
Related terms
Gross vs net revenue
Gross vs net revenue is the accounting choice between reporting everything customers pay (gross) or only what a company keeps after paying partners (net), which complicates comparisons.
Take rate
Take rate is the percentage of the money flowing through an ad tech platform that it keeps as its fee: platform revenue divided by the gross spend it handles.
DSP (demand-side platform)
A DSP (demand-side platform) is software that advertisers and agencies use to buy ad impressions automatically across many exchanges and publishers, deciding which impressions to bid on and how much.
Earnings report
An earnings report is the periodic announcement, usually quarterly, in which a public company discloses its revenue, profit and other key results, often with an investor call and updated guidance.
Net revenue retention
Net revenue retention (NRR) is the percentage of revenue a company keeps from an existing group of customers over a period, including expansions, downgrades and losses, but excluding new customers.