Should Your SEM Budget Move to Programmatic Ads?

As of November 2026, the short answer for most Singapore advertisers is no change in allocation, and a change in how you grade it. The Trade Desk, the largest independent demand-side platform, reported third-quarter revenue of $736 million, a small annual dip, per Digiday's report of 10 November 2026. If you buy search intent through an agency, whether a sem agency in Singapore or one in Hong Kong, the safer move is to keep the accountable search layer as the core of your paid media, test programmatic as an increment, and demand one measurement standard built on signed revenue.

That conclusion runs against the reflex to follow where the growth is. Smaller ad tech companies did grow in the same quarter, and their numbers are real. Growth in a vendor's revenue is not the same thing as growth in your return, though, and the quarter's filings make the gap between those two ideas easy to see.

What does The Trade Desk's revenue decline actually tell an advertiser?

It tells you the largest open-internet buyer is spending the year rebuilding, not that the open internet stopped working. Digiday reported on 10 November 2026 that this was only the second revenue decrease in The Trade Desk's decade as a publicly listed company, and that chief executive Jeff Green described the reorganisation as including a headcount cut of 15% in the third quarter.

Green also said the company was still operating below the growth level it expects of itself, and that it needs to make the platform easier to use, easier to adopt and easier to prove incremental outcomes. For a buyer, that is a hiring question about the sem agency or DSP team that will actually run the account. The company guides fourth-quarter revenue to at least $755 million.

The mix matters more than the headline. Video, including connected TV, now accounts for more than half of The Trade Desk's revenue mix. The buyer most advertisers associate with display and open web is now, by revenue, mostly a premium video business. If your programmatic spend is mainly display retargeting, you were never the centre of that platform's product strategy.

Why did other ad tech companies grow in the same quarter?

Because they sell a different job. Digiday's same report put four third-quarter results side by side, and the spread is wide:

Company	Q3 revenue	Direction	Q4 guidance
The Trade Desk	$736 million	a dip	at least $755 million
Zeta Global	$493 million	growth	$521 million to $525 million
Viant	$110.4 million	growth	$130.5 million to $133.5 million
PubMatic	$79.6 million	growth	$91 to $93 million

Zeta Global's guidance implies double-digit growth. PubMatic's implies an increase of 15%, the figure its chief executive Rajeev Goel attached to a shift from sell-side targeting to sell-side decisioning. A platform that bundles data, identity and messaging into one suite, a supply-side platform that sits closer to the publisher, and a CTV-first buyer all found demand the largest DSP did not capture.

Viant's own release, published 9 November 2026, adds detail the news summary leaves out. Connected TV advertiser spend rose nearly 40% and took the larger share of total advertiser spend on the platform. For the second consecutive quarter, over 80% of CTV spend went through Direct Access, a steep rise on the position at the start of 2026.

One reading of those numbers is that the money moved toward inventory advertisers can see: premium video, direct publisher paths, identity-led suites. That is a shift in where programmatic budget flows, not proof that it earns more per dollar than search.

SEM or programmatic: which side of the funnel is your budget buying?

The two answer different questions, and buyers who treat them as substitutes usually end up measuring neither properly. Search answers "someone is looking for this now". Programmatic answers "someone looks like they might need this at some point".

Your situation	Search (SEM)	Programmatic (DSP)
Demand already exists and people type queries	Strong fit	Secondary
New category with little search volume	Weak alone	Useful for reach
Long sales cycle that closes offline	Needs conversion send-back	Needs offline attribution
Premium video or CTV brand work	Not the tool	Strong fit
Tight test budget	Start here	Test narrowly
You cannot export the account data	Fix this first	Fix this first

This advice does not suit businesses with no website conversion path, or those selling only through marketplaces where the platform already owns attribution. In those cases the first job is plumbing, not media.

For a Singapore manager choosing a partner, the question narrows: does the person in front of you hold the search layer and the programmatic layer to the same standard? Most sem agency briefs in this market are written only around leads, which is why the programmatic half goes unchecked. A sem agency singapore pitch that promises leads from search and a DSP pitch that promises reach should both answer to the same signed-deal figure before the next renewal, and a buyer who asks for it is harder to sell to — which is the point.

What is SEM in marketing, and why does the answer settle the budget debate?

This is the question the search results around this topic kept raising without answering. SEM, search engine marketing, is paid advertising placed next to search results: Google Ads text listings, shopping units, and in some markets the local search engines. You buy on keywords or intent signals, pay by the click or the impression, and optimise toward a conversion you name.

It is not "all digital advertising". Nor is it a synonym for programmatic, even though Google's automated bidding and Performance Max now allocate placements across search, display, video and shopping inside one campaign. That automation is programmatic in mechanism and search-led in intent. Placing the budget correctly starts with naming which of those two you are buying.

Three consequences follow for a Singapore budget:

Search spend scales with expressed demand, so its ceiling is your keyword universe.
Programmatic spend scales with audience size, so its ceiling is reach and frequency.
Measurement differs, because search usually closes inside a platform window and programmatic rarely does. That gap is why open-web buyers keep pressing platforms for a common standard.

When the largest DSP in the market says it must make its platform "easier to prove incremental outcomes", as Green did in the Digiday report, the third point has arrived in a public earnings call. A vendor writing your report has no reason to be generous about a number that only it can see.

How do you judge a paid-media partner when every platform grades itself?

Ask for a number the platform cannot write for itself. A dashboard screenshot of a strong return is that platform grading its own homework; a signed contract value divided by media spend is not.

Here is the test I would put to any partner, search or programmatic, before signing:

Which figure is your return calculated from: platform-reported conversions, or signed deals?
Can you show the account's funnel from impression to click to enquiry to quote to deal, with the largest drop named?
If a deal closes after the attribution window, where does it appear?
Who owns the ad account, the pixel and the event history if we part ways?
When budget moves between channels, who decides the split, and on what evidence?

A partner who answers all five in one sitting is worth more than one who answers the first two well. A partner who answers none is selling media, not outcomes. The last question is the one most agencies avoid, because it needs a view that neither Google nor Meta can supply from inside its own system.

This is where a question about SEM and programmatic becomes a question about data ownership. Cross-channel weighting has no owner inside the platforms: Google's bidding allocates traffic inside Google, Meta configures at campaign level, and a deal that closes after the attribution window is simply discarded. Someone outside both systems has to decide the weight between them, and that decision needs a shared definition of a sale.

Where Topkee sits, and where it does not

Topkee is not a demand-side platform and does not sell open-internet programmatic inventory. Topkee Media Limited, founded in Hong Kong, runs performance campaigns inside Google's ecosystem as a Google Premier Partner, with a client base in the thousands on its own count. What it does on the question this article puts to you is the accountability layer for search, and that is where a sem agency singapore engagement with Topkee starts: keyword matching and long-tail expansion, negated terms, copy testing, conversion-based bidding, landing-page and mobile call-to-action work, and lead handling, with measurement built from the client's own data rather than the platform's.

Two of the systems behind that matter here. ROAS Truth places Google Ads, Yahoo Ads, Facebook Ads and GA4 on one ruler and traces each ad dollar to a signed deal, which is the test in the section above. Spend Shield audits where budget leaks, from blank search terms to fatigued creatives, and redirects it to the routes that perform, using the client's own CDP, pixel and CRM signals. On Topkee's own Hong Kong account for a recent June reporting period, the largest leak sat at the click-to-landing-page step, well ahead of every later step between enquiry and signed deal; that is a self-reported single account, offered as a method, not a benchmark.

Where this stops: if your need is open-web reach, CTV buying outside Google's inventory, or sequential messaging across publishers, that is a DSP's job and Topkee has no product for it. The honest split runs the accountable search layer as the base and treats programmatic as a tested increment with its own measurement plan.

What should a Singapore advertiser do this quarter?

Keep the search core, audit the leaks, and buy programmatic narrowly enough to prove it. A workable sequence for the next quarter, whether a sem agency or an in-house team runs it:

Fix measurement before media. Export the account data, define the sale, and set one return formula.
Audit the search account for wasted spend, starting with blank search terms and fatigued creative.
Test programmatic with a budget you could lose, and name the outcome before it runs.
Review the split every month against signed revenue, not platform-reported conversions.
Keep the two channels on separate reports until the shared standard holds for a full quarter.

The next step is a measurement decision, not a media decision. Start with revenue tracking that follows a lead to the signed deal, then read the account's numbers before committing more budget. If you are comparing agencies, how to select the right agency for SEM initiatives sets out the questions worth asking, and the Google and Meta ads offer at Topkee Singapore shows what a search-led engagement covers.

FAQ

Should I move my Google Ads budget into programmatic this quarter?

Not as a wholesale move. The revenue dip and the reorganisation at the largest buyer signal a rebuilding year, not a proven better return. Test a small programmatic increment against the same revenue standard you hold search to, and keep the search layer running while you do.

Why did The Trade Desk revenue fall if programmatic advertising is growing?

Because "programmatic" is not one market. Viant's CTV spend rose nearly 40% in the same quarter while Zeta Global's revenue grew by almost half again, so budget moved toward video, direct publisher paths and identity-led suites. The largest buyer also spends the year rebuilding its products, and its revenue mix is now more than half video.

Is Google Performance Max the same as programmatic advertising?

The mechanism is automated allocation across placements, so it is programmatic in the way it buys. The intent is still search-led: you pay to appear where a query or a signal points. For a budget decision, treat it as search with wider placement, and judge it on signed revenue like any other search campaign.

What is the fastest way to tell if my paid media is working?

Ask for the largest drop in the funnel between click and signed deal, rather than the return on ad spend on the dashboard. A single account can show hundreds of thousands of impressions and dozens of enquiries while the drop between click and landing-page interaction is where most of the money leaves.

Do I need a different agency for search and for programmatic?

Not necessarily, but you need one accountable number across both. If the search partner reports on signed deals and the programmatic partner reports on platform conversions, you have two scorecards and no decision. Fix the standard first, then decide whether one team or two should run the budget.