Viant Technology Inc. (DSP) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

December 3, 2024

NASDAQ US Information Technology Software conference_presentation 33 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Christopher Kuntarich

analyst
#1

All right. Thank you, everyone. My name is Chris Kuntarich. I'm the SMid-Cap Internet analyst here at UBS. Today, I have Tim and Chris Vanderhook with me, team from Viant. Really appreciate you all coming here today joining us again. It's been a great year.

Tim Vanderhook

executive
#2

Yes. Great to be here.

Christopher Kuntarich

analyst
#3

It's been a great year for you guys. So it's not that it hasn't been a -- that '23 was a bad year. I would say, '23 was more of a transition year. But it would be great maybe just to kind of kick the conversation off for maybe people who are ramping on the story a bit. Like what have been those 1 or 2 changes that investors need to be thinking about of Viant today versus maybe a year ago or later?

Tim Vanderhook

executive
#4

Yes. I would say, the #1 theme I would highlight of Viant is the launch of ViantAI, a big suite of AI tools that have really taken the programmatic advertising industry by storm. I think we have a leading position in artificial intelligence. We launched a 12-minute video through LinkedIn. And in about 3 days, we had 150,000 views of the video. So it was very interesting from a B2B adtech product launch to see something actually go viral like that. . So ViantAI has been a huge boost. We showed AI planning. It's 4 phases to our buying AI suite. So we launched ViantAI planning. That's the video I just described that really went crazy about 2 months ago. In 2023, we launched AI bidding, which has driven our contribution ex-TAC margin expansion from '23 into '24, which was a huge driver for us. And the second thing I would highlight outside of AI is CTV. And so the 2 themes that we are very, very focused on is artificial intelligence applied to connected television. CTV growth for us last quarter was just shy of 50% growth, up from 40% growth the prior quarter. So we continue to go down these themes. Last, at our last earnings call, we announced an acquisition of IRIS.TV, which is more granular targeting and measurement within CTV. And we think the combination of Viant and IRIS.TV really gives us a huge lead in connected television against some of our larger competitors.

Chris Vanderhook

executive
#5

And I think at the end of, really, I'll go back a little further, '22. '22 started out okay. But in the second half of '22, there were some macro pressures. But really, we got -- we ended up getting caught. I think just us, as a management team, we really refocused the business. We told them that we spent too much money in '22 chasing growth. . We peeled that back. We told everybody at the end of '22, we're going to refocus the business on our core customer group, which is the mid-market. These are advertisers who spend, meaning, we're between $100 million, $500 million a year, still a really big customer spending category. We weren't chasing the Fortune 100, the P&Gs and the Unilevers of the world. We weren't trying to be everything to everyone. That made a huge difference in the company. It got everybody focused. We attacked that customer set. So that's the first thing we did. The second thing we did, we said we're going to keep our costs under control. We're going to grow contribution ex-TAC faster than OpEx. Committed to do that. And we just said we're going to put our heads down, we're going to prove it. So we posted 5 straight quarters of 20% or greater growth with our guide, that will be 6 in the fourth quarter. So I think, right now, people are just seeing that, okay, these guys, they did what they said they're going to do. They have a strong focus on CTV, a big tailwind there. So I think that's really been the difference.

Tim Vanderhook

executive
#6

And I think the response to the stock price in Q3 was we grew 20% on top of a very tough comp of 20% the prior year. It's been a question of investors is, is the growth sustainable? And I think we've kind of proven that out. .

Christopher Kuntarich

analyst
#7

Yes. This is a high-level question I'd like to ask. Obviously, there's been a lot going on that -- a lot of things that are pointing in the right direction. But as you think about kind of the key levers of just framing shareholder value creation, like how do you think about what you've been doing so far over '23 and '24 versus kind of the levers you may be flexing going forward?

Tim Vanderhook

executive
#8

Yes. Really good question. One of the great things about the business model of a demand-side platform, so the biggest in the space is Google offers DV360, and we have another large independent, The Trade Desk, which most are familiar with. These are great business models. You basically have a fixed cost basis of people. We're at operating leverage. We're generating cash flow and EBITDA. So every incremental dollar that comes into the platform, about 60% of it in Q3 flowed through to the bottom line, and we see that expanding as we grow OpEx slower than contribution ex-TAC. So a lot of leverage that we're able to flex, and it's just a question of execution and scale, getting more advertisers on the platform and then driving ad spend. And with the launch of ViantAI, the tailwinds in CTV, there's tons of money coming into connected television. So we have great tailwinds behind the business, which gives us tons of confidence. Do you want to talk about some of the product expansion around ViantAI?

Chris Vanderhook

executive
#9

Yes. I mean, I think the -- if you look in '23, Tim had mentioned AI bidding, which was our first AI product out there. 90% of customers have adopted that, and it equates to about 75% of the spend on the platform. That's incredible adoption inside of a year, definitely our fastest growth from a product perspective adoption. It makes sense. We're basically saving clients money on CPMs. That's a huge piece. I think the other thing investors understand, CTV is a tailwind, certainly, because of how much money is going there. But you should also look at our growth in CTV. CTV market, on average, has grown about 18% a year. In our last quarter, it's actually accelerating. It was 40% growth. It's now nearly 50% growth. It makes up about 40% of spend on our platform. You should dig into why we're growing faster, and it's really around our stance around identity or our Household ID, the scale of that relative to other players in the market, like Trade Desk UID2, it's about 10% scale. Ours is in excess of 80% of all ad opportunities on the Internet. That has huge benefits for customers for targeting and, most importantly, for measurement. In the channel of CTV, it's incredible. So marketers are buying CTV through our platform. They're buying it direct through our direct access program, and they're targeting and measuring so they can see their returns so they keep spending more.

Tim Vanderhook

executive
#10

And that's the flywheel.

Christopher Kuntarich

analyst
#11

Got it. And since you brought it up, the name of -- twice, Trade Desk. Just for investors that may be less familiar with the Viant story, kind of, what are those kind of 2, 3 key differences as they think about Viant versus Trade Desk?

Tim Vanderhook

executive
#12

Yes. First, I would start with artificial intelligence. I think one thing that the Trade Desk does is they'll claim artificial intelligence, but anyone in the audience or anyone watching this, have you ever seen any AI? They say Koa or Kokai are their products, but no investor's ever seen it. It's something behind the scenes. And so it's a question of, is it real? Is it not real? We show off what the product is, and we let people see it, touch it, feel it, play with it, and you can see the artificial intelligence. That's number one. Second is our ability to do targeting in connected television. We acquired IRIS. And just a backup for everyone, when it comes to CTV, the current landscape today is targeting at the app level. So they'll allocate budgets like $1 million to Hulu. But you don't know which show in Hulu your ad is showing up in. With the acquisition of IRIS ID, it gives us more granular data at the show level, so we can actually see which show is it. Is it Paramount? And which scene within the show. Were they at a bar? You probably don't want a Pampers ad right after the bar scene. So being able to drive brand suitability, better safety for these brands in CTV has been a huge boost. So I think those are 2 big key areas of differentiation. If anyone has ever seen a DSP, it's like a Bloomberg terminal for ad buying. Take specialized expertise. You need to train on it and get certified. With the launch of ViantAI, we see a big differentiation that there's no training needed. If you know how to send a text message through texting, you now know how to use our DSP. So we think that helps us go down market into the SMBs. But with the AI planning, it also is driving lots of excitement up market with the bigger advertisers who spend lots of money just creating media plans, identifying and figuring out consumer research, spending money there to figure out who the target audience is. Or you can come to ViantAI and get all that information in 60 seconds. So it's been a huge TAM expansion for us as well, just simplifying that user interface to buy ads and TV.

Chris Vanderhook

executive
#13

And I think, the conversation, I would say, maybe 2 years ago with investors was very much dominated that isn't this just a Google and Trade Desk game? One of the things -- it is true there's only a few -- there's a handful of DSPs, specifically these 4. There's Google's DV360, The Trade Desk, Yahoo! DSP and Viant. That's it. There's only 4 in the world that are self-service omnichannel DSPs. When I say self-service, that means a customer can -- you can give them a log in and they can log in and self-direct all their ad buying. They can use it for measurement. There's only 4 of them. The reason why there's only 4 of them, it's rarefied air, the investment it takes to build 1 of these is incredible. And there has been a dearth of venture capital in the space. And it probably isn't a great move to -- and it's risky to build these things to get to operating leverage. It takes a long time. We were just dumb enough to do it. However, once you make it out to the other side, what you realize is that there won't be just 1 winner. What you see is happening right now. Every marketer, for the most part, uses DV360 because they want to buy YouTube. So they have that exclusive. But Google is spilling out customers to, and has been for the last couple of years, to The Trade Desk because they wanted a counterbalance to Google. What we're seeing now is, as The Trade Desk has grown, as they've made other moves and maybe some of the behavior that they've had in the market, you're now seeing that marketers are looking for an alternative. Agency is looking for an alternative to The Trade Desk. And if you look at the 4 that I named, 2 are buy side only, us and The Trade Desk. The other 2, Google and Yahoo! are conflicted. They're on the buy and the sell side. So it makes us a natural selection for someone who's either spilling out of Google or The Trade Desk. Or like I said, who's our core customer set? That mid-market advertiser. And why are they our core? Because they're the most data-driven marketers out there. Much of the top multinational companies, Fortune 100 that The Trade Desk has, they sell toothpaste and toilet paper. They're not the most data-driven marketers. They're not trying to measure every dollar. They really aren't. It's these mid-market customers that need a platform that is the most data-driven. So I think that really highlights the differences between us and, let's say, a Google and or a Trade Desk.

Tim Vanderhook

executive
#14

And last, it's just that we have a patented technology around identity called Household ID. The scale of our Household ID at 80% of the total bid stream versus the competing alternative, which is owned by The Trade Desk UID2, is between 10% and 20%, so far outreaching the scale that we've been able to achieve with our patented technology and approach relative to where they've been able to get to. .

Christopher Kuntarich

analyst
#15

Got it. So let's just take it back to the model here for a second. And it'd be really helpful to frame how you think about the growth drivers in '24 from a revenue ex-TAC perspective and how that evolves in '25. Like we've talked about ViantAI. We've talked about IRIS.TV. Maybe talk about how those fit in with customer ads and expanding kind of same advertiser budgets.

Chris Vanderhook

executive
#16

Yes. Well, I would say, one of the big drivers that we'll keep highlighting is going to be continued growth in CTV. We believe that we can continue growing well above the market because of the things like our Direct Access Program, which, yes, saves advertisers fees, you're not going through an SSP; the content owners, and it's the largest content owners in the world, connecting directly to our DSP, and they eliminate the middle man in the middle. Typically, there's no SSP fee there. So advertiser gets the inventory cheaper. It's actually better for the content owner. They're getting higher CPMs because there's no fee in the middle. So that was the first wave of growth of Direct Access. The second wave of growth is what we've been announcing throughout our partnerships, which is they -- these content owners offer authenticated experiences. They're taking their subscriber data, and they are integrating directly with our Household ID. Because we have scale of 80%, and actually, in CTV, it's closer to 90%, we are making all of those ad requests addressable. They are passing us our household ID, so we know who the household is. So marketers on our platform, that's why it does so well is because our Household ID is there. That, I think, is going to be another leg of growth in CTV for us in '25. Direct Access represents about 50% of total CTV spend, and we think that we're going to continue to grow that in '25. So...

Tim Vanderhook

executive
#17

Last, continued expansion of the ViantAI products. We have a new product coming out, AI measurement and analysis. So the old way is you can log in, click the reporting dashboard, find the metric you're looking for. If I print out all the metrics of a programmatic trader who's buying ads through these platforms, if I printed out the reporting on a PDF, it'd be 47 pages of just reports and different data points by state, by type of ad format, et cetera, et cetera. It's just too much information for humans to consume and retain. So being able to take AI on top of all that data, which is really what the AI measurement product is and analysis, and in 60 seconds, it tells you what you need to do to improve your campaign results, taking all that data in. It's just another advancement. These are premium products, so it grows our contribution ex-TAC. If we have adoption similar to AI bidding, it could expand our contribution ex-TAC margin by another 300 or 400 basis points in 2025 as adoption of that product goes. So we've got a great product cycle, a great cadence and a great business model behind the AI that we're bringing to market. .

Christopher Kuntarich

analyst
#18

Got it. And one of the questions we'll get from investors is just on the incrementality of the CTV spend. And sometimes, when you're looking at the numbers, the question we get often is, how much of this is truly incremental spend versus shift from other channels? Like how should we be thinking about it at this point? And how has that kind of evolved over the last year or so?

Chris Vanderhook

executive
#19

Well, I guess, on some level, it's all taken from somewhere. So I don't know. Is it a shift from linear? Yes. Definitely, you're shifting money from linear. Is it cannibalizing and/or -- and is it producing better returns for clients than other formats or channels, like display or search or social? Absolutely. And I think that's something that investors are not aware of, and this is kind of some inside baseball within adtech right now. When the marketers that are seeing -- for the last 15 years, there's been this term called attribution, which is whoever showed the last ad gets credit for the sale. That has directed nearly all of marketers' spends. Now what everyone is realizing is that after years and years of cutting the TV ad because I can't measure it and giving more money to a branded search term on Google because I can measure it, and someone typed in my Ford F-150, clicked on it, went to the website and built and priced the vehicle and requested a quote. Well, they keep pumping more -- they cut the TV ad to keep pumping more and more money into Google. They realize -- everybody who's hearing this realizes, "Oh, yes, someone sees a TV ad. They go to Google for navigational purposes, types import F-150, then gets directed to the website." Everyone understands that. But in kind of digital advertising, what's been happening is, the money has just been shifted to the attribution model. So what's happening now is that marketers are realizing, in streaming TV, so in CTV, I can measure, it's addressable now. So I can measure it. Did you see an ad? Yes. Did you go to Google and type in that branded search? "Oh, if I cut the TV ad, then less people will go and type in search. Cut money from search, pump more money into CTV." We're seeing that -- we see money coming out, and this is what I'm saying is the inside baseball. We believe that search spending is way over indexed and is going to decrease over the midterm. And we also think that about social media advertising. So we think that -- we're seeing it with clients right now that it is cannibalizing some of those channels because they see the incrementality factor of CTV. Everyone expects, if I spend another dollar in advertising, I get yet another sale.

Tim Vanderhook

executive
#20

Or a new customer.

Chris Vanderhook

executive
#21

Right. You don't get the same -- you shouldn't get the same sale. Otherwise, that's wasted ads. That's what Google search is, and it's a lot of what is in social media. The highest incrementality factor of any channel or any format out there is CTV. So I believe that, that will continue. And I would say that there's -- again, there's growth coming to CTV from all angles. Shift away from traditional and from other channels. And it's still so early in CTV. I don't think anyone recognizes how big the growth could be.

Tim Vanderhook

executive
#22

Yes. I mean, if you think about where we're at in CTV, live sports is really just coming online. This is billions of ad impressions that were in linear that are now going to be available for us to bid and buy. So the market is really just exploding. And to put in perspective why sports is so critical, of the Top 100 shows in 2023, 94 of them were the NFL. So I mean, it really is all about sports when it comes to live TV. Very few companies have the infrastructure. Really, it's only The Trade Desk and Viant that have the infrastructure and capacity to bid and buy in live sports.

Christopher Kuntarich

analyst
#23

Yes. And I think my understanding was that it's like somewhere around in the 30% range is what live TV represents as part of advertising? But -- okay, of viewership. I guess, as we think about those ads budgets shifting more from linear to CTV here, like what role will programmatic play here? And like, I guess, what should we be on the lookout here over the next year for what's going to unlock?

Tim Vanderhook

executive
#24

Yes. It's all programmatic. I think the IAB released the study that 90% of ad buying in connected television is programmatic. So the programmatic advertising, just like when the Nasdaq showed up in electronic trading showed up, it took away the paper-based trading of the individuals on the NYSE floor. That electronification of the ad buying process, that's what programmatic advertising is. It's already eaten the industry. So we're at 90% in TV. We never see that going back. It provides flexibility for advertisers, and it provides a unique way for content owners to sell this inventory without having to hire a 1,000-person sales force. It's very, very cost effective to enable this electronic buying.

Chris Vanderhook

executive
#25

And I would say, in live sports, we're so excited about it because the returns are crazy. Like the results when you buy live sports are through the roof. And I -- and part of it has to do with the engagement of live sports. You know people are glued to the TV more so than, say, news or some drama that you hit on demand. So that's one. And I would just -- I think for the content owners, they see it as a huge revenue boost. Everybody realizes that sometimes games going over time or there is an injury, and then there's an unscheduled ad break. And I won't get into the infrastructure of delivering this and making sure that there's no such thing as you can't sit there and buffer in a live sports stream game waiting for an ad. All this stuff is called ahead of time, maybe a minute or 2 ahead of time. In some cases, it will be live. But to do -- to run an auction and to know which household that is and then bid what price are you willing to pay and have that ad show up in a few milliseconds, that takes a lot of infrastructure. But we were willing to do the investment because our early test, when we first ran it a few years ago, these results are big. So we want to bring our customers to live sports. And many of our customers have never bought live sports, many. I think NBC stated -- or Peacock, they recently stated an industry event that we brought something like 1,200 advertisers to the Olympics. And it used to be a $20 million, $25 million minimum investment to get on the Olympics. And we put over 1,000 customers on the Olympics, Clearly, they didn't spend $20-some million a pop, but they found households that they wanted -- that were relevant to them. They wanted to show their ads there, and they got great returns. So that was kind of like us wetting the palette of a lot of our clients was on the Olympics. And in '25, we think there's going to be a lot of spend going there.

Christopher Kuntarich

analyst
#26

Got it. You mentioned maybe 2 minutes ago kind of CTV is very early on. And like one of the broader views or longer-term ideas around CTV is this is moving towards direct response. You said it's very early days in CTV. I would think that, that would kind of fit into that bucket here. But as we think about addressing that direct response opportunity, where would you kind of position that, in your own words? And kind of should we be thinking about potential unlocks here as we move into '25?

Chris Vanderhook

executive
#27

Yes. I mean, I don't know if I would -- I hate separating so much brand versus direct response because -- yes, they all kind of blur. At the end of the day, nobody buys an ad and doesn't expect some sort of performance. But I do think -- I definitely think we certainly see the benefit of this. Marketers are buying -- it is early. So there is a decent amount of money that's shifting from linear that they're just buying ads. They're just buying ads. They know that it works, but they are contractually obligated to buy that ad, whether it's in linear or in streaming. So they have to because the consumer viewership is moving. So that's why we state that it's still early. But what we see that's coming, and I think '25 is going to be a big leap in continuing to do more targeting and more measurement in CTV that, in the end, I think that it will be the most measurable channel is my own personal belief. I believe it will be more measurable than search because it does sit a little bit upper funnel, but you're going to be able to measure who you reached, which households saw the ad and then what the downstream effects of that are. A lot of people think that the most measurable medium is search. But it's just -- search is a tax, so navigational tax to get your website or to get to your app. So I don't believe it's really that measurable. But I do think CTV will continue to get more and more measurable. And our investment in acquiring IRIS.TV is right alongside that. We 100% believe in being able -- there's going to be a future where we are going to match the ad to the content, whatever the content, right, before they go to ad break. We are going to match the ads so that they are contextually relevant on the same mood, the same sentiment. We are going to make ads feel almost synonymous with content, and that's going to be a huge boost to campaign performance.

Christopher Kuntarich

analyst
#28

Got it. I want to talk about macro here as we're starting to wind in the last couple of minutes. Our checks, so far, have been directionally relatively positive, I would say. And -- just curious, as you look at your visibility here, like what have you seen through November? And just kind of how does -- where you sit today compared to last year? And how is that visibility as you look out into '25 compared to this point last year?

Tim Vanderhook

executive
#29

Yes. I mean, Q3 last year was good. Q4 last year was good. I would say, so far, it's been a strong quarter. It's a healthy environment. More and more advertisers are buying more and more digital advertising. And usually, at a macro level, that's the only thing that derails it. It's like, if the economy goes into recession, if interest rates go up, that's where you'll see pullbacks in ad spend, but we're not seeing that at all. October, November have both been strong. It seems to be generally healthy and nothing that I see that provides any risk to growth.

Chris Vanderhook

executive
#30

Yes. I think if you look at it, we're a 21% contribution ex-TAC growth in third quarter. If you look at the midpoint of our guide, it's 22%, so it's accelerating. We're on pace for that. If you look at our EBITDA margins expanding 31%, 32% in the fourth quarter, so we feel great about it. The market is actually -- the market all year has been really strong. And usually, we get -- we have a saying, it's called the tale of 2 halves. Sometimes you have a strong first half. And it's like you go to Cannes in June and July and the sentiment might change. And you can tell when you're on the ground meeting with clients but didn't see that at all, it was -- I mean Cannes was back this year, big time. I mean, people were out in full force. And there was a lot of bullishness, I would say, out of marketers and agencies. And I think it's going to continue. We're really looking forward to '25. We think '25 is going to be strong.

Tim Vanderhook

executive
#31

Yes. Our theme heading into '25 is, "Gentlemen, start your engines."

Christopher Kuntarich

analyst
#32

Got it. Let's bring back IRIS.TV, though. Yes, just how should we be thinking about the IRIS ID and like what that brings as far as incrementality to that Household ID? And like, when could this potentially be translating towards that accelerating budget growth?

Tim Vanderhook

executive
#33

Yes. We see, IRIS, we've got to integrate -- we are integrated into the DSP. But what IRIS did a good job and what -- let's first talk about what is -- they provide a content ID. In the CTV space, you're -- there's a law called the Video Privacy Act (sic) [ Video Privacy Protection Act ] , where you're not allowed to know what someone's watching. And it was from like the '80s, someone rented a video at a video store, and it got released. So it's a gray area, but there's litigation going on. So the general theme is no one is passing you the show. So the way -- what IRIS did, but obviously, advertisers are very interested to know which show is my ad showing up in. So IRIS provides something called the content ID. It's not the show name, but it's a number that represents season 1, episode 1 of Yellowstone. That's 1, 2, 3. And so when that comes through the bid stream, advertisers are able to buy this anonymous number, but it's representative of a show. And you'll know things about it. It's a Western. It has Kevin Costner. It takes place in Montana. You don't know it's Yellowstone, but you know a lot about the content. So this IRIS ID is a content ID that comes through the bid stream to make everything regulatory compliance. So it's very, very friendly there. They have no competition. The competition of IRIS ID is the publisher, like Paramount, passing you genre would be the next best thing. The problem with that is the genre groupings of Paramount are different than the genre groupings of Disney that are different than HBO Max, et cetera, et cetera. So from a buyer's perspective, IRIS ID enables a consistent calculation that this is about fly fishing. And if you buy that video, it's going to be consistent across all the apps that a marketer has. So when we think about what IRIS is, the content ID, it's information about the content that can be targeted for advertising. What Household ID is information about the household and who they are. And so when you know who they are and what they're watching, we now have the best targeting in CTV, better than The Trade Desk, better than Yahoo! DSP, better than DV360 that they offer there, too. So it's a very unique setup. We're scaling that ID. So IRIS did a great job getting all the TV manufacturers: Samsung, LG, VIZIO, Roku, et cetera. They were more on the manufacturers. The content owners, they had some of the smaller ones like AMC. They do have Warner Bros. Discovery, I believe. And we need to work on scaling the ID across the other major partners out there, but those are our partners in the Direct Access Program. So we feel very good that our partners will carry that ID and send it back to us in the bid stream. And we see IRIS having more of a financial contribution in the second half of 2025.

Christopher Kuntarich

analyst
#34

Got it. And I think I asked the same question last year to wrap up. But where are you most excited? And where are we going to be? What are we going to be talking about onstage next year?

Tim Vanderhook

executive
#35

Artificial intelligence and CTV. It's just these 2 tailwinds. AI creates so much productivity and efficiency for humans in operating their job. It's not going to be fully autonomous in 2025, where it's making every decision. But as a tool for humans to use, it's going to create huge boost to productivity. And I think this is going to be across most companies across every industry. We've already seen the success with AI bidding, the 90% of customers adopting it in 12 months effectively. We've never seen an adoption of any product that we've rolled out. So I think as we roll out AI measurement and then moving to decisioning, which is towards that autonomy, I don't know if we'll get there fully in 2025. But AI is going to continue to drive innovation and connected television with live sports. What are you seeing with Netflix, they've opened up programmatic advertising. They're moving into live sports. That's a consistent theme that we see across every major content owner, which bodes well for us, representing the buyers of those ads. We make a fee. If there's more supply, that's going to drive our revenue.

Christopher Kuntarich

analyst
#36

Anything else?

Chris Vanderhook

executive
#37

I think I just -- on Tim's point on AI, the appetite is huge. And I think the appetite is huge because there's a lot of talk about AI. There's very little show. Very little show. There's a lot of people saying the word AI, but let's see it. Our marketer is using it, and I think that's why we've gotten such a strong response. When we launched that ViantAI video, over 150,000 people watch that video of an adtech B2B product launch in the first 3 days. Over 500 people requested early access to it. That's more than our customer base. So you see the appetite and he said this earlier, yes, there's a lot of appetite for it, but it's varied all over in the market. It's not just 1 customer segment. But without a doubt, it is allowing us to move upmarket with larger customers, bigger partnerships. But I think as you see us have success on that in '25, that's really going to open up '26, which is then going to go after who advertises in social and in search. These e-commerce brands that stick to 1 channel only, that's a huge opportunity for the open Internet that we are going to exploit with AI. We have to make DSPs and programmatic advertising very easily accessible to people who buy, let's say, on Meta or TikTok. A 12-year-old can buy on Meta or TikTok. They can't through these DSPs. But our investments in AI are going to allow them to do it. We're going to make it that easy. So it's going to expand our TAM. It will probably take till '26, but that's definitely going to happen.

Tim Vanderhook

executive
#38

All the big advertisers on Meta would love to buy connected television. If you think of what Meta's strengths are, it's a logged-in user base, a big advantage for them, that's driven their business. But it's on the world's worst content. And that's what social media really is. We used to call it user-generated content. It's low-quality content. What you get in connected television is the same logged-in user base across all these on top of the world's most premium content, like the NFL. And that is what I would leave with investors in the audience, and that's what marketers actually want is the logged-in user base on the world's most premium content. Because the effectiveness of the combination of those 2 is what's driving that flywheel of ad spend.

Christopher Kuntarich

analyst
#39

Got it. Well, let's leave it there. Chris, Tim, really appreciate the time. Thank you so much.

Tim Vanderhook

executive
#40

Thanks a lot.

Christopher Kuntarich

analyst
#41

Thank you so much.

Chris Vanderhook

executive
#42

Thanks for having us.

For developers and AI pipelines

Programmatic access to Viant Technology Inc. earnings transcripts and 32,000+ others is available through the EarningsCalls.dev REST API. Plans from $24.99/month — full transcripts, speaker segments, full-text search, and the recently-added /api/v1/transcripts/recent polling endpoint for ETL pipelines.