Viant Touts Independence Amid Programmatic Puzzles

These are interesting times in the programmatic advertising business.

Many of the biggest issues have been brought to a head by media agency giant Publicis, which audited The Trade Desk and then said it would no longer recommend that its clients use The Trade Desk’s data-driven platform to execute ad campaigns.

 The move has rippled through the industry, with other agencies and advertisers questioning the platforms with which they do business.

The storm around The Trade Desk could swamp others in the ad-tech business. Or there could be a silver lining for The Trade Desk’s competitors.

“I think it’s more of an opportunity than a problem,” Viant Chief Marketing Officer Jon Schulz told The Measure.

“The problem only comes from additional work,” he said. All programmatic platforms including Viant now can expect to get reviewed or audited by its clients. 

At this point, Schulz said Viant is getting questions but has not yet received requests for a more formal audit. He says it makes sense for clients to want to understand what the platforms are doing and how they’re doing it.

 “Unless you're totally not paying attention, you're going to say, ‘Oh, I better check into this and just make sure we're good,” Schulz said. 

The process will be time-consuming for Viant’s management, legal and sales teams. But in the end, Viant should benefit.

Before joining Viant 18 years ago, Schulz worked at Ford and when a rival’s product, like the Chevy Silverado, was subject to a recall, Ford’s F150 was likely to add sales.

“That's part of the fallout here. When some somebody, missteps, then it shines a light, which we're fine with. We're transparent on our fees. We don't charge for direct access.”

One result of the scrutiny on The Trade Desk is that advertisers are looking to have more control over their programmatic buying. 

For most of this decade, the agencies were in charge of making decisions. “Now the brands are the ones doing the RFPs,” Schulz said, pointing to Molson Coors’ decision last year to work with Viant. 

An issue advertisers are dealing with is tech companies that both make buying decisions and have inventory to sell. Schulz expects this will make independent platforms like Viant more attractive to brands.

Some agencies want their clients to use their programmatic platforms. Those platforms can be used to enable principal media buying, in which agencies buy media and resell it to clients at a markup. Some brands have expressed concerns over principal buying. 

And then there’s Amazon, whose DSP is becoming a bigger player as more programmers make their inventory available there and use Amazon’s data and commerce systems.

Schulz believes Viant can compete. “I think there's a lot of space for everybody. And the reason I say that is the big brand advertisers do not want to put all their money in one spot, and because those guys have owned and operated inventory,” he said.

He’s thinks that while brands can access attractive content from Disney, Paramount, Peacock or Fox via the Amazon DSP, they should be wary because Amazon’s priority is selling Prime Video inventory.

“They'll do these other things to try to appeal more broadly and lower their fees. And by the way, they're really good at retail,” Schulz said. “Do they have the other options? Sure, they do. But as an owned and operated player, at the end of the day, they're trying to maximize yield for their owned and operated inventory.” 

By contrast, Viant doesn’t have owned and operated inventory, which is good for brands.

“If you don't have a horse in the race, you can focus on getting the best, lowest CPMs, because we don't have a yield management objective like the owned and operated guys do,” Schulz said. 

Schulz notes that Viant’s DSP was built to handle CTV. About 46% of the spending on its platform is CTV, not including other forms of digital video. That’s good for Viant because CTV spending is outpacing other channels. 

Viant has also gotten a boost from its acquisition of Iris.TV, which has put the company in the contextual business. 

“When we bought Iris, the iris ID was about 8% of the bid stream. Now it's close to 50% of the bid stream,” Schulz said. “It's really become a currency so people can buy against the Iris ID and drive the contextual targeting,” and that leads to better outcomes for brands.

Getting brands or agencies to change programmatic platforms or use multiple DSPs can be a challenge.

 It's a hard decision to change platforms. It's a lot of work because the platforms are similar but different. It's like learning new software,” Schulz said. 

Viant has been implementing artificial intelligence to make its platform easier to use for brands and buyers.

“Programmatic is inherently complex and a lot of interfaces that look like the periodic table of elements,” he said. Using AI, Viant can simplify to interface to a prompt. 

Viant has also introduced agentic systems that can autonomously set up campaigns and optimize them in flight in real time. 

“We took something that would take a trader hours or days, and we'd reduced it to minutes,” he said.

Schulz notes that not all clients are ready to let the robots take over campaign management.

“There's a segment of customers that still aren't there yet, that need their hands on the keyboard. That's fine. Most of our business is hands on, keyboard self-service, and that may be the case for the foreseeable future, and that's fine,” he said.

But even with wider adoption, agentic AI won’t eliminate the need for humans in marketing.

“I don't think that that means everybody is going to be unemployed, and everybody in marketing is going to lose their job,” Schulz said. “Things are going to evolve. Trust me, there's plenty to do, and there's plenty of challenges. It's just the mix of work will probably change, and you'll be spending time on more strategic activities and things that got bounced off the to-do list because you just didn't have time putting out the day-to-day fires.” 

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Mediaocean said it launched Prisma Direct, an automated media buying system, and that Disney is the first company to adopt the new product.

Prisma Direct enables buyers to make direct connections with sellers across streaming, video and connected TV. 

“At Disney, our focus is on making the experience better for viewers and making it easier for advertisers to buy premium video however they choose—through direct access, programmatic platforms, or any combination in between,” said Jamie Power, senior VP, addressable sales for Disney Advertising. “We value openness and collaboration across the ecosystem, and innovations like Prisma Direct align perfectly with our goal of removing friction and enabling greater flexibility for our clients.” 

The companies say Prisma Plus will help lower operations costs for agencies and brands, minimize tech fees, increase net revenue and reduce leakage for publishers, improve billing accuracy and enable real-time insights.

 “We’re excited to partner with Disney to address one of the advertising industry’s most persistent operational burdens—the cost, time, and inefficient execution required to activate premium TV and video orders,” said Drew Kane, chief product officer for Prisma. “The majority of premium TV and streaming video orders are direct, and we’re committed to providing the most direct, automated, and low-cost integrations at enterprise scale. We believe this will set the standard for how premium campaigns are activated.”

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Locality, a local TV ad platform, said it acquired Deben, a media planning software company. 

Financial terms were not disclosed.

Last year, Locality and Deban worked together to launch Collective, which enables national planning and activation across local TV.

Deben CEO Prasad Joglekar will join Locality as senior VP of data science & architecture.

“Acquiring and integrating Deben advances how local TV advertising is planned and executed,” said Locality CEO Michael Collins. “Advertisers need simpler ways to reach audiences as they move between linear and streaming and coordinate investment across media. Deben strengthens our ability to bring data and precision to broadcast planning, which is essential to making cross-platform strategy work at scale.”