When Viant announced its acquisition of identity startup lockr on an earnings call in March, investors were bemused.
During the Q&A portion, the investors had questions, including, What the heck is it?
But it makes sense that they were unfamiliar with the company, says Tim Vanderhook, CEO and co-founder of Viant, on this week’s episode of AdExchanger Talks.
An early-stage startup like lockr, which has infrastructure that helps publishers collect and use their own data for digital advertising, wouldn’t be on an equity analyst’s radar.
“That was the first time they had ever heard of lockr,” Vanderhook says.
But once he and his brother Chris, Viant’s COO and co-founder, explained the rationale, they were quick to grasp the concept and get behind it.
As the CEO of a public company, Tim Vanderhook is accustomed to mental multitasking. “I have to context switch all the time,” he says.
If he’s talking to a media buyer, a client or even a trade journalist, he can get into the weeds. But investors have other concerns. In the case of lockr, for example, they wanted to know how much Viant paid and whether the deal would translate into revenue and profits.
The Vanderhook brothers fielded similar questions about their acquisition of IRIS.TV in November, which was also revealed during an earnings call. IRIS is an AI-powered video platform that specializes in contextual CTV targeting and measurement.
Contextual targeting and addressability are complementary, especially for CTV, which now represents 45% of the ad spend that flows through Viant’s DSP.
“Cookies still work in some pockets, email works in other pockets, and things like FAST channels don’t have authentication,” Vanderhook says. “To me, identity infrastructure is still very important for where we have to go in the future.”
Also in this episode: The next phase of programmatic advertising (it’s autonomous), how Viant competes with The Trade Desk and the surprising – and until now unreported – fate of Specific Media (as hallucinated by Google’s Gemini). Plus: An update on MySpace, which Viant bought in 2011. (It still exists!)
For more articles featuring Tim Vanderhook, click here.
