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- [00:01]
Jeremy Bloom
Hey there, Ad Tech God POD listeners. Jeremy Bloom here from Architecture Media, joined by none other than the one and only Ad Tech God.
- [00:10]
Ad Tech God
Welcome to the pod, Jeremy. We are thrilled to bring you something epic to kick off 2025, right here in the heart of Las Vegas.
- [00:19]
Jeremy Bloom
It's the ultimate start to the new year ATG Sweet Sweets by the Advertising Forum, an exclusive video series that puts the spotlight on you.
- [00:30]
Ad Tech God
That definitely sounds godly, Jeremy. What if my company doesn't have a suite?
- [00:35]
Jeremy Bloom
No suite, no problem. Come record with our professional video crew in our market suite.
- [00:42]
Ad Tech God
We have a budget for a suite and wait. Las Vegas in January? It doesn't get better than this. We're talking about strategy swaps, fresh ideas for 2025, and the chance to showcase the incredible innovation and. And hard work from the past year. This isn't just about a conference. This is your company, your team, and of course, your suite.
- [01:03]
Jeremy Bloom
And if that doesn't get you pumped, here's the kicker. We'll be dropping some big news about our plans with Magnite. Trust us, it's going to be a very fun week.
- [01:12]
Ad Tech God
So stay tuned, disciples. You won't want to miss this. Sweet Sweets is where the industry reconnects, recharges, and reignites its passion for 2025. Mark your calendars and get ready for Vegas.
- [01:24]
Jeremy Bloom
To learn more, go to Marketia.com x LinkedIn and drop us a message on how you can be a part of Sweet Sweets. See you in Vegas.
- [01:35]
Ad Tech God
Welcome to the EdTech God Pod, your window into the world of advertising technology and the people behind it. I'm your host, Ad Tech God.
- [01:47]
Welcome to another episode of the Ad Tech God Pod. Today's a special episode recently in the news. As of yesterday, we heard that Vyant acquired Iris tv. So I've invited both Tim and Chris to the podcast today to talk a little bit more about the acquisition. Tim, Chris, welcome to the podcast.
- [02:04]
Tim
Thank you.
- [02:04]
Chris
Thanks for having us on Ad Tech God.
- [02:07]
Ad Tech God
Of course. Thank you, guys. And thanks for jumping out so quickly. I love that. I tweeted out, came back, and Mariel was all over it. She's like, you're scheduled. So thank you. Thanks to your team.
- [02:16]
Chris
Not excited to be here. Thanks for making the time today and a little bit of breaking news. So. It's great.
- [02:21]
Ad Tech God
Yeah, I love it. It's. It's new, it's fun, and I've been doing this a little bit more, and, you know, we will be doing this more and more often over the next few months. So. Tim, Chris, you guys recently had A huge announcement about some of the AI features and functionality that you have at Viant. Your stock today was like through the roof, super impressive. So it's obvious, you know, Wall street loves what they're hearing and seeing. But what was the main purpose as to why you acquired Iris tv? Let's start there. Why did you buy TV and how does that fit into the overall vyond stack?
- [02:52]
Chris
Really good question. We've been, you know, talking with Field and Richie at Iris for years. We've been aware of kind of their ambitions and vision around a content id, a global content id, and I think the, the problem that they address in the industry is really around transparency in the CTV ecosystem. And so right now when we look at CTV buying, you know, there's app level targeting that's going on. Nothing really beyond that. There's certainly audience targeting happening across apps, but we heard from a lot of our customers that they'd like to control where their ad is showing up next to the content adjacency that is showing next to. And having Iris ID in the bid stream integrated in the content management systems of the big CTV guys that are out there enables us to target and measure performance in many more areas around the content. So contextual data, brand suitability data we think is a huge one. Like if there's nudity in a show, some brands don't want to show up in that type of show. So just giving more targeting, more data to the buy side to be able to make sure that those spots are very relevant.
- [04:07]
Tim
One other thing too, just if you just on our earnings we talked about yesterday, CTV is our largest channel. It's over 40% of total spend on the platform. It was growing over 50% year over year in the quarter. So we're doing extremely well in ctv and I think that, you know, ctv, yes, it's growing and largely as Tim was talking about, it's still so early. You know, everyone is essentially just moving money over from linear into streaming and you're really just targeting apps. And I don't want to say just showing ads, but it's early and that's okay. And I, and I think the CTV channel just doing that still performs incredibly well. But we're just looking forward a little bit. And I think that what you see with us is a little bit different. You know, we've been in this industry for over 25 years and ad tech is very insular. We all focus on each other. We all focus on, you know, basically fighting over the crumbs that are left over from the walled gardens. And we've never liked that ever since we started talking to Field and Richie about IRIS and what they wanted to build. You know, you know, years ago we thought it was, you know, quite ambitious, number one, but we really liked the angle. That's number one. And then, you know, recently the opportunity came, came up for us to be able to do this acquisition. And, and truthfully, it was because Field and Richie, you know, they want someone who's going to help support their mission. And we think that Iris needs to exist for the industry. We'll go out and compete against other platforms for CTV and for Programmatic and win the DSP business. But ultimately we're looking. There's a larger war at stake, and the war is really the walled gardens. And, you know, you could aggregate three names and they account for 30, you know, 65% of total spend in the US. That's a real threat. You know, my threat is not, you know, whether an SSP is trying to be a DSP or against another dsp. It's really the open ecosystem needs to create better ad products to compete with the walled gardens. That's extremely important. So the IRIS acquisition is certainly part of that. We believe that understanding the content at a granular level in CTV will enable not just us, but the open ecosystem to create superior ad products to those of the walled gardens. And we believe it will tilt the share of spend back to the open ecosystem.
- [06:35]
Ad Tech God
How do you see? Because we talk about walled gardens and there's obviously walled gardens in the non streaming space, but we have our pretty large walled gardens in the streaming or CTV space. How do you see the market shifting over the next couple of years with solutions such as yourself or others in the market to kind of untap and become less dependent on the walled gardens, where, as you mentioned, they dominate, you know, 60% of ad revenue today.
- [06:59]
Chris
Yeah, I mean, I think the trend in CTV is away from walled gardens. I think what you're seeing by the large, either platforms like Roku, they're opening up to more programmatic demand. If you look at Netflix and the change in strategy there, they're opening up more to programmatic demand. So we, we do see the CTV market being much more programmatically driven than say, you know, the social networks that have all become walled gardens. I think over time, even those social platforms are going to open up to incremental demand from programmatic DSPs as well, even in display and desktop and mobile.
- [07:38]
Tim
So one other key point, again, everyone in ad tech is so insular and you Sort of just you take it as a given that, you know, Google and Meta, they're going to get theirs and anything left over is what we fight for. But if you break down who their customers are and who's spending most of the money, so totally different set of customers and a total different set of advertisers. Most people also believe that it's the local pizza store that's continuing to advertise on Meta. Yeah, sure they do, but it's really these e commerce companies and they are.
- [08:09]
Chris
Almost an industry in and among themselves who spend tons.
- [08:13]
Tim
They have an entirely different ecosystem of solution providers, technologies they use. And so we're really focused on that and we think that just again, for the open ecosystem, you know, I think that Peacock stated this at Programmatic IO where they talked about how they started working with partners. One of them they highlighted was us and we brought thousands of new advertisers to the Olympics. We did that because we're making programmatic and live sports and in that case the Olympics more accessible. We have to make especially ctv, but overall we have to make what adtech enables today is predominantly mid to large size marketers, but we have to enable the smaller ones as well to be.
- [08:58]
Chris
Able to buy ctv.
- [08:59]
Tim
If you look at a DTC brand that you see on Meta, you notice they do not advertise on ctv. They're getting, they're hitting high return on ad spends in Meta, apparently. But imagine what, how well they would do if we created products for them and we created tools that made it accessible for them to buy, easy for them to buy ctv. So that's really again, Iris is a little bit more in line with that and really expanding the opportunity for the open ecosystem.
- [09:26]
Ad Tech God
Tim, Chris, any one of you can answer this, but I thought I had read that you guys are going to keep Iris independent from Vyond, or am I reading that wrong?
- [09:35]
Tim
No, we are.
- [09:35]
Chris
That's correct. It'll be run independently by Richie Enfield.
- [09:39]
Ad Tech God
Okay, so it's, it's, it's acquired by Vyent. It sits under the Vyent technology umbrella. Why did you guys decide to do it that way rather than, you know, fully integrate into the Vyant company Again.
- [09:51]
Tim
One, like I just said, we think it's a play for the overall ecosystem. I might be able to win share against a competitor here, but if the overall open ecosystem shrinks, that's a problem. So, and we think that, you know, one of the big decision factors in acquiring Iris was do we believe that this needs to exist? And we do believe it needs to exist in something like it. Publishers need someone like Iris to help merchandise and monetize their content. If you look at kind of Web 1.0 and 2.0, I mean Google just came in and just, you know, robbed them all. I mean if you look at the news publishers, I mean that's exactly what they did that, you know, and you see it even right now with AI, you look at companies like Condon as just licensing their, you know, it's kind of like the last puff of the cigarette for them. They are going to license their content to OpenAI for, you know, however much money. I don't know what's going to be left of that company. So we don't want to see that happen in ctv. We think it's just too big of an opportunity overall. But you know, if you look at Iris, who are their customers? Their customers are the content owners. They partner with the content owners, the television OEMs, the content management systems and ultimately it's about helping the content owner get full value for their, for their content. Now we're not in the, in the yield management business or anything like that, but you know, there's a lot of, if I tell, you know, today again we're predominantly getting app name most of the content that's spot in ctv. You don't know exactly which content you're showing up on. So that needs to change if you want to know more about the content. You can have the content owner pass you things like genre or maybe some metadata, but it's all over the place. It's not normalized. If you know, let's say Paramount is available on Paramount plus it's also available through Samsung, Roku could be available through DirecTV stream. So it's available in all these other places and everyone has a different taxonomy. So we think it's important that all of the information and the contextualization of the content be normalized and marketers then can build against that and index against that. And now DSPs like ourselves can start building model performance based models against that.
- [12:05]
Ad Tech God
It's crazy because in, in streaming it's very different than kind of our linear world where it was distributed by one major player in a particular market. Let's say it's Charter or Spectrum and our footprint and you knew it ran through those cable boxes and that was it. Like you knew where it was being distributed. But today, you know, one particular channel, let's say, I don't know, Fox could run through Zumo, Philo, Fubo, every possible VM vpd their own apps, third party apps that could be run through web mobile app. It is really confusing and then you add to it the complexity of, you know, content and where your ad is running. Some might be brand safe, some just might not be the type of content they want to be aligned with as an advertiser. So it is getting complicated. So I can see where there's value in and providing that transparency.
- [12:51]
Chris
Yeah, I mean not just that, but I mean being able to recognize, hey, this video about fly fishing performs really well for Bass Pro Shops and being able to target ads against that video, whether it's coming from Roku or direct from the content owners app or through a distributor that we talked about there. Having that consistent ID flow through the bitstream creates those optimization models against it. So I think it's a huge boost for the buy side to be able to target and it's a huge boost for the sell side because I believe advertisers are willing to pay more with that content signal included.
- [13:29]
Ad Tech God
So this is going to basically allow buyers to include or exclude specific types of content.
- [13:34]
Chris
Exactly on the brand suitability side. But you've got contextual intelligence data there as well. One of the interesting, more interesting but not quite proven yet is emotional sentiment data. So you can match if you're, if the mood of the video is violence, you know, you could avoid it or target a different category that's more relevant to your brand. So lots of new types of metadata coming available for targeting and for measurement.
- [14:03]
Ad Tech God
A big part two that comes up with this is how is privacy and data security part of your approach and how do you feel that's going to be handled by vience slash, you know, Iris tv?
- [14:14]
Tim
Yeah, well actually if you look at it, you know, there's, there's so much talk around identity and you know, I'll kind of put the privacy angle, you know, there and we've long believed since you know, 2010 or 11, we knew that through either regulation or through, you know, Google and Apple, yeah, big tech, that privacy was going to take center stage. And I think that as a company, as you scale, you got to, you know, one, you know, you're paying attention to privacy and you're making sure that you're doing everything above board. And I think our approach around identity and our household idea has squarely been aimed at that. We, we've long held that hey, this is going to be an opt in universe. This is the way you have to think about it. But then there's also, there's also value beyond identity And I think, unfortunately, you know, I think our industry right now in ad tech, we're just so focused around identity and identity and identity. But you forget about the, you know, the web. When we started in 99, 1999, the value that the Internet provided were on web pages and it gave purchase intent. The things that you were reading and searching for, that's purchase intent. No other channel anywhere really offers that. And that's what the Internet gave us. That's why it crushed all traditional forms of media. And I think IRIS is another angle of that. That isn't really about identity. That's really about understanding what people are watching and being able to make ads relevant to the content. That's the first phase. And the second phase is how do I match an ad to the content? I've said this a few times on social media. No one has any idea what I mean. I'm cool with that because I compete with many of them. So I'm putting it out there. If you can't figure it out, figure it out. But again, it's not that hard to figure out. Just study what Meta's doing, study what TikTok's doing. I mean, they build ad products that are kicking ass for people. So instead of ignoring that and us complaining about walled gardens, well, we're going to start competing. So we think the IRIS is also aimed at that as well. So, you know, I put the privacy angle more around our efforts on household id.
- [16:25]
Chris
That's kind of what's refreshing about the IRIS ID is that there is no privacy issue. It's just data about the content not attached to a user or a household. So it's a little bit refreshing to be able to have a global content ID in CTV that passes every regulatory framework globally. So I do think that there's something there that we can keep building on with.
- [16:50]
Tim
And I think one other point too, you know, IRIS was actually one of the big problems that they solved. They had this. There's something called the vppa, but it's the Video Privacy act. Basically. This doesn't allow the content owners to send network and show link to a user, basically. So there's some pending litigation out there. But IRIS allows the content owner to then, you know, properly merchandise their video content or tell you more about the content you're showing up on without giving you the network name and the show name. And so, you know, and that's different for TV buyers because they are used to buying network and show and linear television. That's how they buy it. So in, in, in ctv. It's fine right now because it's early. You know, their marketers are asking the questions now. They want to know more about the content they're showing up next to. So this really answered something around privacy that, you know, I think is, is going to stick around for a while.
- [17:46]
Ad Tech God
Yeah. And VPPA was actually something that I was going to ask you about next. So I'm, I'm glad you brought it up because that is one of the things that popped in my head is, you know, are you using contextual data, content that's consumed and targeting a particular household or user? And you're not, you're, you're using it to target general contents, whether it's safe or not safe, and categorizing it. But there is no direct link from user to the content that they're viewing.
- [18:12]
Tim
Correct.
- [18:12]
Chris
Exactly. And going back to that example that we talked about, being able to know the standardization of the contextual signal like this video is about outdoor sports. Having Iris apply that across all app providers and having the same algorithm run to classify the content that these are all related to. Outdoor sports will give reliable performance for Bass Pro Shops. If they're targeting that category across all apps. When you relied on publisher provided data, you don't get that level of standardization or repeat performance when you target it.
- [18:50]
Ad Tech God
So. Last question. Well, two last questions for you. One of them you may not answer, but I'll ask you the first one. What's been the response from your clients and from your partners and Iris TV's partners, how are they reacting to this news? I'd love to hear kind of your perspective, what you're hearing from the market.
- [19:05]
Tim
Well, I was on a flat all morning and we had earnings post closed yesterday, so I haven't had a lot of clients. We only had text. Yeah, we had a lot of text. People are fired up about it. Yeah, I think a lot of people. I'll tell you the biggest reaction that we have heard. The reactions that we have heard just since when we announced it yesterday afternoon. A lot of people are really happy for the Iris team and Field and Richie. I mean, if you've ever talked to Field and Richie.
- [19:30]
Chris
Two amazing. Yeah, they're awesome.
- [19:32]
Tim
They remind us of ourselves and that energy they have as entrepreneurs. And I'll tell you that it's a big advantage for us to be able to attract other entrepreneurs. Most people don't understand it because I tell people this all the time. You can't hire Tim and I, you cannot. It's impossible. There's no amount of Money that we would take and you can't hire us, but what you can do is ascribe to a vision that we have and we can work with other people. That was appealing to Field and Richie and I think that that is a big advantage. I feel like a college football coach right now for everybody to get into the transfer portal. But we, we have a great infrastructure set up here that we want to attract other entrepreneurs like Field and Richie to help us build this company. And we think we can make it really enticing for them. That's the first thing we heard. The second is from our, our clients. They've always looked at us around innovation. Innovation is on Tim and I shoulders and we're responsible for it. That we take that personally. And yes, we have a big focus in CTV and we want to not just lead, you know, our customers there or to get more money in ctv. Yeah, sure. But we think that if we can continue to make moves that benefit the open ecosystem, people are going to realize that, you know, hey, we're not just out there for ourselves and I don't have to get every last dollar on the table. I think in the end, if the open ecosystem wins, we're going to win too. And that, and that's the mode we're going to play right now.
- [21:00]
Chris
Yeah. And I think long term, for Vyent to be successful with the amount of features, functionalities, the Internet keeps expanding, we have to do a good job at the IRIS acquisition and giving the space to those entrepreneurs to continue with their mission so that we can attract others as well through more types of transactions in the future to round out the total product offering. And I think this is an example where M and A, we can attract the best in class product and team to be able to come over under Vyond and continue on that mission and hopefully we can do that again in.
- [21:32]
Tim
The future because there's some other people that they would never want to work with.
- [21:35]
Ad Tech God
Last question for you. I asked people what they wanted me to ask you and the only one was they want to know the tea. They want to know how much you guys bought. So are you going to disclose that with me today or is it going to. Or we have to wait till the next earnings?
- [21:50]
Tim
Yeah, you'd have to probably figure it out in the next earnings. You know, I think everyone and a lot of people by the way were involved with iris. So people certainly know the, the impact that they were making, but they know that it was early and unfortunately again in adtech, this is why we work With Apperium and Tim and I personally support our LPs in Appearium because there needs to be more investment in this space, more vc. I mean look, that's yes for the whole ecosystem, but it's selfish for us too. I mean we're a public company and investors, both public and private have to continue to see that the, the ad tech and open ecosystem powers the entire Internet. It's not just Google and Meta. And if you look at, you know, all of the services that consumers interact with, it's not just Meta and Google. You know, look in CTV or streaming audio or web and online video. That's all powered by independent ad tech. We have to bolster the whole ecosystem. Investment in the space is super important. But anyways, long window way, you'll probably have to wait for a later filing to do some jujitsu math and figure.
- [23:01]
Chris
But I can tell you what's great about Viant is we have a great setup for the entrepreneurs to continue to make money on the upside because we are a public equity. And so I think having this structure of us with a public equity, a very large balance sheet of cash, no debt, we're generating cash flow. It attracts other entrepreneurs to partner up. Then they don't have to worry about raising more capital in future rounds. They get to borrow the strength of our balance sheet, the resources and get the independence to basically continue to grow.
- [23:33]
Ad Tech God
Well, I'll just ask Eric and Joe because architecture is on their website for investments. I'll just ask them later.
- [23:38]
Tim
Yeah, you could be on the same LP call as we are.
- [23:41]
Ad Tech God
Yeah, I won't, I won't leak it unless they say it's okay. But everybody's been asking, everybody wants to know. But thank you guys. I really appreciate you guys being here and thanks for taking time. I know you've been traveling quite a bit.
- [23:52]
Chris
Thanks a lot atg. Look forward to catching up again soon.
- [23:55]
Ad Tech God
Awesome. Same here. Thank you.
- [23:57]
Tim
Bye. Thanks.
- [23:59]
Ad Tech God
Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Ad Tech God Pod, a podcast for the people about the people that make ad tech great. Stay connected with me for more insights, trends and interviews in the realm of ad tech. Don't miss out on our latest updates, so follow me on X Instagram and connect with me on LinkedIn. Don't forget ATG Slack community has insights, networking opportunities and jobs. Keep the conversation going and stay at the forefront of adtech innovation.