Viant Technology Inc.

Okay. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Viant's fourth quarter 2023 earnings conference call. My name is David, and I will be your operator today. Before I hand the call over to the Viant leadership team, I'd like to go over a few housekeeping notes for the program. As a reminder, this webinar is being recorded. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a Q&A session. If you plan to ask a question, please ensure you've set your Zoom name to display your full name and firm. If you would like to ask a question during that time, please use the raised hand function located at the bottom of your screen, which will pop up prior to the Q&A session. And with that out of the way, I would now like to turn the call over to Nicole Kunzman with the Blue Shirt Group.

Thank you, David. Good afternoon and welcome to Viant Technologies' fourth quarter 2020 tweet. 2023 Earnings Conference Call. On the call today are Tim Vanderhoek, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Chris Vanderhoek, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer, and Larry Madden, Chief Financial Officer. I'd like to remind you that we will make forward-looking statements on our call today, including but not limited to our guidance for Q1 2024 and our platform development initiatives that are based on assumptions and subject to future events, risks, and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. These forward-looking statements speak only as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update or revise these statements except as required by law. For more information about factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements in our entire Safe Harbor statement, please refer to the news release issued today, as well as the risks and uncertainties described in our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2023, under the heading Risk Factors and Other Filings with the SEC. During today's call, we will also present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Additional disclosures regarding these non-GAAP measures, including a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures, are included in the news release issued today, which has been posted on the investor relations page of the company's website and in our filings with the SEC. I would now like to turn the call over to Tim Vanderhoof, Chief Executive Officer of IAM. Tim?

Thanks, Nicole, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today. I'm extremely pleased with our results in the fourth quarter, which reflect the accelerating momentum we are seeing across our business. Revenue in the fourth quarter grew 18% year over year, while contribution XTAC grew 28%, resulting in an almost 400% increase in adjusted EBITDA for the quarter. Our growth in contribution XTAC was the highest we've had since the post-COVID recovery spike in 2021. This was driven by a record quarter for total ad spend on our platform as we continue to grow our market share and capture more of our customers' ad budgets. I'm pleased with our team's commitment to execution as we closed out a strong year of growth and innovation for Vyant. The success we are having today is a result of the strategic role we play in the programmatic ad ecosystem as an independent buy-side platform, coupled with our ability to capitalize on this position with our strong product market fit. Viant is one of only four enterprise-grade self-service demand-side platforms in the market. and one of only two platforms that are buy-side only, meaning that we are completely independent from representing any publisher inventory. We believe marketers are becoming more acutely aware that they need an omnichannel platform that doesn't also service publishers to achieve their desired campaign outcomes. Viant fits squarely with what advertisers today are looking for, particularly with mid-market businesses that require a more data-driven platform that can achieve better outcomes along with a higher level of support compared to one-size-fits-all platforms that cater to large multinational brands. We continue to see increasing traction with larger mid-market customers as we become their go-to platform. One of the notable highlights from the fourth quarter was our strong double-digit growth in connected TV, representing almost 40% of total spend on our platform, our largest channel in the quarter. Our success with CTV is being driven in part by our household ID technology that allows advertisers to achieve targeting and attribution in cookie-free environments, which is particularly critical for connected TV. We have achieved meaningful scale with customers using our household ID. Approximately 90% of the CTV ad spend through our platform utilizes our household ID. We think this is indicative of the penetration we could see across all channels once cookies have been phased out. We have invested more than 10 years of R&D and customer education on our household ID technology. on the premise that cookie-based advertising would one day be obsolete across all channels. And this vision is becoming much closer to a reality today. Perhaps what's most important is that we're really seeing this mindset shift with advertisers. They are looking for alternative solutions that support cookie-less advertising and measurement as they realize measurement and reporting that is relying on cookies won't work anymore. We have done extensive education and A-B testing with customers who have seen for themselves that they can achieve greater campaign results with Household ID compared to the cookie. Household ID has lower instances of fraud, higher accuracy of addressability, and far superior measurement capabilities as it measures both e-commerce and in-store sales activity resulting from ad campaigns. The strength and scale of our household ID is a core driver of our recent results and is responsible for one of the strongest new customer pipelines in our company's history. Another reason we are seeing strong momentum in CTV is the ongoing expansion of our direct access offering. In today's programmatic ad landscape, there are multiple players on each side of the ecosystem that are charging for services and driving the cost of ad impressions higher. With Direct Access, we are partnering with many of the largest CTV content owners in the industry to bring this inventory directly to our customers. Advertisers see a lower cost of media with a higher win rate in ad auctions, as well as fewer instances of fraud all contributing to better return on ad spend and better campaign performance. And direct access isn't just about delivering better pricing to our customers. It's also about enabling our customers to match their first-party data with the largest content owners in the world, essentially enabling walled garden level addressability on the world's most premium content. We think this creates a massive amount of value for our customers. and they are seeing that they can deliver on their campaign KPIs through CTV direct access better than they would be able to on social or search. This traction is clearly materializing in our results as over 40% of our CTV spend in the quarter was through our direct access program, up from over 25% in Q3. We are continuing to extend the capabilities of our platform across all channels, by expanding on our AI product suite, which Chris will dive into further in a minute. These new features will help customers save money, drive a higher return on ad spend, and enable them to be more efficient with their advertising dollars, which we believe will drive further consolidation of their ad budgets on our platform. We see a significant opportunity to scale our business by leveraging AI and machine learning technology to build the features and automation that best serve the needs of mid-market customers. The investments we're making in our platform and innovation have been recognized by industry leaders, and we are pleased that our AI product suite won the 2024 Innovation Award from Business Intelligence Group. This recognition further validates that we are making notable strides towards our vision of autonomous advertising. A final topic I want to touch on is our focus on sustainability and our goal to decarbonize digital advertising. For our company, I am proud to announce that Viant has achieved carbon neutral status in 2023, as indicated in our first sustainability report we republished last week. I am incredibly proud of the team that worked on this company-wide goal, and it now enables us to turn our efforts to delivering a completely carbon-free supply chain for our customers. We also launched our AdTricity program last year, which helps our advertising customers quantify the carbon footprint of their ad campaigns and is designed to enable them to curb their own emissions stemming from their digital ad spend to meet their corporate sustainability goals. We continue to believe that advertisers will choose to spend their ad dollars through a platform that enables them to not just drive efficient ad pricing, but also do so with no emissions. Viant delivers on both of those tenets, and we believe we have a substantial lead over our competitors when it comes to providing marketers with a sustainable supply chain. With that, I'll turn it over to Chris to cover some of our recent product updates. Thanks, Tim. I'd like to take a few minutes today discussing our top priorities for 2024 that frame our strategy for growing our market share in the quarters and years ahead. The first priority is continuing to integrate more AI and machine learning into our platform to deliver a better experience for our customers. We had a strong year of incorporating premium AI products into our platform in 2023 that have been delivering on customer happiness as they continue to see better results and a more efficient user experience. This point can't be overstated as customers of DSPs look for platforms that are easy to use, hit their KPIs, and are supported by someone that only serves their interests. On that note, in 2023, we rolled out two key initiatives that further leverage the power of AI to make our platform better and easier to use for customers. The first is our AI debt optimizer offering, and the second is our Viant data platform. I'd like to elaborate further on both, specifically how we're leveraging AI and machine learning to make improvements to our customers' experience by getting them more return on their ad dollars. At the same time, these products are priced to help drive our revenue while saving money for our customers. We launched our AI-powered Bid Optimizer in Q2 of 2023, and we've seen strong adoption from our customer base. We've seen incredible adoption with this product because it has helped our customers achieve 35% average savings from a CPM standpoint. Bid Optimizer leverages AI to find the best pricing on publisher inventory, while also driving higher win rates for customers in ad auctions. We believe that passing this efficiency and cost savings along to our customer not only increases their return on ad spend, but also increases their spend on our platform to reach a wider audience. At the same time, we see a significant revenue opportunity for us from our AI BitOptimizer product, as we take a small percentage of the savings that's generated while the rest is passed along to our customers. We're excited by the customer response we've received for AI BitOptimizer, so much so that we've been hard at work developing the second generation of this product that we plan to launch later this summer. We expect it will generate even higher savings compared to our current offering, which is going to deliver even bigger wins for our customers. Our second AI-enhanced product is related to the Viant data platform. Our data platform activates first-party data from customers leveraging personal identifiers such as home address, name, email, and phone numbers. And it doesn't rely on cookies. We've seen good early customer adoption of the Viant Data Platform as seven out of our top 10 customers were using it in 2023. And there's certainly a virtuous cycle with the Viant Data Platform. These large customers have spent more with us because they have achieved outsized campaign performance. Why is this? It's because the Viant data platform creates connectivity of customer first-party data that often sits dormant in a clean room and directly activates that data in the Viant DSP. Many advertisers have selected to house their data in clean rooms, but few have any idea how to make that data actionable across their advertising campaigns. The Viant Data Platform gives advertisers the ability to frictionlessly match first-party data in their cleanroom to the platform, build custom AI targeting models, and measure their sales activity, resulting from the ad impressions delivered in the DSP. The most measurable platforms will be the big winners, but you can't measure unless you have access to the sales data. And with cookies disappearing, advertisers are seeking a platform that can make their first-party data interoperable for targeting and measurement use cases across their programmatic campaigns. This is why we are so excited about the opportunity for the Viant Data Platform. At our Innovation Day back in October, we announced that we plan to introduce a number of new AI products, most notably Chat with Data within the Viant Data Platform. Previously, users needed to have some knowledge of advanced programming languages to use the software. But now, with the use of generative AI and a natural language user interface, we're enabling non-programming business users with no coding experience. We're giving them access to the data and services that the Viant Data Platform provides. We believe this will help meaningfully drive adoption across our customer base. And with the rollout of these new features, we're optimistic that we should be able to see adoption rates similar to what we've seen with AI BitOptimizer in recent quarters. In addition, we see the Viant Data platform as a meaningful revenue-generating opportunity for us as we deliver a superior product that enhances our customers' experience with programmatic advertising. We look forward to the official launch of Chat with Data later this year. And finally, I want to reiterate our position as a buy-side-only, demand-side platform and how it's so increasingly important for advertisers. Our ability to deliver products such as direct access and AI bid optimizer are really only possible because of our dedication and commitment to our advertiser customers, ensuring they receive the best possible pricing on ad inventory while driving their return on ad spend higher. Our customers are in turn able to get transparent data to see which publishers are helping them achieve their campaign and audience goals. And they can independently choose whether or not they want to continue working with specific publishers, depending on the results they are seeing. It's not up to Viant to direct our customers to work with certain publishers. We're proud to be able to give our customers choice without having any competing incentive to drive them one way or another. As Tim mentioned, There are very few independent buy-side platforms in the ecosystem, and we're continuing to build on our capabilities to deliver the best experience for our advertising customers. We're really excited about the new product features we have on the horizon, and we look forward to providing updates in the near term as new offerings become available. With that, I'll turn it over to Larry to provide more detail on our financial performance. Larry?