Viant Technology Inc.

Thank you for everyone that has joined us so far. We're just going to give it about 30 seconds and we'll get started soon. Thanks everyone for joining us today. We'll get started momentarily. Okay. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Viant Technologies' third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. My name is Dave, and I will be your operator today. Before I hand the call off to the Viant leadership team, I'd like to go over just a few housekeeping notes for the program. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. After the speaker remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you plan to ask a question, please ensure that you've set your Zoom name to display your full name and firm you are with. And if you'd like to ask a question during the call, please use the raise hand feature in Zoom, which is located in the controls at the bottom of your Zoom screen. You could raise your hand at any time and be cued. And thank you for your attendance today. I will now turn the call over to Nick Zangler, VP of Investor Relations for Viant.

Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome to Vine Technologies' third quarter 2025 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 statements regarding our guidance for Q4 2025 and other future financial results, our strategy, our platform development initiatives, including Vine AI, our pipeline and potential partnership opportunities, and industry trends 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, and our entire Safe Harbor statement, please refer to the news release issued today, as well as the risks and uncertainties described in our quarterly report on Form 10-Q, for the quarter ended September 30th, 2025 under the heading risk factors and our 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 and in our earnings presentation. which have 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 Vanderhoek, Chief Executive Officer of Viant. Tim.

Thanks, Nick, and thank you all for joining us today. We delivered a strong third quarter performance, achieving new company records across all key metrics. Revenue increased 7% year over year and contribution XTAC increased 12% year over year, both well above the midpoint of our quarterly guidance range. When excluding temporary items like political advertising, revenue and contribution XTAC increased 19% and 22% respectively, and more accurately reflects the true strength of our business. Growth was driven by new customer wins, accelerating CTV demand, a surge in streaming audio demand, greater adoption of Viant's addressability solutions, and the expanded use of the Viant AI product suite. Adjusted EBITDA increased 9% year over year to $16 million for the quarter and surpassed the high end of our guidance range. On our previous earnings call, we discussed an incremental $250 million in potential ad spend opportunities associated with ongoing discussions with major US advertisers, representative of a new addressable market for Viant. We are thrilled with our recent progress, which includes multiple client wins and is highlighted by a flagship multi-year partnership with Molson Coors, one of the world's largest beverage companies. Viant has been designated as the advertising platform for Molson Coors and will power their programmatic ad campaigns deployed across the open internet throughout the US beginning in 2026. Viant was selected because of our proprietary intelligence layer, which combines our industry leading addressability solutions with our autonomous advertising capabilities to uniquely activate first party data, reach targeted audiences, and achieve measurable outcomes at scale. Molson Coors manages a diverse product portfolio, including core power brands, premium brands, and value brands, each of which services a distinct customer demographic. Viant is uniquely capable of finding both existing and potential customers by leveraging our intelligence layer. By integrating their first-party data into our autonomous ad platform, we aim to empower Molson Coors to reach the appropriate legal drinking age audience for each brand while ensuring that every impression delivers measurable value. This is precision marketing at scale, made possible through Viant's autonomous ad platform. Molson Coors joins one of many major US brand advertisers who share our vision of achieving outcomes through autonomous advertising. With multiple wins in place, the broader market is increasingly recognizing Viant as the autonomous advertising platform for the open internet. And for good reason, our value proposition is unmatched. First and foremost, we are an independent and objective partner, free of the conflicts of interest that exist with our competitors. Remember, many of our peers either sell owned and operated inventory, or they monetize certain supply paths, putting their interests at odds with their advertiser clients. google direct spend to youtube amazon direct spend to prime video and the trade desk direct spend through open path all to extract more margin for themselves and ultimately to the detriment of the advertiser At Viant, we pride ourselves in directing spend to ad inventory that drives the highest return on ad spend for the advertiser. We own no publisher content and our incentives are directly aligned with those of our advertiser clients. Viant is also a leader in proliferating secular growth channels, CTV and streaming audio, offering advertisers the ability to purchase ad inventory through our direct access premium publisher program. the industry's most efficient path to purchase premium CTV and streaming audio ad inventory. Through direct access, more ad spend is allocated to working media, which means dollars deployed on Viant's platform go further, generating more ad impressions for advertisers than on many competing platforms. And as referenced a moment ago, at the core of our autonomous ad platform is an intelligence layer that is giving our customers the ability to drive higher returns in open internet advertising. Viant is the only platform where advertisers can leverage AI to harness what we believe to be the industry's most powerful audience identifier, household ID, and the industry's most powerful content identifier, Iris ID, to cut through the noise and deploy precise, hyper-targeted campaigns at scale through the most efficient supply paths. This value proposition is resonating with brand advertisers more so than ever before. And I am pleased to report that throughout the quarter, we made tremendous progress, further enhancing this value proposition as part of our relentless focus on innovation. On that note, I will provide an update on performance and progress across our key strategic priorities, CTV, addressability, and Viant AI. CTV was the strongest driver of Contribution XTAC growth in the quarter, exhibiting an accelerating year-over-year growth rate. Our results consistently demonstrate our leadership position in CTV, and this quarter was no different. Total CTV ad spend on our platform reached a new all-time high and represented 46% of total advertiser spend on our platform, also an all-time high. Year to date, approximately half of all CTV ad spend on our platform has been directed by our customers to run through our direct access publisher program, which offers an efficient, targetable and measurable way to purchase CTV inventory. The vast majority of leading streaming services have joined the Direct Access program, including Disney+, Paramount+, NBCU, Tubi, Samsung, and many more. Increasing adoption of our addressability solutions, Household ID and IRIS ID, both of which are purpose-built for CTV, further propelled demand for CTV on our platform, leading to outsized growth relative to our peers. Viance Household ID, our patented audience targeting and measurement solution, continues to see strong utilization amongst advertisers and was a meaningful contributor to top line growth in the quarter. Household ID delivers superior addressability for advertisers looking to leverage their first party data to reach specific audiences and measure campaign performance. Household ID identifies approximately 95% of US households and is available across roughly 80% of all biddable ad inventory, four times the coverage of key competing identifiers, which reach only about 20% of biddable ad inventory. Our content targeting and measurement solution, IrisID, continues to ramp across publishers, enticing a growing number of advertisers to deploy contextually targeted campaigns on our platform. We recently added Tubi, a leading fast streaming service with over 100 million monthly active users, to our pool of Iris-enabled publishers, joining the likes of Paramount+, AMC Networks, Whirl, Lionsgate, CNN, LG, Vizio, and many more. in just one year since acquisition we have more than tripled the presence of iris id across the ctv bid stream and we believe we have a clear path to achieve 50 of the ctv bid stream penetration in the next few months Iris ID is a powerful performance solution, enabling advertisers to achieve unprecedented levels of precision by targeting CTV ad inventory at the video level. which includes scene level targeting. Consider for a moment the possibilities of scene level targeting where brands align with a seemingly infinite assortment of themes. Imagine brands like Tide Laundry Detergent targeting stains, Bounty Paper Towels targeting spills, and Coca-Cola targeting happiness. The possibilities are limitless. and most importantly iris id works when utilized on our platform advertisers are seeing on average a 48 increase in conversion rates versus control groups given the effectiveness of contextual targeting strategies deployed with viant advertisers are buying in in fact in q3 revenue attached to the iris id more than doubled sequentially versus the prior quarter Last quarter, we announced a partnership with IPG Axiom, where IrisID is powering their content targeting offering. IPG is requiring all content owners with upfront commitments to carry IrisID, and we believe this partnership will help further drive IrisID into the CTV ecosystem. Moving on to Vyan AI. Our autonomous ad platform is powered by the Vyan AI product suite. We have successfully rolled out three of the four phases comprising the Vyan AI product suite. Vyan AI consists of AI bidding, AI planning, AI measurement and analysis, and AI decisioning. I'll provide a brief update on all four phases. AI bidding continues to automate approximately 85% of the ad spend on our platform. With AI bidding, advertisers enable Viance algorithms to find and buy optimal ad placements across the open internet, aiming for the lowest cost while meeting their desired KPIs, which often include reach, frequency, and other targeting requirements. With surging use, contribution XTAC generated from AI bidding more than doubled year over year in the quarter and growth accelerated for the fourth straight quarter. We recently launched AI bidding 3.0 ahead of schedule, which is expected to deliver even greater media cost reductions to our clients. AI planning most clearly showcases our intelligence layer at work and represents the future of ad campaign creation and execution at Viant. AI planning enables any advertiser from an SMB to an enterprise marketer to create a brand or product specific ad campaign in seconds. We replace the complex DSP UI with a single prompt that requires just four inputs. the advertiser, the budget, the timeframe, and the goal. Within seconds of submission, an ad campaign designed to maximize return on ad spend is fully constructed and ready for deployment. Our intelligence layer identifies the ideal audience segment for any brand, product, or service, then utilizes advertiser first party data together with our addressability solutions, historical campaign performance data, and bidding algorithms to most efficiently allocate the budget across various digital channels, publishers, geographies, audiences, video level content, time of day, and more to execute campaigns capable of delivering the most optimal outcomes. In preparation of our launch of AI decisioning, AI planning has been significantly enhanced, now capable of building and executing campaigns for niche performance advertisers and even individual products or services. For example, AI planning can now build and execute a campaign for every single pair of shoes on Nike's website. each uniquely tailored to address a specifically defined audience through calculated digital channel allocations and use of specific audience and contextual targeting segments. With this new enhanced level of precision, enterprises and mid-market advertisers can reconfigure marketing strategies for increased efficiency and performance advertisers, including SMBs and direct-to-consumer e-commerce companies. They can readily engage the most highly effective digital channels like CTV. Of course, powering this enhanced level of precision are our proprietary addressability solutions, Household ID and IRIS ID, both of which are now fully incorporated into our intelligence layer. AI measurement and analysis launched earlier this year and replaces traditional reporting with on-demand insights. Historically, campaign performance data has been spread across multiple dashboards, buried in spreadsheets, and has required the expertise of specialized data scientists to interpret results and identify actionable insights. AI measurement and analysis surfaces actionable insights and optimization opportunities in an instant via an intuitive chat-based interface. Think of AI measurement and analysis as a trusted co-pilot providing on-demand answers and recommendations to all campaign performance-related queries, an essential feature necessary to properly support performance advertisers. AI decisioning set to launch at year end will truly usher in the outcomes era of programmatic advertising at Viant by combining AI bidding, AI planning, and AI measurement and analysis with the added capability of dynamic spend deployment. AI decisioning proactively reacts to fluid market conditions and adjust campaigns in real time to deliver optimal campaign results. AI decisioning is expected to enable Viant to expand our addressable market to include performance advertisers who are in need of a do-it-for-me solution that can service them across the open internet. Our autonomous advertising platform will compete with Google's PMAX and Demand Gen solutions, as well as Meta's Advantage Plus solution, but will direct spend to demand generation channels like CTV and streaming audio that drive incremental lift, as opposed to demand capture channels like Search and Social, where ad spend is directed to audiences that often would have converted anyway. To summarize, we delivered impressive results attributable to strong underlying performance, particularly in CTV, where we are continuously expanding our leadership position. We believe our partnership with Molson Coors underscores our platform's unique advantages over our much larger competitors. And we strengthened our value proposition through improvements in our CTV offering, addressability solutions, and the Viant AI product suite. With headwinds easing, underlying performance strengthening, and a marquee client win established, we are poised to meaningfully accelerate growth going forward. With that, I'll pass it over to Chris.