Viant believes DSPs should be DSPs

Viant is a 24-plus-year-old, scaled ad tech company that has gone through many permutations. From its roots, as an ad network called Specific Media, the company acquired the social network MySpace and later Adelphic to become a full-fledged DSP. And it’s now reportedly in merger talks with MediaMath to further consolidate its ownership of the category, per Digiday. In this conversation with Ari Paparo, Viant CEO Tim Vanderhook talks about the company’s current approach to identity and bidding, and explains why he doesn’t buy into the recent trend toward unified programmatic platforms — epitomized by The Trade Desk’s Open Path offering to publishers. “When I walk into a customer, I tell 'em, I work on behalf of you,” he said. “We're gonna get the lowest possible CPM we can get for the inventory, using all the algorithms at our disposal. It's going to war against yield management platforms that have extremely sophisticated technology on the other side to see how much they can bid you up.” Recorded: June 2023

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