U of Digital Newsletter - 11/14/24 (free)

November 6th-November 13th

Below is a roundup of last week’s notable industry news, with summaries and our opinions. This is a big one! Lots of juicy news to unpack, including tabloid-style drama, lots more Q3 earnings, and a flurry of acquisitions…

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Top Stories 👁️ 

Viant Acquires CTV Data Business IRIS.TV
Source: VideoWeek
November 13th, 2024

Summary: The demand-side platform (DSP) Viant is betting big on connected TV (CTV) contextual tech with a deal for IRIS.TV. The platform ingests and standardizes raw metadata from publishers' video libraries in order to make it “addressable” (e.g. targetable, measureable) across platforms via their IRIS_ID. In addition to strengthening Viant's CTV position, the companies say the acquisition will bring IRIS_ID to more major CTV publishers due to Viant’s relationships, with the goal of expanding its reach to the entire CTV ecosystem. IRIS_ID is passed through the bidstream, where IRIS-enabled partners can decode it for contextual targeting, measurement, brand safety, and planning. 

IRIS says it has integrated with more than 1,400 video content owners, platforms, and content management systems, enabling it to index more than 60M streaming video files for things like context, sentiment, and brand suitability. This goes way beyond the basic app, genre, and show level data available in CTV that advertisers typically use to make buying decisions.

After the deal closes, IRIS will still operate independently under co-founders Field Garthwaite and Richie Hyden. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. 

Deal Grades:
IRIS: INC (depends on how much they sold for)
Viant: INC (depends on how much they paid)

Opinion: Let’s get the basics out of the way. 

Viant is a demand-side platform that has been aggressive in identity and CTV. IRIS is a contextual data company that helps fill targeting and measurement gaps (see: identity) in CTV.

Well, maybe. 

IRIS makes money by making their data as ubiquitous as possible across the programmatic ecosystem, within DSPs, SSPs, identity solutions, brand safety solutions, etc. Now that IRIS is part of Viant, that gets a little harder to do, since Viant is a DSP that is competing with other DSPs like The Trade Desk, Google’s DV360, Yahoo DSP, etc. If Viant is going to maximize IRIS, Viant will let it continue to do its own thing, which seems like their plan for now. But still, other DSPs (and even SSPs) may think twice now before working with IRIS to avoid propping up a competitor in Viant.

For Viant, offering IRIS as part of their suite of CTV targeting solutions and identity graph gives their DSP a boost. And surely, Viant will create some advantages around IRIS that other DSPs won’t be able to offer (e.g., pricing, ease of execution, data carve-outs, etc). But they can’t do much more than that if they want IRIS to thrive, right?

It’s like if Whole Foods went out and bought Ben & Jerry’s with the intention of letting them operate independently and continue selling their ice cream at every grocery store. Is that really better for Ben & Jerry’s business? And wouldn’t Whole Foods be better served investing their money into a more clear-cut 2+2=5 oppotunity?

On yesterday’s emergency AdTechGod Pod about the acquisition, Viant’s Co-CEOs said it’s all about backing a company that is building cool tech in order to enable smarter CTV buying that will help the ad tech industry compete with the big walled gardens. And that if all the non-walled garden CTV boats rise, so will theirs. That’s a great story! But from a business perspective, for these two specific companies, especially without knowing the financial terms, we don’t quite get it…

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That’s It For This Week 👋

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