Viant Technology reported on November 9, 2026 that third-quarter revenue rose 29% to $110.4 million, the largest quarterly figure in the company's history, while consolidated net income fell 49% to $2.6 million. Net income attributable to Viant Technology Inc., the listed holding company, came to $67,000, against $996,000 a year earlier, which left GAAP earnings per Class A share at $0.00.

The company's preferred measures told a different story. Contribution ex-TAC, which strips out traffic acquisition costs, rose 27% to $67.2 million, and adjusted EBITDA increased 24% to $19.8 million. Both beat the top of the guidance Viant gave in August. Alongside the numbers, the Irvine, California company disclosed that it had closed a $20 million cash acquisition of Waymark, a generative AI video production platform, on November 6, raised its share repurchase authorization by $50 million to $150 million, and opened its buying platform to Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor through direct integrations.

In Short

Viant, a company that buys digital ads on behalf of advertisers, grew third-quarter revenue 29% to $110.4 million, yet its GAAP net income halved to $2.6 million as stock compensation, legal and accounting costs climbed. Most of the growth came from healthcare and public-services advertisers, and connected TV now accounts for more than half of what advertisers spend through the platform, so the business leans on a narrower base than the headline rate suggests. The company is betting on a $20 million purchase of Waymark, which generates TV ads with AI, and on access through chatbots such as Claude and ChatGPT to bring smaller advertisers in, while guiding fourth-quarter revenue to $130.5 million to $133.5 million.

The quarter in numbers

Revenue for the three months to September 30, 2026 reached $110,428,000, against $85,582,000 a year earlier, according to the condensed consolidated statements of operations in Viant's Form 10-Q, filed the same day as the earnings release. Gross profit, which Viant calculates as revenue less platform operations expense, rose 30% to $51.6 million.

Sequentially, revenue grew 6% from the second quarter's $104.3 million. Contribution ex-TAC grew 12% from $60.2 million. Adjusted EBITDA jumped about 40% from $14.2 million, and adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of contribution ex-TAC widened to 29% from 24% in the second quarter. That margin was still lower than the 30% Viant recorded in the third quarter of 2025, a decline of a little under one percentage point on the unrounded figures, a PPC Land calculation.

Non-GAAP net income rose 20% to $13.4 million, and non-GAAP earnings per Class A share were $0.14 basic and $0.13 diluted, against $0.12 on both bases a year earlier. The gap between the $13.4 million non-GAAP figure and the $2.6 million GAAP figure is mostly stock-based compensation, which Viant adds back: $10.4 million in the quarter, up 61% from $6.4 million.

The company had guided, on August 10, 2026, to third-quarter revenue of $107.5 million to $110.5 million and adjusted EBITDA of $18.5 million to $19.5 million, as PPC Land reported on Viant's second quarter. The actual revenue of $110.4 million landed $0.1 million below the top of that range. According to a table in the earnings presentation, revenue beat the guidance midpoint by $1.4 million, contribution ex-TAC by $1.2 million and adjusted EBITDA by $0.8 million. The same table shows non-GAAP operating expenses of $47.4 million, $0.4 million above the $47.0 million midpoint, even though a bullet point on that slide says contribution ex-TAC, non-GAAP operating expenses and adjusted EBITDA "all outperformed high end of our guidance."

GAAP profit moved the other way

Income from operations fell to $1.9 million from $4.2 million a year earlier. Total operating expenses rose 33% to $108.6 million, outpacing revenue. The largest single line, platform operations, rose 29% to $58.8 million, driven by a $10.6 million increase in traffic acquisition costs to $43.2 million. TAC grew 33%, faster than revenue, so it absorbed 39.1% of revenue against 38.1% a year earlier, a PPC Land calculation from the reported figures.

General and administrative expense rose 55% to $17.4 million. The 10-Q attributes the increase primarily to a $2.6 million rise in accounting and legal expenses "associated with general corporate, compliance, and transaction-related matters," a $1.8 million increase in personnel costs, $0.7 million more in stock-based compensation and a $0.4 million increase in bad debt expense. Technology and development expense rose 39% to $10.7 million, with $1.7 million of that increase coming from stock-based compensation. Sales and marketing expense grew 29% to $21.7 million.

Over nine months, Viant recorded a net loss of $1.4 million on revenue of $303.2 million, against net income of $3.6 million on $234.1 million in the first nine months of 2025.

Two verticals carried the growth

The earnings presentation says growth "continues to be broad-based across verticals." The 10-Q gives a narrower picture. Revenue rose $24.8 million in the quarter, "primarily due to a 81% increase in revenue from marketers in the healthcare and public services industry verticals, while revenue attributable to marketers across our remaining industry verticals increased 7%," according to the filing. Over nine months, the same two verticals grew 61%, against 17% for the rest.

Working backwards from those two growth rates, healthcare and public services generated about $25.5 million of revenue in the third quarter of 2025 and about $46.1 million in the third quarter of 2026, roughly 42% of the total. The other verticals moved from about $60.1 million to about $64.3 million. On that arithmetic, a PPC Land calculation based on the rounded percentages in the filing, the two verticals supplied about $20.6 million of the $24.8 million increase, or more than four-fifths of it.

The filing does not split healthcare from public services, and it does not say how much of the public-services category is government or political advertising. Larry Madden, Viant's chief financial officer, told analysts on the earnings call that the quarter's performance was "primarily driven by organic growth, with minimal contribution from political and TVision." He said the top five verticals accounted for more than 65% of platform spend and grew about 30% together.

Concentration also shows up at the customer level. One advertising agency holding company accounted for 11.6% of consolidated revenue in the third quarter and 12.3% over nine months, according to the 10-Q. In the same periods of 2025, no single customer or holding company exceeded 10%. The filing does not name the holding company.

CTV passes half of platform spend

Connected TV advertiser spend rose nearly 40% year over year, reached a record high and represented more than 50% of total advertiser spend on the platform, according to the release. A year earlier, Viant reported that CTV was 46% of advertiser spend, then an all-time high. Madden said video, including CTV, accounted for nearly 70% of total platform spend, also a record. CTV, streaming audio and digital out-of-home together represented more than 60% of customer-directed spend, against 54% for the full year 2025.

Viant does not disclose advertiser spend in dollars. It defines the metric as the total amount billed to customers, including media, third-party data, add-on features and the platform fee, and uses it as a "qualitative indicator" of market penetration, according to the 10-Q. The CTV percentages therefore cannot be converted into a dollar volume from the published documents.

For the second consecutive quarter, more than 80% of CTV spend ran through Direct Access, Viant's route that connects buyers to publishers without a reseller in between. In the first quarter of 2026, the figure was more than 50%. When Viant opened its bidder to publishers with the free SupplyIQ dashboard in June, it put the share at 85%. In September, the company extended Direct Access to private marketplace and programmatic guaranteed deals, saying neither buyer nor seller pays to set up or run a deal on that route.

Chris Vanderhook, Viant's co-founder and chief operating officer, described the fee point on the call as a selling argument in head-to-head tests: buyers compare the CPMs they pay to content owners on another platform with what they pay through Direct Access "and seeing the savings." No savings figure was given on the call or in the filings.

Waymark: $20 million for generated CTV creative

The acquisition of Waymark I, Inc. closed on November 6, 2026, three days before results, according to the subsequent events note in the 10-Q. The purchase consideration was $20.0 million in cash, "subject to customary adjustments and hold-backs." Viant expects to account for the deal as a business combination and had not yet determined the initial purchase accounting when it filed.

Waymark converts brand inputs into complete video ads with scripts, visuals and voiceovers. Chris Vanderhook named its existing media partners on the call: Spectrum Reach, Nexstar, Sinclair, Comcast, NBCU, Fox, Scripps, Gray, Hearst, TEGNA and Cox Media Group. Those groups use Waymark to produce linear TV and CTV creative for advertisers buying their inventory, many of them local businesses.

"By combining Waymark's generative AI with our audience, content, and attention intelligence, we can empower advertisers of all sizes to produce audience tailored, contextually relevant, and attention-optimized creatives in minutes and at a fraction of traditional costs," Tim Vanderhook, co-founder and chief executive, said in the release.

On the call he went further. "The paradigm is shifting. TV is no longer reserved only for the world's largest brands," he said, adding that removing production costs could let the number of CTV advertisers "scale from thousands to millions." Viant's plan is to generate variations of one ad for different audience segments, selected by Household ID; for different programs, matched by IRIS Content ID; and to place them against TVision's attention data before the bid.

Chris Vanderhook used a university as the example. Sports viewers would see an ad about athletics, academically minded prospects one about academic standing, others one about campus life. "Instead of broadcasting a single static ad to the masses, we can distribute tailored creative variations designed to resonate with each specific audience," he said.

Who pays, and what it adds

Madden said Waymark's contribution to fourth-quarter results would be immaterial and that its standalone top-line contribution in 2027 would "remain modest." Tim Vanderhook said smaller customers would get Waymark bundled into the platform, while enterprise customers, who "like all fees broken out," would see it as an add-on if they choose to use it. Viant plans to add Waymark to its AI model integrations.

An analyst from Needham raised a channel-conflict question: whether a creative tool aimed at small and medium-sized businesses could unsettle the ad agencies that serve Viant's mid-market and larger clients. She named MNTN, which has a base of small and medium-sized advertisers, as the comparison. Tim Vanderhook said Waymark's current go-to-market runs through local media sellers serving mid-sized and small businesses, and that agencies would look for such tools for their own clients.

He also cited TVision attention data to argue that new creative matters. Long-running ads, "think personal injury ads," hold attention "sub 25%," he said, while fresh creative "skyrockets above 80%." He did not describe the sample or the method behind those figures. Answering a later question from Raymond James, he said large advertisers often run one production for three to six months and that "users are over-frequenced," a pattern the industry calls creative fatigue. He added that Viant does not expect enterprise customers to be the first users of Waymark.

The move puts Viant closer to rivals that already pair self-serve TV buying with creative production. MNTN launched QuickFrame AI in October 2025, producing complete ads from a URL in about 12 minutes, and Walmart agreed in June to buy Vibe.co, a self-serve CTV platform with more than 10,000 advertisers. MNTN's own small-advertiser model has hit trouble: on November 4 it cut its 2026 revenue forecast by about 11% after sales execution problems.

The 10-Q's risk factors set out what Waymark adds to Viant's exposure. Generated content may be "inaccurate, misleading, deceptive, infringing or otherwise inappropriate," the filing says, and generative AI "has lowered the barriers to producing realistic deepfakes, manipulated audio and video, and fabricated or misleading political advertising." Waymark also collects and processes personal information from users and enterprise customers across multiple jurisdictions, according to the filing, which lists the integration of its data practices with Viant's as a specific risk.

TVision: a mobile meter and a bigger panel

Viant agreed in April to buy TVision Insights for $40 million, split between cash and stock, and completed the deal on May 1, 2026, according to the 10-Q. The filing now puts the estimated purchase consideration at about $37.3 million: $16.2 million in cash, $18.9 million in Class A stock and an amount payable under a $4.2 million holdback. A post-closing working capital adjustment of about $2.0 million reduced the consideration. Of the total, $13.2 million was recorded as goodwill and $12.3 million as intangible assets, including $1.1 million for "panelist relationships" amortized over four years.

TVision's panel households carry computer vision and automatic content recognition technology that records four signals, according to Tim Vanderhook: in-room presence, co-viewership, second-by-second eyes-on-screen attention and viewer demographics. He said the signals cover linear TV, CTV and walled-garden platforms including YouTube and Prime Video, and that Viant uses attention scores as a pre-bid signal to compare an impression's value with its market price.

During the quarter Viant launched the TVision Mobile Meter. Chris Vanderhook said Viant plans "to passively monitor both TV and mobile device activity" in panel households, linking ad exposure on TV to searches on Google and LLMs, website visits, social media activity and purchases across the web and apps "like Amazon, Walmart, Target, and more." He described it this way: "TVision's Mobile Meter finally answers the foundational question advertisers have asked since the dawn of television: What happens after a viewer sees an ad?"

The meter has rolled out across "much of" the existing panel. Over the next year, Viant aims to triple TVision's reach to about 15,000 households and 50,000 individuals, spanning "the vast majority of U.S. DMAs," which Chris Vanderhook said would allow statistically significant results within individual markets. TVision's April announcement described a panel of 5,000 U.S. households.

Commercial use is still small. Tim Vanderhook said TVision usage was a "low single-digit percentage in the quarter" and remains in a "test and learn" phase. TVision's results were not material to Viant's consolidated results, according to the 10-Q, while Madden counted a full quarter of TVision among the reasons non-GAAP operating expenses rose.

Nielsen litigation came with the deal

TVision brought pending patent litigation with The Nielsen Company (US), LLC, which has filed multiple infringement actions against TVision since 2021, according to the 10-Q's risk factors. In June 2026, a jury returned a unanimous verdict that TVision did not infringe the asserted patent in the 2022 action (Case No. 1:22-cv-00057, D. Del.), which relates to automatic content recognition. In July, Nielsen filed post-trial motions seeking judgment of infringement or a new trial on infringement and damages. Those motions are pending, and no final judgment has been entered.

A second case, filed in 2025 (Case No. 1:25-cv-00575, D. Del.), alleges infringement of another Nielsen patent. In November 2025, TVision filed antitrust counterclaims in that action, alleging that Nielsen used serial patent litigation, exclusionary contract terms and monopoly power in TV audience measurement to suppress competition in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Viant says some litigation costs are covered by indemnification arrangements with TVision's former equityholders, but those arrangements are "subject to limitations and may not fully cover all losses." The measurement market around it is consolidating: Nielsen agreed in August to buy DoubleVerify for $2.15 billion.

Buying through Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor

Viant has established direct integrations with "leading AI frontier models, including Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor," according to the release, allowing advertisers to manage campaigns through natural language prompts outside its own interface. Tim Vanderhook said "over 41 skills" across the demand-side platform have been enabled through the Model Context Protocol, covering campaign creation, optimization and every change previously made through the self-service interface. He said Grok would follow "shortly."

The executives were candid about why. Familiarity with rival interfaces has kept advertisers on incumbent platforms. Tim Vanderhook said that "everyone knows how to use our competitor Google's platform and DV360 or The Trade Desk," calling that know-how "a big headwind and point of friction for us winning new customers." His argument is that natural-language access makes the interface irrelevant: "By moving to Claude or ChatGPT, that know-how or that moat that they have around the UI really starts to evaporate."

Chris Vanderhook called the approach "headless," meaning advertisers never log into Viant's interface. He said it should widen the customer base to "large DTCs, heavily data-driven advertisers that might be buying only in search and social."

So far the effect is limited to existing accounts. Asked by B. Riley whether the integrations bring in new advertisers, Tim Vanderhook said testing has been with current customers and that "right now, from current customers, it's the same budget." Other ad platforms have moved the same way this year: Meta opened its ads MCP server to any developer with a Meta app in July, and X released an ads MCP server with 23 tools in August.

The 10-Q carries a caution that sits alongside the strategy. Viant uses AI technologies licensed from third parties and "cannot control the availability or pricing" of them, the filing says. It also warns that agentic AI systems "could reduce the volume of consumer traffic to the open web and other channels, which could in turn reduce the supply of programmatic advertising inventory available on our platform."

Outcomes and the data layer

Outcomes, the autonomous campaign product within the ViantAI suite, now handles performance budgets for more than 10% of Viant's advertiser base, Tim Vanderhook said. All of the top 10 advertisers use it, allocating on average 26% of their on-platform spend to it. He positioned the product against Google's Performance Max and Meta's Advantage+. Asked whether that money was moved from existing Viant campaigns, Chris Vanderhook said it was "nearly all incremental budgets," taken from the performance teams that buy search and social. He also said Outcomes was "providing better performance than search and social," without presenting data on the call.

On the data products behind it:

  • Household ID: contribution ex-TAC from Household ID utilization reached its highest level for any third quarter. Viant describes the product as its patented approach to identity resolution, and Chris Vanderhook said CTV usage relies on publisher-authenticated data.
  • IRIS Content ID: IRIS-enabled ad spend rose 41% year over year. Tim Vanderhook claimed about 70% market share for IRIS and said it is exclusive to Viant's buying platform; no source for the share was given. Viant acquired IRIS.TV in November 2024, according to the 10-Q.
  • TVision attention data: low single-digit usage, as above.

Costs, stock pay and buybacks

Non-GAAP operating expenses rose 28% to $47.4 million. Excluding acquisitions, they rose 19% year over year and 1% sequentially, according to the presentation, which implies acquired businesses added roughly $3.4 million in the quarter, a PPC Land calculation from the rounded growth rates. Viant had about 463 employees on September 30, 2026, according to the 10-Q. Trailing twelve-month contribution ex-TAC per employee rose 8% to $563,000, based on average headcount of 430 against 382 a year earlier, the 13th consecutive quarterly increase.

Equity grants have grown faster than buybacks. Viant granted 5.56 million restricted stock units in the first nine months of 2026, and RSUs outstanding rose to 6.72 million from 3.95 million at the end of 2025. It also granted 487,000 performance stock units; none were outstanding at the end of 2025. Unrecognized compensation on RSUs stood at $75.7 million, to be expensed over a weighted average of 2.1 years. Over the same period, Viant bought back about 544,000 Class A shares for $6.5 million under its repurchase program.

Purchases accelerated after the quarter ended. Viant spent $5.5 million under the program in the third quarter and a further $13.1 million between October 1 and November 6, Madden said. Including $4.6 million spent on net settlement of vested equity awards, the company bought 1.8 million shares for $23.2 million at an average of $12.82 from the start of the third quarter through November 6, according to the release. The presentation gives a separate year-to-date figure for the program alone: 1.5 million shares for $19.6 million at an average of $12.69. Class A shares outstanding fell from 21.2 million on September 30 to 20.2 million on November 6, according to the 10-Q cover.

The board authorized another $50 million effective November 9, 2026, according to the 8-K. Cumulative program purchases reached $79.2 million, or 6.3 million shares, between May 1, 2024 and November 6, 2026, leaving $70.8 million of the $150 million authorized since the program began. The program has no time limit and can be suspended at any time. "The $50 million increase in our share repurchase authorization reflects our confidence in Viant's long-term business opportunity," Madden said in the release.

Cash and cash equivalents were $183.2 million on September 30, down from $191.2 million at the end of 2025, with no debt. Working capital fell to $198.3 million from $219.2 million. The company has a $75.0 million revolving credit facility with PNC Bank, maturing on April 4, 2028, with $74.1 million of undrawn availability, according to the 10-Q. Operating cash flow over nine months was $35.7 million, up 83%, and free cash flow, which Viant defines as operating cash flow less purchases of property and equipment and capitalized software, was $20.8 million against $6.1 million, an increase of 238%. Cash paid for acquisitions, net of cash acquired, came to $15.4 million.

The 10-Q also shows growth in a smaller revenue stream. Over-time revenue more than doubled to $4.3 million from $2.0 million in the quarter, and the company's remaining performance obligations under contracts longer than one year rose to $10.7 million from $0.7 million at the end of 2025. The filing does not say which products produced the change.

Fourth-quarter guidance and 2027

For the fourth quarter of 2026, Viant expects:

  • Revenue of $130.5 million to $133.5 million, up 20% year over year and 20% sequentially at the midpoint
  • Contribution ex-TAC of $80.5 million to $82.5 million, up 26% year over year and 21% sequentially
  • Non-GAAP operating expenses of $49.5 million to $50.5 million, up 25%, or 14% excluding acquisitions
  • Adjusted EBITDA of $31.0 million to $32.0 million, up 27% year over year and 59% sequentially
  • An adjusted EBITDA margin of 39% of contribution ex-TAC, about 40 basis points higher than a year earlier

At the midpoint, full-year 2026 revenue would be about $435 million, up 26%, with contribution ex-TAC of about $259 million, up 24%, non-GAAP operating expenses of about $184 million, up 22%, and adjusted EBITDA of about $75 million, up 31%. Madden said contributions from TVision and Waymark would be immaterial in the fourth quarter and political advertising "a minimal contributor."

The guidance shows revenue growth slowing while contribution ex-TAC growth holds up. Revenue grew 34% in the second quarter and 29% in the third; the fourth-quarter midpoint implies 20%. Contribution ex-TAC grew 18%, 24% and 27% in the first three quarters of 2026, according to the presentation, and Madden said third-quarter growth was about 10 percentage points faster than in the first quarter. Viant does not explain the divergence in the documents. Revenue includes media and data costs under fixed-CPM pricing and some percentage-of-spend arrangements, which contribution ex-TAC removes.

For 2027, Madden said the company expects "20% or more annual growth in contribution ex-TAC and meaningful adjusted EBITDA margin expansion," based on existing advertisers, the continued ramp of enterprise clients won in 2026 and a pipeline of prospects, "including a number currently testing our platform." Viant gave no 2027 revenue figure. Madden added that full-year 2026 contribution ex-TAC would more than double from 2022, a compound annual rate of over 20%, while adjusted EBITDA would improve from a loss of about $6 million in 2022 to more than $75 million.

What analysts asked

The open internet

The Needham analyst opened the questions by stating that open internet traffic was down "like 40% year-over-year" and that Reddit had said it would become a walled garden, asking how Viant could sustain its growth. Neither figure was sourced on the call. Tim Vanderhook said the open internet is "10% or less of our business" and argued that budgets moving away from display and online video on the open web toward CTV would act as "a catalyst for us next year."

Apple and identity

Asked by Raymond James about Apple's recent changes affecting identity vendors on the new iOS, after Apple's iOS 27 began blocking The Trade Desk from serving ads in Safari, Chris Vanderhook said Viant decided years ago, "I believe that was in 2017," not to track users across sites and apps. He said the iOS changes do not affect Household ID but do affect customers who rely on JavaScript tags on their websites to track performance, and that "there needs to be a stronger move in the market towards CAPI or conversion APIs." Tim Vanderhook added that TVision's opt-in panel would keep feeding Viant's algorithms "no matter what Apple does."

AppLovin and CTV

An analyst from Rosenblatt asked about AppLovin's stated interest in CTV. AppLovin, whose third-quarter revenue rose 55% to $2.18 billion, said on November 4 that it was running pilot CTV campaigns. When AppLovin comes into CTV, "we will welcome them," Tim Vanderhook said, adding that the Mobile Meter would show when a CTV ad leads to an app download. The two companies already overlap: AppLovin owns Wurl, whose technology Viant integrated with IRIS_ID for scene-level targeting in August 2025.

The pipeline

The Rosenblatt analyst also asked about the $250 million request-for-proposal pipeline Viant had described in earlier quarters. Tim Vanderhook said many of the 2027 opportunities "still aren't decided" and that many would be settled by the time Viant reports first-quarter results. Chris Vanderhook said many prospects had chosen head-to-head tests over paper RFPs, and that Viant had added an unnamed prediction markets platform as a customer. Tim Vanderhook said that customer started with brand advertising and is now testing Outcomes for performance, and that Viant issues a press release for any customer it is allowed to name.

Shares and valuation

Viant's Class A shares closed the regular session on November 9 at $14.04, up 9.3% from $12.85, before falling 7.1% to $13.04 in after-hours trading following the release, according to Investing.com. The 52-week range was $8.71 to $14.80. At the November 6 close of $12.85, the presentation put Viant's market capitalization at $854.5 million and its enterprise value, after subtracting $183.2 million of cash, at $671.3 million, based on 66.5 million Class A and Class B shares.

Control remains concentrated. Of those 66.5 million shares, 45.3 million are Class B, and the 10-Q describes Viant as a "controlled company" under Nasdaq listing standards, which exempts it from certain governance requirements.

Why this matters for the marketing community

Viant is one of a handful of publicly listed platforms that work only for ad buyers, and its quarter fills in a picture of the CTV buying market that its peers' results have only sketched. On the sell side, Magnite reported CTV contribution ex-TAC up 39% to $105.4 million on November 4, helped by political spending. MNTN, which sells CTV to smaller performance advertisers, cut its forecast the same day. Viant says political spend played almost no part in its growth, which makes its CTV figures a cleaner read on non-political demand, though one heavily weighted to two verticals and, at the customer level, to one agency holding company.

For advertisers and agencies, three practical changes emerge from the documents. The first is fees: with more than 80% of CTV spend on a reseller-free route and fee-free deal buying since September, Viant is competing on supply-path cost. The second is access: an advertiser can now run Viant campaigns from Claude or ChatGPT rather than learning another interface, a direct challenge to the interface familiarity that Viant's executives say keeps buyers on Google's DV360 and The Trade Desk. The third is creative: by owning Waymark, a buying platform now offers the ad itself as well as the placement, which shifts creative production toward the buying platform and away from agencies and production houses.

Each comes with qualifications that the documents themselves supply. The chatbot integrations have so far moved existing budgets rather than new ones. Waymark's revenue contribution will be "modest" in 2027. TVision's mobile meter depends on a panel that Viant plans to triple, and its core technology remains in litigation with the dominant TV measurement company. And while adjusted EBITDA rose 24%, the GAAP result fell by half, with stock compensation up 61% and 5.56 million RSUs granted in nine months against 1.5 million shares repurchased in the year to November 6.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Viant Technology Inc. (Nasdaq: DSP), the Irvine, California buy-side advertising platform led by co-founders Tim Vanderhook (CEO) and Chris Vanderhook (COO), with CFO Larry Madden. Waymark, the generative AI video ad platform it acquired, and TVision, the attention measurement company it bought in May, are central to the strategy. Analysts from Needham, Craig-Hallum, Rosenblatt, Raymond James and B. Riley asked questions on the call.

What: Third-quarter revenue rose 29% to $110.4 million, contribution ex-TAC rose 27% to $67.2 million and adjusted EBITDA rose 24% to $19.8 million, while GAAP net income fell 49% to $2.6 million. Healthcare and public-services revenue rose 81%, against 7% for all other verticals. CTV exceeded 50% of advertiser spend, with more than 80% of it through Direct Access. Viant closed the $20 million Waymark acquisition, launched the TVision Mobile Meter, enabled campaign management through Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor, and raised its buyback authorization to $150 million. It guided fourth-quarter revenue to $130.5 million to $133.5 million and 2027 contribution ex-TAC growth of 20% or more.

When: Results, the 10-Q and the 8-K were released on November 9, 2026, with the earnings call at 2:00 p.m. Pacific Time. The quarter ended September 30, 2026. Waymark closed on November 6, 2026, and the buyback increase took effect on November 9, 2026.

Where: Viant is based in Irvine, California, and its platform buys advertising across CTV, streaming audio, digital out-of-home, mobile and desktop, primarily in the United States.

Why: The quarter shows an independent buying platform growing faster than much of its market through CTV, fee-free supply paths and proprietary data, but with growth concentrated in two verticals and GAAP profit falling as stock compensation and acquisition costs rise. Waymark and the AI model integrations are Viant's attempt to reach advertisers too small for traditional TV production or unfamiliar with its interface, a bet whose revenue effect the company itself expects to be modest in 2027.