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  James Kotecki (00:06): 

  This is CES Tech Talk. I'm James Kotecki with another conversation that I recorded live at CES 2025 in the C Space Studio. You can watch every interview from that series on the CES YouTube channel, but this one is a favorite and we wanted to share it right here in your podcast feed. Enjoy. 

  (00:26): 

  Welcome back to the C Space Studio, sponsored by Integral Ad Science. I am James Kotecki, your host. We're here at CES 2025 with two CES veterans, the co-founders of Viant Technology, Tim Vanderhook, CEO, and to his immediate left, Chris Vanderhook and brother, COO. Welcome both to the C Space Studio. Thank you both for joining me. 

  Chris Vanderhook (00:47): 

  Thanks for having us. 

  Tim Vanderhook (00:48): 

  Of course. Thanks for having us, James. 

  James Kotecki (00:50): 

  Okay, Viant Technology. How are you defining, Tim, the brand and what it means in 2025? 

  Tim Vanderhook (00:56): 

  Yeah, for us at Viant, we're in the programmatic advertising ecosystem and what everyone's talking about, not just within programmatic advertising, is artificial intelligence. And so late in 2024, we launched Viant AI, our first AI products that we brought to market to great fanfare and really started paving the way to how programmatic advertising can use generative AI to improve the productivity of everyone. So for us, I think, and for most companies out there, our focus heavily is on AI and connected television, which is the hottest intersection. Those two is where brands are putting their money and we're excited to deliver products there. 

  James Kotecki (01:33): 

  Chris, generative AI and programmatic advertising makes me think that AI is generating the advertising itself. Is that what you mean by that? 

  Chris Vanderhook (01:40): 

  So not the creative yet. That's certainly where it's going, and that's going to be really exciting when that hits. But today we're using generative AI to really automate a lot of the arduous and rote work that happens in media. So think media planning, developing the plan, the market research, who the target audience is, think then building campaigns out in a DSP, that's a very heavy lift. And there's a lot of automation in these platforms to begin with, these DSPs like us, but generative AI makes it much more seamless. And really our North Star product vision is what we call autonomous advertising. Think like the self-driving car is to the automobile, that's what autonomous advertising is to a DSP. 

  James Kotecki (02:23): 

  So I just say I want people to buy more baseball bats and then the advertising system just figures out the rest. 

  Chris Vanderhook (02:29): 

  That's the goal. 

  James Kotecki (02:29): 

  Okay. 

  Tim Vanderhook (02:30): 

  Yes, 

  James Kotecki (02:31): 

  Tim, now what does the user interface for this product look like? Is it a chat thing where I'm actually chatting? Do I want to see dashboards if I'm in your industry more? 

  Tim Vanderhook (02:40): 

  Yeah. I think what we're used to in the industry today, pre-generative AI is a lot of dashboards. Every company has their own unique dashboards. Everyone wants to look at metrics. But what we found is that that takes training, certification, learning how to use it, and there's a sense of anxiety that anyone who hasn't used it before, they don't know where to look or click. 

  (03:00): 

  What our interface is, it's all a text-based interface. If you know how to chat, you know how to actually use our DSP today. These interfaces are game-changing, because everyone knows how to use it out of the box. And now no longer do you need to log in, click six different web pages just to get the report you were looking for. You simply ask it, "What's my campaign performance?" And it gives it to you. 

  James Kotecki (03:21): 

  And are you finding that that's changing who is actually using and interacting with a product like this, whether that's someone who previously has been untrained and maybe lower on, a lower-level person or an executive who also doesn't have the training and kind of wants that higher level? 

  Tim Vanderhook (03:33): 

  Absolutely. It's everyone in the organization now has access to the information. Whereas before, only two, three, four people inside of a small agency might know how to use a DSP and get that information for the boss, now the boss can simply just ask the question and get the answer. 

  James Kotecki (03:49): 

  And Chris, does that change the jobs of the people in the agency who used to be those two or three people who had all the answers before? How do their jobs evolve? 

  Chris Vanderhook (03:56): 

  Well, anytime you're talking about AI, you get some uncomfortableness and people are at fear for their jobs. What I tell everyone is the programmatic trader, that's a very difficult job, very tedious, a lot of responsibilities on that individual, and they may not be and it's not like these are PhDs and mathematicians. So it's typically someone who's doing a lot of the rote work, and I remind them these are typically the jobs they don't want to continue doing forever and they want to catapult out of it. And I think that in the end though, what we're seeing is their job, their life in the job is actually getting much easier and they're able to be more effective because they're using generative AI. It's like an assistant really to boost their own performance. 

  James Kotecki (04:38): 

  Let's talk connected TV and ad growth there. Where are we? Where do we go from here? 

  Tim Vanderhook (04:42): 

  Yeah, I mean, connected TV is exploding. It has been for a few years, but where do we go from here? In linear television, there's still $50 billion being transacted across traditional television through set-top box, and we're seeing that migration from linear TV into streaming, and that's going to continue over the next couple of years. 

  (05:01): 

  But we think CTV can be even bigger. Now you're able to track and measure the same way we do with search advertising, social advertising and programmatic. You now have TV coming into that where it's measurable to a much larger degree than what linear television is. And we think this category, everyone pegs it at 70, $80 billion in the United States, that's just linear coming over. But we think with the gains of being able to optimize campaigns and drive better returns, we think that could double over the next 10 years. 

  James Kotecki (05:33): 

  Chris, do you still see people making mistakes or having the wrong assumptions when it comes to measurement and attribution in your space? Are there still out there people who are just still doing it the wrong way, so to speak? 

  Chris Vanderhook (05:44): 

  I would venture to guess that 65-plus percent of all money spent in digital advertising is using what's called last touch attribution. At best case scenario, last touch attribution, and what that means is whoever showed the last ad and then the person bought, that last ad gets all the credit. Best case, if you're a marketer using last touch attribution, and we've been in this space for over 25 years, take it from us, we know this space, at best case, you're 95% wrong. And worst, you're completely 100% wrong. 

  (06:16): 

  And the TV ad, and I remember 10, 15 years ago, we would watch marketers cancel linear television ads and let's say I'm Ford, I cancel linear television ad because I can't measure it, but when someone goes to Google and types in Ford F150, wow, I can measure that and it performs really well, buy more of that. That behavior has just gone on for the last decade and a half, and we think that it's really driving marketers to optimize and act on false signals. And so we really think that CTV actually now being measurable is being able to show the real impact of television and it's causing marketers to change the way they measure their advertising now, which is really exciting. 

  James Kotecki (06:56): 

  It is exciting. Are there, who are having doubts or second guesses about that? Like, "Oh, now that I measure it, I realize I was kind of doing everything wrong." I mean, I imagine there may be some in the industry who maybe have, incentive maybe is too strong a word, but maybe we still steer towards the other way of doing it because it protects certain things. 

  Tim Vanderhook (07:10): 

  Yeah, definitely. I mean, no one wants to look and say, "Hey, the last five years we've been doing something is completely wrong." 

  James Kotecki (07:15): 

  That's hard truth. 

  Tim Vanderhook (07:16): 

  Yeah, that absolutely is. 

  Chris Vanderhook (07:17): 

  Who wants to get fired? 

  Tim Vanderhook (07:19): 

  But I think for us it's about showing the truth of being able to track that consumer journey from television ad exposure to Google search to the end advertiser's website, and then the product is sold. And there is value to Google. It's not zero value. But it's not all the value that they're getting credit for today. 

  James Kotecki (07:38): 

  Let's talk audio content for a second and podcasting. What's the positioning of your company there? 

  Tim Vanderhook (07:42): 

  Big time. We saw last year streaming audio in 2024 got to about 10% of ad spend as of our last quarterly report that we earned, or sorry, talked about. And that 10% is up triple digit percentages. And so streaming audio is exploding. It's the fastest growing category, or excuse me, channel in programmatic advertising. It has a lot of the same look, feel and performance as connected television, but it's even cheaper than CTV. And there's something special about AirPods in someone's ears or when they're in their car driving, you have their full attention and that is gold for advertisers looking to reach consumers. 

  James Kotecki (08:22): 

  And Chris, we talked about that gen AI may eventually get to the point or will get to the point where it's automating the creative. Will it be automating the creative and audio first, do you think? That seems like maybe one of the, quote, "Easier places to do it." To even do like a host read, you take the host voice and you automate an app? 

  Chris Vanderhook (08:37): 

  Yeah. The only reason why audio isn't 20% of spend in our platform, and I believe it will get there, is because there's a lack of creative that our clients don't have. "Hey, I don't have the radio or the audio creative." And so we definitely see that AI, there are companies right now that are creating AI commercials for brands using the DJ's voice, or whatever, the podcast host, some incredible stuff going on, so absolutely, and it's going to be very seamless. I think that we'll make ads in audio quicker than we'll make ads in CTV because I think there's certain big brands are like, "Wait a second, I'm going to pump the brakes on you making my television creative." But audio creative seems pretty straightforward. 

  James Kotecki (09:22): 

  I want to ask you both for a prediction about the future, say five years out, that you believe that maybe others in the industry or haven't caught up to yet. 

  Tim Vanderhook (09:31): 

  Well, it's the same mission that Viant's been on since we went public in 2021. We view the future of advertising as one of autonomous advertising. Chris talked about the self-driving car and automotive. In programmatic advertising, there's too many websites, apps, audience segments, places I could place my ad for a human to make the best decision. Computers are much better at analyzing the billions of opportunities that are out there to actually place the ad. We're going to measure the responses, and the AI is going to make changes on the fly. So we see hopefully less than in five years, full autonomy is right around the corner where we only need the human to say, "I'd like to start a campaign." 

  James Kotecki (10:11): 

  Wow. 

  Chris Vanderhook (10:11): 

  Yeah. I'll give you one that no one agrees with me, but it's definitely I believe going to happen. Over the next five years Google Search is going to lose share. And if you look at the amount of money that marketers are spending in searches, as Tim said, it's not that it doesn't provide any value, it does. It just doesn't provide the level that they think it does. I believe that from the marketers that we see about half of their search spend typically of a brand, and they're all different, but are spent on branded search terms, their own brand term. They buy and they spend on that. We believe that marketers are starting to realize that, "Wait a second, that was my TV ad that drove them there." This is just navigational search behavior. So I believe that Google Search, in terms of their share of wallet with marketers over the next five years will go down. I think the largest benefactor that's going to gain from that is CTV and audio. 

  James Kotecki (11:01): 

  Last question for either of you. What's it like to co-found and run a company with your brother? 

  Tim Vanderhook (11:05): 

  Oh, it's a ton of fun. When you have a relationship as close as Chris and I do, I mean, we grew up sharing a room and we've been negotiating who's going to shut off the bedroom light at night since we were five years old. So to be able to go into business together and be able to carry that same relationship over is really incredible for us. We've had a lot of fun doing it. 

  James Kotecki (11:23): 

  It'd be funny if you said, "I totally disagree with that." 

  Chris Vanderhook (11:25): 

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. A lot of people ask that question, and they're like- 

  Tim Vanderhook (11:28): 

  Remember, he works for me. I bet he does. 

  Chris Vanderhook (11:30): 

  Yeah. A lot of people ask that question, "You guys don't argue? You don't fight?" I'm like, "Oh, no. Of course we do." We argue all day long. However, the cool thing about working with your brother, you don't have to worry. He's not going to split. I'm not going to split. You can say anything to your brother. 

  James Kotecki (11:43): 

  There's another lane of trust there. 

  Chris Vanderhook (11:45): 

  You may not be able to say anything to your sister, but you can definitely say anything to your brother. But no, it's a lot of fun. 

  James Kotecki (11:50): 

  Tim and Chris Vanderhook, co-founders of Viant, thank you both so much for joining us here. 

  Chris Vanderhook (11:53): 

  Thanks, James. Thanks for having us. 

  Tim Vanderhook (11:53): 

  Thanks for having us. 

  James Kotecki (11:55): 

  And thank you so much for joining us and watching us here in the C Space Studio. I'm James Kotecki. More conversations are just ahead, so keep it here. This is CES 2025. 

  (12:05): 

  Well, I hope you enjoyed that conversation from CES 2025. That is our show for now, but there's always more tech to talk about. So if you're on YouTube, please subscribe and leave a comment. If you're listening on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart Media, or wherever you get your podcasts, hit that follow button and let's give the algorithms what they want. 

  (12:23): 

  You can get even more CES at ces.tech. That's C-E-S dot T-E-C-H. Our show produced by Nicole Vidovich and Paige Morris. Our C Space Studio episodes are produced and edited by Cramer. I'm James Kotecki, talking tech on CES Tech Talk.