Viant Technology is making a $40 million bet that a New York-based company that tracks how people watch TV across platforms like YouTube and Prime Video will give it an edge in the crowded digital advertising market.
The Irvine-based digital ad company said it will pay $22.5 million in cash and $17.5 million in the company’s stock for TVision Insights, a New York firm that tracks how individuals in roughly 5,000 households watch television in real time, down to the second, including whether they’re paying attention or tuning out. The company’s insights enable the proper placement of ads tailored to different viewers.
“This acquisition offers profound technological synergies which we expect will fundamentally reshape how advertiser budgets are allocated,” Viant Chief Executive Tim Vanderhook told investors on April 15, the day it announced the acquisition.
TVision measures how people engage with TV ads by tracking whether viewers are in the room, whom they’re watching with and whether their eyes are on the screen—data that helps advertisers better gauge the true value of their ad spend, Vanderhook said.
“When nobody is in the room, an ad delivers no value,” he said.
TVision’s system works across all forms of TV and streaming, including Google’s YouTube, Amazon’s Prime Video and other streaming platforms.
“Every advertising platform measures its own performance today, which makes it difficult for advertisers to understand what’s actually working. With TVision, we are providing advertisers a true market-wide view of how their advertising performs, free from any platform’s self-attribution bias. While our competitors measure themselves, Viant measures the market,” Vanderhook said in announcing the planned purchase.
He co-founded the company in 1999 with his brother, Chris Vanderhook, and took the company public in 2021.
Viant shares traded around $11.02 at press time, up about 35% since a 52-week low of $8.11 last October. It currently has a $645 million market cap (Nasdaq: DSP).
Computer Vision Tech
Eyes-on-screen viewership data is captured by TVision’s computer vision technology, which is embedded in cameras mounted to each household’s primary TV.
To build this panel, the company recruits households to install TVision technology in their homes. The system uses proprietary computer vision technology to measure attention to TV shows and commercials, monitoring the attention reaction of some 15,000 people.
“TVision was built to provide a more accurate and transparent view of how people engage with television and streaming content,” said Yan Liu, TVision’s CEO and co-founder.
CEO Vanderhook says TVision’s “always-on technology continuously tracks in-room presence, the number of co-viewers and precisely measures when a viewer’s eyes are directed toward the TV screen.”
These insights provide an “unrivaled viewer attention data set” that Viant plans to deeply embed across it entire buying platform, he told investors.
The purchase is expected to close by the end of June, subject to customary closing conditions.
Raymond James Analyst Positive
The planned acquisition got high marks from Raymond James analyst Andrew Marok.
“We see the addition of TVision’s attention measurement insights as a solid value-add for Viant’s comprehensive CTV offering, at a reasonable price,” Marok wrote shortly after the planned acquisition was announced.
In addition to announcing the planned acquisition, Viant on April 15 also reaffirmed its March guidance calling for a revenue jump in the first quarter. Viant predicted revenue for the period would be in the range of $83 million to $86 million, up 21% at the midpoint from $70.1 million in the same period a year earlier.
