Viant (DSP) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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Date

May 11, 2026, at 5 p.m. ET

Call participants

• Chief Executive Officer — Tim Vanderhook
• Chief Operating Officer — Chris Vanderhook
• Chief Financial Officer — Lawrence Madden

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Takeaways

• Revenue -- $88.5 million, up 25% year over year, surpassing guidance by 3%.
• Contribution ex-TAC -- $50.3 million, representing 18% year-over-year growth and landing above the midpoint of guidance.
• Adjusted EBITDA -- $9.8 million, up 81% from the prior year, exceeding the top end of guidance by 3%.
• Non-GAAP Net Income -- $5.6 million, nearly doubling from $2.8 million, with basic earnings per Class A share growing 125% to $0.09.
• Operating Expenses (Non-GAAP) -- $40.5 million, reflecting a 9% year over year and 2% sequential increase.
• Platform spend mix -- CTV accounted for over 50%—an all-time high for a first quarter—and video, including CTV, made up over 65% of platform spend.
• Customer mix shift -- Over 60% of total platform spend came from emerging digital channels (CTV, streaming audio, digital out-of-home), up from 54% for all of 2025.
• Major client wins -- Molson Coors and WHOOP began deploying ad spend, with expectations for aggressive ramp through the year.
• Direct Access adoption -- Over 50% of CTV ad spend was transacted through Direct Access, involving publishers such as Disney, Paramount, and Peacock.
• Viant proprietary data -- IRIS ID penetration grew fivefold year over year, reaching nearly 50% of CTV bid requests and expected to soon exceed 75% with new integrations.
• Household ID utilization -- Featured in 80% of all programmatic bid requests and 96% of CTV requests, with 95% of household addresses mapped to Viant's ID graph.
• TVision acquisition -- Closed on May 1, providing proprietary audience attention data now integrated for prebid optimization in the DSP.
• Outcomes AI product -- Launched in January, with early adoption among existing clients and performance budgets shifting to CTV from search and social channels.
• Productivity -- Contribution ex-TAC per employee increased over 9% year over year, marking the eleventh consecutive quarterly increase.
• Free cash flow -- $41.5 million for the trailing 12 months, up 59% or $15.4 million year over year.
• Share repurchases -- $1 million spent on buybacks in the quarter, with $60.6 million returned to shareholders since May 2024 and $39.4 million remaining authorized.
• Q2 2026 outlook -- Projecting revenue of $98.5 million to $101.5 million (28% growth at midpoint), contribution ex-TAC of $58.5 million to $60.5 million (23% growth at midpoint), non-GAAP operating expenses of $45.5 million to $46.5 million (24% growth at midpoint), adjusted EBITDA of $13 million to $14 million (20% growth at midpoint), and adjusted EBITDA margin of 23% at midpoint.
• Market position -- Engaged in the largest RFP pipeline in company history, signaling increased demand for independent, objective DSP solutions.

Summary

Viant Technology (NASDAQ:DSP) presented record-setting quarterly growth across revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and contribution ex-TAC, crediting accelerating CTV adoption, proprietary data assets, and success with enterprise client wins for its performance. Management stated that new flagship advertisers, including Molson Coors and WHOOP, launched spend on the platform, with expectations for further large-scale budget ramps this year. The rapid increase in the adoption of Viant's exclusive data signals (IRIS ID, Household ID, and attention data from TVision) was highlighted as a competitive differentiator, directly integrated into pricing and targeting. The integration of TVision's real-time attention data into ViantAI and the Outcomes product is positioned to further enhance media buying precision, with Outcomes drawing performance marketing budgets away from legacy search and social channels. The company indicated ongoing operational efficiency improvements, supported by per-employee productivity gains, a strengthening cash position, and continued capital returns through a significant share-repurchase program.

• Viant's guidance calls for record Q2 revenue, contribution ex-TAC, and EBITDA while incorporating the initial contribution from the TVision acquisition.
• Management said, "We expect accelerating top line performance throughout the year, driven by a combination of new and existing catalysts," citing CTV migration and political advertising as 2026 drivers.
• High attention was placed on platform independence, objectivity, and transparency, contrasting Viant's business model to those of Amazon and Google, which management characterized as lacking in advertiser alignment.
• Viant reported that its RFP pipeline is at a historic high, implying future upside as more major U.S. advertisers move spending onto the platform.
• According to management, ViantAI's autonomous ad buying has begun capturing formerly untapped performance-marketing budgets, a market they estimate at over 60% of total ad budgets.

Industry glossary

• Contribution ex-TAC: Net revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs, directly reflecting the platform's take rate.
• CTV: Connected TV; digital streaming video accessed via internet-connected television devices, a core growth segment for digital ad platforms.
• IRIS ID: Viant's proprietary content identifier for show-level and contextual targeting within the CTV marketplace.
• Household ID: Viant's patented identity solution linking digital and personal data to normalized household profiles for audience targeting.
• Direct Access: Viant's supply path optimization feature providing advertisers with a direct purchasing route to premium publisher inventory, reducing intermediary fees.
• ViantAI: The company’s suite of artificial intelligence-powered ad products, including fully autonomous campaign management and optimization.
• Outcomes: Viant's AI-powered, autonomous advertising solution ingesting advertiser inputs to automatically construct, optimize, and report on digital campaigns.
• TVision: Television measurement company acquired by Viant, offering real-time viewer attention data integrated into Viant’s ad-buying algorithms.
• Ex-TAC: Excluding traffic acquisition costs; typically used to distinguish net platform revenue from gross billings including media costs.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Tim Vanderhook, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer; Chris Vanderhook, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer; and Larry Madden, Chief Financial Officer. I'd like to remind you that we will make forward-looking statements on our call today, including, but not limited to, statements regarding our guidance for Q2 2026 and other future financial results, our strategy, our platform development initiatives, including ViantAI, expected benefits of our acquisition of TVision, our pipeline and potential partnership opportunities, our share repurchase program and industry trends that are based on assumptions and subject to future events, risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected.

These forward-looking statements speak only as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update or revise these statements, except as required by law. For more information about factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements and our entire safe harbor statement, please refer to the news release issued today as well as the risks and uncertainties described in our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2026, under the heading Risk Factors and in our other filings with the SEC. During today's call, we will also present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures.

Additional disclosures regarding these non-GAAP measures, including a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to the mostly directly comparable GAAP measures are included in the news release issued today and in our presentation, which have been posted on the Investor Relations page of the company's website and in our filings with the SEC. I would now like to turn the call over to Tim Vanderhook, Chief Executive Officer of ViantAI. Tim?

Tim Vanderhook: Thanks, Nick, and thank you all for joining us today. We delivered strong first quarter performance, achieving new company Q1 records across all key metrics. Revenue increased 25% year-over-year, well above the high end of our quarterly guidance range and contribution ex-TAC increased 18% year-over-year, above the midpoint of our quarterly guidance range. Growth was broad-based across verticals, driven by strong CTV demand, increased utilization of our proprietary data and expanded use of the ViantAI product suite. Adjusted EBITDA increased 81% year-over-year to $9.8 million for the quarter and exceeded the high end of our guidance range. We are off to a strong start in 2026 and Viant's market position and opportunity for growth have continued to strengthen.

We expect accelerating top line performance throughout the year, driven by a combination of new and existing catalysts. First, the ad environment remains healthy as evidenced by strengthening customer demand trends observed throughout the first quarter. March performance was particularly robust, signaling strong business confidence to kick off the year, and we continue to see healthy demand trends midway through the second quarter. Our new flagship customers, Molson Coors and WHOOP, among other major U.S. advertisers went live in the first quarter and are now scaling spend across our platform. On a related note, we are currently actively engaged with our largest sales pipeline in company history.

Perhaps more than ever, we believe major U.S. advertisers and their agency partners are seeking a new buy-side partner, one that is independent and objective, free of conflicts of interest and can transparently deliver maximum return on ad spend. Viant is meeting this demand with a differentiated offering, equipped with proprietary data and evolving AI capabilities. Propelled by current market dynamics, we expect to win incremental ad spend from current customers and secure additional major advertiser wins throughout the year. Tenfold viewership events are also expected to drive ad spend to the CTV channel this year.

The 2026 World Cup is hosted by providers within our direct access premium publisher program, and we anticipate strong contribution from political advertisers in the second half of the year, fueled by midterm elections and the ongoing shift of political budgets from linear TV to CTV. We expect to benefit from ramping adoption and increased utilization of IRIS ID, our industry-leading content identifier, which recently reached nearly 50% penetration across all biddable CTV inventory. with additional major streaming services set to become Iris-enabled later this year. Following our go-to-market launch in January, we are encouraged by early adoption of Outcomes, Viant's fully autonomous AI-powered solution.

Within our existing client base, we are beginning to capture performance budgets previously allocated to search and social channels. Advertisers are redirecting search and social spend toward the highly effective CTV channel, where spend doesn't merely take credit for sales that would have happened regardless of a last second ad exposure. CTV actually drives net new customers. While early, we believe Outcomes is fully capable of servicing the 10 million advertisers electing to allocate spend across search and social channels. We expect outcomes to be a meaningful growth accelerator for Viant in the years to come.

And finally, on May 1, we closed on our acquisition of TVision, a leading television measurement provider, uniquely capable of quantifying the true value of linear TV, connected TV and walled garden inventory through viewer attention-based insights. Together and for the first time, we will activate TVision's attention data within the bid stream on a prebid basis, enabling advertisers to optimize budgeting and bidding decisions to inventory designed to capture genuine human engagement. In a moment, Chris will elaborate on the state of the market with specific reference to the growing number of opportunities available to Viant attributable to our commitment to innovate on behalf of advertisers.

Our commitment to remain an independent and objective partner as well as favorable market dynamics well documented amongst trade publications. But first, I will provide an update on our recent performance and progress across our 3 key strategic priorities: CTV, Viant's proprietary data and ViantAI. Within the CTV ecosystem, 2 major industry tailwinds are currently underway and remain in the very early stages. The continual migration of linear TV advertising dollars to CTV and the diversion of search and social performance budgets to CTV, as the most sophisticated buying platform in the marketplace for CTV ad spend deployment, Viant is exceptionally well positioned to capitalize on these tailwinds, both in the near term and for many years to come.

Reflecting these dynamics, total CTV spend on our platform reached a new all-time high for a first quarter, accounting for over 50% of total ad spend. Contribution ex-TAC increased well over 40%, and this performance in Q1 2026 marks the third consecutive year that CTV contribution ex-TAC has increased over 40% on a year-over-year basis. a rate that is 3x that of the industry growth rate. This outsized adoption reflects Viant's strategic investments in critical CTV infrastructure, publisher relationships and addressability solutions, which collectively establish Viant as the platform of choice for CTV campaign deployment across the open Internet.

Contributing to our outsized CTV growth is the continued expansion of our direct access premium publisher program, with new integration announcements coming in the next few weeks. Direct Access offers advertisers an efficient, targetable and measurable path to purchase CTV ad inventory. By facilitating transactions directly with publishers, we bypass midstream resellers, which reduces CPMs for advertisers and drives better return on ad spend for our clients. In the quarter, over 50% of CTV ad spend on our platform was transacted through direct access, which includes leading CTV streaming services, including Disney, Paramount, Peacock and many, many more. Viant's exclusive data has expanded and now consists of 3 primary pillars of exclusive proprietary insight into content, identity and now attention.

Through our acquisition of Iris TV, our proprietary content signal continues to proliferate amongst publishers, enabling advertisers to deploy show level and contextual campaigns at greater scale. In just over a year since its acquisition, the presence of our content identifier, IRIS ID, within the CTV ecosystem has grown fivefold, reaching nearly 50% of incoming CTV bid requests in the first quarter. Viant's content identifier empowers advertisers to target CTV ad inventory at the show level, providing a substantially more detailed and granular targeting capability relative to our competitors who are limited to app-level targeting only.

Iris uniquely enables advertisers to align their message with specific shows, contextual categories, emotional sentiments, tones and brand-suitable content, representing a degree of micro targeting that enhances return on ad spend and drives outcomes. This is made possible through direct integrations with publishers' own content management systems, providing Viant with a meaningfully higher resolution of content intelligence. With new major streaming services slated to become enabled later this year, Viant's content identifier penetration is expected to soon reach over 75% of biddable inventory. Viant's household ID, our patented identity solution for audience targeting, saw utilization meaningfully accelerate in the quarter, fueled by a growing number of advertisers electing to deploy sophisticated campaign strategies.

Household ID delivers superior addressability for advertisers looking to activate their first-party data to reach specific audiences and measure campaign performance. It is embedded in approximately 80% of all programmatic bid requests and now 96% of all CTV requests. And with 95% of all household addresses mapped to Viant's ID graph, we can connect advertisers to addressable audiences at a massive scale, offering over 4x the coverage of other competing identity offerings. On May 1, we closed on our acquisition of TVision, a preeminent television measurement provider uniquely capable of quantifying consumers' eyes on screen attention while watching linear TV, connected TV, YouTube and Prime video content on and ad inventory.

TVision gathers this proprietary data point through their nationally representative panel of U.S. households, each equipped with TVision's computer vision and automatic content recognition technology. TVision's attention data provides advertisers with 4 unique signals: in-room presence, co-viewership, viewer demographics and eyes on screen attention, with each signal offering critical insights exclusively available to Viant's advertiser clients. In-room presence lets our customers know if their ad was delivered to an audience or an empty room. Co-viewership measures the total number of viewers in the room, allowing advertisers to optimize decisioning to target larger audiences. TVision enables the most accurate targeting and reporting of demographics across linear TV, CTV and walled garden content.

Within a typical household, one logged-in user registers across various streaming services, but a typical household includes multiple individuals, each with their own viewership preferences. As an example, in my household, Amazon believes my wife is watching the NBA playoff game on Prime Video because she holds the Amazon account for our household. TVision's technology identifies the actual viewers within that household that are sitting in front of the TV when the content plays. Eyes on screen attended viewership tracks whether the audience is actively watching the TV screen during content and ad airings or if they are distracted or disengaged.

Together, these insights provide Viant with an exclusive lens of the CTV market and enable our bidding algorithms to price all CTV inventory on a first-of-its-kind attention-adjusted CPM. Viant receives these attention signals in real time ahead of the ad break. enabling our AI-powered buying platform to assign definitive attention scores and corresponding attention-adjusted CPMs to all CTV ad inventory and direct purchase decisions toward inventory where attention and price are aligned to maximize return on ad spend efficiency and deliver optimal outcomes. To be clear, Viant's proprietary data, comprising exclusive content, identity and attention signals is unique to Viant and cannot be replicated by competitors such as Google, Amazon, OpenAI or Anthropic.

This is attributable to the strategic acquisitions of Iris and TVision as we are the only company currently capable of activating attention as a prebid signal for advertisers. providing an exclusive and differentiated performance advantage for our clients. This takes me to ViantAI. Leveraging proprietary data spanning content, identity and attention, our fully autonomous AI-powered ad platform is actively building and executing campaigns without any human intervention and is delivering return on ad spend performance that human traders cannot beat. In early January, we launched Outcomes, a fully autonomous ad product designed to serve performance ad budgets.

Outcomes is the do-it-for-me solution for the open Internet, ingesting just 4 basic inputs: the advertiser, the budget, the flight dates and the goal. Based on these inputs, ViantAI constructs the most optimal media plan, leveraging our exclusive data. After the advertiser provides ViantAI with their goals and budgets, ViantAI automatically constructs the ad campaign and transparently shows the advertiser where their ad will be placed to which audiences it will be shown, the times of day it will run and before deployment, ask the advertiser for approval. Once approved, ViantAI implements, executes, optimizes and reports on the results without any human intervention, making decisions in milliseconds.

Together, our exclusive data and ViantAI's the Lattice brain decisioning engine is producing better results than any form of manual optimization could ever achieve. And coming soon, Viant AI and our Outcomes product will lever TVision's attention data to optimize bidding decisions toward inventory that commands high attentive scores and features attractive attention-adjusted CPMs, driving yet another enhancement to return on ad spend efficiency that no other platform can offer. A growing number of advertiser clients are utilizing ViantAI and our Outcomes product to deploy ad spend, and we continue to deliver impressive results.

We will continue to expand the adoption of ViantAI's full capabilities amongst our current customers while continuously enhancing the solution based on learnings from every impression we deliver and every exclusive data point ViantAI receives. In summary, Viant is transforming from a media execution platform into an advertising intelligence company. The competitive landscape is increasingly split between traditional DSP's focused on media execution and closed ecosystems built around owned data, owned inventory and self-contained measurement. Viant is building a different model, one built around the advertiser. We are combining proprietary data, independent measurement and real-time activation into one self-reinforcing platform.

Our identity, content intelligence, attention data and cross-channel measurement help advertisers understand what media is worth, which impressions deserve investment and how to activate against those signals in real time. That combination strengthens our moat and separates Viant from platforms built primarily around execution alone as well as closed ecosystems where the same company sells the media and measures their own results. That is the model we are building, and it is the foundation for the next phase of Viant's growth. With that, I'll turn it over to Chris to walk through the current market dynamics.

Chris Vanderhook: Thanks, Tim. I would like to share our findings from recent interactions with agencies and advertisers across the marketplace, and I'll preface these remarks by noting that this is an extraordinarily exciting time for Viant as we are addressing the largest RFP pipeline in company history. From our perspective, we believe there are 3 primary reasons why agencies and advertisers are increasingly engaging with Viant. Number one, our commitment to relentlessly innovate on behalf of advertisers and their agencies by creating unparalleled efficiencies and exclusive data signals that are in high demand, but only available in Viant's platform; number two, our commitment to remain a transparent, independent and objective partner; and number three, favorable market dynamics.

We believe advertisers and agencies have finally drawn a line in the sand with regards to the self-attributing tactics of walled gardens and the general lack of transparency provided by our competitors. To elaborate, begin with our commitment to relentlessly innovate on behalf of advertisers. The market clearly recognizes Viant as a platform provider in a perpetual state of innovation, as demonstrated by our recent strategic investments and a string of new product launches, all of which are designed to further establish Viant as the leading platform for CTV. Our solutions are industry-leading and exclusive to Viant. Household ID is the industry's leading audience identifier, boasting over 4x the availability of alternative solutions.

Direct Access provides the cleanest, most efficient path to purchase premium CTV ad inventory in the market. Leveraging our content identifier, IRIS ID, Viant was the first and remains the only buying platform that enables contextual targeting for CTV. In 2 years, we rolled out 4 phases of ViantAI solutions, culminating in a fully autonomous AI-powered buying platform, producing results human traders and media planners cannot replicate. We acquired TVision, a leading attention measurement provider of TV, and we plan to strategically merge TVision's attentive insights with IRIS ID to create an attention optimized targeting and measurement solution for TV buying that does not exist elsewhere. And there is more to come.

We will continue to invent new solutions unique to our platform that are designed to maximize return on ad spend efficiency and drive outcomes, helping our advertiser clients win in market and gain market share against their competitors. Last quarter, we announced a multiyear strategic partnership with WHOOP, the human performance company behind world-class wearable technology. Viant is now the DSP of record for WHOOP, responsible for powering their ambitious growth expectations. WHOOP's fitness and health-focused wearable device competes with big tech competitors like Apple and their Apple Watch.

But in partnership with WHOOP, we have developed a marketing plan that utilizes Viant's full arsenal of advertising solutions and aims to compete and win versus Apple among other competitors in market. Together, we expect to drive meaningful share gains for WHOOP's wearable devices and help fuel their growth. Moving to the second reason advertisers are increasingly engaging with Viant. Viant has remained steadfast in our commitment to provide advertisers and agencies with a transparent solution that fully aligns their best interest with ours. And in doing so, we have established an unwavering degree of trust that ensures agencies and advertisers remain partners with Viant for the long term. Viant is an independent and objective platform.

We do not own any publisher content, and therefore, we have no motivation to direct ad spend towards any specific channel or publisher. We work on behalf of our advertiser clients to deliver optimal outcomes and return on ad spend efficiency regardless of channel or publisher distribution. Competing platforms lack this level of integrity. And quite frankly, the worst offender is undoubtedly Amazon. The Amazon DSP is effectively a margin trap, strategically designed to drain all profit from the marketer. We hear these horror stories firsthand from advertisers leaving their platform. Amazon will first attempt to steer the vast majority of advertiser spend towards its owned and operated inventory, including Amazon Prime Video, where, of course, Amazon captures full margin.

It then uses self-attribution measurement tactics to make the claim that all sales originated from its own inventory, compelling the advertiser to further increase spend with Amazon. What's more, Amazon directs consumer audiences to purchase the advertiser's product on the Amazon website, leading to the advertisers' growing dependence on Amazon as a primary sales channel. This dependency enables Amazon to trap more and more and more ad spend from the advertiser if they want to maintain their positioning in the Amazon store. As Amazon becomes an advertiser's leading distribution channel, it effectively crushes the advertisers' product margins because Amazon takes the largest cut of the sale amongst all retail distribution channels.

And finally, Amazon leverages this sales data against the advertiser to benefit competing advertisers in the same product category and more egregiously to develop its own competing white label products. How on earth does this model represent a viable option for advertisers? Where is the partnership? There is no partnering with Amazon, and the advertisers that have been spurned by this model are looking elsewhere. And what they are finding is that true independence and objectivity is hard to come by these days. Google's DV360 deploys the same self-attribution tactics as Amazon, claiming YouTube and Google Search are the only channels capable of driving sales on behalf of the advertiser.

Yahoo DSP is no different, claiming the same self-attribution across their publisher properties. Well, advertisers are finally waking up. They have learned you cannot trust the buying platform that also serves as a seller of ads because selling their own content will always take priority at the expense of the advertiser. We believe this leaves Viant and The Trade Desk as the 2 remaining independent and objective enterprise-level buying platforms in market, which, of course, in light of recent press coverage, brings me to transparency. Viant's go-to-market strategy is fundamentally centered on providing advertisers and agencies with transparency, control and the option to utilize our platform in a way that best suits their needs.

We believe we are widely recognized as one of the most transparent buying platforms in the industry, consistently receiving client praise for the high degree of visibility we provide regarding platform fees. Viant's commitment to transparency is rooted in the proven effectiveness of our solutions. Essentially, our products pay for themselves. When advertisers opt to use Household ID or IRIS ID for audience and contextual targeting, they are rewarded with a significantly enhanced return on ad spend, an investment that pays for itself. The same goes for when advertisers opt into AI bidding, which enables our algorithms to purchase inventory on their behalf. We generate savings that overwhelmingly accrue to the advertiser.

We believe our go-to-market approach supports a mutually aligned business model that drives a win-win scenario for both Viant and our agencies and advertisers. This commitment is further demonstrated by Viant's direct access solution for which Viant charges no fee, passing the value of our direct-to-publisher integrations to our clients, allowing for more working media dollars and better campaign performance. In fact, Direct Access is specifically engineered to completely eliminate all unnecessary fees charged by bidstream middlemen by creating what we believe is the most efficient programmatic route to premium inventory for our clients. Our business model is predicated on the success of our advertiser clients.

We work on their behalf as a true partner, and therefore, when they win, we win. And finally, touching on market dynamics, which have been well documented amongst trade publications. From our perspective, it is abundantly clear that agencies and advertisers are finally ready to take action and explore alternative demand-side partnerships. Notably, Viant maintains strong, long-lasting relationships with all of the major agency holding companies, which collectively account for approximately 1/3 of our ad spend mix. As a trusted partner, continuously innovating on behalf of advertisers, we welcome the opportunity to service incremental spend from these existing agency partners. Additionally, our team is actively engaged with a growing number of major U.S. advertisers.

These are household names across CPG, retail, QSR and health care verticals, representing ad spend opportunities that either match or eclipse ad spend levels associated with our recent major wins, notably Molson Coors and WHOOP. Through a superior offering continuously enhanced by innovation, exclusive data signals, a model built on transparency and favorable market dynamics, we believe we have an unprecedented opportunity to secure incremental spend from existing agency partners and win amongst major U.S. advertisers, and we intend to capitalize. With that, I'll turn it over to Larry to provide more detail on our financial performance. Larry?

Lawrence Madden: Thanks, Chris. Before I begin, I would like to remind everyone that we have posted a presentation on our Investor Relations website that includes supplemental financial information to accompany today's call. In terms of our results for the first quarter, revenue for the quarter was $88.5 million, representing a 25% increase year-over-year and exceeding the high end of our guidance range by 3%. Contribution ex-TAC totaled $50.3 million in Q1, up 18% compared to the prior year period and above the midpoint of our guidance range. We delivered strong performance across most customer verticals in Q1 with financial services, health care, consumer goods and industrials leading the way.

CTV remained a core growth driver in Q1, accounting for over 50% of total platform spend, our highest CTV mix on record. In addition, CTV spend reached an all-time high for our first quarter, reflecting continued momentum as advertisers increasingly prioritize premium addressable video to drive performance. Advertisers industry-wide continue to shift their media mix towards emerging digital channels, including CTV, streaming audio and digital out-of-home. Reflecting the secular trend, customer-directed purchasing on our platform across these channels collectively represented over 60% of total platform spend in the quarter, up from 54% for the full year 2025. Viant remains well positioned as a leading partner for advertisers moving beyond search and social spending to capitalize on next-generation media formats.

Video, inclusive of CTV set a new record, representing over 65% of total platform spend in the quarter, further reflecting the continued shift towards high-impact measurable formats. Building on strong customer momentum, new flagship clients, including Molson Coors and WHOOP, among others, began deploying ad spend in the first quarter and are expected to aggressively ramp spend throughout the year. At the same time, we are actively engaged with our largest RFP cohort in company history, reflecting our commitment to innovate on behalf of advertisers, our stance to remain an independent objective partner and market dynamics favorable to Viant.

Working further down the income statement, non-GAAP operating expenses totaled $40.5 million for the quarter, reflecting a 9% year-over-year increase and a 2% increase sequentially. Importantly, we remain focused on scaling efficiently. Even as we continue to invest in innovation across Lions AI and our broader technology stack, we have been delivering measurable gains in productivity, increasing trailing 12-month contribution ex-TAC per employee by over 9% year-over-year, marking 11 straight quarterly increases, a clear signal of improved operational efficiency. Adjusted EBITDA for Q1 was $9.8 million, exceeding the high end of our guidance by 3% and increasing 81% year-over-year.

Adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of contribution ex-TAC was 19% for the quarter, expanding by nearly 700 basis points compared to the prior year. Non-GAAP net income, which excludes stock-based compensation and other adjustments, totaled $5.6 million for the quarter, up almost 100% from $2.8 million in the prior year. Non-GAAP basic earnings per Class A share outstanding increased 125% to $0.09 in the first quarter compared to $0.04 in the prior year period. In terms of share count, we ended the quarter with 63.8 million total shares outstanding, consisting of approximately 18.3 million Class A shares and approximately 45.6 million Class B shares.

We ended the quarter with $185.7 million in cash and cash equivalents and $220.1 million in positive working capital with no debt and access to a $75 million undrawn credit facility. Our solid performance is enabling meaningful positive cash flow generation. For the trailing 12 months ended March 31, 2026, cash flow from operating activities totaled $60 million, representing a year-over-year increase of $16.5 million or 38%. Free cash flow totaled $41.5 million, representing a year-over-year increase of $15.4 million or 59%. For the current quarter, cash flows from operating activities increased $7.4 million year-over-year, representing a 166% increase and free cash flow increased $7.2 million year-over-year, representing an 88% increase.

Additionally, in the current quarter, we used $1 million for share repurchases under our existing share repurchase program and $3.1 million for share repurchases related to tax withholdings on vested equity awards. Since launching the share repurchase program in May 2024, we have returned $60.6 million to shareholders. As of May 8, $39.4 million remains available under the current plan authorization. We expect to strategically deploy share buybacks to return capital to our shareholders, particularly when our stock is undervalued. We believe our strong financial foundation, combined with consistent execution and a balanced capital allocation strategy positions us well to capture growth opportunities and drive shareholder value in the quarters ahead. Turning now to our Q2 outlook.

Our Q2 guidance includes a partial quarter contribution from TVision, beginning with the close date of the acquisition, which occurred on May 1, 2026. For the second quarter of 2026, we expect revenue of $98.5 million to $101.5 million, up 28% over the prior year period at the midpoint. Contribution ex-TAC of $58.5 million to $60.5 million, reflecting 23% year-over-year growth at the midpoint. Non-GAAP operating expenses of $45.5 million to $46.5 million, up 24% year-over-year at the midpoint. Adjusted EBITDA of $13 million to $14 million, representing a 20% year-over-year increase at the midpoint, inclusive of the impact of the TVision acquisition.

And finally, we expect an adjusted EBITDA margin as a percentage of contribution ex-TAC of 23% at the midpoint. The midpoint of our guide assumes record Q2 performance across revenue, contribution ex-TAC and adjusted EBITDA. I would also like to make a couple of general observations about our outlook for 2026. In 2026, we expect contribution ex-TAC growth to continue outpacing the broader U.S. programmatic market, which is projected to grow approximately 13%, driving further market share gains. We expect year-over-year growth rates of contribution ex-TAC to accelerate sequentially as we move through 2026, primarily driven by new clients onboarding, ramping organic growth, political contribution in the back half of the year and the incorporation of TVision into our financials.

We also expect revenue and contribution ex-TAC to continue growing faster than non-GAAP operating expenses on an annual basis, leading to modest adjusted EBITDA margin expansion for the full year 2026. More broadly, we continue to operate the business with the goal of delivering consistent 20% or more annual top line growth and adjusted EBITDA margin expansion with an opportunity to reach adjusted EBITDA margins of 40% or higher over the next several years. In closing, we delivered another record quarter, executing against our strategic priorities and advancing innovation across our platform. We believe we are well positioned for sustainable long-term growth given our strategic alignment with secular growth trends, including CTV, proprietary data and buying AI.

And with that, I'll turn the call back over to the operator for questions. Operator?

Operator: [Operator Instructions] And with that, our first question comes from Jason Kreyer with Craig-Hallum.

Jason Kreyer: So talked a lot about the record pipeline. You certainly gave a lot of color on why that pipeline is building. Just wondering if you could talk about how the opportunities are progressing through the funnel and what that growth -- the accelerating growth story can look like in the coming quarters.

Chris Vanderhook: Yes. Thanks, Jason. As we said, it's a growing and very large pipeline right now. Part of that has to do with just the steady cadence of innovation that we've been going after for the last 2 years, but also the market dynamics. We've definitely seen -- I would put it in stages. We've been winning large customers. We'll be getting test budgets from other large customers. And then we're also in the process of the RFP process that will largely be 2027 opportunities. But in all 3 stages, we just -- we see really good traction.

Jason Kreyer: Great. Appreciate that. Maybe just ask on TVision, the early feedback you've heard from partners. And then you're adding the attention metrics to outcomes. Curious what the time frame is for that and what kind of investment is required?

Chris Vanderhook: Yes. The feedback on TVision has been outstanding. We just had an industry event in Miami that's called Possible, met with many agencies and brands. They understand our -- really part of our strategy is around building these exclusive data sets as signals to help marketers understand and value their investments. The attention data from TVision is so unique.

It's a one-on-one asset the fact that they have unified independent measurement across everything in linear television, CTV and walled gardens like YouTube and Prime Video, it really is a leg up for our customers to be able to evaluate how much attention is being paid across all of the programming that they're buying and helping them understand, right now, we're in the middle, upfronts are kicking off. Marketers want this data at their fingertips when they're negotiating in the upfront. And not only that, they don't want to just measure it after the fact. They want to do something about it in real time when they're bidding and buying in the DSP.

And that's exactly what we're going to do, bring the attention signal in real time in the DSP. It's going to be an unprecedented buying platform for marketers. They're going to have an incredible advantage by using Viant.

Operator: Our next question comes from Barton Crockett with Rosenblatt.

Barton Crockett: I'm sorry about that. Can you hear me now?

Tim Vanderhook: Yes.

Barton Crockett: Okay. Great. So I was wondering if you could detail the contribution of the acquisition TV Scientific to the second quarter guide. How much of the acceleration is that versus just more organic fulsome strength? That's one question. And then the second question is, I was just noticing that you were talking a lot more where in the past, you've kind of spoken about Amazon is not really present in your competitive set. And I was just wondering if that suggests that you're seeing them more even if you should be if you're actually seeing them out there more.

Tim Vanderhook: Barton, we got your first question around the contribution of TVision, but you were broken up on the second question. Could you reask it?

Barton Crockett: Yes, sure. I'm sorry about that. You mentioned Amazon. You spoke a lot about Amazon. And in the past, you've said Amazon is not really particularly present in your competitive set. You just haven't seen them in the bids. But you're talking about them now. So I'm just wondering if that means you're seeing them more even if you think you should be?

Tim Vanderhook: Yes. I'll take the first one. In terms of TVision, we're not breaking out the revenue, so I can't comment on what the second quarter contribution would be. But we do see long-term advantages in the flywheel of our business with the TVision asset now consolidated under Viant. One thing we do expect is it should increase the take rate of all ad spend flowing through as customers choose that measurement or using the data for bidding and buying. So it's the same flywheel. We're not going to break it out because it's fully integrated, but we do expect a lift in take rates on a go-forward basis.

Chris Vanderhook: Yes. And with respect to Amazon, we don't see them in the finals of these selections. So that remains consistent. I think that -- to also remain consistent, we do pay attention to them. It is Amazon. They are intent on competing in the space. We think that it's no different than what we've already seen with Google TV 360. And really, what we're doing is drawing the distinction of what we're hearing from marketers that they want independence.

There's a huge -- I think over the last 10 years, marketers have seen what happens when you use a buying platform that you believe it can be independent, but they also are selling their own content and owned and operated inventory to you. It is a business model, and we want to make sure marketers and investors understand what that true business model actually is and how that differs from the opportunity that Viant offers in that we're not going to have any incentives on the sell side to direct to any particular channel or any particular publisher. We're going to help marketers make the correct decision regardless of where that goes.

Tim Vanderhook: Yes. And I would just add to that. 90% of the commentary comes from investors. That's why we decided to talk about it today and the differences of us versus the Amazon DSP. I would say 10% or less are coming from advertisers. And to echo Chris' comments, it's all about objectivity. Are you actually doing the right thing for my business? Or are you doing the right thing for your business, which is Amazon and Google's positioning in the market?

Operator: Our next question comes from Laura Martin with Needham.

Laura Martin: Sure. So your numbers are excellent, especially compared to The Trade Desk. So they did 12%. You guys just did 18%. Their guidance is lower by 400 basis points for Q2. Yours is higher by 500 basis points. In theory, you're the same kind of company, independent DSP. So could you sort of size for us or rank order why you think there's this dispersion in growth rates, like 1, 2, 3, what do you think the 3 biggest reasons are? And then secondly, I think Wall Street agrees with you, the proprietary data does have pricing power. You now have these 3 assets that you have built this proprietary data.

The other thing Wall Street really believes is the proprietary supply, like unique content or unique types of ad units also have pricing power. Do you guys have any plans to go into that aspect of sort of the programmatic stack that is -- has a moat around it?

Chris Vanderhook: Yes. One of the things I would say about your first question, Laura, thanks for that is really just our positioning in CTV. We want to have proprietary data around content, identity and attention. And that's kind of played out now with the TVision acquisition announcement. But I think we've just stayed very focused in CTV. It's a massive growing market. It's a huge opportunity. And then when you couple our unique data assets that we have along with direct access that eliminates so many fees for marketers, it's just -- it's an unbelievable offering when you compare us to other platforms. And I think that's a big part of what's driving the faster growth.

On the second question around do we have any plans for exclusive content or being on the content side, the answer to that is plainly no. We view our partner as the advertiser. And in my prepared remarks, I said we're building a business model around the advertiser. And at no point do we ever want to have a conflict of interest of our interest being aligned with the advertiser's interest. And when you get into that side of the business, there's no doubt Prime Video has great content. YouTube has tons of content, lower quality, but tons of content, and they deserve to be on the buy because of the reach that they bring to marketers.

But they consistently, for lack of a better term, rig the reporting so they get the highest share of wallet, and it's at the detriment of the advertiser. Our goal and objective is to be on the advertiser side independently staying objective and saying, what is the proper allocation of budget to Prime Video, what is the proper allocation of budget to YouTube? And then, of course, bidding and buying across the open Internet for everything else.

Operator: Our next question comes from Andrew Marok with Raymond James.

Andrew Marok: I wanted again to touch on that RFP pipeline that you guys were talking about. Are you seeing any particular areas of strength or verticals within that, that are powering kind of some outsized wins? And maybe in connection with that, are you starting to see a snowball effect among large advertisers as some of your emerging large advertiser cohorts start to spend, you maybe get some case study data. Is that making it easier to go out and sell to subsequent large advertisers?

Chris Vanderhook: Yes. Thanks for that, Andrew. I broadly put the early test that we've got as well as the RFP process, if I had to bucket them, I'd say it's in CPG, retail, health care and QSR. Broadly, I put them in there. Yes, you want to take the second question?

Tim Vanderhook: I just repeat that second question.

Andrew Marok: Yes. Just wondering if you're seeing kind of a snowball effect among large customers. So as your initial crop of large customers starts to spend, obviously, in early stages right now and you start to get maybe some case study data off of them, is it easier then to go out and sell to subsequent large advertisers?

Tim Vanderhook: I would say definitely, the network effects of winning, let's call it, the Fortune 500 or companies that spend quite a bit amount of ad spend certainly derisks Viant from being selected by the next major large advertisers. So if we were aligned 3 to 5 years ago, we weren't being included in RFPs. I would say we're being included in every single RFP now just in the awareness of the company and the differentiation of the product offering. and the objectivity that we bring. And I think the big issue that advertisers face with, am I going to partner with the platform that owns the content where they have a conflict of interest?

Or am I not going to do that and go with an objective platform? When you go with the objectivity route, you really only have 2 choices. There's Viant and what I broadly speak, the other guys, but I'm not going to say their name on this call. But -- so I do think there's been a huge lack of transparency, which ultimately has led to broken trust with our buy-side competitor, and that's what's leading to more windfall wins to Viant.

Chris Vanderhook: And I would just say the other piece, too, is as CTV continues -- the shift from linear into CTV and the dollars are getting so significant, marketers are starting to ask the questions around, okay, well, CTV was supposed to be addressable versus linear. -- and they start looking at these addressability solutions in market that really aren't very scaled. And then they come across Household ID that has over 90% addressability in CTV. That's a huge win. So that's a big feather in the cap for Viant.

When you get to the content, hey, wait a second, why am I only buying at the app level through these other platforms and buying Paramount+, but I don't know what the content is. And our IRIS ID with the proliferation of that north of 50% of all CTV ad inventory has the IRIS ID on it and accelerating. Now they actually get these shows that they want to buy. Do you want to buy the NFL or do you want to buy the? That's a big difference if you're, say, Molson Coors. So I think just our leadership position there, we've made our bets and they're starting to play out.

So that's putting us in these RFP processes as well.

Operator: Our next question comes from Naved Khan with B. Riley.

Naved Khan: Great. A couple of questions from me. So on the Outcomes adoption, maybe just talk about if you see any change in the growth curve for the spend once advertiser shifts over to outcomes versus the prior setup? And then just on the elections and just in terms of the spend on your platform, what have you seen historically? And how should we be thinking about the contribution in Q2, Q3, Q4 from elections?

Chris Vanderhook: Yes. On the outcomes adoption, what I'd say is although it's early, we're seeing just incredible performance results for marketers. And then just to go back to our previous quarter when we talked about it, it's really because it is an autonomous product. It's not -- we're taking away the latency that typically is experienced with humans making changes to campaigns and optimizing and it's doing it at the speed of milliseconds. So we just see tremendous performance improvements. Clients that are in the Outcomes product are loving it. I will say it is still early. We're seeing tremendous growth, but it is off of a small base.

And really, this was about -- this wasn't about going and diverting spend from our existing customers. It was going after an entirely new market of performance marketing, which we believe is north of 60% of total ad budgets in the market. So we think that although early, we're seeing great growth signs, we have a very exciting product road map that we're continuing to enhance the outcomes offering, I think that we'll hear about in the coming quarters. In terms of political advertising, Q2 is usually a light quarter for political. It really kicks in, in Q3 and Q4, almost equally split towards the back half of Q3, the front end of Q4 or up to midway through.

So that cycle really hasn't hit. Larry, do you remember political last cycle?

Lawrence Madden: Yes. The presidential cycle in '24, we probably added about 500 basis points of growth in Q3 and Q4, not -- as Jim said, not very much in Q2 though and very little in Q1. So this is nonpresidential, midterms, we think it might be lower than that number, but still looks like it's going to be meaningful.

Operator: Our next question comes from Stephen Ju with UBS.

Stephen Ju: Great. So can we talk about the time line of when you win an RFP and when budgets would start to actually roll in? I get that everybody is different, but is it 6 months? Is it a year? Is it 9 months? And secondarily, I think the feedback that we're getting advertisers as more and more of the budget shift to online is that there's greater, I guess, volatility. It's easier to spool up campaigns and it's easier to kill campaigns when things are online. So -- versus back in the day when it was TV only. So I'm just wondering what kind of behavior you're seeing from advertisers as the geopolitical backdrop and everything else remains very fluid.

Chris Vanderhook: Yes. On the first one, the RFPs are largely about 2027. These are -- these DSP selections, they are heavy lift on the advertisers. So it's a pretty lengthy evaluation process when you're going through that. Some of them elect to do tests with some of the platforms that they're RFPing. As I mentioned, we're underway on a lot of those. But they're going to be 2027. I would say that most of them, you expect that will hit in January, but they all have -- depending on the categories, they have different budget cycles throughout the year, but we would expect a lot of these to really begin in the first quarter of '27.

Tim Vanderhook: In terms of the volatility of CTV versus linear TV, it certainly is more volatile than an upfront committed television ad spend because one of the greatest parts of the demand-side platform is the flexibility that we actually bring advertisers the ability to hit pause. So certainly, that risk is there from our business perspective. But I will say the moment you hit pause because it's such a large percentage of ad spend now, all you're doing is hurting consumer demand in the future for your product or service.

So to give you an idea, like during the COVID time period, a large chunk, the majority of advertisers paused their ad spend, and that lasted for between 10 and 14 days before they turned it back on and ad spends were even greater. So I think in the long term, what you have is, yes, the ability to pause, it's great flexibility for advertisers if something is massively disruptive. But ultimately, they need to stimulate consumer demand for their product or service and digital is where they activate and most of the budgets are going to go there. So I think we're in the right tailwind. We haven't noticed any increased volatility or anything different.

Conversely, we're winning bigger customers, which usually are planning out their budgets on an annual basis versus quarterly or monthly the way we built the business. So I think for us, we should be fine. We don't see anything from a macro perspective where that volatility would kick in.

Operator: Our final question will come from Wyatt Swanson with D.A. Davidson.

Wyatt Swanson: Appreciate the question on for Tom White. There's been a lot of reports in recent weeks and months about potential disruptions to the status quo in terms of the relationships between large brand advertisers and their agencies and their legacy DSP relationship. Can you talk about whether that's been a tailwind to your business in recent weeks? And maybe how meaningful an incremental spend opportunity could these developments be for Viant over the next couple of years?

Chris Vanderhook: Yes. Thanks for the question, Wyatt. We don't see any disruption between advertisers and their agencies per se. I think it's the latter around DSPs. And I think -- as we talked about in our prepared remarks, certainly very public about that. We're definitely seeing that there is I would say the sentiment. There have been a lot of sentiment already in the market around lack of transparency and really whether or not they were going to actually go through with RFPing their platform looking for alternatives, and that's well, well underway. We're already seeing the tests because of those things.

We do expect that we'll get an increased amount of spend throughout the rest of the year because of some of that. But what I would say, though, is we're not getting that spend because of the issues that are happening that are showing up in the press. We're getting that because we built a superior offering and marketers are now realizing it, and they're ready to make the jump.

Operator: Okay. At this time, we have no more questions.

Chris Vanderhook: Thank you, everyone. We'll see you next quarter.

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