Viant Technology Inc. - Annual Report: 2020 (Form 10-K)

UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549

FORM 10-K

(Mark One)

For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020

OR

FOR THE TRANSITION PERIOD FROM                      TO                     

Commission File Number 001-40015

Viant Technology Inc.

(Exact name of Registrant as specified in its Charter)

Registrant’s telephone number, including area code: (949) 861-8888

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act: None

Indicate by check mark if the Registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act. YES ☐ NO ☒

Indicate by check mark if the Registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Act.  YES ☐ NO ☒

Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant: (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the Registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days.  YES ☐ NO ☒

Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the Registrant was required to submit such files).  YES ☒ NO ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company,” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.

If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act.  ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has filed a report on and attestation to its management’s assessment of the effectiveness of its internal control over financial reporting under Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (15 U.S.C. 7262(b)) by the registered public accounting firm that prepared or issued its audit report.  ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act).  YES  ☐NO ☒

As of June 30, 2020, the last business day of the registrant’s most recently completed second fiscal quarter, the registrant’s Class A common stock was not listed on any exchange or over-the-counter market. The registrant’s Class A common stock began trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on February 10, 2021.  

As of March 19, 2021, there were 11,500,000 shares and 47,435,559 shares of the registrant’s Class A and Class B common stock, respectively, $0.001 par value per share, outstanding.

DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE

None

Table of Contents

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PART I

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This Annual Report on Form 10-K (“Annual Report”) contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”), and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”). All statements, other than statements of historical fact included in this Annual Report, including, without limitation, statements regarding our financial position, business strategy and other plans and objectives for our future operations, are forward-looking statements. These statements include declarations regarding our management’s beliefs and current expectations. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “could,” “intend,” “consider,” “expect,” “plan,” “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “predict” or “continue” or the negative of such terms or other comparable terminology. Such statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve a number of assumptions, risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expected results. As a result, you should not put undue reliance on any forward-looking statement.

These forward-looking statements are included throughout this Annual Report. Factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, the risk factors discussed in the “Risk Factors” section of this Annual Report.

The forward-looking statements contained in this Annual Report are based on historical performance and management’s current plans, estimates and expectations in light of information currently available to us and are subject to uncertainty and changes in circumstances. There can be no assurance that future developments affecting us will be those that we have anticipated. Actual results may differ materially from these expectations due to changes in global, regional or local political, economic, business, competitive, market, regulatory and other factors, many of which are beyond our control, as well as the other factors described in the section entitled “Risk Factors.” Additional factors or events that could cause our actual results to differ may also emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for us to predict all of them. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should any of our assumptions prove to be incorrect, our actual results may vary in material respects from what we may have expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. We caution that you should not place undue reliance on any of our forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statement made by us in this Annual Report speaks only as of the date on which we make it. We undertake no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise, except as may be required by applicable securities laws.

Item 1. Business.

Our Company

We are an advertising software company. Our software enables the programmatic purchase of advertising, which is the electronification of the advertising buying process. Programmatic advertising is rapidly taking market share from traditional ad sales channels, which require more staffing, offer less transparency and involve higher costs to buyers.

Our demand side platform (“DSP”), Adelphic, is an enterprise software platform that is used by marketers and their advertising agencies to centralize the planning, buying and measurement of their advertising across most channels. Through our technology, a marketer can easily buy ads on desktop, mobile, connected TV, linear TV, streaming audio and digital billboards.

Our software is designed to make our customers’ lives easier by enabling marketers and their advertising agencies to plan, buy and measure advertising campaigns in a highly automated fashion. We offer an easy-to-use self-service platform that provides customers with transparency and control over their advertising campaigns.

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Our platform offers customers unique visibility across inventory, allowing them to create customized audience segments and leverage our people-based and strategic partner data to reach target audiences at scale. Our platform delivers a full suite of forecasting, reporting and built-in automation that provides our customers with insights into available inventory based on the desired target audience. We offer advanced forecasting and reporting that empowers our customers with functionality designed to ensure they can accurately measure and improve their return-on-advertising spend (“ROAS”) across channels.

Marketers use our software to deliver advertising campaigns to their desired target audience across channels and formats. Through platform integrations, we offer our customers access to omnichannel advertising inventory, which refers to media available across devices, channels and formats. This includes access to over 300 million unique desktop and mobile users, 114 million connected TVs, 112 million linear TV households, over 200 million unique digital audio users, and 158,000 unique digital billboards, in the U.S. Our platform supports a full range of transaction types including real-time bidding, private marketplace and programmatic guaranteed, allowing customers to easily source and integrate ad inventory directly from publishers and private marketplaces.

We enable deep data access through our data integrations to authenticate user identities across a range of devices. Our matching of people-based identifiers enables us to be the nexus point with more than 70 data partners, providing customers with deep access to people-based data across market verticals such as automotive, entertainment, business to business, retail, consumer packaged goods, travel and tourism, and healthcare. Our proprietary identity graph is matched to more than 250 million users across 115 million households in the U.S., which we believe makes it one of the largest in the industry.

Our customers are advertising buyers including large advertising holding companies, independent advertising agencies, mid-market advertising service organizations as well as marketers that rely on our self-service software platform for their programmatic ad buying needs. We are a trusted partner to our customers and have had a 95% customer satisfaction rating for the last 3 years based on Viant’s Annual Adelphic Customer Satisfaction Survey. Many of our customers use our software as their primary demand side platform.

Our platform is built on people-based data. Using our identity resolution capabilities and identity graph, marketers and their advertising agencies can identify targeted consumers using real-world identifiers rather than relying primarily on cookies to track users. We believe the industry is shifting to a people-based framework to replace the cookie in delivering personalized advertising, particularly for identification. People-based data allows marketers to deliver personalized advertising while being able to accurately link ad impressions across multiple devices and to customer sales, letting them know what they get in return for their advertising dollars. In addition, people-based data allows consumers to know who is collecting their data and what it is being used for, and also gives them the right to delete or stop their use of data for personalized advertising. Many of our competitors rely on cookies for the targeting and measurement of digital advertising but this technology has not been effective at accurately measuring the real impact of a marketer’s ad spend on their business results. Apple’s popular web browser, Safari, currently does not allow third party cookies and Google Chrome has announced plans to entirely disallow third party cookies in their browser in early 2022. This market change has created an increase in demand by marketers actively looking for platforms like ours that offer an alternative to cookie-based tracking, which we believe is strengthening our strategic position.

Programmatic advertising has proven its value to marketers and more organizations are devoting more of their digital ad spend to it. The digital ecosystem continues to evolve and with it programmatic advertising, creating new opportunities and needs for marketers and their agencies. The U.S. programmatic advertising market is expected to grow from $65 billion in 2018 to $140 billion in 2022, a 21% CAGR, according to eMarketer, a market research company that provides insights and trends related to digital marketing, media, and commerce. We focus on ad buyers and believe that our solutions will accelerate the shift of advertising budgets to programmatic advertising. Additionally, as marketers desire more control over programmatic advertising and move some functions of programmatic ad buying in-house, our software platform is designed to address these needs and expands our market opportunity.

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Our total revenue was $165.3 million, $164.9 million and $108.4 million for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2020, 2019 and 2018, respectively, representing an increase of 0.2% from 2019 to 2020 and 52.1% from 2018 to 2019. We recorded net income of $20.6 million and $9.9 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $31.8 million and $24.7 million for the years ended December 31, 2020 and 2019, respectively, compared to a net loss of $25.5 million and Adjusted EBITDA loss of $7.5 million for the year ended December 31, 2018.

Adjusted EBITDA is a financial measure not presented in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States of America (“GAAP”). For a definition of Adjusted EBITDA, an explanation of our management’s use of this measure and a reconciliation of Adjusted EBITDA to our net income or net loss, see “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—Key Operating and Financial Performance Metrics—Use of Non-GAAP Financial Measures.”

Our Industry

We believe the key industry trends shaping the advertising market include:

Advertising dollars shifting towards programmatic advertising: We believe the advertising industry is still in the early stages of a shift to programmatic advertising. The ability to transact through real-time-bidding platforms has evolved beyond banner advertising to be used across a wide range of advertising channels and formats, including desktop, mobile, connected TV, linear TV, streaming audio and digital billboards. U.S. programmatic advertising is experiencing a rapid increase in adoption and, according to eMarketer, is expected to grow at a 21% CAGR from 2018 to 2022, reaching $94 billion in 2020, $118 billion in 2021 and $140 billion by 2022. U.S. programmatic advertising is forecasted to represent 48% of total U.S. media spend by 2022, increasing from 29% in 2018. The TV industry is undergoing significant disruptions as Internet-enabled connected TV has become a preferred vehicle for streaming video content. The amount of connected TV users in the U.S. is forecasted to increase from 195 million, or 59% of the U.S. population, in 2019 to 226 million, or 66% of the U.S. population, in 2024, according to eMarketer. Connected TV also provides a number of benefits to advertisers, including more accurate control of scale, addressability, and measurement. Marketers are increasingly investing in connected TV as more inventory becomes available. According to eMarketer, 51% of connected TV ad spend was transacted programmatically in 2019 and the share of programmatic will increase to nearly 60% in 2021. In addition, connected TV ad spend is expected to grow from $6 billion in 2019 to $8 billion in 2020 to $18 billion in 2024, a 25% CAGR.

Strong marketer demand for Return-On-Advertising-Spend measurement across all channels: Marketers are looking for a centralized view of their customers, while connecting online and offline purchases to accurately measure ROAS. Return-on-advertising-spend is a critical metric for marketing campaigns. Insights from ROAS across all campaigns inform marketers about what they are getting for their money across all media investments near real-time. Hence, marketers seek tools to track their ROAS across all channels. We believe people-based platforms are able to provide a more accurate measurement of ROAS as compared to cookie-based platforms.

Demand for scaled people-based platforms: Advertising has become more data driven and marketers need to be able to target audiences at the individual and household level while respecting consumer privacy. Internet advertisers in the past have capitalized on anonymous data from cookies to gain insights into users and ad performance. However, increased privacy concerns and changing requirements of browser providers including Google (Chrome) and Apple (Safari) are causing marketers to reduce their reliance on vendors and software platforms that primarily utilize cookies for device identification. In today’s connected world, marketers need to be able to identify their customers and connect with them across multiple channels, devices and formats. This is driving an industry shift away from cookie-based DSPs to scaled people-based DSPs.

Brands directly selecting advertising software solutions: Marketers are increasingly becoming directly involved in the selection of their advertising software solutions as they seek to reduce costs, better leverage their customer data and gain more control over their advertising. These factors have also led to an increase in marketers moving programmatic ad buying functions in-house. The automation of ad-buying technology has enabled fast, accurate and cost-effective decision-making, resulting in ad buying becoming a skillset that an increasing number of Chief Marketing Officers (“CMOs”) want to fully own. According to a recent survey by IAB in 2019, 18% of U.S. brands have completely moved programmatic ad buying in-house, and 51% of U.S. brands have moved a portion of their programmatic ad buying in-house.

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Our Market Opportunity

We believe that over the long term, our total addressable market is the total global advertising market which, according to eMarketer, is forecasted to grow from $614 billion in 2020 to $846 billion in 2024, an 8% CAGR. Currently, our focus is primarily on the U.S. market, and according to eMarketer, desktop, mobile, connected TV, linear TV, streaming audio and digital billboard channels are forecasted to grow from $205 billion in 2020 to $314 billion in 2024 in the U.S., an 11% CAGR, broken into the following segments:

The forecasts above include both programmatic and non-programmatic digital advertising. In recent years, programmatic advertising has represented an increasing portion of total U.S. media spend. According to eMarketer, the U.S. advertising market, as represented by desktop, mobile, connected TV, linear TV, streaming audio and digital billboard channels, is forecasted to grow from $205 billion in 2020 to $241 billion in 2021 and $269 billion in 2022.

Our Solution

We provide a software platform that enables marketers and their advertising agencies to plan, buy and measure their advertising across channels. Integrated with our people-based capabilities, we provide our customers with a full suite of forecasting, reporting and automation functionality to make informed decisions around their advertising investments.

Cloud-Based, Self-Service Portal: Our software is available in a self-service interface, providing customers with transparency and control over their advertising campaigns and underlying data infrastructure. Customers can log on to the self-service platform to immediately create, update or re-align campaigns themselves, without having to involve our employees or any third parties.

Omnichannel Demand Side Platform: We are a demand side platform for ad buyers. Marketers and their agencies can use our integrated software platform to efficiently manage omnichannel campaigns and access metrics from each channel to inform decisions in other channels. Our integrations enable the purchase of advertising media across desktop, mobile, connected TV, linear TV, streaming audio and digital billboards. Our technology leverages machine learning to identify the best supply partners, formats and impressions based on our customers’ goals.

Advanced Reporting and Measurement: We invest heavily in our measurement capabilities, as we believe this will increase our customers’ usage of our software. Our software and self-service data lake empower customers with differentiated insights, including foot-traffic data reports, multi-touch attribution and ROAS analytics. Leveraging our people-based framework and machine learning algorithms, our platform provides marketers real-time actionable insights throughout an advertising campaign. Our built-in automation enables marketers to optimize digital campaigns designed to achieve their KPI goals.

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People-Based Identification for Advertising: Our identity resolution capabilities and identity graph reduce or eliminate the need for cookies by enabling matching of people-based identifiers, and allow marketers to reach targeted consumers in a privacy-conscious manner, irrespective of device or channel. Our identity graph is matched to more than 250 million users across 115 million households in the U.S., which we believe makes it one of the largest in the industry.

Onboarding: We enable marketers to onboard their first-party data to gain a view into their customers’ top attributes, create targeting segments and easily activate these customer segments. Our simple interface allows marketers to upload audience data with ease and create a unique segment or build look-a-like audiences without the need for a separate data management platform. Our data integrations provide marketers with high match rates, which leads to meaningful audience insights for segmentation and targeting.

Our Strengths

We believe the following attributes and capabilities provide us with long-term competitive advantages:

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Our Growth Strategy

We believe that the advertising market is in the early stages of a secular shift towards programmatic advertising. We intend to capitalize on this opportunity by pursuing the following strategies:

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Our Platform

Our platform enables a marketer or their agency to programmatically buy an ad in linear television, a digital billboard on the side of the highway, a streaming ad on connected TVs, an ad in your favorite mobile app or on your favorite podcast or a dynamically personalized ad on any website, all within a single user interface.

The key components of our platform include:

Omnichannel DSP: We offer an omni-channel, people-based DSP that provides enterprise-ready, self-service technology to enable our customers to engage with consumers across all channels, devices, and formats.

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Identity Management: Marketers can easily sync customer data, build custom audiences, extend target audiences and understand audience insights seamlessly within our cloud-based, on-demand platform.

Advanced Reporting: We close the loop on digital and traditional media by linking advertising spend to online and offline sales.

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Our platform is built with ad buyers in mind and offers many in-depth features that give buyers the highest levels of control, which helps ensure they are running the most efficient campaigns possible. This includes:

Our Technology and Development

Rapid and continuing innovation is a core driver of our business success and our corporate culture. Our product and engineering team is responsible for the design, development and testing of our platform. We are committed to continuous innovation and rapid introduction of new technologies, features and functionality that bring value to our customers. We expect technology and development expense and capitalized software development costs to increase as we continue to invest in the development of our platform to support additional features and functions, such as enhancement of our user interface and automation functions, and to increase the number of advertising and data inventory integrations in various channels.

The technical infrastructure for our platform is currently managed through third-party web hosting services providers and to a limited extent, our own servers which are located at a third-party data center facility. We generally enter into one to two year agreements with our web hosting providers.

Our Customers

Our customers consist of purchasers of programmatic advertising inventory. We define an Active Customer as a customer that had total aggregate revenue ex-TAC of at least $5,000 through our platform during the previous twelve months. We had 264 and 277 Active Customers for the years ended December 31, 2020 and 2019, in each case consisting of advertising buyers, including large advertising holding companies, independent advertising agencies, mid-market advertising service organizations as well as marketers relying on our self-service software platform for their programmatic ad buying needs. For a detailed discussion of Active Customers, see “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operation—Key Operating and Financial Performance Metrics—Number of Active Customers and Average Revenue ex-TAC per Active Customer.” Revenue ex-TAC is a non-GAAP measure. For a detailed discussion of our key operating and financial performance metrics and a reconciliation of revenue ex-TAC to the most directly comparable financial measure calculated in accordance with GAAP, see “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operation—Key Operating and Financial Performance Metrics—Use of Non-GAAP Financial Measures.”

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Many of the advertising agencies that we work with are owned by holding companies, where decision-making is generally highly decentralized such that purchasing decisions are made, and relationships with advertisers are located, at the agency, local branch or division level. Our customer count includes only those parties with which we have a billing relationship. We contract with our customers either through master service agreements or insertion orders. Our agreements do not contain any material commitments on behalf of customers to use our platform to purchase ad inventory or use other features. Our agreements with customers generally do not have a specified term, and are generally terminable at any time by either party upon specified notice periods, typically ranging from 30 to 90 days. Insertion orders are generally limited in scope and can be reduced or canceled by a buyer without penalty.

Our Advertising and Data Supply

We obtain digital advertising inventory primarily through our integrations with supply side platforms (“SSPs”) and directly with publishers. We believe that our integrations across every channel give us the most robust omnichannel integrations of any single platform. These suppliers provide us with access to a breadth of programmatic advertising inventory across desktop, mobile, connected TV, linear TV, streaming audio and digital billboards.

We enable deep data access through our integrations with over 70 leading data companies, giving our customers access to data across key industry verticals, including auto, retail, consumer packaged goods, travel and health. Customers onboard their own first-party data onto our platform, without the need of a separate data management platform. Our operation of Myspace.com provides certain data assets and intellectual property that we may leverage to continue to offer innovative products and services to our clients.

Sales and Marketing

We sell our platform through a direct sales team focused on business development across all markets, including sales to new customers and revenue growth within existing customers. We have an experienced sales team of 75 sellers across the United States who are focused on selling access to our platform in our target markets, building and nurturing relationships with global brands and agencies. We use a consultative sales approach focused on educating existing and potential customers on our platform capabilities, and training clients to use our platform. We offer a formal certification program, Programmatic University and Adelphic Certification, that covers programmatic industry trends, technology capabilities and time-saving workflows and have an online knowledge base with robust documentation. We provide dedicated customer support and work with customers as they set up and optimize their campaigns, assist with delivery against key performance indicators and goals, and provide post-campaign support and recommendations.

We tailor our contracts and terms to the needs of our customers, including by offering our three different pricing options: a percentage of spend option, a subscription option and a fixed CPM pricing option. Customers can use our platform on a self-service basis or can enlist our services to execute their campaigns.

Our marketing efforts are focused on increasing awareness and consideration for our brands, executing thought-leadership initiatives, participating in industry events, creating comprehensive sales support materials and generating new customer leads. We seek to accomplish these objectives by presenting at industry conferences, hosting customer conferences, publishing white papers and research, public relations activities, advertising campaigns and social media presence.

Privacy and Data Protection

Modern consumers use multiple platforms to learn about and purchase products and services, and consumers have come to expect a seamless experience across all channels. This challenges marketing organizations to balance the demands of the consumer and the most effective advertising techniques with responsible, privacy-compliant methods of managing data internally and with advertising technology intermediaries.

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We believe strongly in providing consumers with more visibility and control over their data. We have prioritized protecting the privacy of consumers and their data and offer consumers a robust suite of tools to manage their data. We have policies and operational practices governing our use of data that are designed to actively promote a set of meaningful privacy guidelines, including advanced consumer opt-out capability, best in class security measures, encryption of data using robust industry standards, proactive identification of threats and regular penetration testing. When giving our customers access to personal data, we provide that data in a “hashed,” or de-identified, manner. We have dedicated personnel in place to oversee our compliance with the data protection regulations that govern our business activities in the jurisdictions in which we operate.

The U.S. Congress and state legislatures, along with federal regulatory authorities, have recently increased their attention on matters concerning the collection and use of consumer data, including relating to internet-based advertising. Data privacy legislation has been introduced in the U.S. Congress, and California has enacted broad-based privacy legislation, the California Consumer Privacy Act. State legislatures outside of California have proposed, and in certain cases enacted, a variety of types of data privacy legislation. Many non-U.S. jurisdictions have also enacted or are developing laws and regulations governing the collection and use of personal data.

We expect the trend of enacting and revising data protection laws to continue and that new and expanded data privacy legislation in various forms will be implemented in the U.S. and in other countries around the globe.

Competition

Our industry is highly competitive and fragmented. We compete with smaller, privately-held companies, along with public companies such as the Trade Desk, and with divisions of large, well-established companies such as Google and Amazon. The competitive landscape in recent years has been affected by consolidation and limited investment in new startups in our industry and there are few competitors with self-service capabilities. Our long history and time in the market with customers has given us significant advantages in terms of platform development and expertise, as well as a long development lead ahead of new entrants. We believe that we compete primarily based on the performance of campaigns running on our platform, capabilities of our platform, our identity resolution capabilities, our omnichannel capabilities and our advance reporting capabilities. We believe that we are differentiated from our competitors in the following areas:

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Our Human Capital

We are a founder-led business and believe our employees and culture are key to our success. Our employees tend to be long tenured for our industry, with average tenure of the leadership team of nearly 12 years and more than 4 years across all employees. Our business and our culture are anchored on four core values that embody our resourceful mentality: “Live,” “Lead,” “Create” and “Figure It Out.” We believe we attract talented employees to our company and sophisticated customers to our platform in large part because of our vision and unwavering commitment to using cutting-edge technologies to create products that help advance the advertising industry.

As of December 31, 2020, we had 289 employees in 10 offices around the United States. Our team draws from a broad spectrum of backgrounds and experiences across technology and advertising industries.

Diversity and Inclusion

We are committed to fostering a culture of inclusion where all employees feel valued and included. We believe our greatest asset is the people who work for us, and as part of our investment in our people, we prioritize diversity and inclusion. Our goal is to create a culture where we value, respect, and provide fair treatment and opportunities for all employees. Each year, we conduct an annual survey to give employees the opportunity to provide feedback on our management team and culture. This survey helps drive new programs that continue the development of our inclusive culture. Our leaders review the survey feedback and work with their teams to initiate new initiatives based on the results.

We are committed to developing a diverse environment through recruiting, development programs, community involvement and fostering conversations about differences.  

Talent Development

Even though Viant has been around for 20+ years, our culture still reflects an entrepreneurial spirit. We empower employees to develop their skills and abilities by following our core values and acting on great ideas regardless of their role or function. We encourage employees at all levels to be creative and come up with ideas that can help the business grow. We work to provide an environment where talented individuals and teams can take control of their career growth. We provide a wide range of learning and development opportunities in both individual and group settings.

Compensation and Benefits

We provide compensation and benefits programs to help meet the needs of our employees and reward their efforts and contributions. We use internal and external resources to help develop plans that are fair and reward our employees’ commitment and performance with the goal of attracting and retaining high performing individuals.

In addition to salaries, we provide competitive compensation programs that are in line with our peers and industry. These programs may include bonuses, equity awards, 401(k) plan, healthcare and insurance benefits, flexible spending accounts, paid time off, family leave and employee assistance programs among many others.

Health, Safety and Wellness

We strive to provide a work environment where our employees feel safe and are comfortable working. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we immediately implemented a teleworking program that complied with all applicable government regulations and protected our employees while allowing them to continue to be effective in their jobs. We continue to stay updated on changes in government regulations and implement them to meet our employees’ changing health and wellness needs.

Intellectual Property

The protection of our technology and intellectual property is an important component of our success. We rely on intellectual property laws, including trade secret, copyright, patent and trademark laws in the U.S. and abroad, and use contracts, confidentiality procedures, non-disclosure agreements, employee disclosure and invention assignment agreements and other contractual rights to protect our intellectual property.

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As of December 31, 2020, we held 26 issued patents, 10 pending patent applications and 306 issued trademarks. Our issued patents are scheduled to expire between 2025 and 2038. We continually review our development efforts to assess the existence and patentability of new intellectual property. In addition to the intellectual property relating to the operation of Adelphic and our people-based framework, we own intellectual property related to our owned site, Myspace.com. Of our issued patents, 11 relate to our platform and our people-based framework, and 15 relate to the Myspace.com site.

Corporate Information

Viant was founded in 1999 by Tim, Chris and Russ Vanderhook who continue to lead our company today. Viant has been at the forefront of digital advertising technology since its inception and has demonstrated its ability to grow, thrive, and innovate as competitors have come and gone. In 2011, Viant acquired the social network website Myspace.com. In 2011, Tim and Chris Vanderhook started Xumo, a connected TV streaming service, which was acquired by Comcast Corp. in 2020. In 2015, Viant completed its first people-based integration. Viant remained independent until 2016, when Time Inc. acquired a 60% interest in Viant through its subsidiary, Viant Technology Holding Inc. (the “Former Holdco”). That interest was later acquired by Meredith Corporation when it acquired Time Inc. in 2018. In 2017, the Company purchased Adelphic, a DSP. Since the Adelphic acquisition, the Company has materially transformed from a full-service provider of digital advertising solutions into a leading DSP that enables marketers and their advertising agencies to centralize the planning, buying and measurement of their media investments using a people-based framework. Viant has grown from a business operating from a home office to a company with nearly 300 employees in 10 offices throughout the U.S. In 2019, Viant entered into an agreement that resulted in the retirement of the Former Holdco’s interest in Viant and Tim Vanderhook, Chris Vanderhook and Four Brothers 2 LLC (the “Vanderhook Parties”) acquired that 60% interest in the Company (the “2019 Former Holdco transaction”), allowing it to once again become an independent company. Viant Technology Inc. was incorporated in Delaware on October 9, 2020. In connection with the consummation of our initial public offering (the “IPO”), Viant Technology Inc. became the sole managing member of Viant Technology LLC. We completed the IPO of our Class A common stock on February 12, 2021. Our principal executive offices are located at 2722 Michelson Drive, Suite 100, Irvine, CA 92612 and our telephone number is (949) 861-8888. Our website address is www.viantinc.com.

The SEC maintains a website at www.sec.gov that contains reports, information statements and other information regarding issuers that file electronically with the SEC. Our Annual Report can be downloaded from the SEC’s website. We will file with or furnish to the SEC periodic reports and other information. We furnish or make available to our stockholders annual reports containing our audited financial statements prepared in accordance with GAAP. We also furnish or make available to our stockholders quarterly reports containing our unaudited interim financial information, for the first three fiscal quarters of each fiscal year. We make our periodic reports and other information filed with or furnished to the SEC available, free of charge, through our website, as soon as reasonably practicable after those reports and other information are electronically filed with or furnished to the SEC. Information contained on our website or linked therein or otherwise connected thereto does not constitute part of nor is it incorporated by reference into this Annual Report.

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Item 1A. Risk Factors.

Investing in our Class A common stock involves a high degree of risk. You should carefully consider the following risks and uncertainties described below, together with all other information contained in this Annual Report and in our other public filings, including our consolidated financial statements and the related notes appearing at the end of this Annual Report. The occurrence of any of the following risks, as well as any risks or uncertainties not currently known to us or that we currently do not believe to be material, could materially and adversely affect our business, prospects, financial condition, results of operations and cash flow, in which case, the trading price of our Class A common stock could decline and you could lose all or part of your investment.

Summary of Factors That May Affect Our Future Results

The following summarizes the principal factors that make an investment in the Company speculative or risky. This summary should be read in conjunction with the remainder of this “Risk Factors” section and should not be relied upon as an exhaustive summary of the material risks facing our business. The occurrence of any of these risks could harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and/or growth prospects or cause our actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements we have made in this report and those we may make from time to time. You should consider all of the risk factors described in our public filings when evaluating our business.

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Risks Related to Our Business

Our success and revenue growth is dependent on adding new customers, effectively educating and training our existing customers on how to make full use of our platform and increasing usage of our platform by our customers.

Our success is dependent on regularly adding new customers and increasing our customers’ usage of our platform. Our contracts and relationships with customers generally do not include long-term or exclusive obligations requiring them to use our platform or maintain or increase their use of our platform. Our customers typically have relationships with numerous providers and can use both our platform and those of our competitors without incurring significant costs or disruption. Our customers may also choose to decrease their overall advertising spend for any reason, including if they do not believe they are receiving a sufficient return on their advertising spend. Accordingly, we must continually work to win new customers and retain existing customers, increase their usage of our platform and capture a larger share of their advertising spend. We may not be successful at educating and training customers, particularly our newer customers, on how to use our platform, in particular our advanced reporting tools, in order for our customers to get the most benefit from our platform and increase their usage. If these efforts are unsuccessful or customers decide not to continue to maintain or increase their usage of our platform for any other reason, or if we fail to attract new customers, our revenue could fail to grow or decline, which would materially and adversely harm our business, operating results and financial condition. We cannot assure you that our customers will continue to use and increase their spend on our platform or that we will be able to attract a sufficient number of new customers to continue to grow our business and revenue. If customers representing a significant portion of our business decide to materially reduce their use of our platform or cease using our platform altogether, our revenue could be significantly reduced, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results and financial condition. We may not be able to replace customers who decrease or cease their usage of our platform with new customers that will use our platform to the same extent.

We may not realize the expected benefits of an industry shift away from cookie-based consumer tracking as such shift may not occur as rapidly as we expect or may not be realized at all.

We expect to benefit as compared to others in our industry from marketers reducing their reliance on vendors and software platforms that utilize third-party cookies for tracking. However, we cannot assure you that the shift away from cookie-based consumer tracking will happen as rapidly as we expect or that such shift will occur at all. Additionally, even if the shift away from cookie-based consumer tracking does occur, we may not be as successful in growing our business and increasing our revenue as we expect. For example, marketers may not shift their business away from our competitors if our competitors are successful in developing alternative products or services that are not significantly reliant on the cookie-based framework.

The effects of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and other sustained adverse market events have had, and could in the future have, an adverse impact on our business, operating results and financial condition.

Our business and operations have been and could in the future be adversely affected by health epidemics, such as the global COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic and efforts to control its spread have curtailed the movement of people, goods and services worldwide, including in the regions in which we and our customers and partners operate, and are significantly impacting economic activity and financial markets. Many marketers, particularly those in the travel, retail and automotive industries, have decreased or paused their advertising spending as a response to the economic uncertainty, decline in business activity, and other COVID-19-related impacts, which has negatively impacted, and may continue to negatively impact, our revenue and results of operations, the extent and duration of which we may not be able to accurately predict. The spread of an infectious disease may also result in, and, in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in, regional quarantines, labor shortages or stoppages, changes in consumer purchasing patterns, disruptions to service providers’ ability to deliver data on a timely basis, or at all, and overall economic instability.

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A recession, depression or other sustained adverse market events resulting from the spread of COVID-19 could materially and adversely affect our business and that of our customers or potential customers. Our customers’ and potential customers’ businesses or cash flows have been and may continue to be negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led and may continue to lead them to reduce their advertising spending and delay their advertising initiatives or technology spending, or attempt to renegotiate contracts and obtain concessions, which may materially and negatively impact our business, operating results and financial condition. Our customers may also seek adjustments to their payment terms, delay making payments or default on their payables, any of which may impact the timely receipt and/or collectability of our receivables. Typically, we are contractually required to pay advertising inventory and data suppliers within a negotiated period of time, regardless of whether our customers pay us on time, or at all, and we may not be able to renegotiate better terms. As a result, our financial condition and results of operations may be adversely impacted if the business or financial condition of our customers and marketers is negatively affected by the pandemic.

Our operations are subject to a range of external factors related to the COVID-19 pandemic that are not within our control. We have taken precautionary measures intended to minimize the risk of the spread of the virus to our employees, partners and customers, and the communities in which we operate. A wide range of governmental restrictions has also been imposed on our employees’, customers’ and partners’ physical movement to limit the spread of COVID-19. There can be no assurance that precautionary measures, whether adopted by us or imposed by others, will be effective, and such measures could negatively affect our sales, marketing, and customer service efforts, delay and lengthen our sales cycles, decrease our employees’ or customers’ or partners’ productivity, or create operational or other challenges, any of which could harm our business, operating results and financial condition.

The economic uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has made and may continue to make it difficult for us to forecast revenue and operating results and to make decisions regarding operational cost structures and investments. Our business depends on the overall demand for advertising and on the economic health of our customers that benefit from our platform. Economic downturns or unstable market conditions may cause our customers to decrease their advertising budgets, which could reduce usage of our platform and adversely affect our business, operating results and financial condition. We have committed, and we plan to continue to commit, resources to grow our business, including to expand our employee base and develop our platform and systems, and such investments may not yield anticipated returns, particularly if worldwide business activity continues to be impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The duration and extent of the impact from the COVID-19 pandemic depend on future developments that cannot be accurately predicted at this time, and if we are not able to respond to and manage the impact of such events effectively, our business may be harmed. Such future developments may include, among others, the duration and spread of the outbreak, new information that may emerge concerning the severity of COVID-19 and government actions to contain COVID-19 or treat its impact, the level of relief efforts designed to help businesses and consumers, including any declines in such levels, impact on our customers and our sales cycles, impact on our customer, industry or employee events, and effect on our advertising inventory partners.

Our results may also fluctuate unpredictably as and to the extent there is a recovery from the pandemic and a return to non-pandemic business conditions. We cannot predict the impact of a post-pandemic recovery on the economy, our customers or consumer media consumption patterns or the degree to which certain trends, such as the growth in demand for our connected TV offering, will continue.

If we fail to innovate and make the right investment decisions in our offerings and platform, we may not attract and retain customers and our revenue and results of operations may decline.

Our industry is subject to rapid and frequent changes in technology, evolving customer needs and the frequent introduction by our competitors of new and enhanced offerings. We must regularly make investment decisions regarding offerings and technology to maintain the technological competitiveness of our products and services and meet customer demand and evolving industry standards. The complexity and uncertainty regarding the development of new technologies and the extent and timing of market acceptance of innovative products and services create difficulties in maintaining this competitiveness. The success of any enhancement or new solution depends on many factors, including timely completion, adequate quality testing, appropriate introduction and market acceptance. Without the timely introduction of new products, services and enhancements, our offerings could become technologically or commercially obsolete over time, in which case our revenue and operating results would suffer. If new or existing competitors have more attractive offerings, we may lose customers or customers may decrease their use of our platform. New customer demands, superior competitive offerings or new industry standards could require us to make unanticipated and costly changes to our platform or business model.

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If we fail to enhance our current products and services or fail to develop new products to adapt to our rapidly changing industry or to evolving customer needs, demand for our platform could decrease and our business, operating results and financial condition may be adversely affected.

The market for programmatic buying for advertising campaigns is relatively new and evolving. If this market develops slower or differently than we expect, our business, operating results and financial condition would be adversely affected.

We derive revenue from the programmatic purchase of advertising on our platform. We expect that programmatic ad buying will continue to be our primary source of revenue for the foreseeable future, and that our revenue growth will largely depend on increasing our customers’ usage of our platform. While the market for programmatic ad buying for desktop and mobile display ads is relatively established, the market in other channels is still emerging, and our current and potential customers may not shift quickly enough to programmatic ad buying from other buying methods, which would reduce our growth potential. If the market for programmatic ad buying deteriorates or develops more slowly than we expect, it could reduce demand for our platform, and our business, growth prospects and financial condition would be adversely affected.

In particular, the market for programmatic buying for advertising campaigns across multiple advertising channels, including connected TV, linear TV, streaming audio and digital billboard channels is an emerging market. Our ability to provide capabilities across multiple advertising channels, which we refer to as omnichannel, may be constrained if we are not be able to maintain or grow advertising inventory for such channels, and some of our omnichannel offerings may not gain market acceptance. We may not be able to accurately predict changes in overall industry demand for the channels in which we operate and cannot assure you that our investment in channel development will correspond to any such changes. For example, we cannot predict whether the growth in demand for our connected TV offering will continue. Furthermore, if our channel mix changes due to a shift in customer demand, such as customers shifting their usage more quickly or more extensively than expected to channels in which we have relatively less functionality, features, or inventory, such as linear TV, then demand for our platform could decrease, and our business, financial condition, and results of operations could be adversely affected.

We receive a significant amount of revenue from a select number of advertising agency holding companies, owning various advertising agencies, and the loss of advertising agencies as customers could harm our business, operating results and financial condition.

A significant amount of our revenue comes from advertising agencies. We had 264 Active Customers for the year ended December 31, 2020, consisting primarily of advertising agencies. Many of these agencies are owned by advertising agency holding companies, where decision making is generally highly decentralized such that purchasing decisions are made, and relationships with marketers are located, at the agency, local branch or division level. If all of our individual customer contractual relationships were aggregated at the holding company level, two advertising agency holding companies would represent 13.3% and 13.2%, respectively, of our revenue for 2020. Due to the highly decentralized operations and decision-making at the agencies owned by each of these advertising agency holding companies, we consider the individual agencies rather than the holding company to be our customers.

Often, we enter into separate contracts and billing relationships with the individual agencies and account for them as separate customers. However, some holding companies for these agencies may choose to exert control over the individual agencies in the future. If so, any loss of relationships with such holding companies and, consequently, of their agencies, local branches or divisions, as customers could significantly harm our business, operating results and financial condition.

We do not have exclusive relationships with advertising agencies and we depend on agencies to work with us as they embark on advertising campaigns for their clients. The loss of such agencies could significantly harm our business, operating results and financial condition. If we fail to maintain satisfactory relationships with an advertising agency, we risk losing business from the marketers represented by that agency.

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Marketers may change advertising agencies. If a marketer switches from an agency that utilizes our platform to one that does not, we could lose revenue from that marketer. In addition, some advertising agencies have strong relationships with competing DSPs or other platforms and may direct their marketers to such other platforms.

We may experience fluctuations in our operating results, which could make our future operating results difficult to predict or cause our operating results to fall below securities analysts’ and investors’ expectations.

Our quarterly and annual operating results have fluctuated in the past and we expect our future operating results to fluctuate due to a variety of factors, many of which are beyond our control. In particular, we offer our customers a choice of three different pricing options: a percentage of spend option, a subscription option and a fixed cost per mille (“CPM”) pricing option. We also offer our customers the ability to use our services to aid them in data management, media execution and advanced reporting. Our revenue and revenue ex-TAC vary across these different pricing and service options, and therefore our results may vary based on the mix of pricing and service options chosen by customers in any given period. The varying nature of our pricing mix between periods therefore may make it more difficult for us to forecast our future operating results. Further, variation in our pricing mix may make it more difficult to make comparisons between prior, current and future periods. Period-to-period comparisons of our operating results should not be relied upon as an indication of our future performance. Fluctuations in our operating results could cause our performance to fall below the expectations of securities analysts and investors, and adversely affect the price of our Class A common stock. Because our business is changing and evolving rapidly, and the macroeconomic environment continues to evolve as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, our historical operating results may not be necessarily indicative of our future operating results. It is also difficult to predict the impact of a post-pandemic recovery on our business and operating results. In addition to changes in terms of mix of our different pricing options, factors that may cause our operating results to fluctuate include the following: