Viant Technology Inc. (DSP) Q2 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Viant Technologies' Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. My name is David, and I will be your operator today. Before I hand the call over to the Viant leadership team, I'd like to go over a few housekeeping notes for the program. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] Thank you for your attendance today. I would now like to turn the call over to Nick Zangler, SVP of Investor Relations for Viant.

Thank you. Good afternoon, and welcome to Viant Technologies' Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. On the call today are 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 Q3 2026 and other future financial results, our strategy, our growth opportunities, performance and benefits of our products, our platform development initiatives, including Viant AI, expected benefits of our acquisition of TVision, our pipeline and potential partnership opportunities, our share repurchase program, potential tailwinds 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 June 30, 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 most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are included in the news release issued today and in our earnings 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 Viant. Tim?

Thanks, Nick, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. We delivered strong second quarter performance achieving new company second quarter records across all key metrics. Revenue increased 34% year-over-year, well above the high end of our quarterly guidance range and contribution ex-TAC increased 24% year-over-year. Growth was broad-based across most verticals, driven by strong CTV demand, increased utilization of our proprietary intelligence and expanded use of Viant AI. Most notably, customer CTV spend surged by nearly 50% in the quarter, attributable to the unique performance advantages we deliver for advertisers within this secular growth channel. And finally, adjusted EBITDA increased 26% year-over-year to $14.2 million for the quarter, exceeding the high end of our guidance range. As our second quarter results clearly indicate, Viant has entered into a new phase of accelerated growth propelled by the continued adoption of our platform by major U.S. advertisers. Ramping spend from these clients contributed to one of our strongest top line quarters ever as a public company. Our momentum is accelerating and is supported by the largest pipeline of new business opportunities in our company's history. Our differentiated value proposition further enhanced by the integration of TVision's attention insights is resonating with advertisers and agencies more so than ever before. Viant has evolved from a demand side platform into an advertising intelligence company, uniquely capable of empowering advertisers with proprietary data, independent measurement and cutting-edge AI solutions, which collectively work in concert to optimize media execution. Viant is in market with an industry-leading arsenal of technological solutions, specifically engineered to drive superior ad campaign performance. Our intelligence layer synthesizes proprietary viewership signals, spanning audience identity, content selection and viewer attention into real-time actionable insights that best inform campaign targeting strategies. Lattice Brain, our AI-powered decisioning architecture, operationalizes these insights, dynamically refining every campaign to ensure that performance is continuously optimized. And our Direct Access supply path connects brands directly to premium publishers, lowering costs and eliminating bidstream inefficiencies to maximize working media spend. These solutions exclusive to Viant are attracting new advertisers to our platform while simultaneously fueling organic growth through deeper value-driven relationships with existing clients. Our commitment to innovation is solidifying Viant as an essential must-have partner for today's outcome-oriented advertisers. In a moment, Chris will provide some perspective on today's market environment and detail how Viant is strategically positioned to capitalize on emerging market opportunities, to deliver sustainable long-term growth into 2027 and beyond. But first, I will provide an update on our recent performance and progress across our three key strategic priorities: Viant's proprietary intelligence layer, Viant AI and CTV. Beginning with our intelligence layer, Viant empowers advertisers to deploy sophisticated campaign strategies through three core pillars of proprietary intelligence, spanning identity, content and attention. These proprietary data signals allow our advertisers to parse through the 15 million bid requests made available to them every second and identify the specific impressions that will drive performance. Leveraging our proprietary intelligence, advertisers can precisely target their desired audiences within contextually relevant high attention environments and capture value by acquiring inventory where the intrinsic value exceeds the market price. Walking through our intelligence layer, Viant's identity intelligence is powered by our Household ID, a patented solution for audience targeting. Household ID delivers superior addressability for advertisers looking to activate their first-party data to reach specific audiences and measure campaign performance. Household ID is widely available across the digital landscape, embedded in 80% of all programmatic bid requests and 96% of all CTV requests. Offering 4x the coverage of competing identity solutions, it is mapped to 95% of U.S. household addresses through our identity graph, enabling advertisers to activate first-party data at massive scale. A large grocery store chain has been utilizing Household ID for several years. By leveraging the pervasive reach of Household ID, they are able to deploy sophisticated audience-targeting campaigns at a scale that is simply unmatched in the market. We link their first-party data directly to our identity graph to establish a precise one-to-one match. Because Household ID is so ubiquitous, we can scale their strategy across the entire programmatic ecosystem, more broadly than any competitor, while providing simple, clean, closed-loop measurement back to their own internal IDs. Household ID utilization reached new heights this quarter, fueled by a growing number of advertisers deploying sophisticated targeting strategies. This adoption drove robust performance, with contribution ex-TAC attributable to Household ID achieving its strongest year-over-year growth in 5 quarters. Viant's content intelligence is powered by the IRIS Content ID, which empowers advertisers with show-level targeting, a significant leap in granularity compared to that of our competitors, who are limited to app level visibility. We achieved scene level targeting through direct integrations with publisher content management systems which provides Viant with high-resolution contextual intelligence that is not available elsewhere. Leveraging the IRIS Content ID, advertisers can align their ad creative with specific shows, contextual categories and even emotional sentiments enabling a level of micro targeting that drives better outcomes. A brand like WHOOP will combine the audience precision of Household ID with the contextual intelligence of the IRIS Content ID to achieve superior return on ad spend. By stacking Household ID with IRIS Content ID, WHOOP not only reaches fitness enthusiasts, they reach fitness enthusiasts in the specific contextually relevant moments that matter most, like during premium sports programming, which significantly boosts campaign performance. We are seeing a powerful feedback loop. Advertisers are prioritizing IRIS Content ID for its granular targeting capabilities and publishers are rapidly adopting the standard to make their inventory more competitive and attractive. IRIS Content ID is currently enabled across a number of leading CTV OEMs, including Samsung, LG, VIZIO, TCL and Xumo, along with leading streaming services, including Paramount+, Tubi, AMC Networks and A&E, among others. Presence across enabled publishers has pushed IRIS Content ID to nearly 50% penetration within the bidstream. Over the course of the third and fourth quarters, we are scheduled to launch the IRIS Content ID across Disney+, HBO Max, Peacock, Roku, DIRECTV, Sling TV, Spectrum and Philo pushing penetration to approximately 70% of biddable inventory by the end of the year. Viant's attention intelligence is powered by TVision and its nationally representative panel of U.S. households, each of which is equipped with TVision's computer vision and automatic content recognition technology. TVision's attention data provides advertisers with four unique signals of attentive insight: in-room presence, co-viewership, second-by-second eyes on screen attention and associated viewer demographics. These signals quantify viewer attention across the entire media landscape, which includes linear TV, connected TV and the walled garden platforms of YouTube and Prime Video. To date, TVision attention measurement data has been an essential asset for advertisers looking to optimize market planning and elevate creative performance. Publishers also rely on TVision's insights to pinpoint where viewer engagement gravitates allowing them to better refine their content strategies. But together, Viant and TVision are pioneering a new standard of advanced targeting. We can now deploy attention data as a prebid signal which empowers advertisers to target inventory based on its attentive value, a breakthrough capability that has not existed until now. To be more precise, TVision's attention signals effectively act as a proprietary lens for price discovery. We can now calculate the real-time intrinsic value of any impression based on its attention score. By comparing this intrinsic value to the prevailing market price we can identify when an impression is undervalued and capture it for our clients. This is a distinct decisioning framework and algorithmic mode that no other competitor in the market can offer today. Consider this illustrative example. Think back to Game 5 of the NBA Finals where the Knicks were mounting a historic comeback. As the game tightened, viewer attention surged, in-room presence, co-viewership and eyes on screen engagement all peaked, driving the advertising inventory's intrinsic value up to a $120 CPM as determined by TVision. Because this intelligence is unique to Viant, we would be willing to bid for this inventory up to $120 but competing ad platforms would be left unaware of the true value of the impression. Lacking the data to justify the higher cost, they would most likely refuse to raise their bid beyond a modest premium, allowing Viant to strategically secure high-value inventory for our clients at a significant discount. This is a performance advantage we believe no other platform can compete with today and one we look to roll out across the course of this year. On that note, our TVision integration is tracking well ahead of schedule and early results validate our strategy. We recently executed 42 pilot campaigns with advertisers targeting TVision's high attention inventory segments. Across this cohort, over 80% of these campaigns achieved higher conversion rates versus the benchmark, delivering an average lift of 1.4x. We saw even more significant outperformance in specific verticals, including a 14x lift for a home improvement brand, 3.7x for an online university, and a 3.1x lift for a state tourism office. While our technical integration remains ongoing throughout the year, the exceptional progress we have made thus far allows us to accelerate our commercial rollout ahead of schedule. TVision has already become a key instrument in our pitch to both new and existing clients. And we are highly encouraged by the strong reception from advertisers and agencies eager to leverage these attentive insights. Together, Household ID, IRIS Content ID and TVision can unlock performance capabilities that distinguish Viant from competitors. But to maximize the effectiveness of these proprietary solutions, we feed these insights directly into Viant AI's Lattice Brain decisioning architecture. The volume and velocity of real-time data signals are likely impossible for a human to efficiently synthesize, but our AI processes this information instantly, automating and optimizing campaigns with a level of precision no human could ever achieve. This takes me to Viant AI. Earlier this year, we launched Outcomes, our first version of a fully autonomous ad product designed to capture performance-driven budgets deployed across the open Internet. Outcomes complements our existing suite of AI products. Representing a do-it-for-me solution, built to compete with walled garden performance products, namely Google's PMax and Meta's Advantage+, but with a distinct advantage of utilizing Viant's proprietary intelligence across the entire open Internet. The workflow is simple. An advertiser needs only to provide their name, budget, flight dates and goal. And Viant AI takes it from there. Our AI autonomously constructs an optimal media plan, executes it and continuously optimizes performance in milliseconds, entirely without any human intervention. We are in the early stages of our go-to-market rollout, yet the market reception has been exceptional. Outcomes is already accounting for 5% of total ad spend year-to-date. An impressive level of adoption for a product launched just 6 months ago. We are validating CTV as a destination in which advertisers can deploy performance spend, which unlocks a massive opportunity to attract spend from the 10 million advertisers currently confining their performance budget to search and social media environments. Moving to CTV. In the quarter, total CTV spend increased nearly 50%, reaching yet another new all-time high. And once again, CTV spend accounted for over 50% of total ad spend in the quarter, reflecting the growing preference of advertisers to designate the CTV channel as the cornerstone of their holistic campaign strategy. Clearly, our growth within CTV is multiples above the industry growth rate. And the reason is simple. We are taking share within CTV because on our platform, ad spend goes further, targeting and measurement is better, and Viant AI makes the entire buying process easier. With each passing quarter, Viant continues to establish itself as the ideal platform for advertisers looking to deploy CTV campaigns across the open Internet. Driving this momentum is the rapid adoption of our Direct Access solution. As a reminder, Direct Access offers an efficient, targetable and measurable path to the premium inventory by facilitating transactions directly with publishers. This combination of superior data resolution with a streamlined path to purchase significantly enhances media execution, driving 35% reductions in CPMs, resulting in real measurable savings for advertisers. In the second quarter, we saw a step function lift in CTV ad spend allocated through Direct Access. Over 80% of CTV ad spend on our platform was transacted through Direct Access, a steep increase from just over 50% reported in the first quarter of the year. These results are a clear indication of how buyers seek to transact today. They want transparency, data-driven precision and return on ad spend efficiency all of which is made available through our direct integrations with publishers. In July, we expanded Direct Access to include streaming services powered by Publica, a leading ad server representing multiple premium publishers. As these new publishers are onboarded, we expect over 90% of on-platform CTV spend will be distributed through Direct Access in the near future. Over time, through integrations with every major streaming service, we would expect nearly 100% of our clients CTV spend to flow through Direct Access. Lastly, there's been a lot of discussion about whether AI eliminates parts of the advertising technology stack. We think that's asking the wrong question. AI changes the interface, but it dramatically increases the amount of real-time decisioning required underneath it. In an agentic world, inventory becomes easier to discover and transact. That makes proprietary intelligence more valuable. Someone still has to determine which impression an advertiser should buy, what it's worth, whether that consumer has already been reached, what creative should be shown and whether that dollar would be -- would generate a better return somewhere else. That's the role Viant is building for. We don't represent publishers, we represent advertisers. Our job is not to maximize the CPM for every ad impression available. Our job is to maximize the value of the advertisers' next dollar by selectively deciding which impressions drive value. And increasingly, that decision is powered by Viant's proprietary intelligence, from identity, content and attention through independent measurement. Before turning it over to Chris, I would like to take a moment to welcome Craig Abrahams to Viant's Board of Directors. Craig is an experienced entrepreneur, founder and executive with over 25 years of experience in technology and digital media. He is the cofounder of Caesars Interactive Entertainment, a digital gaming business subsidiary of Caesars Entertainment. While at Caesars, he orchestrated the acquisition of Playtika, a leading mobile gaming company, which he would go on to lead as President and CFO, guiding the company through its IPO and aggressive acquisition strategy. His experience scaling a rapidly growing business organically and through strategic M&A will be instrumental as Viant enters a new phase of accelerated growth, and we are thrilled to have him join the board. I'll now turn it over to Chris to walk us through our strategic positioning and how we are building for long-term growth.

Thanks, Tim. Viant has reached a clear inflection point exemplified by our record-breaking second quarter results and strong third quarter guidance. Looking forward, we are uniquely positioned to capitalize on powerful industry tailwinds, including the ongoing migration of linear, search and social budgets into CTV as well as our own proprietary growth drivers. I want to start by addressing the ongoing migration of linear TV budgets into connected TV, a fundamental market shift where Viant is better positioned than ever to capture incremental growth. Currently, industry-wide CTV spend stands at approximately $37 billion, with $51 billion still residing in linear TV. As those dollars migrate, they become increasingly addressable for Viant, particularly because we are now aggressively targeting the enterprise level accounts that command the majority of that legacy linear spend. This migration represents more than just a shift in channel. It is a fundamental evolution of the advertising model. The old TV model was built on simple reach and frequency, measuring how many people were exposed to an ad. The new model is built on attention, valuing media by the real seconds consumers are actually engaged. With TVision, we are helping advertisers move beyond paying for impressions that are merely delivered. We are helping them value media based on cost per attentive second. This allows them to compare inventory accurately, optimize campaigns and finally, understand the value of what they're actually buying. We are seeing this shift in thinking play out in our RFP pipeline. Just 2 years ago, enterprise brands were largely out of reach for Viant. Today, we are actively engaged with some of the world's largest advertisers, representing hundreds of millions of dollars in potential spend. They are migrating from linear to CTV to find new efficiencies, and we are the partner showing them how to achieve it. When these brands look at our platform, they see a solution that solves their core challenges: by eliminating ad spend waste through Direct Access, sharpening audience targeting with Household ID, ensuring contextual alignment with IRIS Content ID and securing high-value ad placements with TVision. We are delivering measurable performance driven outcomes that materially improve both the top and bottom lines for enterprise brands. We are also seeing brand advertisers take a more active role in DSP selection, a shift that serves a significant tailwind for Viant. Today, a growing percentage of our ad spend involves direct brand relationships, allowing for greater synergy as brands work alongside their agency partners to maximize campaign performance on our platform. As we deepen these relationships, brands are increasingly prioritizing Viant's independence and objectivity. They seek a partner aligned with their strategic goals, not a walled garden DSP with conflicting incentives. This is playing out across our current RFP cohort, where walled garden providers are being sidelined early due to a fundamental misalignment of incentives that is quickly recognized by the brands. Advertisers are increasingly viewing walled garden DSPs like Amazon and Google as sellers of their own inventory rather than neutral strategic partners. Because these platforms serve as both publisher and DSP, their incentives are fundamentally conflicted. They are driven to maximize budget capture often at the expense of campaign efficiency by applying self-attribution tactics to justify diverting spend toward their owned and operated content. TVision can help us shift this power dynamic. By quantifying actual viewer attention, we provide advertisers with the objective intelligence required to hold these platforms accountable, independent of their own self-serving claims. While Prime Video and YouTube remain part of a balanced CTV strategy, our data suggests that many advertisers are vastly over-indexed. We are providing the necessary insights for them to reallocate those budgets more efficiently across the broader open CTV landscape. Now as advertisers increasingly seek independent objective partners, we believe there are only two viable enterprise-grade self-service buying platforms to consider. Recent friction between agency holding companies and our primary competitor has already triggered budget reallocations to our DSP, along with the surge in new RFP opportunities, which we expect to realize in the coming quarters. The emergence of CTV as a performance channel represents another major catalyst for growth, and we see an opportunity for advertisers to divert their existing search and social performance budgets to CTV. Today, search and social together command over $300 billion in U.S. ad spend, and we aim to tap this market. Performance advertisers are most commonly represented by niche brands and niche brands speak to niche audiences, which are often defined by location, demographics, interests, income levels and so forth. Viant is uniquely equipped to power performance budgets given the inherent need for precision targeting, which ensures ad spend is allocated to those audiences exhibiting the highest propensity to respond. Our outcome solution was engineered specifically to capture this performance budget opportunity and the traction we have achieved in a short period is significant. As Tim noted, performance-driven spend now accounts for over 5% of our total platform spend year-to-date, all of which has been secured by existing customers electing to divert a portion of their performance budget to Viant. Outcomes is in a perpetual state of improvement and will soon incorporate TVision's data expected to further enhance performance. Our immediate priority is to drive performance budget adoption among our existing clients, tapping into incremental spend that complements their traditional brand budgets. Over the long term, we plan to broaden this initiative to capture new performance-based demand from brands outside our current ecosystem. On a related note, we also believe advertisers are simply over indexed in search and social, misled by self attribution tactics that reward walled gardens for organic sales that would have occurred anyway. I recently spoke with the head of a major beauty brand who experienced this firsthand. Despite favorable lower funnel KPIs, his top line growth stalled. He realized his social media spend was hyper-focused on consumers already in market, those actively looking for cosmetic products. While this strategy certainly drove clicks, he was only reaching 8% of his target audience, which is women between the ages of 15 to 54 years old. You cannot grow market share if you only advertise to the 5% of consumers currently shopping for your product. This brand was burning budget on customers who would have already purchased anyways while starving the company of the brand awareness investment needed to reach incremental customers. I have heard variations of this dynamic from advertisers time and time again. As walled gardens continue to pump out double-digit revenue growth, their customers see their own top line stagnant. We believe more advertisers will come to this realization, and this serves as yet another reason advertisers are considering diverting their search and social budgets to CTV. Beyond these industry tailwinds, our opportunity for growth is propelled by catalysts unique to Viant, namely the accelerating adoption of Direct Access, Household ID, IRIS Content ID, TVision and Viant AI. Collectively, these solutions are the key driver of the momentum we are seeing across major U.S. advertisers. As we continue to prove their efficacy, we expect advertisers to expand their on-platform commitments, capitalizing on the performance gains that we enable. For Viant, this growth is accretive from both a volume and unit economic perspective. Our model is this: as advertisers deepen their adoption of our solution suite, we have the ability to capture higher margins when we deliver superior performance. This creates a compounding effect. As advertisers find success with Household ID, they naturally expand their budget to scale their audience targeting strategy across the platform. By layering on IRIS Content ID for content targeting, they see further performance gains, which drives additional spend at even more attractive margins to Viant. As we integrate TVision for attention-based optimization and leverage Viant AI for autonomous decisioning, the results further compound. Each layer of intelligence not only elevates campaign performance but also allows Viant to capture more value, fueling a virtuous cycle of success for our clients and our business, the hallmark of a true partnership. This strategic alignment reinforces our commitment to relentless innovation. While we have already established a formidable arsenal of performance driving solutions, we will continue to make strategic investments that enhance performance on behalf of advertisers. Backed by a healthy balance sheet with nearly $200 million in cash, 0 debt and accelerating free cash flow we are uniquely positioned to pursue the launch of new innovative offerings, both organically and through opportunistic M&A with the goal of delivering superior outcomes for our clients. We believe the best is yet to come. We are committed to extending our lead as the most advanced buying platform, powering the next generation of ad spend deployment across the open Internet. And with that, I'll turn it over to Larry to provide more detail on our financial performance. Larry?

Thanks, Chris. Before I begin, I would like to remind everyone that we have posted a presentation on our Investor Relations website that includes supplemented financial information to accompany today's call. In terms of our results for the second quarter, revenue for the quarter was $104.3 million, a 34% increase year-over-year and an 18% increase sequentially. The year-over-year growth rate accelerated 9 percentage points from 25% in Q1, exceeding the high end of our guide by 3%. Contribution ex-TAC totaled $60.2 million in Q2, up 24% year-over-year and 20% sequentially. The year-over-year growth rate accelerated 6 percentage points from 18% in Q1 and came in just short of the high end of our guide. At the midpoint of our Q3 guidance, which I'll speak to in a moment, we expect year-over-year contribution ex-TAC growth of 25%. This would extend the quarterly progression from 18% in Q1 to 24% in Q2 to 25% in Q3. We delivered strong performance across most customer verticals in Q2 with health care, public services and travel leading the way. Our top five verticals, representing approximately 60% of platform spend, increased almost 30% year-over-year. CTV remained a core growth driver in Q2, accounting for over 50% of total platform spend. In addition, CTV reached an all-time high in the 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 this secular trend, customer-directed purchasing on our platform across these channels collectively represented over 60% of advertiser 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 media 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. Turning to our expenses. Non-GAAP operating expenses totaled $46 million for the quarter, reflecting a 24% year-over-year increase and a 13% increase sequentially. This increase in non-GAAP operating expenses both year-over-year and sequentially is partly the result of the TVision acquisition, which closed on May 1, 2026. Importantly, we remain focused on scaling efficiently. Even as we continue to invest in innovation across Viant 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 7% year-over-year, marking 12 straight quarterly increases, a clear signal of improved operational efficiency. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $14.2 million, representing an increase of 26% year-over-year and 46% sequentially, exceeding the high end of our guide. Adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of contribution ex-TAC was 24% for the quarter, expanding approximately 30 basis points compared to the prior year and 50 basis points higher than the high end of our guide. Non-GAAP net income, which excludes stock-based compensation and other adjustments, totaled $9.9 million for the quarter, up 23% from $8 million in the prior year period. Non-GAAP basic earnings per Class A share outstanding increased 50% to $0.15 in the second quarter compared to $0.10 in the prior year period. In terms of share count, we ended the quarter with 66.5 million total shares outstanding, consisting of 21.1 million Class A shares and 45.4 million Class B shares. We ended the quarter with $193.1 million in cash and cash equivalents and $200.6 million of 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 quarter, cash flows from operating activities increased $7.5 million year-over-year to $28.5 million, representing a 36% increase. Free cash flow increased $6.3 million year-over-year to $22.4 million, representing a 39% increase. And for the 6 months ended June 30, 2026, cash flow from operating activities totaled $31.4 million, representing a year-over-year increase of 90%. Free cash flow totaled $21.4 million, representing a year-over-year increase of 169% and an approximately 89% conversion of adjusted EBITDA. Year-to-date, we have used $1 million for share repurchase 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 August 7, $39.4 million remains available under the current authorization. We believe our strong financial foundation, combined with the consistent execution and the balanced capital allocation strategy, positions us well to capture growth opportunities and drive shareholder value in the quarters ahead. Turning now to our Q3 outlook. For the third quarter of 2026, we expect revenue of $107.5 million to $110.5 million, up 27% over the prior year period and a 5% increase sequentially at the midpoint. Contribution ex-TAC of $65 million to $67 million reconflecting a 25% year-over-year growth and 10% quarter over growth at the midpoint. Non-GAAP operating expenses of $46.5 million to $47.5 million up 27% year-over-year and 2% sequentially at the midpoint. Adjusted EBITDA of $18.5 million to $19.5 million, representing a 19% year-over-year increase and 34% sequentially at the midpoint. And finally, we expect an adjusted EBITDA margin as a percentage of contribution ex-TAC of 29%. The midpoint of our guide assumes record Q3 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 and 2027, 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 in contribution ex-TAC to continue to accelerate sequentially through the end of the year, supported by the continued ramp of recently onboarded customers, expansion within existing customer relationships, sustained demand in CTV, the incorporation of TVision into our results and political. 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 a 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 intelligence and Viant AI, and with that, I'll turn the call back over to the operator for questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Andrew with Raymond James, Andrew.

Two, if I could. One, great to see the Direct Access penetration figure grow so quickly. But was there any specific unlock that caused the big step change in the span of one quarter? Was it anything to do with new customers coming online and going all Direct Access, existing customers leaning in more or a specific product kind of feature unlock? And then I have a follow-up.

Yes, Andrew, thanks for the question. One, I would just say, just generally, existing customers just continuing to educate them on the cost savings we're seeing on average, 35% lower CPMs. It's kind of a no-brainer for them to move money there. That's one. Two, just the quality of the names of the companies in Direct Access. It's just -- it's -- everyone in there is of highest quality, whether they're a content owner or an OEM. So that definitely is a big benefactor. And then I would say on our go-to-market with new customers, that's front and center in our offering. And for these large customers will be able to save -- or excuse me, 35% of their CTV investments by running through Direct Access. So all of those are really what added to the step-up.

Got you. Appreciate it. And then maybe one more on CTV, if I could. Tim and Chris, you both talked about the synergies of a lot of your products from Household ID to IRIS and Content ID to TVision, when you think about kind of the holistic offering that you've built, is there anything else that you think you want to really add either via inorganic or organic means?

Yes. We really focus on this concept of the intelligence layer. We think one of the big differentiators as we move forward as Agentic comes online, is proprietary data. And so we continue to look out in the market on any opportunistic M&A that comes up that can help build our stack there on more proprietary data that adds value for our customers. So certainly, keeping our eyes peeled and seeing what else comes up.

Our next question comes from Tom White with D.A. Davidson.

Just one for me on the sales force and specifically the enterprise sales force where I think you guys made some sizable investments kind of late last year entering this year. Would you say we've started to see the impact there on the top line yet? Or is that cohort kind of still building out pipeline? And just, I guess, how do you feel about the size of the sales force now? Like as you touched on, there's sizable budget moving away from a large incumbent competitor. Curious whether it would make sense for you guys to invest more to go after that?

Yes. We certainly are seeing some contribution from that. We have a number of brands testing right now. We also have other brands who are not in testing, but in the RFP phase. So we're definitely seeing the impact there. We're across a handful of verticals, but we're continuing to expand the amount of verticals that we're going to be in just because the opportunity in the large customer segment is really just -- it's getting larger every day.

And just in terms of forward-looking, those investments we build into our go-forward plan. So any of the projections that we put out we're slowly and methodically adding to that staff to kind of maintain the philosophy where we grow OpEx slower than the top line.

Our next question comes from Jason with Craig-Hallum. Jason.

Congrats on another good quarter. So you talked about the inflection in growth. You also talked about improvements in the RFP pipeline. Just wondering if you could like tether those two things together? Like if you comment on today's pipeline and how that has the potential to have an impact either late in '26 or more into 2027 just in terms of growth and profitability?

Yes, Jason, thanks for the question. One of the big ways that we operate that we love about this business model is the operating leverage that we have in the business model. So every incremental dollar that comes in really flows through. Obviously, we're growing OpEx a little bit this year with the acquisition of TVision. And so we continue to manage that. In terms of the pipeline, some will probably hit in Q4. Most of the pipeline is on an annual cycle. And so there will be testing as it comes through. So I would expect some lift in Q4, but with the major shift happening in 2027.

And then maybe just piggybacking here. When you look at the opportunity that's growing due to kind of a disruption on the demand side of the ecosystem, how do you go after that? How do you position Viant to be the biggest beneficiary of the disruption that's out there?

Well, I think clients want differentiation. If they're going to move platforms and maybe they're already going to move platforms, but we come in and we lead with differentiation. But that differentiation has to matter for the brand. And that's why specifically within CTV, whether it be the scale of Household ID or the fact that we have a Content ID and everybody else is only at the app level in CTV or Direct Access, saving you 35%. TVision attention data. The list is huge in terms of differentiation. So we like to lead there and really, it's all about customer value. It's not about having these IDs or these tools. You have to translate that into value for the brand. And really, what we do is our focus is if you're -- if we're going after a brand and they're a public company, our whole focus is that hey, if we're getting more efficient marketing, then that should translate into your public company reported financials. We want to see the top -- help those -- their top line actually grow. And I think that's in stark contrast to a lot of the walled gardens. They don't -- that's not in their vernacular. So that's really our angle.

Yes. And just to add to that, I mean, it doesn't matter who we're competing against the decision-making framework on which DSP to go with is increasingly coming down to your capabilities in connected television. Chris talked about Household ID, the IRIS ID, TVision, both from targeting on the attention, the example we gave during Game 5. But even more importantly is the independent measurement capabilities of TVision and really showing the brand, here's what you're getting from YouTube, here's what you're getting from Prime Video. Here's what linear TV is providing. There's a whole lot of trust built up with that measurement platform there. And so I think as the RFP pipeline plays out, when it comes down to it, we lead with product and increasingly, we are the best platform to buy CTV.

Our next question comes from Barton Crockett with Rosenblatt.

I wanted to talk for a minute about the big elephant in the sector, which is the performance of The Trade Desk, which has historically been the largest kind of DSP and kind of the bellwether has historically been how it's seen yet their growth trajectory is really very different, right? I mean, they're guiding to a 12% decline in the next quarter and they were up only 3% missing guidance in the June quarter. You guys are growing at a completely different pace. What -- how would you explain that differential? They've attributed their exposure to macro issues in CPG and auto and obviously, you guys are taking share at some level, but that can't be all of it for The Trade Desk being so much larger. So to what do you ascribe the differential on their performance versus yours? And their status is kind of the bellwether what it means for that?

Yes. I mean just to piggyback a little bit on my answer to Jason earlier, Barton, proprietary data is continuing to be one of the most important factors. If you look at the really big competitors that we have around Google, we all know they are advantaged about having search data. If you look at the next big Goliath out there around Amazon, they have fantastic e-commerce transaction data. So for certain categories, they provide a lot of value there. We have a fantastic proprietary data set that kind of horizontally applies to a lot of marketers in CTV. And again, I can't stress enough. CTV really is the channel that's deciding the DSP RFPs back and forth. When it comes to The Trade Desk, I think their focus on third-party data is really hurting them. It's undifferentiated data that's out there. It's available on every platform, whether you're a large DSP or a small DSP. But having this exclusive intelligence that you can bring to the table has seen certainly has been a big advantage for us when we show up. What would you add?

Just one other piece, too. This company has a strong history in measurement. I regularly use the stat, over 70% of our customers use our platform for measurement to understand really what's the value that they're getting. We've talked about that for years as we've been a public company. I don't hear other companies really stressing that. So we have a lot of investments around our measurement products. TVision only adds to that. And then the other piece is, while other companies may claim to be buy side only or they only service the marketer. I think a lot of our products and what our customers hear from us, they know that we're focused on driving advertiser value and value for them and helping grow their business. I think our customers know that we care about that. It's a big focus of ours. Any time we're doing our monthly business reviews of them, we are very focused on their overall health of the company and are we driving that top line. So I just think we show up differently.

Okay. And then if I could ask just one other question. Just to understand, there's been some press reports about MySpace. I think stemming from a documentary that you guys were apparently part of. And could you just elaborate on what your thinking is about MySpace at this point in your asset there?

Yes. We've seen the recent news reports around MySpace that came out from that documentary that you correctly cited. We don't really have any direct comments around MySpace today. But what I would reiterate is we are extremely focused on the opportunity in front of Viant. It's very large, and it remains our #1 focus. I think the results that we reported today and we'll continue to report kind of put an exclamation point on that.

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

Great. Maybe just on the margins. How much of a drag was TVision on the last quarter's margins? And just talk about even going forward in 3Q, how much of a drag you're baking in so that.

I can take that one. So for Q2, it was about a 150 basis point drag on EBITDA margins. In the Q3 guide, it's about, call it, 200 basis point drag.

Okay. And then the other question I had is around political -- maybe just talk about what kind of contribution you saw in the last quarter? And maybe remind us on like what expectations you've baked into your back half and second half of this year from political? And then maybe on that theme, so if I had to kind of think about the durability of growth into next year, how should we be thinking about that ex political, I guess the two are related, so speak to that?

Yes. And kind of our thought process around political, we've never been a big political player historically. There are incremental budgets that we get access to but for instance, we don't have a political team focused on that. In our expectation, it's about 200 basis points, so pretty de minimis to the overall number. In terms of durability of growth, that RFP pipeline we talked about, the number of wins that we've already posted and we continue to expect that we'll win. We think the growth is very durable and sustainable into the future.

Our final question comes from Brianna Diaz with JMP Citizens.

Just you highlighted the largest pipeline in the company history. Can you help us understand where the accelerating growth is being driven from in terms of whether the new customer budgets being added or just the increased spending within existing customers, driven by Viant AI or TVision and how that relates to guidance going forward. In terms of mix?

Yes. TVision is pretty de minimis from a revenue perspective. We talked about outcomes being 5% of ad spend. Those are incremental budgets from current customers and I would say the answer is both. The new budgets coming on the platform as well as expanding the existing. So I know that seems like it's kind of all of the above, but it truly is kind of all are providing tailwinds to the business.

Great. And if I can just ask one more. You've spoken about Molson and Coors (sic) [ Molson Coors ] and Wurl in the past. Can you just give us an update on those relationships? How spend is ramping on the platform and how that compares to your previous expectations from the beginning of the year.

Yes. They both continue to ramp their spend, both continue to do well as expected.

Thank you. At this time, we have no more questions.

Thank you, everyone. See you next quarter.