Tim and Chris Vanderhook on Viant’s Lattice Brain: How Autonomous Advertising Beats Human Traders
From CES, Ari Paparo talks with Co-founder and CEO Tim Vanderhook and Co-founder and COO Chris Vanderhook of Viant about what automation looks like in a DSP workflow, using Viant’s Lattice Brain and Outcomes as the framing. They cover how goal-based optimization is set up (CPA/ROAS), what they observed in tests comparing automated and human-managed campaigns, and why “decision latency” is a recurring issue in day-to-day programmatic execution.
Takeaways
- They describe Outcomes as a goal-based workflow where an advertiser provides key inputs and the system handles ongoing optimization decisions.
- The guests share results from internal tests comparing automated vs human-managed campaigns, and discuss what signals they looked at beyond the final CPA.
- A main theme is “decision latency”; humans operate on meeting and approval cycles, while automated systems can adjust continuously.
- They distinguish between transparency and control: visibility into where spending goes, but limited ability to override optimization choices.
- They expect a hybrid approach, with some budgets remaining hands-on and others shifting toward more automation.
Chapters
00:00 CES check-in and episode setup
00:55 The AI-assisted song launch tangent
01:54 What “Lattice Brain” refers to
02:39 What Outcomes is meant to do
03:42 CPA/ROAS now, incrementality later
05:21 Why run an AI vs human comparison
06:36 Test setup, including excluding retargeting
08:06 What the results suggested and what they focused on
10:25 What automation changes reveal about typical workflows
12:19 Transparency vs manual overrides
14:16 Why open-web performance has been difficult historically
16:29 What they think needs to be true for better open-web performance
17:33 Hybrid buying and where automation fits
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