Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.

Tim and Chris Vanderhook on Viant’s Lattice Brain: How Autonomous Advertising Beats Human Traders

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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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    Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.By Ari Paparo
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