The Vanderhooks & Viant’s Secret Playbook: Betting Big on The Trade Desk’s Stumble

Adtech is a graveyard of overconfident networks that thought they were too smart to fail. Remember Rocket Fuel? They burned through cash faster than a VC-backed WeWork clone. And Specific Media? That was the Vanderhook brothers’ original ad network before they got sentimental and decided MySpace was ripe for a comeback—essentially the adtech equivalent of reviving Blockbuster in the age of Netflix. Spoiler: it flopped.

But the Vanderhooks aren’t ones to quit. In their latest act, they’re pushing Viant—their DSP that went public in 2021—as the next big thing. And this time, they aren’t just playing in the margins. No, this is their grand strategy to take over the ad industry for real. They believe they’ve cracked the code to dethroning The Trade Desk, positioning themselves as the indie rebel against Jeff Green’s empire. The dream? Finally making Viant the must-buy DSP, the one that forces every media buyer to take them seriously.

And yesterday, they had every reason to celebrate.

The Trade Desk Stumbles—Viant Smells Blood

A chaotic reorganization left The Trade Desk juggling two platforms, and it didn’t take long for Wall Street to punish them. The much-hyped AI-powered Kokai platform failed to gain traction fast enough, forcing the company to continue supporting its legacy system alongside it. The result? Revenue of $741 million, missing analyst expectations of $758.9 million—marking the first time in 33 quarters that The Trade Desk missed its numbers. Investors weren’t feeling charitable. Shares nosedived 31%—the biggest single-day drop in the company’s history.

For Viant, this was the moment they’d been waiting for. Insiders have long hinted that the Vanderhooks see themselves as the true challenger to Green’s dominance, crafting a strategy to position Viant as a serious alternative to The Trade Desk’s grip on programmatic.

While The Trade Desk has ballooned to nearly 4,000 employees with a sprawling, complicated go-to-market strategy, Viant has remained lean and focused. Where Green is dealing with the fallout of a miscalculated transition, Viant has been quietly refining its infrastructure. Their pitch? The Trade Desk is overextended and distracted, while Viant is optimized for the future.

The Grand Strategy: Viant’s Path to Programmatic Domination

We spent almost two months poring over financials, digging through internal documents, and speaking with vendors, clients, and insiders. Several key figures at Viant—who agreed to speak off the record—confirmed what the Vanderhooks see as their secret weapon. If they pull it off, they believe they’ll be bigger than The Trade Desk, controlling the pipes of programmatic in a way that actually matters.

Viant’s approach is different. They’ve doubled down on a cleaner supply chain, a more agile buying infrastructure, and a strategy that doesn’t require a massive migration effort for clients. Their ultimate goal? To become the DSP that advertisers want to use, not just the one they have to use because of The Trade Desk’s dominance.

Meanwhile, The Trade Desk is scrambling. CEO Jeff Green acknowledged that the reorg wasn’t as smooth as expected, with the company essentially supporting two platforms at once. He tried to paint an optimistic picture, promising an “accelerated migration” to Kokai and touting AI as the company’s future. But Wall Street remains skeptical. Analysts at Guggenheim slashed their price target from $150 to $110, while Oppenheimer’s Jason Helfstein noted that the slowdown was partially due to The Trade Desk’s “lack of oversight and decision-making.”

Viant’s Big Swing

Viant sees this as a golden opportunity. The Vanderhooks aren’t just playing for relevance—they believe they’ve built the ultimate programmatic machine, one that could finally give them the industry dominance they’ve been chasing for decades. If they execute their plan correctly, Viant could become a serious contender for programmatic dollars.

And who knows? If they succeed, maybe they’ll even have enough cash (or audacity) to relaunch MySpace—just for the nostalgia.

But for now, their focus is on The Trade Desk. And after yesterday’s bloodbath, they’re feeling more confident than ever that their time has come..

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