Viant Buys Waymark, Putting AI Creative Inside Programmatic Buying

Viant has bought AI video ad maker Waymark, becoming the latest programmatic platform — after Amazon, Google and Meta — to fold AI-assisted creative directly into its buying stack. The deal, announced this week, targets Viant's small and midsize business clients, who will use Waymark's tech to produce CTV ads that are cheaper, better and refreshed on a regular basis.

The logic is straightforward: SMB marketers are short on time and shorter on production budgets. Historically they lag enterprise marketers on tech adoption, but on generative AI they've flipped the script and become early adopters. Business flyers are increasingly AI-made and promoted on Meta right now. One can only imagine what happens when SMBs get hold of Waymark's tools to generate the mattress warehouse and regional car ads of the future — a joke, but also not a joke.

What does this change for SMB advertisers?

In practice, it compresses the gap between having a media budget and having creative that can actually run. CTV production has been a cost barrier for smaller advertisers; an AI generator inside the buying platform removes a vendor step and a chunk of spend. The caveat: "better" ads is Viant's claim, not a measured result. No performance data accompanied the announcement, and AI-generated creative still needs human review for brand safety and accuracy. Buyers should test output quality against their existing creative before assuming savings translate into performance.

The Trade Desk steadies the ship

Elsewhere in programmatic, The Trade Desk reported quarterly revenue of $736 million, down just $3 million year over year — close enough to stabilization that investors pushed the stock up 20%. CEO Jeff Green pointed to strength in two verticals: political advertising and healthcare advertising.

That strength deserves context, because TTD's biggest rivals deliberately avoid those markets. Amazon outright bans political advertising, and — perhaps because it operates a pharmacy — accepts healthcare and pharma ads only with standard caveats. Google tightly restricts both political and healthcare advertising. So TTD's vertical wins are real, but they land in regulated territory where competitors have chosen not to compete deeply. That's an advantage, and also a concentration of risk if regulation tightens.

Is more M&A coming?

Jeff Green signaled openness to buying another company on the Q3 earnings call, a notable statement from a DSP that has acquired sparingly over its run — Sincera being the notable exception. The source doesn't name targets, and no deal is confirmed, so treat this as a door opened rather than a transaction teed up. Startups and established companies may well come calling; whether TTD's turnaround includes another checkbook move is a question for next quarter.

For practitioners, the week's takeaway is consolidation: creative generation is moving inside the platforms where media is bought. Budget owners who currently split production and media across separate vendors should watch whether bundled AI creative shifts pricing and workflow — and hold it to the same performance standards as anything else they run.