Maybe chill, everyone? Sheesh. M&A in adtech is moving so quickly that new deals are announced before we even finish covering the last one.
Anyway, that was the case with Viant’s acquisition of Lockr, which was announced right before the DSP’s earnings call on Monday (the earnings were pretty good, by the way). The deal size is likely modest, but the impact may be undervalued.
Why This Matters:
First, what exactly is Lockr? It’s really a platform that helps publishers easily connect their first-party data to multiple alternative IDs, making that data actually usable for programmatic advertising.
According to Viant’s CEO Tim Vanderhook on Monday’s earnings call: “On a one for one basis, each integration requires extensive engineering resources, a deployment of software code, and ongoing maintenance. But with Lockr managing the integrations, publishers can integrate with Lockr just one time and then seamlessly turn on Locker’s partner integrations at will with no additional integrations necessary.”
With this tech, publishers can simplify and strengthen how they monetize their audience data/inventory as cookies disappear and privacy laws evolve. Lockr helps keep their data available as a signal in the bid stream, essentially. The acquisition is also expected to accelerate adoption of Viant’s Household ID and IRIS_ID.
Household ID is a deterministic ID. Unlike cookies or hashed email-based IDs (e.g., UID2), it doesn’t rely on logins. Instead, it uses geo-enabled devices and ISP data to create persistent, scalable identity signals for ad targeting and measurement.
IRIS_ID is a content ID brought over from Viant’s acquisition of IRIS TV. It enables contextual and brand suitability targeting and measurement for CTV, and is based on video content, not user data.
With Lockr now part of Viant’s portfolio, Viant can scale the connection of Household ID and IRIS_ID to publisher data, making them more accessible and, ultimately, more valuable for advertisers. Viant also promises to keep Lockr open to the broader ecosystem, including other alternative IDs providers (limiting this would likely hurt Lockr’s scale and, in turn, stall the growth of Viant’s IDs).
Per Chris Vanderhook on the earnings call, “I think [Lockr is] a big unlock for publishers, and it’s going to be great for the whole open Internet. It is going to accelerate Household ID. It will also accelerate IRIS_ID in the bid stream, but it’s going to be really big for the whole open Internet.”
Experts React:
When we asked Keith Petri, Lockr’s founder, about the deal, he said: “While SSPs are increasingly activating against their own supply and DSPs—like TTD via OpenPath—are going direct to publishers to optimize efficiency and data access, Lockr simplifies this technical hurdle for the greater market.”
See his X post about the deal here:
Our Take:
The Viant-Lockr deal kind of reminds us of the Zeta Global-LiveIntent deal, in that it highlights the growing M&A demand for adtech that supports addressability, whether through first-party data enrichment or scalable ID tech/solutions. Yesterday’s big Lotame deal with Publicis is similar, in that way.
Of course, we’re not even done with Q1 yet so we’re sure we’ll see more similar deals in the near future. Not today, though, please. We’re tired.
