• by Laurie Sullivan , July 25, 2025

Connected TV (CTV) is increasingly being recognized by marketers as a powerful performance media channel, as it continues to move beyond its traditional role as a brand awareness tool.

Viant ushered in a new era of addressable CTV advertising with the introduction of Direct Access, which enabled the company to strengthen connections between advertisers and ad platforms like the one from LG Ad Solutions. It also gave it a jumping-off point to advance performance advertising in CTV even further.

Now the combination of LG’s direct-to-glass CTV access with Viant’s Household ID and AI-powered demand-side platforms (DSP) is intended to create what the companies call a "unified pipeline" from audience targeting to delivery of campaigns.

The integration of IRIS_ID from IRIS.TV, which enables the ability to standardized content classifications, aims to improve brand-safe and relevant placements that align with content being viewed in real time.

Jon Schulz, CMO at Viant Technology, said CTV advertising already has reshaped how advertisers can access, activate and measure CTV campaigns, but shows opportunities to advance more.

“Traditionally, access to premium inventory was often routed through fragmented intermediaries, which added cost, complexity and latency to campaign execution,” Schulz said, adding that it’s the company’s focus to eliminate these inefficiencies by connecting advertisers directly to OEMs like LG Ad Solutions.

It enables “glass-level” access to CTV, but Viant’s identity-first infrastructure and Household ID helps advertisers achieve true addressability across 45 million LG Smart TVs in the U.S., targeting real households with authenticated data, not just devices.

This shift brings what Schulz called enhanced precision, transparency and performance to CTV, and lays the groundwork for advancing scalable, privacy-safe streaming campaigns.

“CTV is the true full funnel advertising channel; this is why ad dollars are shifting, cementing CTV as the fastest growing channel,” he said. “TV has always played the role of driving awareness— you are not likely to search for a product or service you are not aware of, meaning that investing in search alone will simply cultivate business from existing or known customers.”

He said CTV is critical for driving new business and real incrementality. This evolution in access directly fuels performance advertising goals by letting marketers achieve more measurable, outcome-driven results.

Viant’s DSP leverages tools like content-level contextual intelligence through IRIS.TV, co-viewing insights, and real-time data matching—paired with an identity graph that reaches 95% of U.S. adults to improve ad relevance and reduce waste. 

The ads are optimized for return on investments (ROI) across every phase of the customer journey, from awareness to action, without relying on deprecated identifiers like third-party cookies. He said this type of performance advertising is built for streaming.

When asked to describe next steps for Viant, Schulz said the company is expanding its Direct Access services with other CTV platforms. The goal is to standardize addressability and performance across all major OEMs and premium publishers to bring consistency, scalability and trust to the programmatic ecosystem.

LG Ad Solutions is one of a short list of premium CTV partners that supports premium subscription platforms, leading FAST channels, MVPDs, and CTV OEMs like LG.