Viant expands Direct Access for fee-free CTV deal-based buying

By removing transaction fees from private marketplaces and programmatic guaranteed deals, Viant allows advertisers to direct more budget toward working media. This shift directly addresses the projected milestone where US CTV upfront ad spending surpasses primetime linear TV upfront spending in 2026. As brands increasingly rely on CTV to generate new customer demand rather than simple retargeting, supply path optimization tools must handle complex deal structures without adding friction. Watch how competing demand-side platforms respond to this fee-free model as publishers seek to maximize inventory yield through direct connections.

Viant's Direct Access expansion builds on a series of integrations announced over the past year that have progressively widened its fee-free supply path coverage. In November 2025, Viant announced a direct integration with Magnite's SpringServe ad server, giving advertisers transparent supply paths and removing non-value-added intermediaries between buyers and publishers on SpringServe-served inventory. Then in July 2026, Publica by IAS announced its own integration with Viant's Direct Access product, enabling Viant advertisers to buy premium CTV inventory from Publica publishers through a more direct path. These sequential integrations laid the groundwork for the September 2026 expansion that adds deal-based buying support across all three platforms simultaneously.

The Direct Access expansion is the second announcement tied to Viant's broader Publisher Solutions program, which launched in June 2026. Viant introduced Publisher Solutions as a centralized tool set featuring SupplyIQ, Household ID, and IRIS Content ID, all offered at no cost to publisher partners. At launch, the company disclosed that 85% of CTV spend on the Viant platform was already transacted through Direct Access, a figure that underscores how central the SPO framework has become to Viant's value proposition. Unlike competing SPO programs that charge publishers a percentage of advertiser spend, Viant charges publishers nothing, a positioning choice that directly challenges the take-rate models of traditional exchanges.

The competitive landscape for CTV supply path optimization continues to intensify. Magnite, whose SpringServe platform is now integrated with Direct Access for both open market and deal-based buying, operates its own seller-defined audiences and deal curation tools that help publishers command premium CPMs. Jounce Media, which verified Viant's supply quality scoring and provided the 94% programmatic demand coverage figure cited in the announcement, has become a reference point for advertisers auditing CTV path efficiency. The convergence of fee-free deal execution with independent supply quality verification creates a value proposition that neither traditional SSPs nor walled-garden DSPs currently replicate in a single platform.