Samba TV became the latest company in the ad tech, data and analytics space to prepare for an initial public offering.

The company filed a Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It did not disclose how many shares it plans to sell or what prices the shares would carry.

Samba TV has applied to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol SMBA. 

With the growth of streaming and connected TV ad tech companies have been hot and going to the public markets or merging in order to cash in and have the resources to grow. Pubmatic, Viant, DoubleVerify, Vizio and IAS have all gone public recently.

BofA Securities and Evercore ISI are acting as lead book-running managers for Samba TV’s offering. Oppenheimer & Co. is also acting as a book-running manager. BMO Capital Markets, Craig-Hallum, Stephens Inc. and LUMA Securities are acting as co-managers for the offering.

Advertising analytics and fraud protection company DoubleVerify started trading Wednesday on the New York Stock exchange Wednesday following its initial public offering.

DoubleVerify shares were trading at $34.24 a share, up front the IPO price of $27.

The ad tech business has been consolidating with many companies deciding to either go public, others raising additional capital or being acquired. 

DoubleVerify sold 8.6 million shares and Providence V!! U.S. Holdings, raising $232 million, and other stockholders offered 4.7 million shares.

According to the prospectus filed with the SEC, DoubeVerify had net earnings of $20.5 million in 2020, compared with $23.3 million in 2019.

Revenue rose to $243.9 million from $182.7 million.

DoubleVerify said it intends to use a portion of the net proceeds of the offering to repay its revolving credit facility and the remainder for general corporate purposes, including working capital, capital expenditures and operating expenses.

The company said it may use a portion of the remaining proceeds to acquire complementary businesses or technology, accelerate our product roadmap, continue to upgrade our technology platform and/or hire additional resources to support our product development and international expansion efforts.

Viant stock jumped more than 90% after the programmatic software company made its initial public offering Wednesday. 

The company, which operates a self-serve demand-side-platform that has a growing CTV business, went public by selling 10 million shares--up from an original plan to offer 7.5 million shares--of common stock  at $25 a share, raising $250 million. The price climbed in morning trading before closing at $47.72.

Also Read:  Viant’s TV Spots Say It Makes Programmatic Easy

Viant trades under the symbol DSP--also the abbreviation for demand side platform.

The move comes at a time when the ad tech market is consolidating. Earlier this week, Magnite agreed to buy SpotX from RTL Group for $1.17 billion, forming the largest independent supply-side platform, or SSP. Magnite itself was the product of an earlier merger between Rubicon Project and Telaria.

Viant was founded in 1999. Time Inc. acquired a 60% interest in Viant in 2016. Viant bought Adelphic, which had a programmatic ad platform with self-service media planning and buying tools in 2017. Time was acquired by Meredith in 2017 and Viant’s co-founders, Tim and Chris Vanderhook bought back the 60% Viant stake in November 2019.

The company’s founders and employees still own an 80% stake in the company.

Viant is riding the hot CTV advertising market, but has been looking at the future digital video and advertising since it was founded, according to Chris Vanderhook, the company’s COO.

The Vanderhooks also co-founded Xumo, which was acquired by Comcast for $145 million in April of 2020.

“We really saw the future. On the Viant side we were looking at video-based advertising and we started to see that the future of video is not going to be YouTube playing on a desktop,” Vanderhook said. "The future was going to be streaming into a household. And so we invested in that early.”

Now the time is ripe because the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the shift of consumers moving from traditional TV to streaming. 

“Connected TV is a huge tailwind, especially in the programmatic space, which is where we are,” he said. “We started investing in 2010. We knew it would get here. Man did it take a while.”

He said he didn’t think CTV was a fad.

“Look at the big content companies. Look at Warner. Look at Disney ... They’re taking the best content in the world straight to streaming”, he said. “And marketers want to be along for the ride. And that’s why it’s not the flavor of the month. I’m telling you, it’s a wall of money.”

Vanderhook said that in 2019, Viant’s business was growing at a 52% rate, with 20% profit margins. The pandemic hurt the company in the second quarter of 2020, but business accelerated in the third and fourth quarter.

Viant’s CTV business grew 65% in 2020 and represented a third of its revenue. Three years ago, the company had no CTV revenue.

“Marketers want programmatic,” he said. “When the pandemic hit, another chunk of money came to programmatic. Why? They needed the flexibility to be able to start and stop spending in a given market,” he said. “It accelerated the amount of investment that’s moving into programmatic.”

Vanderhook said programmatic now represents about 40% of the ad market, but he predicts that eventually all ads will be bought via software. 

Viant’s technology is designed to let advertisers and buyers self direct how they spend money and build campaigns. “Your software has to stand on its own, it has to be easy to use. We’re the E*Trade for ads,” he said. 

Through Viant, advertisers can buy all different types of media from linear TV to audio to digital out of home. “The marketers want to control all buying in one piece of software. We think that’s a nice long arc that we’re going after,” he said.

Viant’s platform is also differentiated because it is people based, using real-world identifiers, not cookie based like many of its competitors. And cookies, which are used to track viewers, are being phased out.

Vanderhook said its people based platform makes it easier to connect advertising exposures to consumer behavior. “We tell them what they get for their money,” he said.

Some of the proceeds from the IPO will go towards improving the Adelphic programmatic platform. Viant will also invest in sales and marketing.

CuriosityStream’s first day as a public company had its ups and downs, with the stock fluctuating between $10.50 and $12.01 during the trading day, before closing at $11.20 each, a gain of about $1 per share. 

CuriosityStream agreed to merge with special purpose acquisition company Software Acquisition Group in August in a deal that valued the fact-based programmer at about $331 million. SAG was already trading on the NASDAQ under the symbol “SAQN,” peaking at $10.44 per share. The CuriosityStream deal closed on Oct. 12 and the stock began trading under its new symbol (CURI) on Oct. 15.

With about 13 million customers in 175 countries, CuriosityStream will be the only pure-play publicly traded factual content company, and it has said it would use its new currency to fund growth initiatives. Those include increased marketing efforts and possibly future M&A.

The service also plans to expand its programming library, currently consisting of more than 3,000 titles, including over 900 original shows. The company has said it plans to grow its streaming library to more than 11,000 premium factual titles within five years. 

The company continues to be led by Discovery Channel founder John Hendricks, its chairman and largest shareholder, and CEO Clint Stinchcomb.  

At its Oct.15 closing price, CuriosityStream has a market capitalization of about $425 million, according to the NASDAQ website. Share volume on its first day of trading was 450,528 shares.

“Investors will have the unique opportunity to capitalize on a ‘pure-play’ streaming media service that is not burdened with legacy linear TV assets in cable and broadcasting,” Hendricks said in a statement. “With our public debut, CuriosityStream will continue to offer compelling direct-to-consumer offers and innovative distribution models that provide curious viewers around the world with content that informs, enchants and inspires.” 

Streaming device and platform company Roku filed an S-1 Friday with the SEC, outlining plans for an IPO that aims to raise up to $100 million.

The subject of IPO rumors for years, Roku landed a $45.5 million round last year, and has raised more than $208.61 million in total, according to Crunchbase.

RELATED: Roku Raises $45.5M More

The S-1 filing shed much light on Roku’s business and operations.

For the six months ended June 30, 2017, Roku raked in revenues of $199.7 million, up 23% from the prior year period. For all of 2016, it generated $398.6 million, up 25% from the $319.9 million brought in during 2015.

Roku also posted a net loss of $24.2 million in 2017 through June 30, and a gross profit of $76.5 million.

The majority of Roku’s revenue comes way of sales of streaming players, with the balance from its Platforms business, which includes advertising, subscription revenue sharing, and licensing fees from TV makers that have integrated Roku’s OS (its TV partners include RCA, TCL, Element Electronics, Hitachi America, Haier America, Sharp, and Insignia/Best Buy).  

RELATED: RCA Rolls Out Roku TV Models

For the first six months of 2017, Roku player revenues reached $117.32 million, compared to $82.39 million for Platforms. For that same six-month period, player revenue represented 59% of total revenue, down 2%, while platform revenue represented 41%, growing 91% over the year-ago period.

As of June 30, 2017, Roku had cash of $70.16 million, total assets of 184.99 million, and $22.81 million of long term debt.

Roku also disclosed that it had 15.1 million active accounts by the end of Q2 2017, up from 10.6 million in the year-ago quarter.

Roku said 3.5 billion hours of content were streamed on its platform in Q2 2017, up from just 2.2 billion in the year-ago period.  Roku said its users streamed more than 6.7 billion hours on its platform in the first six months of 2017 (through June 30), a 62% rise from the six months ended June 30, 2016. 

Annual streaming hours stand at 11.9 billion for the trailing 12-month period, versus 9.4 billion for all of 2016, Roku said.

“We believe all TV content will be available through streaming,” Roku proclaimed in the S-1

Roku reported Q2 2017 ARPU of $11.22, up from ARPU of $7.20 in Q2 2016.

Regarding its growth strategy, Roku said it hinges on boosting active accounts, hours streamed, and increasing ARPU.

As of June 30, Roku had 696 full-time employees, with 395 in R&D, 165 were in sales and marketing, and 136 tied to general and administrative and operations.