IRIS.TV, Inc.

IRIS.TV is the contextual-video data layer most CTV buyers and sellers don’t realize they’re already touching. Founded in 2013 in Los Angeles by Field Garthwaite and Richie Hyden, the company built a platform-agnostic content fingerprint — the IRIS_ID — that classifies streaming inventory at the episode, movie, or clip level so contextual, emotional, and brand-suitability signals can travel cleanly through programmatic pipes. By the time Viant Technology announced the acquisition on November 12, 2024, IRIS had integrated with more than 1,400 video owners, platforms, and CMSs and indexed 60M+ streaming files.

The strategic significance of the deal didn’t fully land until eighteen months later. Viant’s April 15, 2026 agreement to acquire TVision Insights for $40M paired second-by-second attention measurement with the IRIS_ID context layer and Viant’s Household ID — a stack AdExchanger argued wouldn’t have been buildable without IRIS landing first. IRIS continues to operate as an independent, platform-agnostic subsidiary under Garthwaite and Hyden, which is the part of the deal structure the rest of the ecosystem watches closely: a contextual identifier that travels cleanly across DSPs only retains its value if its parent doesn’t quietly enclose it.