Breaking Down the Walled Gardens: How Open-Source AI and Viant AI Are Reshaping Digital Advertising

The Future of AI in Ad Tech: Breaking Free from Walled Gardens

The digital advertising landscape is undergoing a major shift, thanks to open-source AI models like DeepSeek’s R1. Traditionally, major platforms like Google, Meta and Amazon have dominated the space with walled gardens — closed ecosystems that limit advertisers’ data access, transparency and flexibility.

But according to Chris Vanderhook, Co-Founder and COO of Viant Technology, the rise of open-source AI could level the playing field and disrupt the monopoly of walled gardens. By leveraging AI-driven innovations like ViantAI, advertisers can take back control, enhance data transparency and build custom AI models tailored to their needs.

The Problem with Walled Gardens

For years, major platforms have maintained their dominance by keeping advertisers dependent on their proprietary ad tech stacks. These walled gardens not only limit visibility into performance metrics but also create pricing inefficiencies and data silos, restricting advertisers from optimizing their campaigns effectively.

Vanderhook recently described in Digiday the control that Google’s AdX exerted over advertisers:

“Once you were in it and were bidding into them, they had such scale, and at any moment, they could tilt the rules in their favor and have all the value.”

With closed ecosystems, advertisers have been forced into opaque pricing models and restricted reporting, making true optimization nearly impossible.

How Open-Source AI Like DeepSeek Is Changing the Game

The emergence of open-source AI models like DeepSeek R1 is a turning point for ad tech. Unlike proprietary AI models that big tech companies control, open-source AI provides more flexibility, transparency and innovation opportunities.

Chris Vanderhook mentioned in Digiday why he sees this as a critical moment for the industry:

“Because AI adoption is so early, they [Google, Meta, Amazon, etc.] didn’t get their hooks and claws into everyone yet.”

By embracing open-source AI, advertisers can:

✅ Analyze and optimize ad performance with greater transparency
✅ Reduce dependence on walled garden ad ecosystems
✅ Customize AI-driven ad strategies based on real-time data

As AI continues to democratize advertising, open-source solutions allow brands to train models on their own first-party data, rather than relying on big tech’s algorithms.

How Viant AI is Leading the Charge

At Viant, we’re not just observing the AI revolution — we’re building it. ViantAI is designed to:

🔹 Empower advertisers with AI-driven media planning
🔹 Provide greater transparency into ad performance (coming soon)
🔹 Deliver real-time campaign optimization for higher ROI

The Future of AI in Digital Advertising

The era of expending enormous ad budgets into walled gardens that do not provide premium, high-quality, highly transparent reporting on how those dollars are spent is coming to an end. With open-source AI disrupting the status quo, advertisers finally have the ability to:

📌 Control their data
📌 Optimize ad spend with transparency
📌 Leverage AI without relying on big tech’s rules

Viant is leading the charge, proving that AI isn’t just for big tech — it’s for advertisers who want control, transparency and better performance.