VideoByte Acquired by Kargo
Today we announced that VideoByte has been acquired by Kargo. I’ll be joining Kargo as General Manager of CTV to continue building on what we started.
I want to take a moment to reflect on what we built at VideoByte over the past three years, and why I think it matters for the future of streaming TV advertising.
The problem we set out to solve
When we started VideoByte in 2020, Connected TV advertising was growing fast but the technology was stuck in the past. Advertisers could buy spots on streaming platforms, but they had no real visibility into what content their ads appeared alongside. You might know you’re running on a FAST channel, but you had no idea if your ad played during a cooking show, a true crime documentary, or a children’s cartoon.
Meanwhile, publishers were dealing with a different problem: ad breaks. Every ad on CTV required stopping the content, running a pod of commercials, and hoping viewers didn’t bounce. For FAST channels competing for eyeballs against ad-free options, this was a real tension. More ads meant more revenue but also more friction. There had to be a better way.
What we built
We built two things that I believe will shape how CTV advertising works going forward.
Scene-level contextual targeting
The first was scene-level contextual targeting for FAST and streaming content. Not show-level. Not genre-level. Scene-level.
Our system analyzes video content in real-time: what’s happening on screen, the dialogue, the emotional tone, the objects and people visible. It creates a contextual profile of every moment in the stream. When an advertiser wants to reach viewers watching outdoor adventure content, or cooking scenes, or moments of celebration, we can deliver that with precision.
What made our approach different was that it worked directly with the video stream. No SDK. No tagging content. No manual categorization. We could analyze any FAST channel or streaming service without touching their tech stack. That was critical for getting to market quickly and scaling across the fragmented CTV landscape.
For advertisers, this opened up something that wasn’t previously possible: the ability to actually know what content they’re appearing alongside and to target based on it. Brand safety becomes real. Contextual relevance becomes real. You can run a travel ad next to travel content, not just on a channel that sometimes has travel shows.
Moments: Non-intrusive ad formats
The second innovation was what we called “Moments,” a suite of ad formats that don’t interrupt the viewing experience.
Think L-bars, picture-in-picture overlays, squeeze-backs, and frame ads. These formats let advertisers deliver a message while the content continues playing. The viewer doesn’t lose their place in the show. The publisher doesn’t have to worry about ad break fatigue. And the advertiser gets a format that commands attention because it’s different from the same 30-second spots viewers have been ignoring for decades.
The technical challenge was making this work without requiring publishers to rip out their existing infrastructure. Most streaming platforms already have server-side ad insertion (SSAI) systems in place. They’re not going to throw that out for a new vendor. So we built Moments to work as a layer alongside existing SSAI. Complementary, not competitive. Publishers could add our formats to create incremental inventory without touching their existing ad stack.
This was important because it aligned incentives. Publishers got new revenue without new risk. Advertisers got new formats that stood out. Viewers got fewer interruptions. Everyone wins.
Why Kargo
Kargo has spent twenty years building relationships with premium publishers and major advertisers. They’ve established themselves in mobile and web with a reputation for creative innovation. What they didn’t have was CTV.
We have the technology. They have the distribution. That’s the logic behind this deal.
I’m excited about what we can do together. The innovations we built at VideoByte were always limited by our ability to get them in front of buyers and sellers at scale. With Kargo’s go-to-market capabilities, we can accelerate that significantly.
FAST viewership is exploding. Ad-supported tiers are launching on every major streaming platform. Advertisers are shifting budgets from linear TV to streaming. The companies that can deliver real targeting, real measurement, and real creative innovation on CTV are going to win.
We built VideoByte to be one of those companies. Now we’re going to prove it at scale.
Press coverage: