#155: Quo Vadis Green Shoot AdTech Interviews
Part 2 with Chris Petitt, CEO and Co-founder of Revving
#CannesLions is around the corner! Join Michael Rubenstein from Firsthand AI and me for An Off-the-Record Cannes Lunch Conversation. Thursday, June 25, at 11:30 AM. RSVP here.
You can find me at various other Cannes events at the end of the article.
Quo Vadis Green Shoot AdTech Interviews
Welcome back to Quo Vadis Green Shoot AdTech Interviews.
In this series, we’re stepping into the shoes of “AdTech Equalizers,” the green shoot companies changing how the advertising job gets done. We’ll delve into their worldview and unveil new strategies, tools, and thinking that make advertising better off.
Today, we have the great pleasure of speaking with Chris Pettit, CEO/co-founder of Revving. We interviewed Revving’s other co-founder, David Mandeno, in November 2025. Business is moving faster than ever across adtech, with companies shifting from revenue growth in a mature/changing market to profitability, so we thought it would be valuable to get an update from Chris Pettit.
If you’re heading to Cannes and want to reach out to Chris (or connect another time), reach out to him here: chris@revving.io
Q1: What are AdTech businesses really asking for when they talk about cash flow?
A: Chris
A lot of the time, they’re asking for control. The top-level problem is payment timing. Revenue gets earned, but the cash takes months to arrive. Everyone in the industry understands that, but the bigger issue is what that delay does to the decisions a business can make. If cash is tied up, choices get narrower. For example, you might hold back on hiring, delay media spend, stretch supplier payments, or turn down work you would otherwise want to take on. Not because the business is underperforming, but because the timing doesn’t work. That’s a very suboptimal way to run a business looking to create shareholder value.
It’s also the part I think gets missed. Cash flow isn’t just about what’s in the bank today. It’s about whether a business has the flexibility to act when it needs to. For me, the future of finance is choice: businesses being able to decide how and when they access the revenue they’ve already earned, rather than having that dictated by someone else’s payment process.
Q2: What does traditional finance still miss about how AdTech businesses actually make money?
A: Chris
A lot of traditional finance still starts with the things they know how to assess: balance sheets, fixed assets, long trading histories, invoices, personal guarantees, etc. Those things matter, but they don’t always tell you how a digital business is really performing.
When it comes to AdTech, it’s data-rich and performance-led. Revenue is being generated through commercial activity, but funding still waits for the slower paperwork that follows. That’s the important gap Revving’s Transactional-Based Funding model is built to close. Instead of starting with an invoice after the fact, our model uses verified transaction data to understand what’s already been earned and make that value available sooner. For AdTech businesses, that means earned revenue can become usable capital sooner, with far less friction in the middle.
Q3: How does Transactional-Based Funding level the playing field in AdTech?
A: Chris
It removes payment timing as a barrier to growth. Long payment terms are still treated as part of the deal in this industry. Bigger businesses can often absorb that. Smaller and scaling businesses often can’t, even when they’re doing brilliant work and generating real revenue.
That’s where I think there’s a real democratization of funding opportunities. Larger businesses typically know where to go, have the relationships, and have more ways to manage the gap. Smaller businesses often don’t. Our Transactional-Based Funding approach gives those businesses another option. By removing payment terms as the deciding factor, smaller and scaling businesses can compete properly with bigger players. Then the best business wins, not just the one with the deepest pockets.
Q4: Is this mainly an AdTech problem, or does the same funding gap show up elsewhere?
A: Chris
AdTech is one of the clearest examples because the supply chain is so layered. Brands, agencies, DSPs, SSPs, publishers, and platforms are all working with different payment terms. If one part of the chain pays in 90, 120, or 180 days, the pressure compounds and gets pushed downstream. The same problem appears across the digital economy… wherever you have platforms sitting between payors and the businesses delivering the work, payment timing matters a lot.
For example, creator platforms are a growing area for us for exactly that reason. They’re often managing campaigns for large brands while also keeping their creator ecosystem moving. If payment from the brand is delayed or on long terms, the platform still has to manage that gap. This is precisely where access to earned revenue is critical. It gives platforms more control over timing, more flexibility in how they support their ecosystem, and more choice over when and how capital is put to work.
Q5: What does the future of finance look like for the digital economy?
A: Chris
The future looks more connected to how digital businesses actually operate. Advertising is already moving towards more automated, real-time decision-making. Agentic advertising will only take that further, with buyer and seller systems coordinating directly, campaigns adjusting dynamically, and more commercial activity happening between systems rather than through manual workflows. This is why Revving is already MCP-ready for the agentic buyer-seller world. The MCP “nodes” across the ecosystem are already there and increasing every day. We don’t think it will be long before the network effects light up and rapidly accelerate from there.
In our view, as agentic environments develop, we’re looking at how funding and payment flexibility could become part of the workflow itself, rather than something managed separately afterward.
For me, that is the future and why we are building a financial layer that can evolve with an industry that has never stood still, and never will.
You can find me at various #CannesLions events.
Sunday to Wednesday: Commerce Media: See this series of Fluent events. Sir Martin Sorrell and I will have a chat and open it up to Q&A.
Tuesday:
Wednesday:
Signal owners, platform leaders, and operators are rebuilding the layer underneath advertising. 50-person RSVP breakfast with Brian O’Kelley and Gabriel DeWitt, hosted by Above Data.
The Transparency Paradox Debate on Mediaocean’s yacht. Bob Lord and Brian Wieser debate transparency vs. performance, moderated by Bill Wise and Tom Triscari
Criteo Lunch Panel: Measurement Models and Redefining Efficiency with Brian Wieser, Todd Parsons, and Tom Triscari
Thursday:
C Wire AdTech Chill House: 1-1 chat with Sir Martin + Audience Q&A. We’ll end the week talking about what happened and why it matters.
PMG Beach: How to Survive in a Post-LiveRamp World at PMG Beach: Sam Bloom, Mathieu Roche from ID5, and yours truly tell it like it is.
Criteo Yacht Talk: Wired Different. B.R.O.s at Work
Disclaimer: This post, and any other post from Quo Vadis, should not be considered investment advice. This content is for informational purposes only. You should not construe this information, or any other material from Quo Vadis, as investment, financial, or any other form of advice.