All right. Well, thank you for joining us. We're happy to have DoubleVerify. Mark and Nicola, thank you so much for stopping by.
Great being here.
Yeah. Maybe we can kick it off, Mark. You know, we reported 4Q last week. What were some of the highlights coming off of the call? You know, what are the biggest growth drivers we should think about as we head into 2026?
We ended the year last year growing 14% year-over-year, delivered 33% EBITDA margins. You know, had a very solid year for DV coming off of an expectation at the beginning of the year of about a 10% growth rate. You know, we are happy with the yearly drive. Coming out of the quarter, we had some really strong highlights in kind of three areas: social, CTV, and then, you know, AI solutions. On the social side, we saw social activation grow 60% year-over-year, which is a great growth rate for kind of our emerging solutions there on Meta Prebid and Authentic Advantage.
We saw our CTV volume impressions grow at 22% for the quarter and ended up around 33% for the year. We continue to expand into connected television. We had some really strong AI offerings launched into the marketplace. Our Agent ID solution, some of the areas around combating AI slop. A strong quarter in product development, a strong quarter in delivering kind of solid growth across the three kind of emerging growth lines for us.
W e'll dig into each one of those as we go through here.
Right.
Maybe taking a step back and looking at just, like, the broader advertising environment, there's this narrative that's going on, that even brand advertisers are shifting to increasingly performance advertisers. There's not as much brand advertising anymore, it's brand performance. Just how do you think about that impacting brand safety specifically? Are brands not as focused on brand safety anymore? Are they focused on pure performance?
Yeah. You know, I think it's an interesting narrative because there's this concept that brands never cared about performance. You know, all advertising is driven through the fact that you need to sell something, right? Building a brand is about selling more solutions or selling more product. You know, the idea of Brandformance, I think, has always been out there. And it is a, you know, increasing focus just due to the fact that the tools to track that performance have gotten better and better over time. With regard to kind of where does brand safety and suitability fit in, it's always been part of the equation.
Just simply put, if you take garbage out of the system, if you take ad fraud, if you take impressions that are not relevant because they're geographically misaligned, if you take brand suitability or safety violations, that's garbage that you're pulling out of the system. What's left performs better. We've always thought of ourselves as a performance player no matter what, because eliminating bad stuff helps the good stuff perform better. Brand safety has always had a role, brand suitability has always had a role. More interestingly, we've also leaned into solutions, like Scibids, which takes that data and makes it even more powerful. Beyond just taking garbage out, what you have left, how do you make that perform better? That's where Scibids comes into play.
Scibids is a algorithmic bidding solution that we bought a couple of years ago that we're now integrating across our platform. It has had significant uptake with our top 100 customers. I think over 50 of our top 100 customers now are using some level of Scibids in their engagements with us.
Maybe another high-level question, I think with everything that's going on with AI, I think people are focusing on what are the structural assets that ad tech companies have that differentiate them from the competition? Can you maybe just take a step back and talk about DV and what are the assets that you have that really set you up for structural differentiation?
I think, you know, the core asset that we have that differentiates us is data, right? If you think about what drives an advertising decision, there are tools out there that you know, that make the decision, and there are people out there who inform the decision. I think where AI disruption is gonna be greatest is in the tools that make the decision, right? Whether it's an agent. It used to be a DSP, in the future, it'll be an agent, right? The data, though, is imperative to what the decision that agent makes or what that AI runs off of. That's where we have an incredible proprietary asset. And it's data based on trillions of proprietary transactions that we see every year from our customer base that no one else has access to.
More importantly, that's based on proprietary integrations into leading social, CTV, and transactional platforms that are relatively limited. If you look at someone like Meta, they work with three companies in brand suitability that have access to transaction data that you can make a decision on. If you look at Netflix, it's the same thing. It's two brand suitability or safety companies. Those integrations are contracted, and they're limited. No matter how good your AI crawler is, it's not gonna get into Meta. No matter how good it is, it's not gonna get into Netflix. The fact that we have these proprietary relationships that are based on our independence and unbiased and unconflicted perspective give us a data pool which acts as a really significant differentiator. That data pool only grows over time, and the number of transaction only grows over time.
It creates this really wonderful flywheel where we get proprietary important data that allows us to make better decisions. Those better decisions help us close new clients. Those new clients give us access to more data, and it spins over and over again. We have a data engine that just gets smarter over time based on proprietary information.
That's helpful. Then maybe let's dig into some of these catalysts that are coming in 2026, specifically Meta activation is one of the big ones.
Yeah.
Can you just talk about what you're seeing so far to date? I think one of the big things you talked about before, Mark, was getting through the annual budgeting cycle and getting this into some of those contracts.
Yeah.
Can you just talk about how we should see this progressing throughout 2026?
Yeah. We saw a really nice acceleration in the Meta pre-bid or activation part of our business running into Q4. We grew from 56 customers to 68 customers. A large number of those 28, I think, are top 100 customers of ours. We're starting to scale with the kind of companies that matter, with Colgate, with Unilever, with Fidelity, with Sony. These are big brands that spend a lot of money on Meta, and they're now starting to implement the tool. A catalyst for that was the fact that, you know, we launched in, you know, GA but it was relatively, you know, alpha-based GA in early Q1 of last year. That product has gotten better over time. Data transfer from Meta to DV has gotten significantly faster.
The number of categories that we're able to filter against has gotten significantly larger, and that's meant that the product efficacy has gotten better. That allows us to sell new customers because they not only have a budgeting cycle, but they have a testing cycle they run through. They wanna run the filter, you know, run impressions across Meta with the filter and without the filter, and see what their suitability rates are, for example. We're seeing significant lifts in suitability after you run the filter. That continues to grow as the product gets better. We've seen that scale over time. We mentioned we exited the year, around an $8 million run rate on the solution, and we ended the year at, you know, an even stronger run rate in 2026.
We look at that solution if we start to scale it. We do around $40 million of measurement with Meta on just verification measurement. This is a solution that costs roughly twice as much. Even if we sell half of our customers through on Meta Prebid, you know, at twice the price, you're looking at a $40 million business opportunity for us in the relative short term. We're scaling there nicely. The uptake has really started to pick up. We've got some big brands against it and, you know, we're very optimistic that that's gonna be a real impact driver for 2026 and beyond.
The other big one is DV Authentic AdVantage. Can you just talk about, maybe step back and inform investors exactly what Authentic AdVantage is? Two, what are you seeing as far as adoption and also performance outcomes?
Yeah. I know for those of you who don't know a lot about DV, we talk about a lot of products, right?
Yeah.
We do have a lot of stuff we throw out there. But just to take a step back, you know, the main goal for everything that we do is to ensure that ad impressions perform, and that ad spend is protected from bad behavior, from fraud or brand safety or suitability violations and lack of geo-alignment. We do that either before an impression is bought, which we call pre-bid, so filtering, or we measure it or block it after it's purchased. There's one other aspect of this tool where we started this conversation, which is around performance. Performance is about optimizing what happens before you buy based on data that you have after you buy. That's where Scibids comes in.
Authentic AdVantage is a solution we launched last year, first on YouTube, which takes all three of those aspects, so pre-bid filtering, post-bid measurement, and optimization, and puts them together into one package. We launched that across YouTube in mid last year with some beta customers. We've now continued to scale that. We mentioned about $8 million in ACV had been closed running into the end of the year. That business continues to grow really nicely. The value prop there is pretty straightforward. We are able to drive 20%-30% higher reach, 20%-30% lower cost per unit, while increasing brand safety and suitability at the same time. It's kind of like the holy trinity for an advertiser.
Give me more reach that's cheaper, but give me quality that's better, and that's what Authentic AdVantage does, and we've launched it across YouTube and, you know, we have plans in the, in the midterm to roll it out to some other platforms as well.
Got it. Okay. That was my next question.
Yeah.
We wouldn't expect any additional platforms, but it sounds like they're coming, but it just takes.
Yeah
... takes time.
We're testing it on Meta now. Still very early days. We're testing it on Meta. You know, we also, now that we have pre-bid on TikTok as well, we think there's some opportunities to roll into there. Our main focus right now is expanding our Authentic AdVantage implementations on YouTube. We've got customers that spend $1 billion a year on YouTube, $1 billion, and, you know, if we can just scratch the surface of that $1 billion, and this is a percentage of media product, so when you buy Authentic AdVantage, you usually pay against a percentage of media, there's really significant upside for us.
At our investor day, that we had last year, we saw this as a $100 million opportunity down the road, and I think, you know, it's early days, but, you know, we're seeing really great uptake. We're seeing great results, and some of our biggest customers are trialing it out. More to come there for sure.
CTV, this is another key catalyst for you. You know, I think some of the product launches are the Do Not Air list, the Authentic Streaming solution that you launched. How should we think about those products scaling in 2026 and beyond? Where are we, I guess, in like in an innings perspective on CTV?
Yeah. I'd say we're solid second inning there. You know, we're a little bit out of the first inning 'cause we've a decent CTV business. As I mentioned earlier, it grew over 30% last year. In the last quarter it grew, 22%. I think we're still underpenetrated on CTV to be direct. Part of it has to do with the fact that some how CTV is bought, but also it has to do with the kind of data that we've been able to get to make our decisioning based on, you know, on what advertisers are really starting to get concerned about, which is greater transparency in CTV. Both of those things are changing. Through our relationship with IMDb, we're starting to now pull and create program-level analysis on CTV impressions.
We've got significant scale across the CTV platforms as well. Both of those things together have helped us launch things like Authentic Streaming TV, which allows an advertiser to basically have the confidence that they're buying real branded CTV impressions. I know it sounds nonsensical, but in many, many cases, advertisers think they're buying CTV, and they're buying a gaming app someplace or something else. We've seen significant amounts of CTV fraud out there. With Authentic Streaming TV, both on a pre-bid focus and a post-bid, advertisers are able to measure and ensure that they've gotten an authentic streaming platform, and filter out those impressions that don't align with that. The ABS list, right now, it's a relatively small program that we've rolled out only on The Trade Desk.
The goal there is our attach rate for ABS on CTV, and ABS is our Authentic Brand Suitability solution, which is, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue for us, only has an attach rate about 10% on CTV impressions. Right? We have a huge opportunity for ABS on CTV, but we've got to find the right fit. I think with Do Not Air lists through ABS, we've got the right fit. What the tool does is it allows advertisers to literally exclude programs, through an agentic interface. We have an agentic-based interface, exclude programs that they do not want their ads to run on. This is something that's been done in linear TV since it started.
Don't run me on this kind of programs and this show." We've now moved this into digital and the agentic age, by building this solution. The goal there is to obviously drive attach rates up, and also drive the CPMs up as well. Because I, you know, on CTV impressions, I don't think we're getting the value from our buyers of what that product's worth. We now have some new tools to start charging a higher rate for ABS, for CTV, because I think now it has real value against CTV impressions.
No, that's great. Then maybe one that's more off in the distant future, not distant, but maybe near distant future.
Yeah
... is just verification on AI platforms. Obviously, it's an early concept. no one's launched it yet, but it's coming.
Yeah.
Just how does DV fit into that environment, and how do you expect it to evolve, you know, the company as a whole and opportunities that you guys could get into?
Yeah. Matt, I mean, to be direct, it's evolving way faster than we expected.
Yeah.
you know, with ChatGPT now launching an ad-based version, much faster than I think we expected or anyone in the industry expected, this is something that's barreling forward. The interesting thing is that we've seen this story before, and we've played in this story before. you know, rewind two years ago to Netflix, which was never ever gonna run ads.
Yeah
... one day they decided to run ads. You know, within the first 60 days, they gave us a call and said, "Hey, we need verification." We're seeing a similar story play out with ChatGPT, where, you know, they were never gonna run ads. They're running ads. They're launching tests. We have several dozen of our customers as part of that test, we've been involved with our customers from day one. What our customers have told us is, "We expect the same level of verification that we have everywhere else across social, across CTV, across mobile web, across the open web, on chat environments as well." That to us is a good sign that we have our customers behind us.
I'm sure you saw this week that Criteo announced that they're a third party now, is gonna allow to be part of the trial test. All those indications are pointing towards the fact that ChatGPT wants to play with the broader ad tech ecosystem, it wants to bring in partners that can make a difference for them, and that there's tons of customers out there who are, you know, leaning in, and they're customers of ours, that are kind of saying, you know, "We want the consistency on ChatGPT that we're getting everywhere else." The other thing that's really interesting on this front, is that from what we've read, most analysts are saying the dollars that will go into chat advertising are dollars that are coming out of search.
That's expected to be somewhere from $25 billion-$30 billion in the next four years. That's money that we don't go after right now.
Yeah.
DV has $0 coming from search. We look at this as in a total incremental TAM of $400 billion that we've never tapped into, and that if it rolls in there and it proceeds the way we expect it to, it'll be a great new opportunity for us.
Great. Nicola, Scibids and Rockerbox were two key acquisitions you made.
Yeah.
We actually kinda hit on Scibids and the adoption that you've seen there.
Yeah.
Can you just talk about what you're seeing as far as adoption and just how those products are going?
Yeah. Maybe we start with, you know, why we acquired these companies and what the philosophy was there in terms of M&A. These were two companies that were in market with clients and already with integrations within the ecosystem when we acquired them. We bought businesses that already existed with client relationships, but they didn't have the distribution that we have with so much more, so many more clients. What it allowed us to do is expand from where we were a few years ago. It was just protection.
Adding outcomes and now performance, right? You now have a suite of products that no one else really has out in the market, and that allows us to have conversations with clients that other companies cannot have. Authentic AdVantage, the core assumption around Authentic AdVantage really is built on Scibids, and Rockerbox will come into the fold as well as we develop products around outcomes and performance. It's worked out very well in terms of our whole M&A strategy. It is really driving all these products' evolution that we've seen in the past few years.
No, that's great. Maybe I can sneak another one in here 'cause I think it's important for everybody. It's just as we think about guidance for 2026.
Sure
Just, I know for 1 Q, I believe it's a slight acceleration that people are seeing.
Mm-hmm.
What can you give investors as far as just comfortability around like the hitting the guidance targets and then, you know, moving forward? Like what's embedded in those and, you know, what can you give as far as like is it some of these new product initiatives-?
Yeah
... or, you know, what are we seeing in that?
Sure. Yeah. The, the anchor for our guidance is the core products into the core base of our clients. You know, the average tenure for our top 75, 50, and even 20 clients is almost nine years. NRR last year was 109%. Off that base, you know, that's the baseline for what we expect for 2026, 109% NRR. Then of course, we've guided to, on the higher end, 10%, so you have an extra one point there that comes from everything we just discussed. It's gonna be a product-led growth from all the adoptions of these new products. The speed at which the products are adopted depends a little bit on us, but also depends on the clients and opening up budgets and adoption of the new solutions.
That's how we're thinking about the guidance. You know, the only other thing I would say is it is gonna be more towards the second half of the year that you'll see the acceleration just because last year in the first half we had a strong first half. That's how we're thinking about it. The upside to the numbers will be the speed at which we can have an adoption of these new products.
No, that's great. Yeah. It definitely seems like there's not too much that's embedded into these new products and, you know, if things go well, there is potential. You've operated this business typically at 33% EBITDA margins-
Yeah
... at least for the past couple of years.
Yep.
You just guided to 34%.
Yep.
You know, what's changed and what's enabled you to really bump up those margin targets?
Sure. What's not changed is the need for us to continue to invest in the business, so we are a company that invests in the business, and this is how we were able to launch all these products that others cannot have in the market. What has changed, though, is that the advent of the AI tools really allows us to create efficiencies within the business. The investments we need to make around AI for us is not the infrastructure of AI, right? It's the usage of their tools to continue to develop our own proprietary databases and our own proprietary classification of content. That is now at such a speed that we're able to actually extract efficiencies that naturally will fall to the bottom line. We're able to continue to invest, yet show efficiency growth.
Simply said, we, you know, we expect to be able to grow with fewer people because the tools are gonna allow us to do what we were, you know, in the past doing with a lot more people.
Yeah. No, that's great. A $300 million share buyback you announced last quarter, I think the biggest in the company's history, if that's correct.
Correct.
Can you maybe just take a step back and just talk about capital allocation priorities?
Sure.
Like should we expect any more M&A from, you know, Scibids or Rockerbox that you bought previously? Like just what are the priorities as you sit here in 2026?
The three pillars of the capital allocation again haven't really changed, which is we invest in the business, we look for M&A opportunities like Scibids and Rockerbox, which by the way, we're able to fund with the cash that we generate, and then buybacks, right? 2026 will be the third year that we're doing buybacks. $300 million is the largest available amount for buybacks. What we said is that we will do buybacks that is at a clip that's faster than we did in 2025. For 2024 and 2025, we were anchoring buybacks to the stock-based compensation expense. In 2026, we said we're gonna do it at a clip that's gonna be faster than that. Last year, buybacks allowed us to reduce outstanding share by 3%.
You know, $300 million would create a much bigger reduction in shares if we use it all. That is the beauty of the business, right? Like the free cash flow conversion, it was 70% last year, it was 60% the year before. We have a lot of options to use cash, and we're always focused on return to shareholders and buybacks as part of that.
Yeah. look, we firmly believe that we've got a great plan in place.
Yeah.
We've got huge opportunities ahead, and who better to bet on than ourselves?
Yeah.
I think that's a great use of our capital.
Yeah.
Yeah. No, definitely. Mark, maybe a last one here, just because, you know, last year IAS got acquired, and like Just can you maybe take a step back and talk about the competitive landscape? Has anything changed since then? Just like as we sit here today, you know, how do you think about the competitive intensity in the, in the ecosystem?
Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a great question and, you know, if anything, we feel like the competitive landscape has tilted more in our favor over the last 12 months, due to the fact that, you know, we just spent 30 minutes talking about all these amazing products that we've invested in, and out of all of those, our competitors have launched none, right? They have no optimization solution. They've got no solutions in social to address kind of AI slop. They've got no solutions, you know, like Authentic AdVantage out there that bring together pre-bid, post-bid, and kind of performance-based in one package. They've got no CTV solutions. Why that's happened is because when you're distracted by acquisitions and not up deploying capital, you can't deploy products into the market.
You know, you could, you know, listen to me rant, or you can look at our, you know, 90% of our wins in Q4 were greenfield wins, and those were wins in which there was no competitive product on the other side of the table that we were displacing. That means we're going into totally new areas with a totally new value prop that our competitors can't meet. I think, you know, in addition to the great uses of capital that we do in investing ourselves, we're also investing in product and tech that our competitors can't do because they're distracted by $1 billion of debt sitting on their balance sheet when we've got 0.
No, definitely. Well, it's setting up for a great year for 2026. A lot of product catalysts. Mark, Nicola, thank you so much for coming.
Thanks, Matt.
Yeah. Thanks for having us.
I appreciate it.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thanks a lot.