We're gonna get started now. I'm Laura Martin. I'm the senior media and big tech analyst over here at Needham & Company. I`'d like to welcome the CEO of DoubleVerify. His introduction is over here. The CFO of DoubleVerify. We're gonna turn off my phone. That's my phone ringing. One sec. Okay. Mark Zagorski is the CEO of DoubleVerify, where he has spearheaded the company's growth as a critical trust layer in digital advertising since joining in 2020. A veteran of the ad tech industry, previously served as the CEO of Telaria, where he managed its merger into the Rubicon Project, which was then sold to Magnite. Prior to Telaria, Mark was the CEO of eXelate, which he sold to Nielsen.
This is Nicola, and he's the CFO, and so we will create some questions for him on the run, which is fantastic.
Yeah.
Glad he's here. 'Cause there's always one I ask him that he hates, so we'll do that one first. I would just like to say as an introduction, we rate DoubleVerify a buy because its acquisition of Scibids, which it does AI optimization, and Rockerbox for attribution, are pivoting DoubleVerify towards high-value performance workflow optimization with broader ad tech platform economics and deeper integrations into ad campaign executions. We believe that DoubleVerify will successfully transition from vendor verification middleware to mission-critical AI advertising infrastructure, which will give them upside pricing power and accelerate their revenue growth. That's why we really like the stock. I wanna start with a leadership question, and you're gonna get to answer it too.
Oh, boy.
because you're on stage with me. That is that when we think about generative AI, it threatens to disrupt a lot of jobs. So how does your notion of leadership change in this environment where there's so much uncertainty? What kind of demands does it put on you as a leader that are different now?
Wow. That's a great question that you did not send in advance.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
Am I required?
I apologize.
-to answer that now?
Yes.
It's a good one. I think AI has really upended how we look at.
Okay
how we look at growth and innovation.
That's interesting.
How we bring those two things together in a very different way. I mean, in the past, when we thought about innovation, it was how many engineers can we hire and how many great engineers can we hire, right?
Okay.
How best can we get the most out of them?
Okay.
Now, it's more focused on how do we take the tools that are out there and apply them in ways that are gonna drive growth in our business, but also create efficiencies which the market is absolutely expecting, right?
Yeah.
From a leadership perspective, what that's done is created massive fear.
Yes
Amongst teams.
Yes.
The way to frame it is less as this is something that's going to take your job.
Yeah
As opposed to this is something that's gonna give you longevity in a space that's going to change rapidly if you embrace it, right?
Yes. Uh-huh.
I think we've seen a really great embracing of AI within the company.
Okay
When we first started, folks were, especially engineering team, probably half of them were like, "I'm not doing this.
Seriously?
Right? "I'm a coder. I'm not gonna not code." We told them, "Hey, by the end of the year, you're gonna be a manager. You're gonna manage five agents-
Yeah
That's your job.
Yeah.
They're like, "Well, I don't wanna be a Manager." We said, "You're not gonna have a job then.
Good for you.
They changed though.
Good for you.
You can see the people embraced it. A lot of times, you know, the normal thought was, hey, your senior executives are the ones who are gonna be like, "Keep that away from me. I know what I'm doing. It wasn't. It was they're the ones who embraced it first because they've seen this change before. Many of them had been through multiple cycles of change, and they're like, "If I don't embrace this, it's the end for me.
Yeah.
It's changed a lot.
I once saw Jeff Bezos right before they were going public and they said, you know, "You got all these guys that are about to be worth $10 million each. How do you motivate them?" Jeff Bezos said, "'Cause the best employees never work for money." The point is, the best employees don't just work for this job.
Yeah
They work for something bigger, something more interesting, something creative. If they don't, then they're not a best employee.
Yeah.
Like, you know?
Yeah.
What about you in finance? I'm gonna actually add something. One of the most interesting things Roku's talking about, and I think they're right after you, is token cost.
Mm-hmm. Yep.
He says, "I got everybody in my organization using tokens to try things in HR or in, you know, legal and stuff." He says, "I have no return on capital metric. Like in coding, I can put a return on capital metric, but my costs are going through the roof of these tokens, and they aren't telling me in HR how this is making me, the CFO, more productive.
Right.
Talk about how you think leadership, but also this cost notion that maybe tokens need to have a capital spending cycle around them and put budgeting, and in legal you can use this many, so they're forced to prioritize. Talk to me about that, thank you.
We are actually doing that.
Okay
We are managing the use of tokens centrally through our technology group.
Wow.
That it is spread across the teams in a way that is manageable and that we can monitor.
Okay.
Right now we're just taking a look at where exactly it's used. Is it used in a way that is efficient?
Yeah
accelerating, our own product roadmap, our own efficiencies, rather than just letting everybody trying out and seeing what happens.
Yeah.
I think in terms of the responsibility of finance around these tools, we do need to try them. We are trying them. The ultimate result of their using them will be a higher, more efficient business model, which we're already showing the signs of through our first quarter results of the year. There will be an ultimate measure to see that it is actually happening.
Okay.
The way we're rolling them out is in a more centralized fashion.
I'll just give you the Fubo answer. He said, "From now on, I don't look at resumes." For interviewing new people, he says, "We put them, I expect them to make a video using generative AI tools to make an app, and then explain in the video what they did and why they did it and why it's useful.
Wow.
He says, "Because the two skills I need are people who can actually use gen AI. My next employee needs to be able to use gen AI-
Yeah. Mm-hmm
As Levison, and explain to people why he used it to do that and why it matters in English.
Right.
I just thought And he's like, "I'm back to generalists. I don't want point solution people.
Yeah.
I want generalists because I don't know where gen AI is going." I just thought it was an interesting way.
No, that's a great way.
to hire your next guy.
Yeah.
Maybe you can't impose it on your current guys, thought it was an interesting idea. Okay, let's talk about how does DV remain independent while integrating deeper into the walled gardens? 'Cause some of your fastest-growing stuff is sitting within Meta or sitting within TikTok.
Yeah.
It feels to me like this gravitational pull to the big pools of money that are sitting in walled gardens does threaten your independence or trust in your brand as an independent brand.
Our role in the walled gardens is exactly the same role as the open web, which is exactly the same role in streaming, and which will be the exact same role that we have on the LLMs.
Okay.
Which is that as an independent trust layer. We, just because we're analyzing something behind a wall doesn't mean we're not objective and doing so from a way that has only our advertisers' desires at the forefront.
Okay
that role doesn't change, and I think it's critically important because that's why people are hiring us.
Yes.
They're hiring us because.
They trust.
They need trust in those platforms. They've seen their ads run against stuff that they don't want it to be.
Yes.
How You know, look, the reality it is, how can you trust someone who's selling you media to tell it's good?
Right.
To tell you that it's good.
Right.
CBS, there's a reason why Nielsen exists, right?
Right.
If CBS came up with their own ratings and said, "Hey, buy against my ratings.
Yeah
Who would trust them?
Right
you know. I think, our role there, and as you noted it's an increasingly growing role.
Yes
It's important. You know, last quarter, we grew our social activation business by over 90%.
Yeah. Congratulations.
We grew our social measurement business by 23%. It's, you know, we are leaning in there. There's demand for the solutions, and I think our innovation and our products are just catching up to that demand.
Yeah. Okay. Fantastic. Retail media, CTV, 2 biggest TAM categories for DoubleVerify. How do you prioritize resources and which one will be bigger in three years from now, do you think?
Uh, we-
This can be for both of you.
Yeah. I mean, we've leaned really into streaming right now, into streaming television.
Okay
As the bigger opportunity for the two.
Okay.
Maybe not for the reason why you think.
Okay
You know, first of all, you know, streaming, we've barely scratched the surface on, I think, our opportunity there. We mentioned that our CTV impressions grew 28% last quarter. You know, we still have strong kind of growth trajectory there. Our products are catching up there. We've launched Verified Streaming TV. Which is a pre-bid and post-bid application that ensures that ads are being run in high-quality, full-episode players, not, like, on a mobile gaming site or something like that.
Gotcha.
It's running in Hulu. It's running in Paramount.
Okay.
We created a product called Automated Do Not Air Lists. Which give the advertiser the ability to avoid specific programs or specific genres of programs.
Um-
Gen AI, or is that a different product?
That's a different product.
Okay, sorry. Okay.
This is specifically around streaming. We launched that through Trade Desk.
Okay.
It actually doubled the attach rate on Trade Desk of our ABS product because you buy the Do Not Air list through ABS.
Oh, interesting.
Which was pretty significant in a quarter.
Wow
In less than three months. We're starting from a low rate to a higher rate.
Okay
It was great. I think the reason why we're leaning to streaming today, we just think there's a lot more of a gap there for. What we can deliver.
Clear market need to.
What we've been able to deliver in the past, what we can deliver now.
Okay
Kind of what our attach rate is there.
Okay. Okay. All right. retail media really, does retail media network just have an outcome so people don't really attach as much to the DoubleVerify products?
Well, I mean, if you look at some of our biggest retail customers are folks like Walmart and Amazon.
That's true.
Retail media platforms.
They are.
Amazon is interesting. I think last stat I saw, something like Amazon's, like, 80% of the retail media network business.
Yeah.
Um-
That makes sense to me. I would guess higher, actually.
Yeah. It's huge, and we work with Amazon as a supply platform. As a demand platform through their DSP, and as an advertiser.
Okay.
Right? on all different aspects.
Right.
That part of our business is really growing, but when you talk about retail media, for us, it's really about Amazon.
Okay.
And, um-
Assembled
and we're meeting-
Okay
kind of all of those demands.
Okay.
I think the interesting thing about RMNs, though.
Yeah
which I don't know if people are fully starting to embrace.
Yeah
An RMN is basically just a giant retargeting network, right? You're taking data from a site.
Yeah
Then they're using that data to retarget somebody when they leave your site. If you're Best Buy, if you're Target, that's what it is, right?
I thought an RMN was, a retail media network was sort of I spend an ad dollar, and I can actually just have an outcome of an actual physical sale at the other end, and that's what the RMN did, is it tied the ad dollar I spent to the actual outcome of a sale.
It's part of it, but the money comes from me as Best Buy, me as Target.
Right, that's the ad dollar
Me as whatever, saying, "You came to my site, and you looked for a television.
Right.
Sony, I'm gonna sell you that same user someplace else, and I'm gonna extend that data or that impression offsite. That's where the money comes from in retail media, the spend of impressions or dollar impressions based on data that I get from that retailer.
Okay.
That's, so-
Okay
If you think about that, they're buying impressions offsite. Most of that's basically mobile online video or display.
Right.
It's not like in a walled garden.
That's true.
Right?
That's true.
That business is slowly gonna be starting to be eaten by the LLMs, who are gonna be focused on commerce.
Yeah, that's true.
I think a lot of retail media is moving to the LLMs.
Oh, that's interesting. Oh, that's pretty controversial.
That universe, I think, is gonna start to be.
That's interesting.
becoming LLM universe.
Do you think it's cannibalized first by the LLMs?
The media part of that, for sure.
Okay. Interesting. Let's integrate you into our play here, Nicola. When you think about, like, Do you prioritize by product category? Like, how are you guys prioritizing in the back office software?
In terms of product development?
Yeah.
We're prioritizing by the channels where we're not yet fully penetrated.
Which is, like, OTT.
would be social-
Stream
CTV.
Okay.
Those are really the ones where-
Okay
We spent a lot of product development resources last year to launch the products that are now in market.
Yeah.
The one that's growing the fastest is social activation.
Yeah, sure.
Those tools are now in the market, and Mark already mentioned the growth.
90%
over 90%.
That's where we're prioritizing, the product development. Of course.
Okay
In the background, we're also getting ready for verification on the AI platforms.
On?
On the AI platforms.
On the AI platforms.
Yeah.
Is that, like, OpenAI?
Yes.
Is that what you mean?
Exactly.
Okay. Is OpenAI letting you in?
Uh-
That sounds like a no.
Yeah. We can't talk about anything.
Okay
that's not been publicly announced yet.
Gotcha.
Um-
Okay
We've mentioned on our calls that we're in conversations with LLMs.
Okay
around advertising.
Since Claude doesn't have advertising.
Mm-hmm.
That narrows 'em down. We're not letting in Google.
I mean, our perspective is this. When we talk to advertisers, they expect us to verify media transactions everywhere where they spend.
Yes.
Right? It started off in the open web, and then moved to programmatic, and then to social-
Yeah
To streaming TV.
Right.
The next phase will be LLMs.
Yes.
They've made it very clear to us and to those LLMs, for them to move beyond test campaign budgets.
they need verification. When Reddit went public, what did they say? "We want third-party verification.
When Netflix started selling ads, what did they say? "We're going to have third-party verification and measurement in.
They called us. They called Nielsen, right?
Yeah.
it's just history repeating itself that brand-
Long as you have brand advertisers. I do not think you need it if it's SMBs.
Okay
Because they have clear performance or outcome orientations.
You know, look, I think if you look at every platform has some percentage of brand advertisers, right?
Okay.
Even the social platforms have 30%.
That's true.
40%
You're right.
On brand advertisers.
Yeah, 'cause I would've said Meta didn't need you, because they do all SMBs. They have 10 million SMBs.
Right
you're right.
They have 30% of their billions in revenue.
Yeah.
I mean, you look at someone like P&G. P&G spends $1 billion a year on YouTube, right?
That's crazy.
$1 billion just on one platform.
That's crazy. That's just P&G.
Yeah. On one, you know, you have to assume that there's going to be. If you go to, you know, some of the LLMs now and look at the advertising, it there's big brands there.
Yeah.
We've seen brands there already.
Well, OpenAI doesn't have the capability of doing granularity. They have to do big brands. Almost like a well, it's almost like a billboard sale.
Right.
Like
They're, you know, they made recent deals with demand generation companies, right?
Yes.
With Kargo and Pacvue
Yes
Criteo because they're trying to attract dollars from brands to spend across their platform.
Yes.
They don't have a sales infrastructure.
Yeah, that's true.
Um-
That's true.
You know, we know, we have dozens of our current advertiser brands who are testing campaigns across the LLMs. We just feel it's, you know, it's inevitable at some layer, at some level that.
Yeah
You know, verification will come there.
Yeah
Driven by advertiser demand.
Yeah. By the way, Claude's saying, "Hell no," and I'm like, "I've heard this with Netflix.
Yep.
Yeah.
Like, it's not a thing.
Exactly.
Like, ultimately, you guys need money.
Exactly.
Advertising is targets a whole part of the U.S. that makes less than $70,000 a year.
Yeah.
That's where advertiser targets.
That's right.
You just can't ask people to pay a fortune.
Yes
you know.
That's Yes.
You need to reach everybody, and that means you need advertising.
Especially outside the U.S. Remember, Netflix hit the wall, is when subscribers started to slow in the U.S., and they moved outside the U.S.
$24
Developing countries, Southeast Asia, $24 and spend $20 billion on content a year.
Yeah.
Think of that.
But even here-
That was tiny.
almost all of their new ads are ad-driven, because people have seven streaming services.
Yep. Right. Right.
They wanna pay $10 for Netflix, not $24.
Yep.
It's not only offshore, but I take your point about the slowing.
Yeah.
Subscription revenue.
As you expand into markets where you can't pay $19.95 a month.
Yeah
it's just not-
You must have an ad-driven option. Yeah. Well, also, to me, it's more fair, because if you have a hit piece of content, why are you paying a fixed price to something crappy? Like, advertising allows you to make a little more money.
Sure
When you have Stranger Things and it blows everybody away.
Yeah.
Some breakout hit. It allow same with sports. Like, they now have five sports, in this case five different live sports for the NFL. If you have programmatic, if you have advertising, you get to capture the upside if it happens to be a great game.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Right? Whereas if you just have a flat subscription fee, like, it's like I mean.
Yeah
got too much value in that particular.
Absolutely
month, in a sense.
Absolutely.
I like the combination of the two, like a downside protection layer of subscription, and then an upside warrant f rom advertising revenue if you do a really great job at your core business, which is making content.
Yeah.
But anyway. Great. Let's go to social and do activation and measurement products on Meta, TikTok, YouTube, Snap. They continue to grow at double-digit rate. Does growth slow? Are we in one of these periods, sometimes you guys have this fabulous 1st year or fabulous year because you have a new product, but then it sort of goes to, like, normalized growth rates of sort of single digits? Do you see that happening in social?
I think we have a while to go before.
Okay
we see that kind of, that kind of pacing. You know, we've just launched our social activation tools.
on Meta early last year. To be honest with you, like, the V1 of that was.
Yeah
not even close to where we are today.
Okay.
The tool's advanced. You've seen an acceleration in revenue on social activation in Meta. We just enhanced our TikTok activation tool. That's gotten better.
Wanna explain to the audience activation versus measurement, how you distinguish between that?
Think of activation's what we call pre-bid. It's actually filtering out a violation before you even buy it, before you bid on it. Measurement is what we call post-bid. I've already bought an impression someplace, but we have the ability to block the actual rendering of that. Obviously advertisers would prefer not to buy it.
Right. Of course.
first, than they would to try to get a make good from.
Get money back.
small block.
Yeah.
Get money back. Activation is pretty new for us on social. We just started kind of scaling it and launching it over the last several quarters. What we found, which is what we saw on our open web, our activation business in the open web is significantly larger than our measurement business.
Makes sense.
Right? Because you
They don't want the ad to run next to inappropriate content.
Right now, our activation business on social is smaller than our measurement business is, half social, half open web right now.
Okay.
That was, you know, how much was that last quarter?
$60 million.
Yeah, $60 million in measurement, right?
Okay.
Our activation business is considerably smaller than that. We see activation continuing to grow on the social side, to where a ratio that we see in the open web is similar, where it's almost twice as much revenue from activation as we do from.
One of the things I remember when you guys did the pre-bid product is I was very whiny at you about why can't we raise our price from $0.08? You said, "Well, the good news is in order to buy a pre-bid product, we require you to re- pre- a post-bid product," right?
Right. Yeah.
You're calling them activation and measurement. Do you do that in social too? They can't buy the pre-bid product without buying the post-bid, so it sort of doubles your take rate in a sense because you're Right.
The systems work together, right?
Yeah. Makes sense.
We catch violations in measurement, and then we filter them out in pre-bid.
Right.
Right.
If they have just a post-bid, let's call it measurement, which is your word, what is the benefit they get? Like, on average, how much does it save them? How much does this measurement number go down for the fraud and value when they add a pre-bid to it? Like does it halve?
We see anywhere from kind of like 3% to 6% or 7%, percentage point increases in suitability, for example.
Okay
By using a pre-bid filter.
Ooh. I'm surprised it's not higher.
90%.
You think, you start at 90, and it goes to, like, 96%?
96%, 97%.
Okay. All right.
Think about that.
That's fair.
If you're running a campaign that has 100 million impressions.
Yes
6 percentage points is a lot of impressions.
Yeah, yeah, you're right. I'm forgetting how many impressions.
that you're keeping away from stuff, right?
Thinking of Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
It's incredibly valuable.
Okay.
We see those rates going up.
The product getting better over time. The product learns, right?
We're getting all this crap, and let's call it AI slop, by the way. I use that term because you guys called a product AI slop. On the data panel this morning, I'm like, "We should have data slop," because there's too much data. Data's confusing it.
Yeah.
At some point you know, doesn't add value. I'm like, "Well, let's take AI slop and apply it here to data slop," you know?
Yeah.
It's a great title you guys made a product of, AI slop.
AI SlopStopper, man.
AI SlopStopper. I love it. On this point, specifically, going from the 90%-96%, when you have a SlopStopper, or when you have more slop, could this 90% be structurally under siege going towards 80% because generative AI is going to make so much more content that's just, you know, bad, not viewable.
Uh-
Is it a different issue?
You know, that's I mean, look, the volume of challenging content continues to grow.
Yeah.
Right? Our filters are still our filters, right? You're just jamming more into them. They're still identifying everything, right?
Yes. Okay.
Volume is never our product problem.
Okay.
Sophistication, for example, around AI cyber fraud, which is becoming more challenging.
Yes.
We saw 140% increase year-over-year in fraud variance between Q1 2025 and Q1 2026. Think about that, 140% increase in fraud.
What does that mean?
That means there are more fraudulent attacks using AI. These are like bot attacks, things like that, than we've seen year-over-year.
Okay.
It's becoming more sophisticated.
Okay.
This is where, like, there's good AI and bad AI.
I see.
Right?
Yeah.
Bad AI is being used to spoof impressions, spoof advertisers.
Right
steal dollars.
Yeah.
You know, that's beyond brand. That's beyond quality and suitability and safety.
Yeah, yeah.
A huge factor.
It's actual fraud.
True fraud.
I mean, it's like true fraud.
Yeah.
Okay, is it coming from offshore? Is it state actors from offshore, which is what I assume? Okay, it's not-
This is not-
bad actors in America.
This is not a kid in his basement.
Yeah.
These are sophisticated. No, 'cause people sometimes think like.
I was wondering.
This is, like, sophisticated.
Some 15-year-old that's taking time off lunch break to, like, do fraud in the afternoon.
There's always that, but, like, these are sophisticated criminal enterprises. They spin up literally thousands of servers.
Oh my gosh.
Like, this costs money to do.
Okay.
Right?
Okay.
They spend money to steal money.
Okay.
This is a multi-billion dollar industry.
Wow.
Billions of dollars get lost every year.
Wow. Well.
Not from advertisers who use DoubleVerify.
It's a $1 trillion. Yeah. That's really great. Okay. We're gonna continue to grow. The answer was we're gonna continue to grow at double-digit rates.
Yes.
We're gonna continue to have for monetization. Okay. Nicola. Yes, starting with you. Yeah. We'll do you second. How are you using AI today to lower costs, and how much AI-driven productivity gains will be reinvested versus being allowed to expand your margins?
how we're using AI to lower the cost on the efficiency of what we do.
Yeah
in terms of how we classify content. AI is allowing us to do it faster and for more content at a more efficient clip.
Okay.
That's part of the way we've maintained gross margins over 80%.
Okay.
That's on the top of the funnel in terms of what we classify.
Okay.
Below that, you know, what we said at the beginning of the year is we'll be able to grow, with fewer employees, and that we've already started to see it in, at the beginning of the year.
Okay.
We'll end up seeing it at the end of the year, and the ultimate result is that our margins are growing. In Q1, we had 31% margin. It's the first time.
Wow
We've had a margin over 30% in the first quarter. We're seeing the results in the bottom. We're obviously being responsible in how we're doing it because people still need to trust us, so we're using the AI tools in the right way to classify. The efficiencies are great. They're large. Up until now, we've always said we're gonna continue to invest and reinvest in the business. That's not changed for us except that the way we're able to do that creates a lot of efficiencies, which is why we're able to expand margins.
Okay. I'm glad you're managing tokens. I think a lot of CFOs are not doing that yet.
Yeah, no, we have to. Yeah. Yep. Yep.
You're really ahead of the game on the token cost. What are you seeing, Mark, on maybe on the product development side in terms of By the way, I will say there was a time there where you guys were super innovative on product, and then, like, everybody went to sleep for, like, three years. Now it feels like you're back in the new product introduction game. That's how it feels to me from the outside. I don't know if you see it that way.
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know what? It was the innovation was done incrementally, and we are doing things around the edges as opposed to big swipes.
Okay
And big hits. I think that's where we've moved to now, which is, like, taking on big challenges, like streaming TV.
Yeah
Transparency around streaming TV.
Yeah. Gen AI Slop.
Like Gen AI Slop.
Yeah.
Like, you know, social and and, you know, the opportunities within social. I think, you know, we mentioned last year at the end of last year at call, like, we launched more products in 2025, like, in two quarters than we had launched in two years before that, and I think it's part of it has to do with.
Why would you ever work on incremental if you can work on a big new category?
I think, you know, we still saw a big pool of money there that we could go after.
Okay
that just tweaking things and investing, you know, small.
Okay.
It wasn't like we weren't doing anything, right?
Right.
We were building the base layer from which we could then launch in, you know, deeper into social, deeper into streaming.
Okay.
I do have to say, you know, over the last several quarters, AI tools have allowed us to do that so much faster.
Right.
Right? Nicola mentioned.
Yeah
classification.
Yeah.
We can classify content 2,000x faster now with AI, 2,000x faster.
That feels like a cost thing, not a new product thing.
It's cost, but it allows us to expand to new languages faster.
That's true.
And to new markets faster. We employ-
Okay. I see.
Semantic scientists.
Okay.
We employ linguists.
Yeah
Translators.
All of those roles are now being done by AI.
Right? I don't need to have someone translate text and then label it and then put it into a model. I have AI doing that.
Sure.
We're gonna be down 100 contractors this year by just using AI to do labeling as opposed to having humans doing labeling and feeding our models. It's driving efficiency. It allows us to move into markets faster. Allows us to test products faster.
You know, we're now building natural language interfaces for customer service, right?
Mm-hmm. Makes sense.
In the past, we'd launch that on a normal pace where it'd be like, "Okay, let's do a beta, which will take us six months, then get it to a customer.
Why do it yourself? Aren't there guys off the shelf that you can just use theirs day after tomorrow?
Well, I'm saying that's the old way. Because we can use AI to actually build prototypes very quickly and launch it.
I see. I see.
We don't use off-the-shelf stuff because when you rely on third parties that's not your own product, then you're tied to them forever. We build our own stuff.
It takes longer to get to market then.
Uh-
You have to prioritize.
Not anymore.
Not anymore.
Not anymore.
Okay, fair enough. Okay. I have one CEO that is saying, and maybe you don't care 'cause you guys are sorta hedged, but he's saying that programmatic rails are gonna be replaced by agentic rails, and he says over time, but what he means is, like, three years.
Yeah
Is it, like, a 10-year idea?
Right.
Do you guys agree with that in your neutral position you sit at?
You know, look, no matter how someone buys or sells media, we're kind of indifferent, right?
Yeah.
As long as our solution set is there, as long as, you know, we're verifying that transaction, we're kind of indifferent how they buy or sell. In this case, though, you know, what's really interesting is think about how folks used to buy with a piece of paper.
That's true, an IO.
Then they bought, right?
A lot of media still bought that way.
Right.
It's crazy to me.
They bought with an IO, and then they bought through email.
It's an insertion order Looks like a trading ticket like this. You hand it with the video to the company.
Yes
you wanna run the ad.
Right. Then it moved to programmatic.
Yep.
Right? Now programmatic ate everything, like, 85% of display and 85% of mobile is programmatically bought.
Yeah.
It'll become agents, right?
Okay.
Our role's still gonna be the same.
Okay.
The interesting thing about agentic buying, which, if you thought programmatic was gonna be fraught with challenges and opacity, think of an agentic world where I'm like 'Cause everyone's like, "Oh, think. You don't need a DSP anymore. You're just gonna send your agent out to go buy media," right?
That's true. That's true.
I'm Netflix.
That's what Yeah.
Netflix, I'm gonna send my agent out, and we're gonna negotiate. Those agents are gonna negotiate. Guess what's gonna happen?
What?
That universe is gonna be flooded with fake agents. Flooded.
Right.
You know that fraud we were talking about?
Yeah.
There's some kid in his basement right now creating an agent-
That sells media.
that agent's gonna sell media.
Right.
It's gonna look just like a Netflix agent.
Right.
it's gonna say, "Hey," you know, "Procter & Gamble-
With $30 CPM.
Yeah, don't you wanna buy this?" They're gonna be like, "This looks legitimate, but how can I tell?" We're gonna be able to tell.
Right, right, right.
And I think-
The more fraud there is, the better for you.
We'll be able to tell because we've already built a tool called Agent ID.
Okay
Which is the first iteration of kind of giving advertisers the ability to understand what the role is of that agent and who they've their ad has interacted with.
Yeah.
The next stage will be when agentic buying truly scales.
is playing that same role. Is this person really selling you a safe page?
Right.
Is this person telling-
A page at all.
A page, right.
Right.
Right.
Is it safe?
Is it viewable?
Is it viewable? All of those things. We're just going to be employing, we joined AdCP, which is the ad.
Standardization
Standardization group.
Okay.
We're involved with the IAB Standardization group. We'll be agnostic.
Right.
Whatever protocol someone uses, we'll build for it, and, you know, but we're gonna play the same role, which is, "Hey, you need to stop here, and we're gonna check it first.
One of the big, and I really do wanna is trust.
Yeah
Does trust in an AI world become more valuable?
I mean, I think it becomes as valuable as, you know, when we're continuing to move people out of the equation, right?
That's true.
Right?
That's true.
We just said you went from a person you trusted sitting across the table from you-
Yeah
To then a machine-.
Yeah
To then buying through a programmatic platform where you had no idea what was happening.
That's true.
Right? Transparency is always gonna be an issue as you bring more machines to it.
Okay.
Efficiency is there, but who can you trust?
Right.
I think that's the role we play, which is.
Okay
driving trust and transparency in opaque environments. I'll give you a good example.
Okay
of where this comes into play.
I like sort of that tagline. Very interesting.
Think of Meta. We started talking about social platforms.
Yeah, we did.
Meta has an amazing product called Advantage+. Which is a black box solution that you put your money into, and it guarantees you an outcome, right? You don't know where it runs. You don't know how it runs. You don't know the context it runs. They'll say, "Look, we'll get you this many clicks. We'll get you this many conversions. It's doing quite well. However, there's no transparency in it.
Right.
Right? When we see campaigns running on Meta using DoubleVerify measurement.
Yeah
Verification, the attach rate is twice as much on Advantage+ campaigns as it is on non-Advantage+ campaigns. That means when you're buying into a black box.
People are relying us on the attach rate's twice as high.
Okay
because they want that transparency.
Okay.
The more things move to black boxes and just trust me outcomes.
The more they need transparency. They lean on companies like DoubleVerify.
Okay. Right. The more fraud there is, the better it is for you 'cause you're like an insurance policy. You're like a low-cost insurance policy.
We Yes.
Okay. One of the things I've really liked, as I've told you a million times, is this move towards % of take rate, % of like a take rate that's a % of media.
Sure.
Let's talk and I don't think you guys talk about this as much, but talk about, like because of Scibids and because of some of these new products you're introducing, you're sort of getting, I would call it, a dual revenue stream where you have, let me call it, a subscription fee, which was like it's really a fixed fee. It's not a subscription fee. It's a fixed fee, round number is like $0.08 or $0.14 per 1,000 impressions. Now you're going to a % of money spent, which I think has more upside. But can you talk about the dual revenue streams and how you think about those?
Nicola?
Yeah. On the optimization products, it makes plenty of sense to be on a percent of media, right?
Okay.
The take rate, it makes a lot of sense because you're showing a immediate return on your investment and what we're able to optimize for the media part of the business.
That is the one that we are pricing directly on a percent of media. The rest of the business is still, as you said, a fee. We receive a fee per impression that we're measuring and verifying for the advertisers. That is the model that we like for where we are.
Because-
For where we are today, which is-
Okay
We are still penetrating new verticals. We're still penetrating new platforms where for us it's very important to be very simple for the advertiser. It's a very simple fee per impression, and we just tack on more and more products to the impression.
Okay.
It creates a very simple upsell motion for the client with our new products. I think there will be a.
Why is that different from a 10% take rate or a 2% take rate, just as simple?
Because every platform is not the same. Not everybody's thinking of what they're spending on social the same way as they're, what they're spending on the DSPs. It's generally not necessarily even the same budgets. The conversations are different. It's easier to just say, "This is how much we are charging you per impression that we see per channel," and it will vary by client. It just makes it very fluid and very simple.
Right.
I think once we end up in a situation where we are upsold into all the channels.
Right
I think we'll have a better opportunity to differentiate the price based on the CPMs that they're actually paying.
Right.
Yeah
was the $0.08 when you went to CTV.
Yeah.
You never were able to raise the price when you went from a $2 CPM to a $20.
No, yeah.
You were stuck at $0.08.
No. Yeah.
which is one of my big complaints.
Yeah
'cause you just walked away from all this excess value, and you've never been able to raise the price. You keep saying, "Oh, we're gonna do it. We're gonna do it." No. You still haven't.
Not yet.
We as You know, part of that, it was the value prop on CTV versus other video.
Yeah
versus social.
Yeah.
I think we're now leaning into having that value prop that gives us greater ability to raise prices. We have raised price on video versus display. We think there's the trifurcation opportunity as we've launched new tools.
Right
Like Verified Streaming TV.
Yeah
The do not air list. There is an opportunity to increase price there for sure. I agree with you.
If simplicity costs you 10X, that wasn't the best economic decision.
Well.
Like simplicity is worth something.
It's not just simplicity, but it's actually the attach rates and the value of the product that we wanted to go for, right?
Yeah.
You know, most CTV is now bought by PMP or PG.
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah.
Um-
private marketplace.
Right
programmatic guaranteed
programmatic guaranteed.
You know, there's a little bit you know, our value prop there is a little bit less defined when you know I'm directly buying an impression from Hulu.
Right.
Right?
Okay.
As more CTV inventory comes into the fold. As it becomes more opaque, as these black box solutions come into play.
Yeah
Our value starts to increase, which means we have more room to start to raise prices there as well.
Okay. Questions from the audience? Any questions for Mark or Nicola? Okay from the audience? Okay. Great. Okay. When you think about staying on this issue of rev shares, when you think about share of revenue versus fixed fee three years from now, is this a growing segment, I assume? What we're doing over.
Yeah
Scibids AI. You know, how big do you think that could be in three years?
Well, if you think about where our target for Scibids AI.
By 2028, 2029 was, like, about $100 million in revenue.
Okay.
$100 million out of $1 billion b y that time.
10%.
10% or so.
Okay.
We have a new catalyst around that.
Okay
which is, the product we launched kind of late last year, which was Authentic AdVantage for YouTube.
Yes. Mm-hmm.
That's a combination of a pre-bid filter, a post-bid measurement, and then Scibids AI as the sandwich in the middle.
Yes.
We mentioned on the call that's growing really well. It's at, you know, $10 million plus, you know, run rate right out of the gate. We see that now we're expanding that to TikTok and to Meta.
Okay
as well.
Okay.
you know, that could also positively influence how fast that pers.
Yeah
'cause that's a percentage of media.
Yeah
There is a percentage of media-
Sure
in that as well.
Okay.
That will positively influence what percentage of our business goes there.
Okay
as you will like-
Yeah
You know, YouTube is video.
It is.
Right?
Yeah.
The CPMs are higher there.
Yes.
They're not CTV video.
No
Impressions-
Yeah
They're higher.
Yeah.
We have a chance to get a bigger chunk of that than just our straight, you know, pre-bid costs off those.
Okay
Video impressions.
Okay.
What I would say is the goals.
Yeah
We have there are stated is 50% of our business being social CTV and then AI when it comes. Right now, it's less than 30%. Whether it comes because of a % of media or not, the goal is to penetrate the channels where we just launched our product. There'll be a motion there, whether it's helped by percent of media or not, I think we're more set on just making sure we are where the advertisers are advertising. Now that we have the products, we're on our way to reaching that goal of 50% being social CTV AI.
Okay.
That's a more of an operational goal that we have in terms of diversifying our business and going where the dollars are.
Okay
Now that we have the products.
I see. Yeah. I really love all the new product innovation. I mean, it must be more interesting for you guys, too.
It absolutely is. I mean, look, we As Nicola was like, "We need to go where the advertising dollars are going. That's where they're going, those platforms.
Well, on that, just listening, like one of the things somebody said on stage is, "The problem with Trade Desk is they stop listening to their customers. You know? I think when you listen to your customer, where advertising dollars is going is code for we're listening to our customers.
Yeah.
Yes. Yeah.
You know?
you know, we don't need to be the first ones there because there's always Remember Clubhouse a few years ago?
No.
Remember, do you remember Clubhouse?
I don't.
It was like a collaborative audio thing. Everyone jumped into, "This could be the next big thing." We're like, "Should we be building for that?" We're like, "Eh, let's hold off a little bit." You know, no real advertising dollars followed.
Right.
We follow the ad dollars.
Right.
Like, if they're like, "Hey, we're going into the LLMs.
Yeah
We will be in the LLMs.
Right. Well, I mean, that makes sense.
That's great. That's how we make money, right?
Yeah. That makes sense to me. Measured transaction fees have been falling. Is this pricing compression structural, consumer specific, competitive, or tied to discounts for new clients only? Why has the average price been falling?
This is a story of mix.
Okay.
We're going in categories where social, the price for the social product is not yet the price that we have for mobile and online and display and video.
Okay
We're just launching the products.
Okay.
The price on CTV is still the same as video because we're just launching the products, and we are not yet at a point where we can charge a premium for CTV versus a regular video. What you're seeing on the MTF is really just the mix of the business.
Okay. Yeah.
As we grow,
Yeah
Especially on activation, you should see an impact positively on MTF.
Okay
I think the number that we keep a close eye on.
Yes
is revenue per client, right? the top 100
Revenue per-
Per client
Clients.
Yes.
Okay.
For top 100.
Yeah.
That was $2.6 million in 2022. It's $4.5 in 2025.
Good for you.
That's like scaling.
It's not the fee is an output of that.
Yeah
We're scaling the opportunity with the clients wherever they're spending their dollars.
Gotcha. you're doubling your average-?
Yeah
spending per client.
Yeah.
You may be tripling their impression growth, so it looks like a lower MTF.
That's, yes.
in a sense.
Exactly.
Okay. That makes sense. Okay. I'm gonna call it there 'cause we're out of time. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thanks, Laura.
Thanks.