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51st Annual J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media, and Communications Conference

May 22, 2023

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Okay, good afternoon, everyone. I'm Mark Murphy, a software analyst with J.P. Morgan, and it is a real pleasure to be here with Mark Zagorski, the CEO of DoubleVerify, as well as Nicola Allais, the CFO of the company. First off, gentlemen, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedules to be here with us.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

Absolutely. Thanks for having us.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Maybe we could begin with you each just very briefly introducing yourselves and DoubleVerify for the benefit of anyone in the audience who isn't already familiar with the company.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

Yeah, great. I'm Mark Zagorski. I'm the CEO of DoubleVerify.

Nicola Allais
CFO, DoubleVerify

I'm Nicola Allais. I'm the CFO.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

DoubleVerify is an ad verification platform. What we do is we enable advertisers to ensure that their ad spend is viewable, so their ad impressions are viewable, they're delivered in the right geography, they are transacted in a fraud-free manner, and those ad impressions show up in a place that is brand safe or brand suitable. We like to think of ourselves as kind of advertising transaction security software. We make sure that ad spend is verified and that an advertiser dollar is optimized.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

That's great. Thank you for that. I'm wondering if Mark, perhaps you could walk us through a couple of specific examples of this to help us understand what is happening out there behind the scenes that a lot of these brand advertisers are dealing with that we may not be aware of. Because I picture probably having some people out there in the audience who would say, "Well, you know, I'm viewing ads all day long on my iPad or on my phone. You know, from what I can tell, they seem fine. They seem like they're viewable to me or I, you know, don't feel like I'm encountering fraud." What is happening behind the scenes that an investor might not be aware of?

I think sometimes when you give examples of this, it really makes it come to life.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

Yeah. I think, you know, the ad world we live in today is very different than the ad world where I think many of us grew up in, which was a much more linear, a much more limited ad space, right? The digital world has created massive fragmentation, so there's tons of platforms out there, and the only way advertisers can navigate that is using partners, right? The days of being able to reach most of America through 3 TV networks are long gone. To reach most consumers, you have to buy ad impressions across thousands, if not tens of thousands of properties, across social networks, across connected television, across regular display websites like The New York Times or The Washington Post to actually get reach.

Because of that, it means that there's lots of middlemen and a lot of lack of transparency. You know, the 3 things that we always call out as examples of what we help advertisers do, the first one is ad fraud. Ad fraud is something that didn't exist when someone was buying TV ads 50 years ago. You bought an ad from a guy who sat across from you at lunch, you had 3 martinis, you went home, and it was done, right? I mean, you knew what you were getting. Today, you're buying advertising through a series of digital channels. A lot of those channels use technology to deliver ads, and in many cases, those ads can be generated by bots.

Those ad transactions can be intercepted, believe it or not, actually intercepted in the middle of the transaction, by bad characters who divert those ads to refrigerators, believe it or not. Connected TV ads, CTVs were actually spoofed by refrigerators, so advertisers thought they were buying CTV ads. What they were actually buying was a single pixel on someone's IP-connected refrigerator someplace.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

That's unbelievable.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

fraud is a real example.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Yeah

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

...of what happens in the digital space these days. Viewability, I'll give you one more example. Viewability is something where the ability for an ad actually to be seen by a human. Was the ad delivered? Again, back in the TV days, it went up on the TV screen, it was delivered, it could be seen. Today, in connected television, we saw a few quarters ago, we launched a product called TV Off. What we found is 25% of the applications, so think of the content apps that sit on your Roku or sit on your Samsung television. 25% of those applications were not sending a signal that said the TV was on, which meant those ads could have been running while the TV screen was actually off, right?

You can't view an ad when the TV screen's off, and that big TV screen in your living room is just a computer where just like when you fold up your Mac, it still runs when the screen's off as well. These are just cases or examples that we've seen that verification software that we produce help an advertiser avoid an ad that's fraud, help avoid an ad that's not viewable by a human, 'cause neither of those two cases are gonna sell a product.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Okay. The martinis are down, the fraud is up.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

Exactly.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

You know.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

...that's the state of the world, which kind of sucks.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

It's helpful to hear it, right? What dawns on you when you hear these, when you make it tangible like that is these the advertisers are dealing with it. In a lot of cases, we are not, right?

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

Yeah.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

The consumer is not. Something ran on a pixel in a refrigerator-

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

Yeah

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

...and you're not even aware of it. I think back to the customer due diligence sessions that we did, you know, several years ago now, and there were a lot of these comments that were very compelling. One of them that stuck with me was DoubleVerify's measurement is second to none, and we were hearing this from some of the biggest brands in the world. Can you help us to understand by how much can you reduce fraud or improve viewability? Can you share any of the statistics around that? Then how does the customer know? When someone tells me that your measurement is second to none, how do they know that?

In other words, how do they verify your assertion to sort of be confident that their ads are becoming more effective?

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

Yeah. It's a great question because we often get a case of, "Well, how do I know what I'm missing out on? Like, how do I know if you guys are actually doing what you say you're gonna do?" I'll point everybody to a great research piece we do every year. It's called the Global Insights Report. It's downloadable from our website, DoubleVerify.com. You can look at kind of all kinds of data that we have around what's happening with CTV fraud and viewability rates and brand suitability violations. Great data there. This year, for the first time, because we get this question a lot, we did another part of our research, was about what's the cost of doing nothing, right? What is the cost of not using verification software?

I'll give a couple quick examples. In the case of fraud, for example, we looked at what is a case of an advertiser who used us and the same advertiser, same capabilities who didn't use us, same campaigns. We saw the incidence of fraud averaged 5%. That doesn't sound like a lot, think about if you're running a $10 million campaign.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Yeah.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

That's $500,000 of wasted impressions for not using our software. That also, in certain days, spiked to as high as 25%. That meant a quarter of the ad spend on certain days was being spent on fraudulent impressions. There's a direct ROI and a direct cost of not working with us. One other example that you'll see in the report, and again, our clients live this every day, campaigns that used a brand suitability filter on the front end versus ones that did not, had a 94% higher incidence of cases of incidence of brand suitability violations than for those who didn't use a filter versus those who did. That means is if you're a big brand, like we work with brands like Unilever, Mondelēz, these are companies that have brands like Dove and Oreos.

Your ad, if you don't use a solution like DoubleVerify's, would have a 94% higher tendency to show up on content that's not aligned with your brand safety or brand suitability requirements. That is huge. The last thing you want is an Oreo ad showing up next to adult content. That could be a disaster for a brand. You know, we look at things like that as indicators of not only the value proposition of our product, but the efficacy of it when it comes to how well we do our job and the measurement job that we do. The second part of your question was around?

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Oh, well, I was asking you... The second part is, how does a brand kind of know that the ad is becoming more effective?

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

Yeah.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Maybe those stats answer it.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

It helps a bit. Yeah.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Is there some other lens that you're providing for them maybe through your insight product?

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

I think the, you know, the biggest indicator is we show them every day through Pinnacle. Those were just tests that we ran, but when you look at our UI, it's called Pinnacle, they can see how many ads every day that we flag for fraud, percentage of violations that we have. They can look at their brand suitability, alignment, and those things are real-time indicators of the ROI of our tool set right there and the value of it that they look at and can see every day.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Okay. The impact is real and it's measurable and it's a, and it's a tangible thing. The way that that's been manifesting. If we look back the last couple of quarters, DoubleVerify grew revenue around 27% organically. That's our math. That's close to your very close to your reported growth rates. That's well above your competitor, IAS.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

Yep.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Right? which is growing mid-to-high teens. I don't actually know what their organic rate is, but it's probably similar to that. You've been talking about competitive win rates being around 80% for multiple quarters in a row. What do you see as the differentiators that are kind of lining up that way that have been creating this backdrop where your market share gains have been pretty durable for a bunch of years running.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

Yeah, it's, you know, last quarter, our closest competitor, we beat them on every line item. We grew faster across what we call our activation business, across our measurement business, across our platform business, domestically and internationally. We're growing faster. It wasn't always the case. You know, I think we had some catch up to do as far as global penetration, but we are now growing faster on bigger numbers. It all comes down to innovation, right? This is a software RFP process in most of the cases where we go head-to-head against one, if not several other competitors. Like any RFP process, it's an initial checklist of stuff. But in a lot of cases it comes down to a head-to-head competition. Let's run this system against another system. Let's see who filters out more fraud.

Let's see who provides a greater level of granularity when it comes to brand suitability and brand safety, and ultimately who drives the highest ROI at the end of the game. In those cases, we're winning a vast majority of those opportunities. It's because of the way we built our system. It's because of the efficacy of the classification that we do. We have a seamless classification tool set we built from the ground up. It wasn't cobbled together. We own all of the IP below it. That gives us better results. At the core of everything we do.

Is all we are is we're a giant classification engine. We look at content, we look at transactions, we put them into buckets. Good, bad, safe, not safe, viewable, not viewable. The better we do that, the more deals that we win. We've talked about this virtuous cycle. The more deals that we win, we see more transactions. Like any machine learning process, the more transactions you see, the smarter you get over time. Every win that we get that our competitor doesn't, gives us more data into that machine. That makes it smarter. That machine learns over time. When we get into those RFPs and we win, we go head-to-head, we deliver better results. Those better results win us the deal. Those get us more data, and it cycles through.

Nicola Allais
CFO, DoubleVerify

There's definitely an impact of scale when it comes to our business, not just in the fact that it makes us bigger, it makes us smarter over time too.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

A prospect is testing head-to-head. They're doing at scale comparisons, then when you end up winning the business, there's this self-reinforcing kind of flywheel effect.

Nicola Allais
CFO, DoubleVerify

Yep.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

So, Nicola, I'd love to ask you for a moment on how you think about TAM penetration. Again, thinking back to some of the interactions that we've had over the years with some of your customers, one of the quotes was, "I'd never run a campaign without this. It's a must-have for campaigns." We would step back, and we think about that, and we'd say, well, how many companies are already thinking this way, right? If they're already thinking this way, if they're already verifying most of their digital ads, so that could be one category, and then you could have others that haven't thought about this or haven't really gotten there yet. How much of this market do you think is left to penetrate, maybe?

If we think through that lens or just maybe the percentage of digital ads that aren't really being.

Nicola Allais
CFO, DoubleVerify

Yeah.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

-aren't being verified.

Nicola Allais
CFO, DoubleVerify

Yeah. The one way to think about it and the way we look at it, as we look at the market that's available to us is, how many of the top 800 customers, the top 800 advertisers globally do we work with? We work with, we did this analysis for 2022 on the Comscore data, and we work with just over 300 of them. That means there's 500 advertisers that we don't work with. Some of them, of course, work with other companies. Of that, when we think about the opportunity that we see in that, of those 500, about 80% of the ad spend is outside of the U.S., we know is a place where we need to continue to grow.

We grew 26% internationally last quarter. We have a lot of opportunity there. That's one opportunity that we see to grow within the advertiser base that we don't yet work with. There's growth that way. There's growth upselling. A lot of the opportunities that we continue to see is basically being able to verify more and more of the inventory of the advertisers that we work with already. Less than half of our advertisers have half of our product suite. There's still a large opportunity for us to continue to upsell our existing base. At the core of what we do, our NRR is over 125%. There is a continuing growth within the base that we have. That's one way to think about TAM.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Okay.

Nicola Allais
CFO, DoubleVerify

The other way to think about TAM, which is intuitively, probably simpler to understand, is TikTok didn't exist a few years ago. It's $12 billion of advertising.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Yeah.

Nicola Allais
CFO, DoubleVerify

to be verified. All those new opportunities just come to the market. Our strategy of verifying everywhere means that we're ready as soon as the sector is available for verification.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Okay. That international comment to me is a big one.

Nicola Allais
CFO, DoubleVerify

Yeah.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

There's work to be done to get there, but there's opportunity.

Nicola Allais
CFO, DoubleVerify

Sure.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

There's quite a bit of opportunity internationally.

Nicola Allais
CFO, DoubleVerify

Yeah.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Now, another aspect that comes up sometimes is the scale advantage for DoubleVerify. There, you know, again, one of these customers said they were running 20 billion impressions per year through DoubleVerify. Sounds like a lot, again, the aggregate volumes you're doing are extremely high. Another one of them said that your advantage is your scale versus other players. It actually called out kind of the fact that you're a global player.

Nicola Allais
CFO, DoubleVerify

Mm-hmm.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Which is interesting in this context. You have these stats, you're doing millions of API calls per second. You're measuring trillions of media transactions annually. The numbers are pretty big. How, how can you architect that? Or how have you been able to architect that in a way that you're scaling like that, and it's a hybrid architecture, and yet you do keep your CapEx fairly low?

Nicola Allais
CFO, DoubleVerify

Yeah. Yeah. The number last year is 5.5 trillion transactions measured, right? Huge number. Just to point on scaling and the inherent profitability of the business. Once you measure 5.5 trillion transactions, the cost of the extra one is really, really small. The way we are able to do that is, first of all of our products are based on a single set of data, right? We continue to innovate based on the same dataset that we have been able to collect over many, many, many years and analyze through Semantic Science. That is the base of our product. The introduction of new products really is just more R&D on the same datasets.

The infrastructure question that you're asking, the reason why CapEx is so small is because we have moved to a cloud-based solutions in terms of hosting.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Mm-hmm.

Nicola Allais
CFO, DoubleVerify

machine learning. That capacity, you know, just on P&L shows up in gross margins opposed to CapEx. We still have some data centers to create some latency, but really, it's a cloud-based solution at this point.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Okay. That's a great answer. Let's, let's switch it up a little bit, and maybe I can ask you a bit on the macro and the ad market, because there's been plenty of volatility in that. It's been confusing to try to track it and anticipate it, I'll tell you that from my side. Y ou're able to kind of see what's happening with the ad buying patterns from a huge chunk of the Fortune 500.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

What is the kind of overall tone and tenor that you're picking up, you know, at this juncture from the major brands? Like in other words, Do you feel like they're getting ready to kinda lean in more on ad volumes at this juncture and/or not? If so, what's causing that?

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

I'll start. You know, if you think back in January, we saw a market that was very different than it is today.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

Right.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

I think January started very slowly, February and March kinda stabilized at a rate that hasn't improved necessarily. We don't see us benefiting a lot from tailwinds at this point, right? Whatever growth we're seeing this year is gonna be from our core products in our core markets. I think what we're seeing is advertisers are willing to think out a few months, but they're not thinking out 6 to 9 months yet. It feels like it's a much more compressed time horizon for what they're deciding to commit to in terms of spend.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

Yeah. No, I think, look, we definitely have emerged from, you know, the early parts of Q1 when there was a lot of fear and trepidation on the year. I think we've gotten to a stabilized point. I don't think anyone is saying the sky is falling anymore, and I think advertisers are slowly starting to loosen up their purse strings. It's become a real quarter by quarter play right now, and I think this is the same for any industry. You know, everyone's kind of looking at what's the next thing that could happen. I think advertisers are in the same pool. They're not freaking out.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Yeah.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

Right? They're not cutting spend. They're basically saying, "Look, we're gonna be calm. We're gonna spend what we need to spend." I think each quarter, I think the level of confidence is growing over time. As Nicola noted, look, we have a business model which is incredibly resilient. You know, Q1 ad spend, depending on who you look at in digital space, anywhere from 5%–6% growth. We grew at 27%. We're not dependent on that tailwind to drive our business. We really do have a model which, A, is still penetrating new markets, but also is not dependent on the overall tailwinds of growth to continue to grow. We'll take them and you know, we welcome them as they come.

As you noted, you know, we've become a utility for our advertisers. They need to use us on their impressions. Since our model is based on an impression-based model, not a percentage of media or a fluctuating.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Mm-hmm.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

CPM-

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Mm-hmm.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

... we really look at transactions. As long as transactions stay steady and growing, we're gonna stay steady and growing.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Okay. You're saying that the tone and tenor from advertisers stabilized?

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

Yes.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

It has stabilized. It's in a better place. I don't wanna put words in your mouth.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

No.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

You said it's in a better place than it was in what? In January?

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

For sure.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Okay. Because they're kind of thinking a couple months out, you don't wanna call a bottom on that because they're not ready to. You don't wanna look back and say that December or January was a bottom.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

Yeah. I think, look, I think the first half of the year is gonna be fine. I think a good indicator of what's going on will be how well the upfronts, which just pretty much have wrapped up in both digital and traditional TV, how they play out, because I think a lot of money is gonna be kept in the side pocket for spot or scatter buys, and that, in the digital world, that means programmatic. I think in talking to advertisers, they feel okay. They feel pretty good about the rest of the year, but no one's willing to stick their neck out and say it's gonna be a boomer just yet.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Okay. Okay, that's very helpful. Mark, maybe you can begin us on the next one. When we think about DoubleVerify and we try to project forward, you know, several years in the future, we think about the growth drivers that you have, there are a few that kinda come to the forefront. One is.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

Yep.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

For sure, right? We think of Meta, we think of TikTok, and we think of Twitter. There are others that are obviously in that mix. One for sure is connected TV, which you brought up earlier. We think of everything kind of spanning all the opportunities that spanning across Netflix and YouTube TV and Hulu and Amazon. Sometimes you'll talk about Authentic Brand Safety, sometimes you talk about Custom Contextual or something else. Can you maybe speak to a couple of those drivers that maybe at this juncture are standing out in your mind as being kind of a more material accelerant in the next couple of years where we should be digging in and doing the work?

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

Sure. I think, you know, let's bucket these roughly into two major groups, sector-based drivers and then product-based drivers. You mentioned the two biggest, I think, sector-based drivers, which is social and our continued coverage of more social platforms. That's the growth of TikTok. That's the implementation of brand safety and suitability on the Facebook News Feed.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Mm-hmm

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

which we've not launched yet, but we hope to do, at some point later this year. Those are big catalysts for growth for us. I mean, TikTok is or Facebook is a huge news feed environment which we are not touching yet with brand safety and suitability. TikTok is rapidly growing to be a incredibly desired social platform for advertisers. We did more revenue with TikTok in Q1 of this year than we did all of last year, which we mentioned on our earnings call. Those two are both long-term catalysts for growth. I think social will continue to grow, particularly as we look at our growth outside the U.S.

If there's a third leg to that growth stool, there's products, there's sectors which you talked about, there's products which I'll talk about in a second, and then there's markets. Only about 25% or so of our measurement revenue is outside of North America, whereas well over 50%.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Mm-hmm

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

... of ad spend is outside the U.S.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Mm-hmm.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

We've got some growth opportunities there. When you take social coverage and when you take international growth, those two things go hand in hand because a big majority of ad spend outside the U.S., particularly in APAC, is on social. Right? We look at those two things really being nice complementary drivers. Coverage in social and continued growth outside the U.S., particularly in APAC, are gonna be real catalysts for growth. We have product growth as well. You know, Authentic Attention, which is a new product for us, super small, super early days, but attention is continuing to grow. ABS, which is the gift that keeps on giving, that product grew 56% in Q1.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Mm-hmm.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

That's a product that launched in 2018, we're still growing, you know, growing at 50%, greater than 50% in Q1. We've got product catalysts, we've got sector catalysts, we've just got international growth catalysts that have turned around pretty substantially over the last year.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Okay. Nicola, do you have anything to add on that? There's a couple of those that I also wanna drill into.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

Go ahead.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

On Netflix, Well, clearly we're interested in this one. I think they themselves had reached 5 million monthly actives on this on this kind of.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

Yep.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

-advertising tier. You've been in a process of trying to beginning to ramp that one during this current quarter that we're in right now.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

Yes. Yes.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Can you comment on just on that at all? Just in terms of how's it going? How's the testing? How's the ramping? Are you surprised at all by hitting $5 million that quickly?

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

It's, I mean, it's a great number for them. We've seen the ramp starting as well. We've got some big brands already testing it, so Toyota, Molson Coors, a handful of others. We're seeing revenue, so money is coming in. It's... I mean, I think our expectations for that have been pretty tempered, just due to the fact that we had, like the rest of the world, we had very little visibility on what their goals were as far as ad-supported.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Mm-hmm.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

subscribers, we couldn't do a lot on the projections. Five million is a good start. You have to put that, though, in perspective to all the other CTV ad, you know, ad-supported CTV platforms. Hulu is multiples bigger than that. You've got the FAST channels like Pluto and others, which are, you know, tens of millions of users on a regular basis. It's a great number. Lots more room to grow there, and I think, you know, the bigger momentum here is not just Netflix, which will help, but all of the ad-supported CTV space and its growth, which I think is only growing over time. We all know subscription fatigue is real. Disney's lost subscribers, paid subscribers over the last quarter. Netflix paid subscribers continue to have a tough time.

When you look at the amount of money, Netflix is making more. I don't know if they reported this or if this was an analyst, but they make more per paid for ad-supported subscriber than they do paid subscribers. It was known for years that Hulu did the same thing.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Mm.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

If you're making more on an ad-supported subscriber than you are a full paid subscriber, they're gonna be a lot more leaning in there. We see volumes going in across the board on all of those platforms increasing, not just on Netflix.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

That's fascinating. Probably a comment on how much Netflix some people are watching out there on a daily basis.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

There is. There is. You know, people, you know, it goes back to that idea of fragmentation. It is impossible for an advertiser to reach people with sight, sound, and motion, i.e., TV and a big screen, in one place anymore, right? They have to buy multiple different places. The more places they can buy, the more they can build up that reach that they need to actually deliver a national message.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Okay. When, when we step back and think about social and the potential scale of that market, right? The stat that I had somewhere is that it's 60% of ad spend if you take it x search.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

Mm-hmm.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

I think that's what's expected for this year. They, you know, we've always thought of them as being walled gardens, where they weren't really all that eager to open up their own inventory and, you know, have an external third party, doing the measurement and doing the verification. Can you walk us through what do you think has been the gating factor there? I mean, are they worried? Are they worried actually about the privacy of the data? Are they worried that it's gonna conflict with their own way of measuring the effectiveness of an ad? Are they. Is there some other concern? Then I have a quick follow-up on it.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

Yeah. Do you wanna comment a little bit?

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

I think the, you know, look, it's a walled garden for a reason, right? Like, they're doing their own work inside their walled garden. I think their reticence to using our services was a little bit of, you know, just poking in and seeing how their business was handled. There's always considerations around how much data is shared outside of the walled garden. I think the big driver of the growth that we expect in social is the eagerness of a platform like TikTok, which is a more recent entrant.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

Mm-hmm.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

to actually using brand suitability. I think that is, that is a competitive driver-

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

That's interesting. Yeah.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

That is kind of really encouraging, let's say, Facebook to use the same product. I think the competitive dynamics is kind of unlocking the opportunity for us to do brand safety in all social platforms. That's really what's changed recently.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

I think it's actually really heartening for us. I mean, the company's been around for over a decade, When you see someone like Netflix going back to CTV saying that when we launch our ad-supported tier-

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Yeah.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

DoubleVerify is gonna be part of that, right? Nielsen's gonna be part of that.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Yeah.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

That's, you know, one other verification company's part of it, and that's it. 'Cause we know if we wanna build credibility with advertisers, we need to have a verification company in there. TikTok said the same thing. If we wanna build credibility with advertisers, we wanna bring third parties in. I think that shows you the power of not DV, per se, or DoubleVerify, but the power of our advertisers. Right. They believe in us, and they're basically saying, "We are not comfortable spending on these platforms unless DV is there." I think that's finally cracked open the social opportunity for us. It's cracked open, you know, the leading.

The biggest CTV brand on the planet, you know, came to us and said, "We wanna go out with you guys as well." It's very heartening. I'd say it's, you know, it's the power of the support of our advertisers that's doing it.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

It's your brand advertisers that are kinda demanding it or recommending it, you have other effects like TikTok being...

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

Yeah.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

kind of fundamentally more open to it. Do we have any idea how much of the inventory is being shown to DoubleVerify today? Like, if we said across all of social, how much of that is being exposed to you? Or where you see it heading?

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

I mean, that's a tough one. I think that, you know, we know that we have relationships with all the big platforms, particularly around social, like, we're embedded in all the major platforms. How much of that they expose to us for every single one of our products varies, right? I think it's growing. When we look at, for example, Facebook is probably about almost half of our social revenue. Of that, 75% of that volume comes in through the News Feed, right? Big chunk of our revenue is driven by the News Feed, but we don't have brand safety or suitability coverage there. That's a big hole. It's a big gap that we have.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Mm-hmm.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

You know, if we look at the universe of available impressions, I think we still have a lot of work to do.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Yeah.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

Particularly on the social side. I think when you look at, even, for example, CTV, that we've been talking about at connected TV, we're doing invalid traffic and viewability measurement there, but not brand safety or suitability measurement on the show level yet at scale.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Mm-hmm.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

There's still, I mean, we've got a great coverage universe. We're across many platforms, but there's still holes that we need to fill in. We look at that as opportunity.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Yeah.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

It's not that our advertisers aren't demanding it. A lot of the times, we just have to get the platforms to open up a bit more. Still, I would say, we are certainly less penetrated than we are more, i.e., we're under, you know, we have more penetration to go than we have that we've already got.

Nicola Allais
CFO, DoubleVerify

I mean, just to give us a scale, a sense for that opportunity.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

Mm-hmm.

Nicola Allais
CFO, DoubleVerify

If 60% of ad spend is on social-

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

Right.

Nicola Allais
CFO, DoubleVerify

Social is about 15% of our revenue.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

Sorry, what percent?

Nicola Allais
CFO, DoubleVerify

15.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

15. Okay.

Nicola Allais
CFO, DoubleVerify

If you think about, at some point, we will look like our advertisers spend once we are able to verify and provide all services in all channels.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

Okay.

Nicola Allais
CFO, DoubleVerify

You know, that's one way to think about the opportunity there.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

That's helpful. We're down to about two minutes. I thought I would just do a quick scan of the audience and see if anyone has a question. If you do, feel free to raise your hand and we'll run a microphone to you. She's coming right across here.

Speaker 4

Hi. What does it take to create brand safety and suitability in the feed? I mean, what are you lacking to get you there?

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

It's a great question. We don't really need to build much more to address it. The only gating factor right now is Facebook is just throttling access to that data at some point. The good news is, during that period of kind of them announcing partners coming in and us actually launching a product, we've done news feed environments for Twitter for brand safety, suitability, for TikTok as well. We've learned a lot. We've learned a lot in high volume environments in which there's text and in some cases video or pictures. We have the classification technology. We have it you know, embedded already in news feed environments. We're ready to rip.

We're just waiting for the data pipe to open up from those guys. Not a lot of work to be done on our side.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Okay. We're ready to rip. That's a good way to end on. We're right on time. Gentlemen, I can't thank you enough for taking some time here with us.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

Thank you.

Nicola Allais
CFO, DoubleVerify

Yeah.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

It means a lot. Thank you.

Mark Zagorski
CEO, DoubleVerify

Yeah.

Nicola Allais
CFO, DoubleVerify

Thanks a lot.

Mark Murphy
Managing Director and Head of US Enterprise Software Research, J.P. Morgan

Thank you.

Nicola Allais
CFO, DoubleVerify

Thank you.

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