Conference Transcript - DV 2026-03-03

Matt, Analyst — Interviewer

Thank you for joining us. We're happy to have a double verify. Mark and Nicola, thank you so much for stopping by.

Mark Zagorski, CEO

Great being here.

Matt, Analyst — Interviewer

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? And, you know, what are the biggest growth drivers we should think about as we head into 26?

Mark Zagorski, CEO

Yeah, so we ended the year last year growing around 14% year over year. Delivered 33% EBITDA margins. So, 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. So, you know, we were 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 pre-bid and Authentic Advantage. We saw our CTV volume impressions grow at 22% for the quarter and ended up around 33% for the year. So we continue to expand into connected television. And then we had some really strong AI offerings launched into the marketplace. So our agent ID solution, some of the areas around combating AI slops. So 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.

Matt, Analyst — Interviewer

We'll dig into each one of those as we go through here. But maybe taking a step back and looking at just like the broader advertising environment. And 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?

Mark Zagorski, CEO

You know, I think it's an interesting narrative because there's this concept that brands never cared about performance. And, you know, all advertising is driven through the fact that you need to sell something, right? and building a brand is about selling more solutions or selling more product so you know the idea of brand formants I think has always been out there and it is a you know increasing focus just due to the fact that the 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. And 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. So we've always thought of ourselves as a performance player no matter what, because eliminating bad stuff helps the good stuff perform better so brand safety has always had a role brand suitability has always had a role and more interestingly we've also leaned into solutions like cybids which takes that data and makes it even more powerful so beyond just taking garbage out what you have left how do you make that perform better that's where cybes comes into play and cybes is a algorithmic bidding solution that we bought a couple years ago that we're now integrating across our platform And 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 side bids in their engagements with us.

Matt, Analyst — Interviewer

And then maybe another high-level question is just, 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 sets you up for structural differentiation?

Mark Zagorski, CEO

Yeah. So I think the core asset that we have that differentiates us is data. If you think about what drives an advertising decision, there are tools out there that make the decision. And there are people out there who inform the decision. I think where AI disruption is going to 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 that agent, 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. But more importantly, that's based on proprietary integrations into leading social CTV and transactional platforms that are relatively limited. So 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 going to get into meta. No matter how good it is, it's not going to get into Netflix. So 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. And that data pool only grows over time. and the number of transaction only grows over time. So 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. So we have a data engine that just gets smarter over time based on proprietary information.

Matt, Analyst — Interviewer

That's helpful. And maybe let's dig into some of these catalysts that are coming in 2026 and specifically meta-activation is one of the big ones. 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 to the annual budgeting cycle and getting this into some of those contracts. Can you just talk about how we should see this progressing throughout 2026?

Mark Zagorski, CEO

Yeah, so 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. So 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 we launched in GA, but it was relatively alpha-based GA in 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. So they want to run the filter, run impressions across meta with the filter and without the filter and see what their suitability rates are, for example. And we're seeing significant lifts in suitability after you run the filter. That continues to grow as the product gets better. So 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 an even stronger run rate in 2026. So 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. So even if we sell half of our customers through on Meta pre-bid, at twice the price, you're looking at a $40 million business opportunity for us in the relative short term. So we're scaling there nicely. The uptake has really started to pick up. We've got some big brands against it. And we're very optimistic that that's going to be a real impact driver for 26 and beyond.

Matt, Analyst — Interviewer

And then the other big one is DV authentic advantage. Can you just talk about maybe step back and inform investors exactly what authentic advantage is? And then two, what are you seeing as far as adoption and then also performance outcomes?

Mark Zagorski, CEO

Yeah. So I know for those of you who don't know a lot about DV, we talk about a lot of products, right? So we do have a lot of stuff we throw out there. But just to take a step back, 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 geoalignment. 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 this tool where we started this conversation which is around performance and performance is about optimizing what happens before you buy based on data that you have after you buy that's where cybids comes in and 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 eight million dollars and acv had been closed running into the end of the year and that business continues to to grow really nicely The value prop there is pretty straightforward. We are able to drive 20% to 30% higher reach, 20% to 30% lower cost per unit, while increasing brand safety and suitability at the same time. So 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 we have plans in the midterm to roll it out to some other platforms as well.

Matt, Analyst — Interviewer

Got it. Okay, that was my next question. We're going to expect any additional platforms, but it sounds like they're coming, but it just takes time.

Mark Zagorski, CEO

So we're testing it on Meta now. Still very early days. We're testing it on Meta. And we also, now that we have pre-bid on TikTok as well, we think there's some opportunities to roll into there. But our main focus right now is expanding our Authentic Advantage implementations on YouTube. We've got customers that spend a billion dollars a year on YouTube, a billion dollars. And if we can just scratch the surface of that billion, and this is a percentage of media product, so when you buy Authentic Advantage, you usually pay against the 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. So more to come there for sure.

Matt, Analyst — Interviewer

And then 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. that you launched. Just how should we think about those products scaling in 2026 and beyond? Where

Mark Zagorski, CEO

are we, I guess, in an innings perspective on CTV? Yeah, I'd say we're solid second inning there. We're a little bit out of the first inning because we have a decent CTV business. As I mentioned earlier, it grew over 30% last year. In the last quarter, it grew 22%. But I think we're still under penetrated on CTV to be direct. Part of it has to do with the fact that somehow 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 so through our relationship with imdb we're starting to now pull and create program level analysis on ctv impressions and we've got significant scale across the 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. And 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 Trade Desk. But 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 so we have a huge opportunity for abs on ctv but we've got to find the right fit and 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 so they have we have an agentic based interface exclude programs that they do not want their programs that they don't 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 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 products 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

Matt, Analyst — Interviewer

against CTV impressions that's great and then maybe one that's more often the distant future not distant but maybe near distant future is just verification on AI platforms, obviously it's an early concept. Really hasn't, no one's launched it yet, but it's coming. How does DV fit into that environment, and how do you expect it to evolve the company as a whole and opportunities that you guys can get

Mark Zagorski, CEO

into? Yeah, so Matt, I mean to be direct, it's evolving way faster than we expected. With ChatGPT now launching an ad based version, much faster than I think we expect or anyone in the industry expected, this is something that's that's barreling forward um and the interesting thing is is that we've seen this story before and we've played in this story before uh you know rewind two years ago to netflix which was never ever ever ever ever ever going to run ads and then one day to decide to run ads you know within the first 60 days they gave us a call and said hey we need verification um we're seeing a similar story play out with chat gbt where um you know they were never going to run ads now they're running ads They're launching tests. We have several dozen of our customers as part of that test, so we've been involved with our customers from day one. And 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. So 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 going to allow to be part of the trial test. So all those indications are pointing towards the fact that ChatGP 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 chat GPT that we're getting everywhere else the other thing that's really interesting for the 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 and that's expected to be somewhere from 25 to 30 billion dollars in the next four years that's money that we don't go after right now db has zero dollars coming from search so we look at this as in a total incremental TAM of like $400 billion that we've never tapped into. And then if it rolls in there and it proceeds the way we expect it to, it'll be a great new opportunity for us.

Matt, Analyst — Interviewer

Great. Then Nikola, sidebids and Rocketbox are two key acquisitions you made. We actually kind of hit on sidebids and the adoption that you're seeing there, but can you just talk about what you're seeing as far as adoption and just how those products are going?

Nicola Allais, CFO

Yeah. So maybe we start with why we acquired these companies and where 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. So we bought businesses that already existed with client relationships. What they didn't have is a distribution that we have with so many more clients. And what it allowed us to do is expand from where we were a few years ago, which was just protection, to then adding outcomes and now performance. And so 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 and so authentic advantage the the core assumption around authentic adventure really is built on side bids and rocket bucks will come into the the into the fold as well as we develop products around outcomes and performance so 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

Matt, Analyst — Interviewer

that's great maybe maybe I can see another one in here because I think it's I think it's important for everybody it's just as we think about guidance for 2026 and just I know for one cue I believe it's a slight acceleration that people are seeing what can you give investors as far as this comfortability around like the heading the guidance targets and then you know moving forward with what's embedded in those and you know just yeah what can you give as far as I guess it's in these new product initiatives and you know what are we

Nicola Allais, CFO

What are we seeing in there? Sure. Yeah, so 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. And our NRR last year was 109%. So off that base, you know, that's the baseline for what we expect for 2026, 109% NRR. And then, of course, we've got it to, on the higher end, 10%. So you have an extra point there that comes from everything we just discussed. It's going to 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 adoptions of the new solutions. But that's how we're thinking about the guidance. And the only other thing I would say is it is going to 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. But that's how we're thinking about it. and the upside to the numbers will be the speed at which we can have an adoption of these new products.

Matt, Analyst — Interviewer

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, at least for the past couple of years. You just got it to 34%. You know, what's changed and what's enabled you to really bump up those margin targets?

Nicola Allais, CFO

So what's not changed is the need for us to continue to invest in the business. And 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. But that is now at such a speed that we're able to actually extract efficiencies that naturally will fall to the bottom line so we're able to continue to invest yet show efficiency growth we expect to be able to simply say we you know we expect to be able to grow with fewer people because the tools are going to allow us to do what we were you know in the past doing with a lot more people yeah that's great and then

Matt, Analyst — Interviewer

a 300 million dollar share buyback you know so I scored I think the biggest in the company's history correct correct can we just take a step back just talk about capital allocation priorities. Should we expect any more M&A from, you know, sidebids and Rocketbox that you bought previously? Like, just what are the priorities that you sit here in 26?

Nicola Allais, CFO

Yeah, so 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 sidebids and Rocketbox, which, by the way, we're able to fund with the cash that we generate, and then buybacks, right? So 26 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 24 and 25, we were anchoring buybacks to the stock-based comp expense. In 26, we said we're going to do it at a clip that's going to be faster than that. Last year, buybacks allowed us to reduce outstanding shares by 3%. $300 million would create a much bigger reduction in shares if we use it all. So that is the beauty of the business, right? The free cash flow conversion, it was 70%. Last year, it was 60% the year before. and so we have a lot of options to use cash and we always focus on return to shareholders and buybacks as part of that.

Mark Zagorski, CEO

And look, we firmly believe that we've got a great plan in place. We've got huge opportunities ahead and who better to bet on than ourselves? And I think that's a great use of our capital.

Matt, Analyst — Interviewer

Yeah, no, definitely. And then Mark, maybe a last one here just because last year IAS got acquired and can you maybe take a step back and talk about the competitive landscape? Has anything changed since then? Or just like as we sit here today, you know, how do you think about the competitive intensity in the system?

Mark Zagorski, CEO

Yeah, I mean, 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. And 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. and you know you could you know listen to me rant or you can look at our you know 90 percent 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 so 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 a billion dollars of debt sitting on their balance sheet when we've got zero. No, definitely. Well, it's setting up

Matt, Analyst — Interviewer

for a great year for 2026. A lot of product catalysts. Mark and Nicola, thank you so much for coming. Thanks, Matt. Thanks for having us. I appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you.