DoubleVerify Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:DV) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

We’ve seen this not with just now some of the solutions that we’ve launched, but we mentioned Netflix running a study with us on attention across their solutions or across their platform. I think CTV is looking for new ways to measure and sell their impressions. The region frequency plays is something that doesn’t really resonate in the digital world the way it did in the linear world. So I think things like attention where we’ve shown some great promise and year-over-year we’ve tripled our business even though it’s small. I think provide a really interesting opportunity in CTV and OTT applications that I think we’re at the early stages of taking advantage of.

Tim Nollen: Great. Very, very interesting. Thank you.

Mark Zagorski: Thanks.

Operator: And our next question comes from Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs. Please state your question.

Eric Sheridan: Thanks so much for taking the question. Maybe two, if I can. In terms of the components of the advertising dynamic that is leading you to lower the guide for this year. Can maybe you unpack a little bit of how much of that trajectory you now see as sort of a permanent downtick? Or it’s just delayed or deferred and there could be elements where some of that on the category side come back as we go through the year? That would be question one. And then as you look towards the back part of the year and you frame it against what you typically talk about in terms of your long-term growth drivers, can you give us a little bit more sense of how your visibility continues to evolve into those long-term growth drivers returning the company, either the exit velocity in Q4 or the exit velocity as an indicator towards 2025 in terms of compounded growth higher than the levels you’re talking about tonight? Thank you.

Nicola Allais : Yes, Eric, I’ll start. On the — for the impact that we’re seeing from this cohort of advertisers, let me just be clear. No one’s turned off the service. This is really based on advertiser spending patterns at the client level, and it’s prior to specific issue as a client. So we don’t see that as a permanent downshift. We’re just seeing it as more of an uneven spending pattern, which is why it is going to impact the rest of the year and which is why it’s having the impact on the guide. It is — as an aside, this is the largest component of impact to the changed guidance that we quoted today. The impact of these uneven spend in our view that we’re just going to take it down. So that is for the first step. So that is not a situation.

And as I said, no one has turned off the solution. They’re just turning back. In terms of exit and growth rates going into next year. Obviously, we’re seeing very solid growth rates in social, in international, and those are bound to continue. I mean in social, what we’re seeing today in terms of growth rate is 51% growth in the quarter versus 48% last year, but it’s still basically a de minimis impact from the launch of brand safety of Meta. And that, as we’ve talked in the past, is a very large opportunity. The social growth is we expect them to continue at a healthy clip. International, within that, obviously, will be held by social. This the first time international is over 30% of measurement revenue. And as we know, international spend for the percent of total is well above 31%, right?

So we saw the gap there to fill. And that will continue and will certainly still be in the exit rate. I think what we will see at the end of this year that we may not be seeing in the first quarter is the combined impact of the lower advertising spend and the fact that more dollars are moved to source the ABS as part of the activation is lower, right? It’s 12% growth range in the quarter. This is a premium-priced product, it is a successful product. It is the only one in the market. As we sign new deals, we do anticipate that growth rate to increase as well.

Mark Zagorski: Yes. And just to throw one to go back to here is, for the second half of the year and the trajectory we see kind of running out of the year, we do — we have a really nice slate of customer wins. And those will start hitting and rolling in the second half as well as a robust pipeline as we mentioned in the call. We still have a great win ratio of opportunities that stayed stable. And again, we saw almost two-thirds of those wins coming from what we call greenfield customers. So those things, I think, will start to lean in and fill some of the gaps that those large customers who have uneven spend have created in the second half of the year.

Operator: Thanks. And our next question comes from Omar Dessouky with Bank of America. Please state your question.

Omar Dessouky: Hey, thanks a lot of taking my question. So I’m hearing a couple of things. I’m hearing, first of all, that your large select advertisers that you called out last quarter was one reason for the lowered outlook for the back half of this year. I wanted to just double check like how many of it — how many of them were there? And could you remind us which verticals they were in? And then I have a question about CTV as a follow-up.

Nicola Allais : Yes. So we said it’s a handful of advertisers. They are all in our top 100. Just to give you a sense of scale, the average spend on the top 100 is over $3 million, and these are advertisers that are towards the top of the top 100 for us. They are in the retail and CPG space. As we said in the first quarter and we’ll repeat it here, these are spending patterns that are tied to specific issues at the advertiser. This is not tied to the segments of our product is that these clients are going through their own issues that has led them to do some belt tightening around advertising spend.

Omar Dessouky: So — sorry, I apologize, but I did — I thought that I heard after the last quarter that one of the advertisers was in the health care area. Is that — are you able to comment on that at all? Because that doesn’t sound like either CPG or retail. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Nicola Allais : I think we did. I think we quoted retail and CPG. These are retail and CPG clients not health care.

Omar Dessouky: Okay. Got it. Okay. Thanks. And then just a question on CTV now. I’m getting a little bit of a sense that there is a shift in ad spending towards CTV. It’s a market that I think is fairly small for you at the moment. Does the product market fit within CTV differ, for your advertisers as compared to the markets that you’ve traditionally focused on? Also, how is the competitive environment different among CTV verification firms as compared to your bread and butter, if at all?

Mark Zagorski: Yeah. So on the latter half, the competitive set, isn’t any different. Actually, it’s even more limited, because the ability to verify and measure within CTV is a pretty heavy lift and like any walled garden or kind of closed environment, partners only — platforms only work with a handful of folks. For example, Netflix, when they rolled out, they worked with two verification partners and one measurement partner when they launched, right? So I think a competitive set is even more limited than it is on the open web. With regard to product market share, I think that’s something that we were kind of alluding to in the comments, but really, it’s — there’s two aspects to it. The first is current product market fit with the way most CTV is being bought and sold, which is through programmatic guarantees and through limited kind of direct buying.

That provides a lower attach rate for us is due to the fact that, it’s really a one-to-one buy in many cases, and there’s not data or targeting or verification applied. Where we see that evolving, however, is where the opportunity lies, which is as CTV inventory becomes much more prevalent. And the balance goes from limited CTV inventory to over abundance of inventory in the same way we saw it in the open web, the same way you saw it in mobile. I think there’s a change in the dynamics of how CTV will be bought and sold. More of it will be programmatic. More of it will be open market or more open PMPs or Private Marketplace Packages, in which there’s a better product market fit for us and, a better attach rate for us. That will be enhanced, as we get more granular on our ability to measure on a show level.

So I think the opportunities there go from being a relatively small opportunity today, as far as the overall volume and percentage of revenue to one which is greater and commensurate with the percentage that CTV is taking of the overall ad market. So again, I think there’s some evolution of how CTV’s bought and sold, that will be a positive attach rate driver to our product. And then there’s some evolution in the actual product to the measurement products that we’re building to be able to do so on a show level basis in the same way we do in the open web.

Omar Dessouky: Okay. I appreciate it. You are going to through that again. Thank you.

Mark Zagorski: Yeah. Yeah.

Operator: Our next question comes from Michael Graham with Canaccord. Please state your question.

Michael Graham: Yes. Thank you. You’ve covered this a few times, but it sounds like the softness from those retail CPG from advertisers is really just a function of their overall ad spend as opposed to any migration away from your products or any competitive pressure. But I wanted to just ask about the competitive landscape and if you’re seeing any changes there. And then separately, you were able — despite the lower revenue guide, you were able to keep your EBITDA margin guidance pretty consistent. So I just wanted to ask what dynamics you’re seeing that are enabling you to kind of keep your profitability levels up.

Mark Zagorski: Thanks, Michael. So I’ll take the first part, Nicola, will take a second. On the competitive dynamics, I mean, I think as we mentioned last quarter, we have been with a lot of the same competitors for over a decade and that dynamic remains as it always has been, which is robust, but certainly has not devolved into any type of pricing competition or pricing. We were very clear about that. In the first quarter, we remain steadfast in our position, that there’s nothing happening that it hasn’t happened in the past which is great products win customers. Great service keeps customers. And we always are very competitive with the folks out there. So they have not played a role in the slowness and even a sensing those core customers that we saw.