DoubleVerify Holdings Inc Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: Matt Swanson - RBC Capital - Analyst : Great. Congratulations, guys, on such a strong start to the year. So maybe thinking about that strong start and then the upside to guidance with the thought process around maintaining the full year. It does feel look a time to be prudent around the macro. But if you could maybe talk us REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. MAY 08, 2025 / 8:30PM, DV.N - Q1 2025 DoubleVerify Holdings Inc Earnings Call through a little bit what you saw in 2022 and 2020 and about that resiliency and how you're kind of factoring that in with the uncertainty that we all have around the macro environment right now?

Question: Matt Swanson - RBC Capital - Analyst : Yeah. Maybe building on that point, Mark, you talked a lot about the ROI or ROAS. It's kind of the core of what you're offering your customers is optimizing those numbers. So I mean coming off a quarter where you saw the strong upselling for large customers and the better pace on activation, better quarter for Scibids, does a tighter spending environment ever end up being a benefit to DV from that expansion side of people trying to get basically more performance with a tighter budget.

Question: Matt Swanson - RBC Capital - Analyst : Thank you.

Question: Maria Ripps - Canaccord Genuity Inc. - Analyst : Great, thanks so much for taking my questions and congrats on the strong quarter here. First, can you maybe help us understand a little bit better what contributed to your revenue outperformance in the quarter sort of relative to your guidance in the end of February, was it driven by maybe more Moat customers coming on or anything else that was sort of onetime?

Question: Maria Ripps - Canaccord Genuity Inc. - Analyst : Got it. That's very helpful. And then I just wanted to ask about sort of your thoughts on expanding a little bit deeper into direct response budgets. And Mark, you talked about sort of performance solutions this quarter sort of been strong. So with Scibids and now Rockerbox, you've been expanding your DR functionality. But maybe talk about sort of the opportunity there on the direct side a little bit more broadly and sort of your strategy there?

Question: Maria Ripps - Canaccord Genuity Inc. - Analyst : Got it, that's very helpful. Thank you.

Question: Andrew Marrick - Raymond James - Analyst : Hi, thanks for taking my question. Just one for me. So you talked about in your social growth, the impact of the customer who slowed their spend recently. But I guess if we could take a step back and just think of with the shift to activation, with the varying kind of ramp and scale phases of your different partnerships and platform relationships, how should we think about that social measurement growth here in the near term in the context of your guide?

Question: Andrew Marrick - Raymond James - Analyst : Thank you.

Question: Andrew Boone - Citizens JMP - Analyst : Mark, I want to go with a big picture question across all of kind of programmatic and large. You're seeing more curation from DSPs and SSPs. And can you just speak to that trend across programmatic? And how does DV fit into that given your historic kind of brand safety, product set and everything else that you're offering?

Question: Andrew Boone - Citizens JMP - Analyst : And then Mark, I'd love to double-click on international. You guys highlighted weakness in the prepared remarks. Is there anything you can expand upon in terms of call outs of why that is? And then how do you guys turn that around?

Question: Andrew Boone - Citizens JMP - Analyst : Thank you.

Question: Brian Pitz - BMO Capital Markets - Analyst : But thanks for the questions. Maybe a quick two. With the rise of agents in AI, how do those agents potentially make solutions from DV around viewability and maybe invalid traffic more important? Is this coming up more with customers as they think about their future needs? And then separately on categories, any changes in CPG over the quarter? Can you give us some more fine-tune points on that? Are you seeing more meaningful recovery in that vertical longer term?

Question: Brian Pitz - BMO Capital Markets - Analyst : Great, thank you.

Question: Mark Kelley - Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Incorporated - Analyst : I wanted to ask two quick ones. Just the first on Meta. I appreciated the comments at the outset about the pre-bid solution. I know you had talked in the past about post-bid was likely to see more adoption once the pre-bid solution rolled out. So I would love to get maybe an update on how those conversations are going and if they're playing out the way you thought they would. And then the second one, some of the stats you gave on CTV fraud, I thought was interesting. I guess I'm curious, are the trends in CTV similar to other ad formats when they were at a similar stage in digital? Or is CTV kind of a totally different animal just from a fraud perspective? Thank you.

Question: Jacob Armstrong - KeyBanc Capital Markets - Analyst : This is Jacob on for Justin. Can you expand on what you're seeing on the macro currently and to your decision to kind of embed that in the full year guide despite not seeing any impact yet? And I guess further kind of down, if this macro kind of leads to a pricing deflationary market, do you believe that the business can remain a bit more resilient there? Thank you.

Question: Jacob Armstrong - KeyBanc Capital Markets - Analyst : Thank you.

Question: Omar Dessouky - BofA Securities, Inc. - Analyst : There's been some noise recently about increased competition in the DSP space and potentially price-based competition. How, if at all, does that affect DoubleVerify and your activation segment or your measurement segment? Then I have a follow-up question on CTV.

Question: Omar Dessouky - BofA Securities, Inc. - Analyst : Okay. And so just since a lot of us are nontechnical people when it comes to ad tech, different DSPs have slightly different functionality at times. Some of which may be more or less complementary to the verification or activation product offering. Is there any difference in propensity to use DoubleVerify for either of those, depending on kind of that feature set for the DSP? Or is it pretty standard across the -- like, let's say, the big four DSPs?

Question: Omar Dessouky - BofA Securities, Inc. - Analyst : Okay. And if I could just ask one more question. So you guys are -- you're early in your CTV ramp here. It looks like you've had several quarters of like 40%, 50%, 60% growth. Are you seeing the addressable advertiser market like expand down market at all this early? Is the CTV space going to become something especially verification. Is it going to become something that more middle market advertisers are eventually going to be interested in based on what you see so far, like what are your predictions?

Question: Omar Dessouky - BofA Securities, Inc. - Analyst : Okay, thanks. I'll ask some additional questions and the callbacks. Appreciate it. .

Question: Alinda Li - William Blair - Analyst : Perfect. Everyone's congrats here. Mark, can you expand more on customer feedback so far on Meta activation? And I have a follow-up after.

Question: Alinda Li - William Blair - Analyst : Awesome. And so 20 customers already activated so far Meta activation. What is the activation speed that we can expect moving forward? so far on that activation. What is the activation speed that we can expect moving forward?

Question: Alinda Li - William Blair - Analyst : Perfect. That's helpful. Thank you.