DoubleVerify Holdings Inc Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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

Question: Matthew Swanson - RBC Capital Markets Inc - Analyst : Great. Congratulations on the quarter. It's been an impressive first half for a transition year. Maybe double clicking on something you both talked about a little bit, which was that social growth. 14% maybe doesn't sound per outlandish, but I mean that's a really big acceleration from 1% in Q1 given the large customer dynamic. So could you dive a little bit more into that, if any of the headwinds we saw do you want to be at all? Or just what drove a 1,300-basis-point sequential increase?

Question: Matthew Swanson - RBC Capital Markets Inc - Analyst : And maybe we'll make it a true follow-up question, stay on Meta. I mean their advertising platform is evolving a lifestyle stand-alone basis with their use of gen AI. Have you given a lot of thought or seen or heard anything from customers that will kind of tell you how this is going to impact DoubleVerify further down the road with Meta?

Question: Youssef Squali Squali - Truist Securities - Analyst : Excellent. Congrats as well. Two questions maybe. Mark, innovation there, you guys preannounced the quarter with revenues of about 17%. You just put up a revenue by 21%. Can you maybe just speak to the drivers of the outperformance relative to that guidance what you've seen throughout July so far? Just trying to understand where the delta may have been derived from and the sustainability of that. And then, Nicola, MTF down 1%, I think, is a big deal, big improvement after many quarters of year-on-year decline. Can you maybe unpack that a little bit and also talk about kind of how you see MTFs within the guidance that you provided for the second half?

Question: Mark Murphy - JPMorgan Chase & Co - Analyst : Mark, how is your overall confidence that some of the fits and starts that the company had with the social products when we think back to the last couple of years might be solidifying now into something that's a little more sustainable? What I mean is, for instance, do you feel better about the ability to verify the content or the fraud risk prebid? Or is the go-to-market motion maybe looking a little more effective just in terms of the number of meta accounts or other accounts that you're adding?

Question: Mark Murphy - JPMorgan Chase & Co - Analyst : Okay. Understood. And Nicola, just I think in maybe aligning a little too to use this question, when we look at the incremental upside since you positively preannounce Q2, it's obviously a nice -- it's a surprise. And I'm curious if we should think of that incremental upside really is occurring there in the last two to three weeks of June. Another did you feel -- do you feel a little better about the exit rate activity coming out of the June quarter? Or did you leave a little cushion in terms of that original positive pre-announcement.

Question: Maria Ripps - Canaccord Genuity Corp - Analyst : Congrats on the quarter. I just wanted to expand on Mark's question actually. Could you maybe give us a little bit more color on how impactful the recent expansion of content level categories on Meta properties is for market instead of advertiser engagement? I guess how advanced are your filtering capabilities now sort of compared maybe more mature offerings? And have you seen any sort of increased willingness from Meta to enable a streamlining of the activation process for advertisers?

Question: Maria Ripps - Canaccord Genuity Corp - Analyst : Got it. And then at your Innovation Day, you talked about sort of increasingly leveraging a percent of spend pricing model. I guess what are your thoughts on sort of extending this pricing model into CTV sort of specialist CTV spend is increasingly becoming performance based. I guess, what are some sort of puts and takes for us to consider here?

Question: Brian Pitz Pitz - BMO Capital Markets - Analyst : Mark, you just -- we're talking about Scibids, maybe any update on the number of top customers using Scibids to optimize. I think last quarter, you said it was 15%, maybe 40% a quarter before. Is there any updated number you can provide for the top 100 customers are actually using it? And then maybe separately, it looks like you did not buy back stock for the first time in four quarters after buying back think it was about $78 million and $82 million over the last two quarters. How should we think about capital allocation, specifically around buybacks and M&A going forward as the story looks to be getting back on track?

Question: Matthew Condon - Citizens JMP Securities LLC - Analyst : My first one is just on moat and upsiding those clients. Just where are we today, what everything are we in relative to maybe just the rest of your client base as we think about that being a tailwind for the next couple of quarters or years here? And then my second question is just on margins. Just as revenue continues to come in better than you expect, do you expect that to flow through to the bottom line? Or should we expect that to be reinvested back into the business to maintain these about 30% EBITDA margins going forward?

Question: Eric Sheridan - Goldman Sachs Group Inc - Analyst : Mark, I want to take the opportunity to ask you maybe more of a big picture I think investors have heard a variety of different views on earnings calls so far over the last couple of weeks about the evolution of the open web, the impact that AI might have on publisher traffic and the evolution answer engines and walled gardens. How do you think about your own view of that evolving over the next couple of years? And when you think about aligning that with your strategic priorities and some of the things you've emphasized to investors maybe going back to Innovation Day, maybe align a little bit of your priority list with how you think about your world view evolving.

Question: Alinda Li - William Blair Capital Partners - Analyst : Perfect. Mark, first question, where are we in the CTV-premium-product development. Is there a time line on when we can expect the product innovations to roll out for the year, for example, with the quality scorecard?

Question: Alinda Li - William Blair Capital Partners - Analyst : Awesome. And in terms of the unified platform, how are customers looking at DV differently since the Unified platform rollout Innovation Day?

Question: Mark Kelley - Stifel, Nicolaus & Company Inc - Analyst : I kind of want to go back to the question that Eric had just about open web traffic. Just curious if you think over time, maybe the more premium publishers will be able to command higher CPMs, given where that's probably where the majority of traffic will go at the expense of and some lower-quality websites that don't really offer premium content? And if so, I guess is that part of the more take rate pricing strategy that you have in mind to be able to kind of capture just where the budgets are going? That's the first question. And then the second one, I really appreciated the incremental thoughts on CTV this quarter. Can you maybe just parse out what you consider to be CTV. Does that include things like YouTube proper? Or is it more of the kind of broadcast or linear replacements? REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. AUGUST 05, 2025 / 8:30PM, DV.N - Q2 2025 DoubleVerify Holdings Inc Earnings Call

Question: Alec Brondolo - Wells Fargo Securities LLC - Analyst : Maybe one for me and I'll ask another AI question. I think investors are anticipating that a lot of the leading LLM products will have ad units embedded in them over time. And so ChatGPT will have some element of advertising. Have you started working with any of the leading companies to figure out what measurement, what suitability looks like in that context and kind of an ad unit that sits in another one?

Question: Omar Dessouky - Bofa Merrill Lynch Asset Holdings Inc - Analyst : I was on mute. In your opening remarks, you referenced having confidence in your long-term growth trajectory. I wanted to ask, relative to last quarter, has your confidence in your long-term growth trajectory increase significantly. And is it safe to -- is it safe at this point to think that future year's year-over-year growth would exceed this year or what you guided at the beginning of this year? I know that's a lot to ask, but any kind of clarification on of that statement would help.

Question: Omar Dessouky - Bofa Merrill Lynch Asset Holdings Inc - Analyst : Okay. Could I just maybe ask then, has anything about the way that you kind of build your guidance change like your guidance methodology changed since, let's say, when you reported fourth quarter results?