DoubleVerify Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:DV) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

But it also, it just helps us justify that story that you need to be watching what you’re doing. So clients maybe who — even our performance clients that have been sitting on the fence and saying, hey, brand suitability doesn’t really matter to me, but if MFA content is out there and it’s AI-generated and doesn’t really work and is redundant, I don’t want to be there. So it does open up some new advertiser opportunities. It has driven some volume a bit. As far as quantifying it, I think it’s too early to do that, Mark. We haven’t really looked at that yet. It may be something we look at going ahead. But we know that our MFA tool have been picked up by some of our largest CPG customers and a couple of retailers as well. And those are folks, particularly on the retail side, that are looking at ROI, and they want to be in the right places to drive that.

So, no, it’s a long answer to I can’t quantify it for you today, but it’s definitely, we’re seeing pickup of the tool. We’re seeing volumes being driven by it and I think it’s still in the first round of advertisers being concerned about this stuff.

Mark Murphy: Yeah. That’s great. It seems like another driver in the early stages for you. And then, Nicola, I wanted to ask on Scibids. We understand it closed very late in the quarter. I’m assuming the contribution, therefore, was de minimis. Can you confirm? We’re estimating it was something like sub-$1 million in revenue for Q3. Are we in the right zone there?

Nicola Allais: Yeah. I would think it was definitely de minimis.

Mark Murphy: Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from Raimo Lenschow with Barclays. Please state your question.

Raimo Lenschow: Hey. Thanks. Congrats from me as well. Just quickly, Mark, there’s so much innovation coming out of you, and I see you’re still having a lot of greenfield wins out there. What are you seeing on those customers that are just not with you yet or not having kind of picked the proper solution? I would almost assume with kind of so much more social out there, so many newer platforms, so many more threats, that there should be a change in behavior of kind of doing more. Like what’s your conversation — what are your conversations like? Thank you.

Mark Zagorski: You make a good point, Raimo, which is the customers that aren’t working with us, in many cases, the way we attract them is through this broader basket of goods, right? And the bigger that basket of goods is, the more hooks we have to bring them in. And when we talk about greenfield wins, those are for customers that haven’t used the products that we’ve sold through to them. So some of those may be current clients that just don’t use that solution, so it’s totally brand new, and some of them may be absolutely brand-new customers we don’t do anything with. The thing that’s common between both is that ensuring that we have lots of innovation and a big basket of goods draws them into us, where we can do that land and expand.

A great example is the MFA solution, which I just mentioned, which we just launched, which has started to attract some folks, Scibids, which performance-based advertisers are getting interested in. Attention pulls folks in. So, the more touch points that we can have to bring in a greenfield customer and then expand with them over time, I think, is essential. We use that stat a lot of time, more than 50% of our customers use less than four of our key products, our core products, right? That means we’ve got a lot of expansion to do with current customers to sell in those additional solutions. And we know that once we hook somebody, whether we hook them through Attention or we hook them through a Scibids relationship or hook them through an MFA solution, we have the ability to continue to upsell them more things over time.

And when we look at, for example, our top 50 clients, more than 50% of them use six or more products. So, we know we can upsell these customers and we can make them bigger over time. And having that basket of goods is key, and that’s why we talk so much about innovation, right? Our core does great, and we continue to grow off it, but the more touch points we have, the more little solutions we can bring in there, that brings them in. They no longer become greenfield customers, they become enterprise customers, and we upsell them over time.

Operator: Thank you. And our next question comes from Michael Graham with Canaccord Genuity. Please state your question.

Michael Graham: Hi, and thank you. Related question, I just wanted to get your latest thoughts on the competitive landscape. You all had a great quarter, and it seemed like some other players in the market segment did as well. And I’m just wondering, you referenced a great 80% win rate in your slide deck. Are you seeing any changes to the competitive landscape? And when it does get down to selection, just maybe talk about the relative importance of product breadth versus maybe pricing as a potential differentiator, just would love to get your thoughts on how all that’s evolving.

Mark Zagorski: Thanks, Michael. I think it’s a great perspective, which is, we still are in a relatively competitive market. But when you look at some of our peers there, we are growing faster on every line item that matters on a much bigger base, which means that we’re beating them on the product front. We’re taking market share. We’re doing it at a very profitable clip. So, the last thing I just said there is really relevant with regard to, is pricing playing a big role here, or is it product? And I have to say, we’re winning deals based on product, right? We’ve been able to keep MTF relatively stable, and that’s our goal, to do that. And I think, in some cases, sure, is it a head-to-head where we’ve got to get aggressive, of course, but we feel that continued investment in innovation is essential.

And when we win those deals because we have this broader basket of goods, because we’ve got solutions that others in the field don’t have, that’s our driver. That’s what we’re looking to do, and I think, if I’d say, a majority of the deals that we win are because of that, because anyone can just get into a price war but over time, the advertisers want to be with somebody who has the best solution that’s driving the best outcomes and has the most flexibility to grow with them in the future. So I think that’s where we still lean. We’re still winning. We’re still growing share. We’re investing more in R&D than our competitors, and I think we see that being as a key advantage moving forward.

Michael Graham: Okay. Thank you, Mark.

Operator: Our next question comes from Arjun Bhatia with William Blair. Please state your question.

Arjun Bhatia: Yeah, perfect. Thank you. Mark, maybe one for you to start. You said you’re expecting to start testing with Meta in the News Feed in Q4. Can you just walk us through what that process might entail? What you expect to learn during the testing period? And what the timeline to GA might look like?

Mark Zagorski: We’re knee-deep in that process right now. Development is going well and according to pace, so there’s a very small group of partners that Meta has decided to work with, and we’re all on par working through the same phases together. We are looking at an early 2024 launch into GA, and I think we’ve noted before, the scaling of that launch will really start with current customers that are using us to measure across the News Feed, then we’ll expand to current customers that aren’t using us, for example, viewability and fraud on the News Feed, and then expand to customers that are totally brand-new. So, we’ve got these three levers of growth that we expect to start rolling out post GA, which will be early in 2024.