DoubleVerify (DV) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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DATE

Feb. 26, 2026 at 4:30 p.m. ET

CALL PARTICIPANTS

• Chief Executive Officer — Mark Zagorski
• Chief Financial Officer — Nicola Allais

TAKEAWAYS

• Revenue -- $206,000,000 for the quarter, up 8% year over year, and $748,000,000 for the year, up 14% year over year.
• Adjusted EBITDA Margin -- 38% for the quarter and 33% for the year.
• Customer Retention -- No new deactivations among the top 100 customers; net revenue retention rate was 109% for the year, and gross retention surpassed 95% for five consecutive years.
• Social Activation Growth -- Social activation accelerated to approximately 60% year over year in the fourth quarter, comprising about 19% of total revenue.
• Average Revenue per Top 100 Customer -- Increased 7% to $4,500,000 annually.
• Programmatic Impressions -- Nearly two-thirds delivered on mobile targeting; double-digit growth reported in both programmatic display and video measurement impressions during the year.
• CTV Measurement Expansion -- Streaming TV (CTV) measurement volume grew 22% in the quarter and 33% year over year; new integrations include LinkedIn and IMDb data licensing.
• Activation and Measurement Revenue -- Activation revenue rose 6% and measurement revenue climbed 8% year over year in the quarter, with social measurement up 11% and representing 49% of measurement revenue.
• Supply-Side Revenue -- Increased 17% in the quarter and 25% for the year, underpinning partnerships across 152 retail media networks.
• AI Product Engagement -- New AI measurement tools, Slop Stopper and Agent ID, piloted by six top customers with wider rollouts planned.
• Greenfield Win Ratio -- 90% in the fourth quarter, indicating entry into new market areas with minimal competition.
• Cash Flow and Capital Return -- Generated $211,000,000 in net operating cash flow; $173,000,000 in free cash flow with a 70% conversion rate; repurchased 8,400,000 shares for $132,000,000, reducing shares outstanding by about 3%.
• Share Repurchase Authorization -- $300,000,000 authorized, the company’s largest, with plans for increased deployment in 2026.
• 2026 Guidance -- Revenue projected between $810,000,000 and $826,000,000 (8%-10% growth); adjusted EBITDA margin targeted at 34%; capital expenditures expected at $46,000,000.
• Stock-Based Compensation -- Full-year expense projected between $102,000,000 and $107,000,000, a reduction of over 40% in annual value of equity grants compared to 2025.
• Employee Count -- Ended 2025 with approximately 231 employees, excluding the impact of Rockerbox acquisition; plan to maintain or reduce headcount further via productivity gains from AI tools.
• Balance Sheet -- Closed the year with $260,000,000 in cash and no long-term debt.

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RISKS

• Nicola Allais cited unanticipated late-quarter "pullback from specific customers that were going through ad agency changes," resulting in Q4 revenue below expectations.
• Price per thousand impressions (MTF) declined 3% for the quarter, attributed to a product and mix shift; Nicola Allais clarified, "As impressions shift from open web to social, until we have full penetration of our pre-bid social premium products, that is not a dollar-for-dollar switch."
• Retail sector continued to exhibit softness in the second half of 2025, impacting overall growth rates.
• Growth in pricing for DV’s products remains pressured, with the average price down from $0.09 at IPO to $0.07 currently, despite ongoing investments in new product features.

SUMMARY

DoubleVerify (NYSE:DV) reported 8% quarterly and 14% full-year revenue growth. Product innovation spanned social, CTV, and AI, aiding sector diversification and fueling both customer expansion and increased wallet share among top clients. Management’s 2026 outlook assumes further mix shift towards high-growth product lines, disciplined cost controls, and incremental capital returns, while cautioning that retail weakness and pricing headwinds may persist near term.

• Q4 saw 60% social activation growth, with management highlighting accelerated adoption across key clients and platforms such as Meta and YouTube.
• The greenfield win ratio reached 90% for the quarter, reflecting distinct competitive positioning for new solutions in emerging verification segments.
• AI-driven solutions, including Slop Stopper and Agent ID, are now in advanced customer trials and scheduled for broader launch, positioning DV for the evolving digital ad verification landscape.
• First-quarter 2026 revenue is guided to 9% growth, despite a tough 17% prior growth comparison, supported by recently launched products and reduced reliance on the challenged retail vertical.
• Management authorized a $300,000,000 share repurchase program, the largest in DV’s history, indicating confidence in sustained profitability and growth.

INDUSTRY GLOSSARY

• ABS (Authentic Brand Suitability): DV's verification solution that ensures ad placements meet strict brand safety and suitability criteria, especially in dynamic environments like social and streaming media.
• MTM (Measured Transactions Metric): Total number of billable ad transactions DV measures, indicating overall business volume.
• MTF (Measured Transaction Fee): Average price DV charges per measured ad transaction.
• Greenfield Win Ratio: Percentage of new business won where no existing verification competitor was previously active.
• Slop Stopper: DV’s AI-powered tool designed to identify and prevent ad placements on undesirable or AI-generated 'slop' content.
• Do Not Air List: An advertiser-defined blocklist enforced pre-bid to prevent ads appearing next to specified streaming content.
• Authentic Advantage: Integrated DV offering combining pre-bid and post-bid social ad verification and optimization, initially available on YouTube.
• MAP (Measurement, Authentication, and Performance): DV’s bundled offering integrating independent verification, real-time optimization, and outcomes measurement.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Mark Zagorski: Thanks, Brinley, and good afternoon, everyone. Let me start today’s call with a quick take on the most recent quarter. In Q4, we delivered a strong 38% adjusted EBITDA margin and 8% year-over-year growth in revenue, demonstrating the strength of our operating model even as revenue came in below expectations. As we mentioned last quarter, while we anticipated some retail softness, our results were impacted by further pullbacks of customer campaign spend late in the quarter, primarily due to agency-related changes. We saw no broad-based spend decreases or detachment of DV services, and noted exceptional strength across multiple sectors in the fourth quarter, including health care and technology.

We reported strong customer retention during the quarter, with no new deactivations among our top 100 customers in Q4, and usage across social and streaming TV continued to scale. In addition, our programmatic business continued to grow, with nearly two-thirds of the impressions that we engage with delivered on mobile, in-app, and mobile web environments. Outside of mobile, both programmatic display and video measurement impressions grew at double-digit rates in 2025. The investments we are making in building durable, diversified long-term growth in sectors that continue to thrive alongside the AI revolution—namely social, streaming, and AI platforms—are becoming core catalysts for our future growth.

Social activation accelerated meaningfully, and is starting 2026 at an even stronger year-over-year growth rate, growing at approximately 60% year over year in Q4, and Authentic Advantage on YouTube is entering the year with $8,000,000 of expected ACV. CTV measurement impression volumes also grew impressively, up 22% for the quarter, continuing their cadence of outsized growth. We also saw strong interest in our ABS-enabled Do Not Air list for streaming TV, which entered general availability with a strong debut this January with three top 15 customers representing hundreds of millions in CTV spend implementing pre-bid controls.

AI measurement tools like Slop Stopper and Agent ID showed meaningful engagement rates and are now being tested by six of our largest customers, with a broader rollout scheduled for the coming months. Together, the areas that are most important for a durable growth story in the future are setting us up for a strong 2026.

Before turning to the full-year 2025 results, I want to discuss the continuing evolution of our product-led growth cycle and what is really on everyone’s mind—our take on the potential impact of AI on advertising, and DV’s business. DV’s growth cycle and trajectory is foundationally shaped by the timing of product releases, platform enablement, and customer adoption. Over the last year, our new product development cycle accelerated across social, CTV, and AI platforms with several major releases rolling out in 2025. With social and CTV innovations now broadly available, and AI capabilities continuing to expand, we have entered 2026 with a more diversified revenue mix driven by a broader product offering. These new solutions fuel two main product-led growth engines.

First, we have a significant opportunity to expand within our existing customer base. As we elevate product attach rates for our new social, CTV, and AI platform verification capabilities, we drive higher wallet share, spur revenue growth, and create broader, stickier client relationships as enterprise customers adopt more of our platform. As a result, average revenue per top 100 customer grew by 7% for the year to $4,500,000. Second, our accelerating product cycle is enabling us to win new customers and gain market share with proprietary solutions as entry points to new customer engagements. Our leadership in the fastest growing areas of digital advertising—social, CTV, and AI-enabled performance optimization—is expanding our relevance, increasing our competitiveness, and landing us new logos.

These differentiated solutions drove a 90% greenfield win ratio in Q4, our highest ever recorded, meaning that we are winning deals with solutions in new areas in which there are no competitive incumbents to displace. Ultimately, our product innovation in 2025 harnessed the power of AI to expand TAM, improve solution efficacy, and drive stronger margins and also helped deliver solid results that will set the stage for future growth. We grew total full-year revenue 14% year over year, well exceeding the 10% growth outlook we provided at the start of the year. We also delivered double-digit growth across all three revenue lines.

We continue to onboard large global enterprise customers, further strengthening our position as a trusted partner to the world’s leading brands. This momentum delivered strong profitability and cash generation with a 33% adjusted full-year EBITDA margin and $211,000,000 in net cash from operating activities.

Now turning to the impact of AI on marketer behavior, and more importantly for this call, on DV’s business. To put it simply, we see this evolution only in terms of accretive future opportunities for DV. The ad ecosystem has always been one in constant flux. Where marketers buy ads, how they buy ads, and even how they create those ads changes with each advancement of media and technology. The current AI revolution is just the next evolution of this story. And in all of these evolutionary cycles what has never changed is why marketers buy ads—their need for measurement, and their demand for trust and transparency.

Whether it was ad networks in 2010, programmatic platforms in 2018, social networks in 2021, or agent-based AI platform buying in 2026 and beyond, DV has been and will be essential in driving transparency and trust. Regardless of changes in media or mode of buying, our customer value proposition lies in the vast amount of data we gather and the trust layer that supports the unbiased, independent analytics we provide. In the AI era, the question is not about who has the best model. It is about who has the best data. DV generates a massive proprietary data set from the hundreds of terabytes of advertising data we process every day across trillions of annual transactions.

This is not generic web data that anyone can access or scrape. These are proprietary signals tied to actual ad delivery, brand suitability, fraud detection, and business outcomes based on contracted relationships with leading platforms. LLMs can help us interpret this data faster and more efficiently, but they cannot replace its unique value. DV has never been about the media or the method, but about the data supporting the motive.

In addition, OpenAI’s introduction of advertising marks the creation of an entirely new digital media environment, and DV is ready for this evolution. According to eMarketer, ad spend on LLMs is expected to grow to over $25,000,000,000 by 2029, cannibalizing over 14% of search spend, which is a $400,000,000,000 market that DV has historically not been able to access. We believe advertising within LLM platforms has the potential to create a new search-like digital channel where independent verification for companies like DV becomes foundational. Independent metrics in this new environment are critical, and several dozen of our current customers who are experimenting in this new space have already indicated that they expect consistent measurement across everywhere they advertise.

While AI platform ad models continue to evolve, advertiser demands remain the same—ensuring ad transactions are trusted and transparent, ads are viewable, brand suitable, and delivered to legitimate traffic within authentic content environments. As digital advertising becomes more automated, agentic, and opaque, and as AI slop becomes the must-avoid content category for advertisers, the need for independent verification, protection, and performance measurement has never been greater. Regardless of platform, buying mode, or message, DV will be an integral, trusted part of this ad equation.

Building on our progress and product innovation in 2025, I will now walk through the updates on our key three product cycles, starting with social, then streaming TV, and closing with AI. As noted on previous calls, our goal is to increase the contribution of social, streaming, and AI-driven solutions from under 30% of total revenue today to approximately 50%, creating a revenue mix that more closely aligns with global digital ad spend trends. Starting with social, it remains our fastest growing environment and a core driver of our next phase of growth. As I mentioned earlier, social activation accelerated meaningfully to approximately 60% year-over-year growth in the fourth quarter, up from around 20% growth in Q3.

That acceleration was driven by continued scaling of social pre-bid, building upon Meta’s specific product enhancements that we upgraded through the year. Expanded content-level avoidance across Feed and Reels nearly doubled filtering coverage and materially improved activation effectiveness. By year end, 68 advertisers were live on Meta activation, up from 56 in the third quarter. Adoption is being driven by large enterprise advertisers, with 28 coming from our top 100 clients. We exited December with social activation at an annualized run rate of approximately $8,000,000 ahead of our expectations, and it continues to be our fastest growing area as we start 2026.

Adoption of DV Authentic Advantage on YouTube also expanded during the quarter, with estimated ACV of approximately $8,000,000 driven by continued customer adoption. Some of our largest CPG customers have started scaling on the solution; we are excited about the opportunity to grow this business over the coming quarters. Also driving social growth into 2026, we expanded attention measurement on TikTok during the fourth quarter, becoming the platform’s first badged marketing partner to deliver impression-level attention insights. In addition, we expanded our post-bid brand suitability measure on Meta to include Facebook Reels overlay placements, extending independent transparency across one of the platform’s fastest-growing ad formats.

Finally, we expanded our integration with Meta through the launch of Rockerbox Relay, which enables Rockerbox customers to send attribution results to Meta as an optimization signal. This launch improves advertisers’ ability to drive performance against outcomes.

Turning to streaming TV. 2025 marked an important inflection point in our expanding CTV strategy. Over the course of the year, we launched a series of products to address growing advertiser transparency demands and increasing fraud in streaming environments, including verified streaming TV measurement and pre-bid controls, automated Do Not Air workflows, and enriched program-level intelligence through our licensing of IMDb data. We have already begun to see solid early adoption of ABS Do Not Air lists by our largest advertisers as well as strong interest in our Authentic Streaming TV, which we launched at CES in January. Expanding our growing CTV footprint, we launched our integration with LinkedIn to deliver measurement for CTV impressions.

This expansion extends DV’s independent verification and authentication to LinkedIn CTV ads across existing streaming environments, increasing measured CTV coverage and reinforcing DV’s leadership in transparent cross-channel media measurement. Together, these innovations helped grow CTV measurement volumes by 33% in full-year 2025, reflecting continued advertiser demand for independent transparency in streaming environments. As mentioned previously, the tools that we launched in 2025 to combat the increasing challenge of navigating AI slop are gaining traction with our largest customers.

This momentum will be bolstered in 2026 with the launch of DV Slop Stopper for social, a premium solution to address a content arena rife with issues that advertisers are eager to avoid on platforms that attract the lion’s share of advertiser spend.

2025 was a year of product development acceleration, partner expansion, meaningful growth across all of our business lines, and continued strong margins and cash flow. Before turning it over to Nicola, I want to briefly address capital allocation. Returning capital to shareholders is a core element of our long-term value creation strategy, and as of today, we have $300,000,000 authorized for share repurchase, the largest amount in DV’s history, which we plan to actively deploy in 2026 at increased levels versus prior years. This reflects our confidence in our business, the continued strength of our balance sheet, and our commitment to creating long-term shareholder value. With that, let me turn the call over to Nicola.

Thanks, Mark, and good afternoon, everyone. Let me walk through our fourth quarter and full-year 2025 results and then discuss our 2026 outlook, including the key growth drivers and assumptions underlying our guidance.

Nicola Allais: For the fourth quarter, revenue was $206,000,000, representing 8% year-over-year growth. For the full year, revenue was $748,000,000, representing 14% year-over-year growth, despite variability driven by the retail sector in the second half. In the fourth quarter, activation revenue increased 6% year over year, and measurement revenue increased 8% year over year, both driven primarily by social. In the fourth quarter, social activation and measurement together represented approximately 19% of total revenue. Supply-side revenue increased 17% year over year, supported by retail media platforms and expanded publisher and platform integrations.

In the fourth quarter, total advertiser revenue, which includes activation and measurement, grew 7% year over year driven by 8% growth in volume, or MTM, partially offset by a 3% decline in price, or MTF, excluding the impact of an introductory fixed-fee arrangement from one large customer onboarded from Moat. Fourth quarter activation revenue grew 6% with ABS representing 52% of activation revenue in the quarter. As of year end, 78% of our top 500 clients were using ABS. Measurement revenue grew 8% year over year with social measurement revenue increasing 11% and representing 49% of measurement revenue, and international revenue increasing 5% and representing 29% of measurement revenue.

Excluding the previously disclosed CPG customer suspension at the start of the year, social measurement revenue would have grown 22% in 2025. Finally, revenue from Rockerbox was slightly ahead of expectations.

Turning to full-year 2025. Revenue grew 14% driven by double-digit growth across each revenue line, including 15% growth in activation, 10% growth in measurement, and 25% growth in supply side. Advertising revenue growth remained primarily volume driven, with MTMs increasing 15% year over year to 9,500,000,000,000 billable transactions measured, partially offset by a 3% increase in MTF to $0.07 excluding the impact of an introductory fixed-fee arrangement for one large customer onboarded from Moat. We expect volumes to remain the primary driver of growth in 2026 as we continue to verify more digital ad impressions through new product launches and through new channel and geographic expansion.

Supply-side revenue grew 25% year over year by adding new CTV and digital platform partnerships and through continued expansion on retail media networks, with DV tags now accepted across 152 retail media networks, including 18 major platforms and 134 retailers globally. For the full year, we achieved a net revenue retention rate of 109%, and gross revenue retention remained above 95% for the fifth consecutive year. Average revenue for top 100 customers increased by 7% year over year to $4,500,000, and we ended the year with 344 advertisers generating more than $200,000 annually. Our long-term customer relationships remain strong, with top 75, top 50, and top 25 customers working with DV for approximately nine years.

Moving to expenses. In the fourth quarter, we delivered 83% revenue less cost of sales and $78,000,000 of adjusted EBITDA, representing a 38% margin. For the full year, we delivered 82% revenue less cost of sales and $246,000,000 of adjusted EBITDA, representing a 33% adjusted EBITDA margin to combine continued revenue growth with solid profitability. We ended 2025 with approximately 231 employees, slightly down year over year excluding the impact of the Rockerbox acquisition. In 2026, we expect to continue to invest in AI capabilities that will enable us to maintain revenue less cost of sales over 80%, accelerate product development and time to market, while also growing with fewer employees through improved productivity across the organization.

This will allow us to scale the business more effectively and increase EBITDA margins in 2026.

Turning to cash flow. We generated approximately $211,000,000 in net cash from operating activities in 2025. Capital expenditures were approximately $39,000,000, or 5% of total revenue, driven by investments in innovation and platform scalability. This resulted in free cash flow of approximately $173,000,000, representing a conversion rate of approximately 70%, up from 61% in 2024, and reinforcing the durability of our cash-generating model. Our strong cash generation enabled us to repurchase 8,400,000 shares for approximately $132,000,000 in 2025, outpacing stock-based compensation expense and driving a net reduction in shares outstanding of approximately 3%.

We ended 2025 with approximately 162,000,000 shares outstanding, approximately $260,000,000 in cash, and no long-term debt, providing us with significant flexibility to invest in growth, pursue strategic opportunities, and return capital to shareholders. Reflecting continued confidence in our financial strength and long-term growth prospects, we have, as of today, $300,000,000 authorized for share repurchases, which we plan to deploy in 2026 at increased levels versus prior years.

Now turning to 2026 guidance. For the first quarter, we expect revenue to range between $177,000,000 and $183,000,000, representing a year-over-year increase of approximately 9% at the midpoint, and adjusted EBITDA to range between $48,000,000 and $52,000,000, representing a 28% adjusted EBITDA margin at the midpoint. To provide context, fourth quarter growth of 8% reflected elevated retail pressure driven by campaign pullbacks late in the quarter from a couple of large customers. Based on the current momentum we have seen to date, our first quarter guidance is 9% growth, despite a 17% growth comparison in the first quarter of last year.

This improvement reflects expected higher contributions from our recently launched social and CTV product, along with continued sector diversification toward health care and technology. For full-year 2026, we expect revenue to range between $810,000,000 and $826,000,000, representing an 8% to 10% year-over-year increase. Our full-year revenue outlook is driven by a recurring base of growth of core products to core clients, which is reflected in our net revenue retention of 109% in 2025. Incremental growth in 2026 of the base will be driven by three product-led growth engines. First, adoption and scaled deployment of the recently launched solutions across social and streaming TV. Second, incremental revenue growth from existing enterprise clients scaling across our product offering.

And third, continued new customer acquisition driven by DV’s differentiated MAP product vision, which integrates independent verification with real-time optimization and outcomes measurement. Our 8% to 10% year-over-year revenue growth guidance assumes a measured take on the impact of these product-led growth drivers as they scale in 2026 and does not assume an improved macro advertising environment. In terms of quarterly growth cadence, 2026 shapes into a stronger second-half growth as we lap 19% growth in the second half of 2025 as compared to 9% growth in the first half of 2025. For full-year 2026, we expect adjusted EBITDA margins of approximately 34%.

We are guiding to an increased adjusted EBITDA margin of 34% in 2026 as compared to 33% over the last three years, reflecting our ability to grow the business more efficiently, improving productivity across the organization. Below the line, we are implementing an updated equity incentive plan that is projected to reduce the annual value of equity grants by over 40% as compared to 2025. As a result, we expect full-year stock-based compensation to decline year over year and range between $102,000,000 to $107,000,000. For the first quarter, we expect stock-based compensation of approximately $23,000,000 to $26,000,000 and weighted average fully diluted shares outstanding of approximately 164,000,000.

We expect capital expenditures, including capitalized software, to be approximately $46,000,000 in 2026, reflecting continued investment in product innovation, AI-driven automation, and platform scalability. With zero debt and approximately $260,000,000 cash on the balance sheet at year-end 2025, we remain well positioned to invest in growth and execute on our capital return strategy. In closing, 2025 was a year of product evolution for DoubleVerify Holdings, Inc. We launched the next generation of social, streaming TV, and AI products, delivered growth, maintained strong margins, generated meaningful cash flow, and returned capital to shareholders. As we move into 2026, we are well positioned with a more diversified business, a clear focus on durable growth and expanding profitability to deliver long-term shareholder value.

And with that, we will now open for questions. Operator, please go ahead.

Operator: At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. We do request for today’s session that you please limit to one question only. We will pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Matt Swanson with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Matthew John Swanson: Great, thank you. I appreciate you taking the question. Mark, I really enjoyed all the color you were giving us on the kind of AI opportunities and maybe explain to us why the risks might not be what some of the market participants might think they are. Also, love the name Slop Stopper, but if you go a little bit deeper into just what inning you think we are in terms of this AI revolution, whether it be from a content side or from your internal products, and just how you think this is going to play out throughout 2026, but also kind of changes you might be making for the long term.

Mark Zagorski: Thanks for the question, Matt. For both internal and external opportunities, we are early—first inning. We are just scratching the surface right now, which makes this so exciting. As we noted, we see AI as nothing but a huge opportunity for DV. Our role in the ecosystem has always been to provide trust and transparency in buying. Whether those are agents buying or DSPs buying or an executive sitting behind a keyboard fifteen years ago, we have always played that role. Internally, opportunities are about efficiency and driving operating margin, and as you saw, we were able to raise our guide this year on our EBITDA expectations.

A lot of that is driven by the fact that the things that we do—contextualize content, stamp out fraud, drive greater transparency—are done faster, more seamlessly, and cheaper through AI. We mentioned before, double the classification volume already, four times the productivity, and 2,300 times faster labeling of content. All of those are real lifts for our business and drive better margins. Externally, we look at not only the universe of challenging content that AI creates as being an opportunity—Slop Stopper will be expanding into social later on this year—and AI as an opportunity for optimization through Authentic Advantage, as well as just this big meatball that is out there: the chatbots, which are now running advertising.

Just as the other venues that we have entered—whether CTV through Netflix or social when we added Reddit in the last few years—that new platform is going to need verification. We have many of our customers already leaning in there and spending money and saying, “You need to be here next.” So, lots of opportunities to be more efficient, lots of opportunities to build new products, and lots of opportunities to add new platforms to our mix, all driven by AI.

Matthew John Swanson: Appreciate that. Are we sticking to the one question?

Mark Zagorski: You can ask another, Matt. Go ahead.

Matthew John Swanson: The other one I was going to ask was just on the MAP side and early response you have seen from the bundling strategies that you laid out at your Analyst Day. Anything you are hearing from your customers right now?

Mark Zagorski: It has been a solid response to our first integrated product, which is Authentic Advantage—for YouTube—that bundles together pre-bid social filtering plus post-bid measurement plus optimization all on YouTube. That helped drive social activation to 60% growth year over year, and we are seeing an even stronger growth rate coming out of the gate on social activation. So that strategy is working. It is also working to introduce totally new solutions within our realm. We mentioned that extremely high greenfield win rate for Q4 of 90%. That means 90% of the customers that we won that quarter were not using a competitive product in that space.

That means we are bringing in new customers into totally new solutions, bringing them into that MAP system, and giving them the ability to upsell over time. It has been early, but we are getting really good results out of the initial solutions we have launched from the MAP strategy.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Matt Condon with Citizens. Please go ahead.

Matthew Dorrian Condon: Thank you so much for taking the question. First, I just really wanted to ask what happened at the end of the quarter. What are you seeing? It seems like there are some agency partnerships where there is some pullback in spend. I was wondering if you could elaborate on that, and what gives you the confidence that you have in 1Q and the implied acceleration of revenue growth?

Nicola Allais: What happened at the end of the quarter is related to the retail vertical. We had talked about that during the third quarter already and had mentioned that it was a little challenged in terms of ad spend, and that continued into Q4 as we had expected. What we did not expect is towards the end of the quarter, additional pullback from specific customers that were going through ad agency changes. That was not something that we had anticipated given the Q4 guidance. That leads us to an ending growth rate in Q4 of 8%.

We are guiding to 9% going into Q1 2026, and that is based on visibility that we have to date into the quarter, an uptick from the social and CTV products that we just launched, and generally not seeing a continued degradation around the retail sector. In offsetting the retail sector, health care and technology did very well for us in 2025. We are entering 2026 with a more diversified mix across verticals, with retail representing less than it used to in prior years. We feel good about having been able to diversify the mix across the various verticals.

Matthew Dorrian Condon: Great, thank you. And maybe just a quick follow-up, Mark, as we think about social pre-bid ramping here, it is good to see that progress continue, but how do we get that to even grow faster in 2026, and how are you planning on driving further adoption?

Mark Zagorski: We saw really strong social activation, as we noted—up almost to 70 customers now and 10 top 15, top 20 customers now engaged, including big brands like Lilly, Inspire Brands, and Capital One, and even Meta themselves. Big brands are out there spending on the platform. Now it is about scaling. There is always a testing process and testing cycle. The great news is we have launched increasingly accurate, increasingly powerful versions of this solution on a regular basis. As it gets more accurate and becomes a more effective arbiter of eliminating waste and finding challenges on those platforms, it is easier uptake for us.

We see that on a nice acceleration pace, particularly across Meta, and right now it is outpacing our expectations. We hope that will continue through the year.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Alex Pegmianti: Hey, guys. This is Alex Pegmianti on for Eric Sheridan. Thanks for taking my question. I want to dig into some of the investments you are making this year to support the product development. Any planned investments in go-to-market to support the adoption curve of some of these social pre-bid products, or will the investments that you are making and what is implied in your guide just be more concentrated on product development and AI? Thanks.

Mark Zagorski: As far as headcount and people investments, we are looking to stabilize or decrease those over time. The efficiencies that we are getting out of AI tools have been exceptional, particularly in classification and our ability to identify challenging content and drive greater transparency and trust. We are doing that with fewer people at a faster pace and more accurately, so efficiencies there. As far as go-to-market, we have a great team. We spent the last few years building out a super engaged global sales team. They have gone deeper into brands—eight of our top 10 relationships are now brand direct.

We have the right folks in the right place telling the right story with the right products, and that will continue to drive growth for us throughout the year.

Alex Pegmianti: Great, thanks, guys.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Brian Pitz with BMO. Please go ahead.

Brian Joseph Pitz: Thanks for the question. Mark, maybe a follow-on regarding category comments. I know CPG has been challenging to you in the past few quarters. Has that category recovered? Any comments would be helpful. And then any additional color on specific growth drivers going forward—the key success factors that really help with your guidance range? Thank you.

Mark Zagorski: I will take that first question, Brian.

Nicola Allais: CPG did well, and as you will recall, we had one client at the beginning of the year suspending its service with us, but the category did well because we acquired clients in 2024 that scaled into 2025. On balance, that category did well. There are pressures tied to CPG that also impact retail. We saw it more on the retail side than on the CPG side, but CPG has remained strong for us because we have large clients that are scaling within the product portfolio that we have.

Mark Zagorski: As far as growth that we are focused on, our social tools and social solutions—expanding Authentic Advantage beyond just YouTube and looking at TikTok as well as Meta. Expanding our Slop Stopper solution into social and walled gardens, which I think is going to be a big hit. Continuing to invest in CTV—our ABS Do Not Air lists are live on Trade Desk, but we have the opportunity to expand that to additional DSPs. For us, it is about focus on social, focus on CTV, and our AI tools that cover both of those products, with an opportunity as the AI platforms start to scale advertising. Looking at that down the road is a big opportunity for us as well.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Tim Nolan with SSR. Please go ahead.

Timothy Nollen: Hi, thanks for taking the question. I would like to come back to the CTV topic, if I could. TV has always had its own measurement systems, and the TV network groups have never historically relied on their own platforms to provide the measurement and attribution reporting. What is different about CTV for you guys versus web or mobile? Is it easier for you to penetrate this medium given your differentiated tools that you can bring to CTV now, or is it difficult given how TV measurement has always operated under its own terms?

Mark Zagorski: The difference in the CTV universe versus the linear universe is that the metrics advertisers use to evaluate success go well beyond just reach and frequency. They go to driving results and effectiveness of results, but you also have challenges—fraud pop-ups, screens not being on while ads are playing, and viewability issues—which all drive the effectiveness of CTV. Our role in CTV is a different role than the measurement companies played in the linear world. Our role is not just to determine whether or not something works, but to determine whether or not something is valid. That is why more advertisers are turning us on and our scale is growing significantly in CTV.

We saw 33% year-over-year growth in volume because it is a world that is not as transparent as the linear world has been. We see bigger opportunities there as advertisers demand greater transparency—getting show-level data on a granular basis and being able to expose that. We are doing some of that already and starting to do that at scale with our Authentic Streaming TV solution. Believe it or not, on a lot of programmatic platforms advertisers are buying CTV that is not really CTV. We can ensure that it is delivered on a full-episode player in a highly branded environment. Those things are becoming a bigger deal to advertisers as the billions of dollars scale.

We play a unique role in that universe. That role continues to expand as we see CTV volumes expand, and the number of tools we provide to address those problems will grow over time.

Timothy Nollen: That is great. Thanks, Mark.

Operator: The next question comes from the line of Linda Lee with William Blair. Please go ahead.

Linda Lee: Awesome. Thank you for taking my question. I want to learn a bit about how customer conversations have evolved with the driving interest of AI solutions, and have you observed any changes in customer interest in the way that they are looking at approaches? Thank you.

Mark Zagorski: It is an interesting question. A lot of what you hear around advertising and agentic-based tools is still relatively early days. A vast majority of buying is still being done through programmatic platforms or through platform-enabled tools on the social networks. First and foremost, advertisers still want to ensure that what they are buying is what they think they are buying and will drive the result they expect. That is the role we play on those platforms, and it is the role we will play with agents when that starts to scale. The dialogue today with most advertisers is how we will play in that new world and what role we will play.

The role we play is the one we play today—driving trust and transparency. In those cases, it will be with an agent that is going to search for a buy and needs to make sure that buy is safe, so it will contact us first, the same way a DSP pings us first, and within 200 milliseconds we return a response that says this is good or bad. We will just be talking to an agent in the future, and we are ready to do that. The other aspect of the AI discussion focuses on how we are leveraging tools with human guidance to make sure that what we are contextualizing and calling brand suitable is relevant and trusted.

Beyond the accreditations that we have, our AI and the efficiencies we derive in contextualization are always guided by humans. We always have a human hand in there because we think that is important, and our customers think that is important too. An increasing number of advertisers are frustrated with the fact that a lot of their ads are running against slop. It is a big deal, and you see statistics that in the next few years, 90% of all content will be AI-generated on the web. Some of that will be okay, and some of it will not be. That is part of the role that we will play.

We did that with made-for-advertising sites and content, and we are doing that now with AI slop. Lots of questions. All of them are interesting, and all of them are places we are leaning in, building solutions, and providing trust.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Laura Martin with Needham. Please go ahead.

Laura Martin: Sure. My first one is on events. You are two months into your three-month quarter. I am surprised the guidance for Q1 is not for more of an acceleration given the social media talking about Bad Bunny and the Super Bowl and the drama around the Olympics that ended up on social media. Can you remind us why those big events do not drive higher impression and therefore faster growth rates for you?

Mark Zagorski: Volumes are still scaling rapidly around social. Our products there are still relatively early stage, but as we noted, we exited the year with social activation growing 60%. I think it is starting the year out even faster at a higher growth rate, so we are seeing those numbers grow quickly. We are also starting to lap the customer that we had paused services with last year, which was a big social customer. We will see social show meaningful growth in Q1 based on that engagement and that events activity, which brings up another good point. You have a year ahead of us that should be interesting: elections, Olympics, World Cup.

All of those will be interesting factors to see where that activity ends up—whether social, open web, streaming, or all of the above.

Laura Martin: Okay. Great. And then my other one is on pricing. When we went public, I think your average price was $0.09, and now it is down to $0.07. It feels like you have spent four years investing in new products and capabilities; you are bundling, and yet under pricing pressure here—price is down 3%—although it sounds like it was worse because you had a one-time Moat customer that gave a fixed contract. What is going on with pricing? Why are we not gaining pricing given all the value you are adding?

Nicola Allais: The first part of the answer is what is driving the price down right now, which is really a mix shift between environments where we have a full slate of products that is fully penetrated—ABS as a premium-priced product along with measurement for the open web—and social. On the social side, we now have the products and we are increasing penetration of the premium-priced side of that equation on social versus the measurement side that we have had for a while. As impressions shift from open web to social, until we have full penetration of our pre-bid social premium products, that is not a dollar-for-dollar switch.

The opportunity, now that we have the products, is to see the benefit of the premium-priced products. On the social side, we are able to charge a premium price the same way as we are able to charge a premium price for ABS versus basic brand safety and measurement.

Laura Martin: Thank you very much.

Mark Zagorski: Thanks.

Operator: Our last question comes from the line of Youssef Squali with Truist Securities. Please go ahead.

Youssef Houssaini Squali: Thank you so much, guys. Maybe, Nicola, you can help me reconcile a couple of things you said earlier. Your NRR is about 109%. You are guiding for the year at 8% to 10%, and you said that we should see better performance or faster growth in the second half than the first half, yet you are guiding to Q1 at 9%. What am I doing wrong in my math? Because that would imply that you should ultimately either grow at least at the high end of the range at 10% or even better, or is the assumption that maybe NRRs are coming down a little bit?

Nicola Allais: You have the right dynamics. The base for the view for 2026 is this NRR number of 109%. That is how we are exiting 2025, and we are seeing that as the recurring base of growth of core products to core clients. On top of that, what will drive our growth is product-led engines: adoption of the new products, incremental revenue from enterprise clients that are scaling, and acquisitions of new customers. One item I will mention for 2026 is that we are lapping Q1 growth last year of 17% and Q2 growth of 21%. The 9% growth that we are guiding to in Q1 is off very high year-on-year comps.

That creates a year where the better part of the growth will be in the second half. Your statement around what could lead to growth that is higher than what we are guiding to—it would be faster adoption around these new products. We have taken a measured view of the adoption of these new products, and we feel it is the right thing to do in terms of how we are planning for the year. To achieve numbers that are ahead of the guidance, that is what we would have to see. We are entering the year with $8,000,000 of ARR on some products—at least two of them that we have mentioned. That is already $50,000,000 of revenue.

It is all going to be about the speed of adoption for us to be on the higher end of that number.

Youssef Houssaini Squali: Okay, that is helpful. And maybe just one other one for Mark. More of a high-level question. Historically, we have talked about growth in digital advertising as being a base for how fast you can grow over time. The market is very large, penetration of measurement and verification remains relatively low across several pockets, and you have highlighted many of these. What needs to happen to get you back to grow at least in line with the overall digital ad market, which we estimate to be in the low double digits, maybe 12% to 13%?

Mark Zagorski: The data point we have this year has digital ad growing around 6%. We are expecting better than that, which we should because that should be a tailwind to what we do. New products should help accelerate that. Not all places are equal. You are seeing areas like social continue to eat up dollars, streaming eating up more dollars, and other areas growing considerably lower. For us, it is about focusing on the areas that are growing faster so that we can grow faster than the overall digital market.

We noted in the call we have always been tilted towards open web, and our goal now is to get 50% of our revenue from social, streaming, and AI platforms—really closed areas. That gets us to where the dollars are going, where they are growing faster, and gives us a more accelerated view on the future. That is where our product innovations are, that is where our investments will continue to be, and that is where the future growth opportunities lie.

Youssef Houssaini Squali: Okay.

Mark Zagorski: That is good color.

Nicola Allais: Thank you, Youssef.

Operator: We have our next question from Maria Ripps with Canaccord. Please go ahead.

Maria Ripps: Great, thanks so much for squeezing me in. As we think about Moat customers maturing on the platform and heading into year two with you, do you expect growth from this cohort to accelerate and maybe become a larger contributor to your overall growth? What have you seen in terms of upsell rate from these customers, and what is factored in your outlook from this cohort?

Nicola Allais: You are correct. We are assuming that we will see continued scaling from the Moat customers. We acquired those customers with a basic product because they were coming from a platform where some of our premium-priced product was not available. We have always said it would take two to three years before we see the full scale of the Moat customers on our platform. It is going very well with some clients. It is slower with others because it takes time for the client to unlock some of the budgets that are needed for some of the premium-priced products that we have.

It is going as we planned, and yes, it will contribute more in 2026 than it did in 2025. Some of these customers are very large and have a large opportunity to be upsold into our premium-priced products.

Mark Zagorski: I will add one more thing—not specific to Moat clients—but an interesting thing to look at is year three of our customer engagement actually has the highest growth rate in aggregate of all of the years that we are engaged with customers. On average, in aggregate, it is about 18% growth year two with them and 22% growth year three with our top clients. It is an interesting take, whereas our upsell cycle usually takes several years, and that third year is usually where the biggest lift is. It is a rule of thumb when we think about all customers.

Maria Ripps: Great. Thank you both.

Operator: That concludes our Q&A session. I will now turn the call back over to Mark Zagorski for closing remarks.

Mark Zagorski: Thank you all for joining us this evening. As we look ahead, we have confidence in the performance of our business, and our priorities are clear: deepen adoption of core products with core customers, accelerate the growth of our solutions for social, streaming TV, and AI, and drive industry-leading margins by leveraging the power of AI. We appreciate your continued support and look forward to connecting with many of you at upcoming conferences.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today’s call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.

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