DoubleVerify Holdings, Inc. [DV] Filings

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UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549

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FORM 10-K

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(Mark One)

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For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2023

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Commission File Number 001-40349

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DoubleVerify Holdings, Inc.

(Exact name of Registrant as specified in its Charter)

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462 Broadway

New York, NY 10013

(Address of principal executive offices including zip code)

Registrant’s telephone number, including area code: (212) 631-2111

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Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:

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Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act: None

Indicate by check mark if the Registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act.  YES  ⌧   NO  ◻

Indicate by check mark if the Registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Act.  YES  ◻    NO  ⌧

Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant: (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the Registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days.  YES  ⌧    NO  ◻

Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the Registrant was required to submit such files).  YES  ⌧    NO  ◻

Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, a smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer”, “accelerated filer”, “smaller reporting company,” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.

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If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act. ☐

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Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant has filed a report on and attestation to its management’s assessment of the effectiveness of its internal control over financial reporting under Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (15 U.S.C. 7262(b)) by the registered public accounting firm that prepared or issued its audit report. ☒

If securities are registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act, indicate by check mark whether the financial statements of the registrant included in the filing reflect the correction of an error to previously issued financial statements. ☐

Indicate by check mark whether any of those error corrections are restatements that required a recovery analysis of incentive-based compensation received by any of the registrant’s executive officers during the relevant recovery period pursuant to §240.10D-1(b). ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act).   YES  ☐    NO  ☒

The aggregate market value of the Registrant’s Common Stock held by non-affiliates of the Registrant as of June 30, 2023, the last business day of the Registrant’s most recently completed second fiscal quarter, was approximately $4,418,583,980 based upon the closing price reported for such date on the New York Stock Exchange (“NYSE”). The number of shares of Registrant’s Common Stock outstanding as of February 20, 2024 was 171,253,902.

DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE

Portions of the Registrant’s proxy statement for its 2024 annual meeting of stockholders are incorporated herein by reference in Part III of this Annual Report on Form 10-K to the extent stated herein. Such proxy statement will be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission within 120 days of the Registrant’s fiscal year ended December 31, 2023.

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Table of Contents

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Special Note About Forward-Looking Statements

Market and Industry Data

Service Marks Trademarks and Trade Names

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SPECIAL NOTE ABOUT FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

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This Annual Report on Form 10-K contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”), and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”). Some of the forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terms such as “believes,” “expects,” “may,” “will,” “shall,” “should,” “would,” “could,” “seeks,” “aims,” “projects,” “intends,” “plans,” “estimates,” “anticipates” or other comparable terms. Forward-looking statements include, without limitation, all matters that are not historical facts. They appear in a number of places throughout this Annual Report on Form 10-K and include, without limitation, statements regarding our intentions, beliefs, assumptions or current expectations concerning, among other things, our financial position; results of operations; industry outlook; and growth strategies or expectations.

Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which may be beyond our control. We caution you that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance or outcomes and that actual performance and outcomes, including, without limitation, our actual results of operations, financial condition and liquidity, and the development of the market in which we operate, may differ materially from those made in or suggested by the forward-looking statements contained in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. In addition, even if our results of operations, financial condition and cash flows, and the development of the market in which we operate, are consistent with the forward-looking statements contained in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, those results or developments may not be indicative of results or developments in subsequent periods. A number of important factors, including, without limitation, the risks and uncertainties discussed under the captions “Risk Factors” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” in this Annual Report on Form 10-K could cause actual results and outcomes to differ materially from those reflected in the forward-looking statements. These factors include, without limitation:

•our ability to compete in our highly competitive market;

•our ability to retain existing customers, obtain new customers and generate revenue from new customers;

•our ability to integrate businesses acquired;

•our ability to accurately and timely collect payments from our customers and integration partners;

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•defects, errors or inaccuracies associated with our solutions;

•our use of artificial intelligence and machine learning models;

•our ability to manage our business and conduct our operations internationally;

•our exposure to foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations;

•seasonal fluctuations in advertising activity;

•our limited operating history, which makes it difficult to evaluate our business and prospects;

•adverse developments affecting financial institutions;

•our estimates of market opportunity and forecasts of market growth may prove to be inaccurate;

•impairment of goodwill or other intangible and long-lived assets;

•restrictions contained in the New Revolving Credit Facility (as defined herein);

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•our potential need for future additional financing that may not be available or may reduce our profitability;

•future sales of shares by us or our existing stockholders;

•the significant influence over us by funds affiliated with Providence Equity Partners L.L.C. (“Providence”);

•future offerings of debt or equity securities that would rank senior to our common stock;

•our ability to maintain an effective system of internal controls;

•the possibility of being subject to securities class action litigation due to future stock price volatility.

You should read this Annual Report on Form 10-K completely and with the understanding that actual future results may be materially different from expectations. All forward-looking statements made in this Annual Report on Form 10-K are qualified by these cautionary statements. These forward-looking statements are made only as of the date of this Annual Report on Form 10-K, and we do not undertake any obligation, other than as may be required by law, to update or revise any forward-looking or cautionary statements to reflect changes in assumptions, the occurrence of events, unanticipated or otherwise, and changes in future operating results over time or otherwise.

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MARKET AND INDUSTRY DATA

This Annual Report on Form 10-K includes industry and market data and forecasts pertaining to the industry and markets of DoubleVerify Holdings, Inc. (“DoubleVerify”), including market sizes, market share, market positions and other industry data. Such information is based on our analysis of multiple sources, including publicly available information, industry publications and surveys, reports from government agencies, reports by market research firms and consultants and our own estimates based on internal company data and our management’s knowledge of and experience in the market sectors in which we compete (together, the “Company Data Analysis”). The third-party information contained within the Company Data Analysis has primarily been derived or extrapolated from reports prepared or published by Ad Age, Magna Global and The Harris Poll. We have not independently verified the market and industry data from third-party sources and thus the accuracy and completeness of such information cannot be guaranteed. This information cannot always be verified with complete certainty due to the limits on the availability and reliability of raw data, the voluntary nature of the data gathering process, and other limitations and uncertainties inherent in surveys of market size.

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SERVICE MARKS, TRADEMARKS AND TRADE NAMES

We hold various service marks, trademarks and trade names, such as DoubleVerify, our logo design, DV Authentic Ad, DV Authentic Attention, DV Pinnacle, Authentic Brand Safety and Authentic Brand Suitability, that we deem particularly important to the marketing activities conducted by each of our businesses. Solely for convenience, the trademarks, service marks and trade names referred to in this Annual Report on Form 10-K are without the ® and ™ symbols, but such references are not intended to indicate, in any way, that we will not assert, to the fullest extent under applicable law, our rights to these trademarks, service marks and trade names. This Annual Report on Form 10-K also contains trademarks, service marks and trade names of other companies which are the property of their respective holders. We do not intend our use or display of such names or marks to imply relationships with, or endorsements of us by, any other company.

Unless the context otherwise requires, the terms “DoubleVerify,” ‘‘we,’’ ‘‘us,’’ ‘‘our,’’ and the ‘‘Company,’’ as used in this report refer to DoubleVerify and its consolidated subsidiaries. DoubleVerify and its subsidiary DoubleVerify MidCo, Inc. changed their names from Pixel Group Holdings Inc. and Pixel Parent Inc., respectively, prior to the date of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. All references to DoubleVerify and DoubleVerify MidCo, Inc. are to these entities both prior to and after the name changes.

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PART I

Item 1. Business

Our Company

We are one of the industry’s leading media effectiveness platforms that leverages artificial intelligence (“AI”) to drive superior outcomes for global brands. By creating more effective, transparent ad transactions, we make the digital advertising ecosystem stronger, safer and more secure, thereby preserving the fair value exchange between buyers and sellers of digital media. Our company was founded in 2008 and we introduced our first brand safety and suitability solution in 2010. As the global digital advertising market has evolved, we have continued to expand our capabilities through new product innovation and partnerships across emerging programmatic media buying platforms and digital media channels, including social and CTV.

The advertising industry continues to shift from traditional mediums to an expanding array of digital channels and platforms. Digital advertisers have historically relied on inconsistent, self-reported data from a large number of publishers, social channels and programmatic platforms, making it difficult to form an accurate, unbiased view of how and where their ad budgets are spent. As objectionable content and ad fraud have proliferated across the Internet and other digital channels, advertisers are utilizing independent, third-party solutions to protect their brand equity and optimize the performance of their digital media investments.

Our technology addresses this need by providing unbiased data analytics that enable advertisers to increase the effectiveness, quality and return on their digital advertising investments. Our proprietary DV Authentic Ad metric is our definitive metric of digital media quality, which measures whether a digital ad is displayed in a fraud-free, brand-suitable environment and is fully viewable in the intended geography. Our software platform delivers this metric to our customers in real time, allowing them to access critical performance data on their digital ads. Customers then leverage our data analytics to improve the efficiency of their digital advertising investments by avoiding wasted media spend on blocked or fraudulent ads and to optimize their media strategies in real time by verifying their highest performing ads and content.

Our software platform is integrated across the entire digital advertising ecosystem, including programmatic platforms, social media channels and digital publishers. We deliver unique data analytics through our customer interface, DV Pinnacle, to provide detailed insights into our customers’ media performance on both direct and programmatic media buying platforms and across all key digital media channels (including social, video, mobile in-app and connected TV (“CTV”)), formats (including display and video) and devices (including mobile, desktop and connected televisions). We collected and analyzed data points on the approximately 7.0 trillion Media Transactions Measured (as defined below) by us in 2023, up from 5.5 trillion Media Transactions Measured in 2022 and 4.5 trillion in 2021. We also analyze more than 17 billion digital ad transactions daily, measuring whether ads are delivered in a fraud-free, brand-suitable environment and are fully viewable in the intended geography. Our software platform and unique position in the advertising ecosystem allows us to develop a significant data asset that accumulates over time as we measure an increasing number of media transactions. We are able to leverage our data asset across our existing solutions as well as expand the data asset to launch new solutions that address the evolving needs of advertisers.

Our blue-chip customer base includes many of the largest global brands. We serve over 1,800 customers that are diversified across all major industry verticals, including consumer packaged goods, financial services, telecommunications, technology, automotive and healthcare. In 2023, we had 93 customers who each represented at least $1 million of annual revenue, up from 78 such customers in 2022 and 64 such customers in 2021, with no customer representing more than 10% of our revenue in 2023, 2022 or 2021. In addition to locations in which we currently have a remote or contracted workforce, we serve our customers globally through our offices or commercial operations in 30 locations across 24 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, Singapore, Australia, Brazil, Germany and the United Arab Emirates.

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We generate revenue from our advertising customers based on the volume of media transactions, or ads, that our software platform measures (“Media Transactions Measured”), for which we receive an analysis fee (“Measured Transaction Fee”), enabling us to grow as our customers increase their digital ad spend and as we integrate into new channels and platforms. We have long-term relationships with many of our customers, with an average relationship of approximately eight years for our top 25, 50 and 75 customers, and ongoing contractual agreements with a substantial portion of our customer base. We are also able to increase revenue per customer as we introduce new solutions, which has resulted in a compounded annual growth rate in average revenue for our top 100 customers of 28% from 2020 to 2023. With respect to our overall business, we have delivered strong historical revenue growth, with a compounded annual growth rate of 33% from 2020 to 2023.

Our company was founded in 2008 and introduced our first brand safety and suitability solution in 2010. As the global digital advertising market has evolved, we have continued to expand our capabilities through new product innovation and partnerships across emerging programmatic media buying platforms and digital media channels, including social and CTV.

Our Industry

We believe that our business benefits from many of the most significant trends in digital marketing and advertising, including:

Significant Growth in Digital Ad Spend. The global advertising industry continues to shift from traditional forms of media to digital channels and platforms. Magna Global estimated that global digital ad spend, excluding search, reached over $280 billion in 2023 and is expected to grow to $386 billion by 2027. We believe the shift towards digital spend will continue as new distribution channels and advertising formats emerge that enable advertisers to more effectively reach their target audiences.

Acceleration of Programmatic Ad Buying. Advertisers are increasingly shifting their digital media buying to programmatic platforms, which automate the digital ad buying process through the use of computer algorithms and deliver targeted advertisements utilizing vast data sets. Programmatic ad buyers and trading platforms benefit from consistent access to high quality and accurate data and analytics to improve purchasing decisions and optimize the efficacy of their ads. Furthermore, advertisers value having a single, unified data source for all of their digital media transactions that they can leverage to help make real-time decisions on programmatic ad placements across all channels and formats.

Emergence of CTV and Other New Digital Channels. Over time, the emergence of new digital channels, such as social, has attracted significant advertiser interest and investment. In turn, this has created additional demand for digital measurement and analytics solutions. Today, CTV represents a large new frontier for digital advertising as global linear television media spend continues to migrate to digital channels. CTV presents a significant opportunity for full-suite measurement and analytics providers due to the fragmented inventory and ad fraud emerging within this channel.

Importance of Brand Reputation. With the increasing scale of digital media channels, advertisers are placing a greater emphasis on understanding where their ads are placed and the content with which it is presented. Context of ad placement has become as important to a brand as the content of the ad itself. According to a study that we commissioned with The Harris Poll, nearly two-thirds of consumers expressed that they would stop using a brand or product that advertises next to false, objectionable or inflammatory content. More than ever, advertisers are being held accountable for brand and content alignment. In response, advertisers are adopting scalable, sophisticated brand suitability solutions to ensure effective use of their global digital media spend.

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Desire to Improve Media Quality and Effectiveness. The significant growth in digital advertising has resulted in wasted ad spend due to ads that are never seen as a result of continually evolving ad fraud activities, including bots, fake clicks and fraudulent web sites. New and sophisticated schemes, particularly across emerging channels such as CTV and mobile in-app, are uncovered each day. We have identified nearly 20,000 fraudulent CTV/mobile apps as of December 31, 2023. In addition, even when an ad is verified to be fraud- free, there is no certainty that it is actually viewable. To combat these issues, advertisers, digital publishers and media platforms rely on robust measurement solutions to validate the performance of their marketing campaigns and ensure that they are only paying for verified ads.

Rising Adoption of Independent, Cookie-Less, Cross-Platform Solutions. The proliferation of digital channels, formats and devices has made it more difficult for advertisers to measure campaign performance across all platforms. This measurement has been further complicated by recent moves by some large device manufacturers and certain closed platforms, which are often referred to as “walled gardens,” to restrict cookie and identifier-based data sharing. As a result, advertisers are increasingly adopting full-suite solutions that are not dependent on cookies or cross-site individual-level data trackers and can be used seamlessly across devices, the open web and the walled gardens.

Artificial Intelligence. Generative AI tools are powerful and accessible to everyone – including bad actors. AI is being used to populate content farms, exacerbating the proliferation of clickbait articles, made-for-advertising (“MFA”) content and inaccurate and misleading information. The rapidly-evolving, AI-powered internet will amplify advertisers’ need to protect media quality and we believe that we offer the most robust and granular brand suitability avoidance and measurement solutions in the industry, including the industry’s first comprehensive toolkit for MFA classification, measurement and protection. Our solutions seek to ensure that advertisers’ marketing efforts are strategically aligned with brand goals and values, to foster deeper consumer engagement and trust, while also optimizing investments and performance. In addition, we are leveraging AI to accelerate content classification across languages as well as to deliver cost-effective video classification.

Our Strengths

We believe the following attributes and capabilities form our core strengths and provide us with competitive advantages:

Best-in-Class Software Platform. Our technology stack enables us to develop proprietary advertising performance metrics on each digital ad transaction. This precision sets us apart from our competitors and allows us to combine and deliver performance measurements across fraud, brand safety and suitability, viewability and geography into a single, unique metric (the DV Authentic Ad), as well as the flexibility to disaggregate and analyze the individual measurements for each delivered ad.

Broad Ecosystem Coverage. We provide comprehensive performance measurement metrics across all key digital channels where our customers advertise and deliver them through the major platforms through which they purchase advertising. Our technology is used in major platforms that provide direct, programmatic and social advertising, including Google, Facebook, TikTok, Amazon and The Trade Desk. As new media formats emerge, the strength of our solutions and the flexibility of our software platform allows us to seamlessly onboard new integration partners and secure new partnerships as selling channels for our solutions. For example, as CTV continues to become an increasingly prominent advertising channel, we have secured partnership agreements with multiple leading CTV platforms.

Powerful Network Effect Fueled by a Robust and Scalable Data Asset. Our software platform and unique position in the advertising ecosystem allows us to develop a significant data asset that accumulates over time as we measure an increasing number of media transactions. This virtuous cycle allows us to deliver better results as we build broader data sets and enables us to enhance and expand the solutions we deliver to customers. The knowledge from the billions of detailed data points we gather daily has enabled us to develop an extensive data asset that we leverage across our existing solutions as well as expand the data asset to launch new solutions that address the evolving needs of advertisers. The strength of our solutions attracts new customers which increases the ad transactions we measure and data we collect, further strengthening the value of our network.

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Compelling Value Proposition Driving High Customer ROI. We enable our customers to optimize return on their marketing investments for a fraction of the underlying media cost. Our unique data analytics are used by our advertiser customers to target the highest performing ad inventory and receive refunds or credits for digital ads that do not meet certain criteria. In addition, our solutions help our customers preserve one of their most important and invaluable assets — brand reputation — by ensuring ads are not shown near content that is inconsistent with their brand message.

Track Record of Successful Product Innovation. We have a track record of developing new solutions for our customers that provide increased relationship value and drive incremental average revenue per customer, thereby deepening our competitive edge. As of December 31, 2023, we had 209 software and data engineers employed with us throughout our seven research and development centers focused on product development, including our office in Tel Aviv. We launched our first brand safety and suitability solution in 2010 and have continued to develop leading-edge solutions ever since.

Loyal and Growing Customer Base. Our customers currently include over 50 of the top 100 global advertisers, according to Ad Age. In each of the years 2021-2023, we maintained over 95% gross revenue retention rates across our customer base and retained 100% of our top 75 customers. With this foundation, we were able to drive net revenue retention of 124% in 2023, 127% in 2022 and 126% in 2021 through increased advertising volume and the successful launch of newly-introduced solutions.

Scaled and Profitable Business Model. We have an attractive operating model, driven by the scalability of our platform, the consistent nature of our revenue, our significant operating leverage and low capital intensity. Our platform allows us to provide large-scale data analytics to customers around the world seamlessly and cost-effectively. We are able to scale our solutions efficiently and with limited incremental cost for new customers and additional solutions. We have grown our business while also achieving profitability, demonstrating the strength of our platform and business model. For additional detail on costs of sales excluding depreciation and amortization, see “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations — Results of Operations.”

Well-Aligned with Privacy Restrictions and Platform Evolution. We believe that we are well-positioned to benefit from broader government regulations and changing industry privacy standards that increasingly restrict the collection and use of personal data for advertising purposes. Additionally, as device manufacturers and walled garden platforms aggressively move to curtail the use of cookie-based data collection across their properties, measurement, advertising solutions that are not based on these tracking and collection tools will benefit. Our core software platform does not rely on third-party cookies, persistent identifiers or cross-site tracking technology to deliver our measurement and analytics solutions. Additionally, the core contextual data set that we use to provide our measurement and analytics solutions can also provide advertisers with an alternative source of data to deliver targeted advertising.

Our Solutions

The DV Authentic Ad

The DV Authentic Ad is our definitive metric of digital media quality, which evaluates the existence of fraud, brand safety and suitability, viewability and geography for each digital ad:

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DV Authentic Attention

DV Authentic Attention is DoubleVerify’s MRC-accredited, privacy-friendly attention measurement solution that provides actionable, comprehensive data to drive campaign performance — from the impact of an ad’s presentation to key dimensions of consumer engagement. Developed in 2020 and released in February 2021, this rich dataset enables granular attention measurement and campaign optimization at scale.

Building on the data we aggregate to deliver our definitive media quality metric, the DV Authentic Ad, DV Authentic Attention analyzes data points on the exposure of a digital ad and consumer’s engagement with a digital ad and device — in real-time. For exposure, DV Authentic Attention evaluates an ad’s entire presentation, quantifying its intensity and prominence through metrics that include viewable time, share of screen, video presentation, audibility, and more. For engagement, DV Authentic Attention analyzes key user-initiated events that occur while the ad creative is exposed, including user touches, screen orientation, video playback, and audio control interactions. Exposure and Engagement ladder up into the DV Attention Index, an overarching measure of attention that provides key insights into campaign performance. Our customers use DV Authentic Attention to predict which ads will impact consumers and drive outcomes, enabling them to make changes to their media strategies in real time.

Custom Contextual

In late 2020, we launched our Custom Contextual solution to enhance our programmatic advertising solutions. Advertisers use our Custom Contextual solution to match their ads to relevant content in order to maximize user engagement and drive optimal campaign performance. Custom Contextual metrics leverage our content-derived analytics data and are not reliant on third-party cookies or cross-site tracking technology. Custom Contextual enables advertisers to target audiences based on key points of interest even in web browsers and operating systems that have phased out or ended the use of third-party tracking technology, and also positions them to align with existing privacy regulations.

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Scibids AI

In August 2023, we acquired Scibids Technology SAS (“Scibids”), a global leader in AI-powered digital campaign optimization. Our Scibids AI solution empowers global brands to leverage Demand-Side Platform impression-level data, first-party data, measurement data and cost data in order to build algorithmic models that more effectively drive specific key performance indicators and tangible outcomes while improving operational efficiency and reducing manual lift. Scibids AI technology does not rely on digital identifiers such as cookies and can be activated across leading Demand-Side Platforms, such as The Trade Desk, DV360, and Xandr.

Supply-Side Solutions

We provide our software solutions and data analytics to publishers and other supply-side customers to enable them to maximize revenue from their digital advertising inventory. Supply-side advertising platforms (such as ad networks and exchanges) utilize our data analytics to validate the quality of their ad inventory and provide metrics to their customers to facilitate the targeting and purchasing of digital ads. We also provide the DV Publisher Suite, a unified solution for digital publishers to manage revenue and increase inventory yield by improving video delivery, identifying lost or unfilled sales, and better aggregate data across all inventory sources. The DV Publisher Suite provides the following features to publishers:

Our Customer Interface

We believe our proprietary customer interface, DV Pinnacle, was the industry’s first unified service and analytics platform user interface. DV Pinnacle allows our customers to adjust and deploy controls for their media plan and track campaign performance metrics across channels, formats and devices.

Profile and Controls: DV Pinnacle allows brands to set profiles and adjust controls for their media plan’s verification settings which are then consistently and automatically deployed across all of an advertiser’s digital buying channels. Our customers use DV Pinnacle to configure their Authentic Brand Suitability settings such as inclusion/exclusion lists, override lists, custom keyword avoidance, inappropriate content avoidance categories, as well as app brand suitability controls such as filtering by app category, star reviews and age ratings. These settings are then automatically uploaded into our customers’ programmatic platforms for complete synchronicity between their pre bid and post purchase measurement settings.

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Analytics: DV Pinnacle enables advertisers to gain a clear understanding of the quality and effectiveness of their digital media campaigns and allows them to take appropriate actions for campaign optimization. DV Pinnacle generates industry benchmarks that are dynamically refreshed enabling customers to compare the quality of their ads against their peers and allows users to set specific thresholds on key performance indicators that drive success of the media campaign, such as blocking rates, ad delivery and viewability.

Integration and Channel Partnerships

Our technology is integrated with leading digital advertising technology channels, supporting the distribution of our programmatic solutions and enabling us to analyze a broad footprint of data and deliver a comprehensive analysis for our customers. These digital ecosystem integrations are highly complex, requiring significant time and capital to develop, and they are a key driver of our success by creating highly scalable network effects. Our position as a strong, independent analytics partner has enabled us to integrate with key global platforms, including social channels, many of whom are very selective in granting third parties access to their technology environments. As new media formats emerge, the strength of our solutions and the flexibility of our software platform allows us to efficiently onboard new integration partners and secure new partnerships as selling channels for our solutions. Further, as we build new product sets, these flexible integrations and partnerships allow for seamless distribution of new services on existing partner platforms. We maintain a team of dedicated business development professionals who manage existing partnerships and develop new channels.

Select integration and channel partners include:

Our advertising customers often purchase the Company’s solutions through a Demand-Side Platform. Demand-Side Platforms have technology to manage an advertiser’s bidding process on exchanges that facilitate the buying and selling of advertising inventory from multiple advertising networks. Customers leverage the Company’s solutions on Demand-Side Platforms to enable the advertiser to evaluate the quality of advertising inventory up for bid on an advertising exchange. To make the Company’s solutions available to advertiser customers through a Demand-Side Platform, the Company enters into agreements with programmatic partners that allow our technology to be integrated into the Demand-Side Platform and enable customers to access our solutions through the platform. Under the terms of these agreements with Demand-Side Platforms, the programmatic partner collects fees from the Company’s advertiser customers and remits them to the Company. Because our advertiser customers obtain control of the Company’s solutions to inform their purchasing decision, rather than the programmatic partners providing access to the Demand-Side Platform, the Company records revenue for the gross amounts paid by its advertiser customers for these Company-provided solutions, and the amounts retained by the programmatic partners are recorded by the Company as a cost of sales.

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Sales, Marketing and Customer Support

Our go-to-market strategy for new customers is focused on driving awareness for our solutions, and fostering relationships with senior brand executives and Chief Marketing Officers of leading brands, agencies and publishers. Our sales presentation is focused on the market challenges that we address, the benefits that customers have achieved utilizing our solutions and the product innovation and differentiation that drive our superior results. We target the largest global advertisers and we believe that we offer the most comprehensive suite of solutions available in the market.

Our commercial organization is aligned by geographically focused teams, comprising sales and account management professionals in the Americas, EMEA and APAC, and professionals dedicated to global client and agency relationships. We regularly seek to expand into new geographies based on demand from existing customers and the attractiveness of the potential market opportunity, including recent expansion in southeast Asia, Japan, India and the Middle East region.

Our sales professionals are responsible for driving the overall commercial strategy, establishing early connections and maintaining relationships with large, blue-chip brands and global advertising agencies and expanding our existing customer relationships. Our customer support team handles all aspects of customer relationships from pre-sale technical support to client onboarding, training and implementation of our solutions. Account managers work closely with product managers to provide direct customer feedback, which is also shared with our technology and development organization, enabling them to implement ongoing improvements and identify potential new product categories.

Our marketing team’s objectives are to build brand leadership globally, drive sales empowerment through lead generation and top-of-funnel pipeline growth, and support customer retention and up-sell through industry insights, thought leadership and analysis of customer data. We execute this strategy through frequent publications of industry insight reports, whitepapers, case studies, earned media, participation at industry conferences and frequent engagement with the world’s leading brands.

As of December 31, 2023, we had 448 professionals on our Commercial organization teams, of which 174 were sales professionals, 55 were marketing professionals and 219 were account managers and customer support representatives. Our sales, marketing and customer support expenses were $126.0 million, $107.4 million and $77.3 million for each of the years ended December 31, 2023, December 31, 2022 and December 31, 2021.

Product Development

Ongoing product innovation is central to our business. Rapid advancement of our product capabilities has enabled our business to meet customer needs in the dynamic digital advertising landscape. Through our innovation, we have been able to continuously add new capabilities to our solutions.

Our engineering team, consisting of 297 employees as of December 31, 2023, is responsible for the development of software and the operations of our infrastructure. We use an agile development process with automated quality assurance, deployment and post-deployment testing to rapidly build, test and deploy new functionality.

Our product team, consisting of 175 employees as of December 31, 2023, is responsible for working with our sales, account management, marketing and business development teams to understand customer input, assess the market opportunity and define the product roadmap. This team is structurally aligned with our engineering organization to ensure there is direct accountability for all aspects of research and product development. Our team includes expert linguists, content classification analysts, fraud researchers and other supporting operational roles which provide the domain expertise and ongoing product development to ensure the highest possible quality of our technology.

Our product development expenses were $125.4 million, $95.1 million and $62.7 million for each of the years ended December 31, 2023, December 31, 2022 and December 31, 2021. We intend to continue to invest in our research and development capabilities to extend our platform to cover a broader range of products, customers and geographies.

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Technology

Our technology is designed to provide our customers with precise, real-time decision-making and measurement data across their digital advertising campaigns.

Our commitment to providing innovative and accurate advertising data and analytics is accomplished through the following core technology components:

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Certifications and Accreditations

Digital advertising measurement is subject to numerous governing industry standards, guidelines and best practices. Supporting these standards are organizations that conduct audit-based accreditations and other certification processes for media measurement products and to renew accreditations on an annual basis. We have received accreditations and certifications from a wide range of industry bodies, including the Media Rating Council (MRC), Trustworthy Accountability Group and Joint Industry Committee for Digital Advertising Quality (JICDAQ), and are signatory to or participate in initiatives by industry bodies such as the German Association for the Digital Economy (BVDW) and Centre d’Étude des Supports de Publicité (CESP). In addition, as part of our ongoing commitment to privacy compliance and data governance, we are the only major digital ad verification provider to achieve certifications for EU-U.S. focused International Privacy Verification (IPV), Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Cross Border Privacy Rules (CBPR), and Privacy Recognition for Processors (PRP) through TrustArc. In 2022, we also achieved ISO 27001:2013 certification for our information security management system.

The MRC is a U.S. based independent organization that updates and maintains the Minimum Standards for Media Rating Research (the “MRC Minimum Standards”), which set strict guidelines for the media measurement industry and are intended to ensure:

We are accredited by the MRC for our impression measurement solutions, including fraud, brand safety and suitability, display viewability and video viewability, and our proprietary metric, the DV Authentic Ad. In late 2020, we were the first third-party solution to gain MRC accreditation for integrated viewability measurement on Facebook. In early 2021, we received MRC accreditation for display and video rendered ad impression measurement and sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT) filtration, including app fraud, in the CTV media environment and, in July 2021, we received MRC accreditation for video filtering, benchmarks, and CTV fully on-screen metrics. In 2021, we were also accredited by the MRC for classification in over 35 languages at the page and domain levels and accredited across 173 languages for language targeting and keyword blocking. In 2022, we were accredited by the MRC for our independent third-party calculation and reporting of Google’s Ads Data Hub (ADH) Video Impressions, viewable impressions and related viewability metrics, Display and Video DV Authentic Attention, and Display and Video CTV Ad verification metrics in English as well as eight other languages.

To receive these MRC accreditations, an independent third-party conducts annual audits of our solutions to evaluate whether they meet the MRC Minimum Standards, which include a technical review of our measurement and data analytics solutions and an evaluation of how we operate within the technical environments of the digital advertising ecosystem.

The accreditations and certifications of our products gives advertisers confidence in the efficacy and reliability of our solutions. These accreditations and certifications also ensure that our partners and other participants in the digital advertising ecosystem that are impacted by our digital media measurement can trust that our solutions are consistent, fair and meet industry standards. We continue to invest in maintaining and growing our accreditations and certifications as they are a key element to ensuring our solutions are trusted by market participants around the globe. The expansive coverage of our certifications and accreditations across metrics, standards, devices and regions represents a significant expenditure of capital and years of auditing that can be difficult for new market entrants to obtain.

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Competition

We operate in a competitive end market with multiple different types of competitors. Our primary competition is other digital ad measurement providers, including Moat and Grapeshot, which are part of the Oracle Data Cloud, and Integral Ad Science. There are several companies that provide point solutions that address individual aspects of digital ad measurement, such as HUMAN (formerly known as White Ops) and Zefr, or geographically focused companies. Some of our ad platform partners also offer their own measurement solutions solely for ads placed through their ad buying tools.

We believe the principal competitive factors in our market include the following:

We believe we compete favorably on these factors and we will continue to provide valuable data and analytics to our customers.

Seasonality

We experience fluctuations in revenue that coincide with seasonal fluctuations in the digital ad spending of our customers. Advertisers typically allocate the largest portion of their media budgets to the fourth quarter of the calendar year in order to coincide with increased holiday purchasing. As a result, the fourth quarter of the year typically reflects our highest level of measurement activity while the first quarter reflects the lowest level of such activity. We expect our revenue to continue to fluctuate based on seasonal factors that affect the advertising industry as a whole. While our revenue is highly recurring, seasonal fluctuations in ad spend may impact quarter-over-quarter results. We believe that the year-over- year comparison of results more appropriately reflects the overall performance of the business.

Intellectual Property

The protection of our intellectual property is important to our success and our internally developed technology provides the foundation of our proprietary suite of products. We rely on intellectual property laws in the U.S. and abroad, as well as confidentiality procedures and contractual restrictions, to protect our intellectual property. We believe our solutions are difficult to replicate and we will continue to enhance our intellectual property portfolio as we develop new solutions for our customers.

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We have two registered U.S. patents, five international patents (three in Europe and two in Japan) and five pending patent applications. We also hold various service marks, trademarks and trade names, including DoubleVerify, our logo design, DV Authentic Ad, DV Authentic Attention, DV Pinnacle, Authentic Brand Safety and Authentic Brand Suitability, that we deem important to our business. We have over 15 registered U.S. trademarks and four pending U.S. trademark applications, and over 15 trademarks that we have registered in various jurisdictions abroad.

People and Culture

We help brands improve the effectiveness of their online advertising, giving them clarity and confidence in their digital investment. Confidence is built on trust. We work to build trust by ensuring our company’s mission, team, and actions are aligned with transparency and authenticity. Trust is foundational to both the lasting partnerships we have built with clients and with our employees as well.

Employee Metrics

Behind all of our innovations are talented people around the world who bring them to life. We believe that attracting, engaging, and retaining top talent is crucial to our continued success. We have 1,101 passionate, accountable, collaborative, employees who are “All In” on our mission to optimize advertising outcomes for global brands. 657 of our employees are based in New York, London, and Tel Aviv, and approximately 41% are located outside of the Americas. We also incorporate contracted resources to expand the reach of our full-time workforce.

Diversity and Inclusion

We are committed to fostering an equitable, intentionally inclusive culture, where differences are celebrated, marginalized voices are heard, and each employee is empowered by a sense of belonging. We take action to realize this commitment through building our capabilities, investing in our people to fuel ingenuity and innovation, creating workplace environments that foster partnership, community, psychological safety and belonging, and using data to quantify our progress and hold each other accountable.

Investing in our people

We believe inclusive benefits are a critical part of delivering an exceptional employee experience for our people. Therefore, we offer a competitive compensation and benefits program that supports our employees’ physical, mental, and financial health.

To support the development of our employees’ skills and abilities, we provide a wide range of learning and growth opportunities including leadership, personal development, and other technical training. In addition, we provide tuition reimbursement for educational programs our employees may wish to enroll in outside of the programming we provide.

We are dedicated to the health, safety, and wellness of our employees, as each is integral to our success as an organization. We provide our employees and their families with access to a variety of programs, including access to online mental health resources, wellness expense reimbursements, and paid time off for “wellness days”. We embrace a flexible hybrid work model, enabling our employees to split time between working from the office and working from home. The number of colleagues that are fully remote has increased and we continue to reimagine the future of work to support the needs of our people.

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Regulatory Matters

U.S. and international data security and privacy laws apply to our business. As a general matter, our core software platform does not rely on third-party cookies, persistent identifiers or cross-site technology, but our measurement of digital ads depends, in part, on the use of certain tracking technologies to measure a user’s views and interactions with digital ads. As such, we rely on limited personally identifiable information to enable some aspects of our solutions. Our ability, like those of other advertising technology companies in the verification space, to use such tracking technologies is governed by U.S. and foreign laws and regulations, which change from time to time. Additionally, many countries have data protection laws with different requirements than those in the U.S. and this may result in inconsistent requirements and differing interpretations across jurisdictions. Governments, privacy advocates and class action attorneys are increasingly scrutinizing companies for compliance with data privacy requirements and the sufficiency of existing frameworks. Among the most sensitive topics recently being debated is the issue of the transfer of personally identifiable information between countries (known as onward transfers), with a particular focus on transfers from the European Union (“EU”) to the United States. As of 2023, EU and U.S. officials announced an agreement on and the enactment of the “Data Privacy Framework” or “DPF,” and the DPF was also adopted by the United Kingdom (“UK”) and Switzerland. Participating companies are able to rely on the DPF to support data transfers to the United States. The Company joined the EU-US, UK-US and Swiss-US DPF in the summer of 2023. While the enactment of the DPF has relieved some concerns around the issue of data transfers to the United States, the framework has been challenged by several activists claiming it is insufficient to safeguard EU citizens’ personal data in the United States. Successful legal challenge could cause uncertainty around the feasibility of transfers of personal data from the EU, the UK and Switzerland, to the United States, and has the potential to adversely affect our operations and business.

New laws restricting the collection, processing and use of personal data have been enacted in California (the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) and the California Privacy Rights and Enforcement Act (“CPRA”)) and other states in the U.S., the U.K. (the General Data Protection Regulation (“UK GDPR”), Brazil (the Brazilian General Data Protection Law) and Europe (the General Data Protection Regulation (“EU GDPR”) and more are being considered that may affect our ability to implement our business models effectively. Further, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”) applies to websites and other online services that are directed to children under thirteen (13) years of age and imposes certain restrictions on the collection, use and disclosure of personal information from these websites and online services. Changes or expansions to these and other legislation or regulations that further restrict the collection, processing and use of personal data, as well as the consequential changes to voluntary frameworks relied upon within the industry, could result in changes to the digital advertising ecosystem and our channel partners’ business practices and may require us to alter the functionality of our measurement solutions. We continue to monitor changes in all applicable data security and privacy regulations and laws in order to maintain compliance with such regulations and laws.

Available Information

We file Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, proxy statements, and related amendments and other information with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). You may access and read our filings without charge through the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov or through our website at http://ir.doubleverify.com, as soon as reasonably practicable after such materials are filed with or furnished to the SEC pursuant to Section 13(a) or 15(d) of the Exchange Act. 

Website addresses referred to in this Annual Report on Form 10-K are not intended to function as hyperlinks, and the information contained on our website is not incorporated into, and does not form a part of this Annual Report on Form 10-K or any other report or documents we file with or furnish to the SEC. 

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Item 1A. Risk Factors

RISK FACTORS

Investing in our common stock involves a high degree of risk. You should consider and read carefully all of the risks and uncertainties described below, as well as other information contained in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, including the Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations and our consolidated financial statements and related notes appearing elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, before making an investment in our common stock. The risks described below are not the only ones facing us. The occurrence of any of the following risks or additional risks and uncertainties not presently known to us could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations or cash flows. In any such case, the trading price of our common stock could decline, and you may lose all or part of your investment. This Annual Report on Form 10-K also contains forward-looking statements and estimates that involve risks and uncertainties. Our actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements as a result of specific factors, including the risks and uncertainties described below.

Risk Factors Summary

Below is a summary of the principal factors that make an investment in our common stock speculative or risky:

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Risks Relating to Our Business

If we fail to respond to technological developments or evolving industry standards, our solutions may become obsolete or less competitive.

Our future success will depend in part on our ability to develop new solutions and modify or enhance our existing platform in order to meet customer needs, add functionality and address technological advancements. To remain competitive, we will need to continuously upgrade our existing platform and develop new solutions that address evolving technologies and standards across all major channels, formats and devices for digital advertising, including mobile, social, video, in-app, display and connected television, as well as across digital media buying platforms, such as programmatic, direct ad exchanges and trading networks. We may be unsuccessful in upgrading our existing platform or identifying new solutions in a timely or cost-effective manner, or we may be limited in our ability to develop or market new or upgraded solutions due to patents held by others. In addition, any new product innovations may not achieve the market penetration or price levels necessary for profitability. Advancements in technology such as AI and machine learning are changing the way people work by automating tasks, enhancing communication, and improving decision-making processes, and our business may be harmed or we may face competitive disadvantage if we are slow to adopt these new technologies. If we are unable to develop timely enhancements to, and new features for, our existing platform or if we are unable to develop new solutions that align with advertiser demands as priorities shift or keep pace with rapid technological developments or changing industry standards, the solutions we deliver may become obsolete, less marketable and less competitive, and our business, financial condition and results of operations may be adversely affected. Further, if our existing and future product offerings fail to maintain or achieve Media Rating Council (“MRC”) or other industry accreditation standards, customer acceptance of our products may decrease.

The market in which we participate is highly competitive.

The market for measurement, data analytics and authentication of digital advertising is competitive and evolving rapidly. As this market evolves, competition may intensify as existing companies expand their businesses and new companies enter the market, which could lead to commoditization and harm our ability to increase revenue and maintain profitability. Our success depends on our ability to retain and grow our existing customers and sell our platform and solutions to new customers. If existing or new companies develop, market or offer competitive products, acquire one of our competitors or form a strategic alliance with one of our competitors or integration partners, our ability to attract new customers or retain existing customers could be adversely impacted and our results of operations could be harmed. In addition, we have partnerships with platforms to allow our customers to utilize our solutions, and these integration partners, some of which have significant market share in the segment in which they operate, could develop products that compete with us in the future. Our current and potential competitors may have more financial, technical, marketing and other resources, as well as longer operating histories and greater name recognition than we do. As a result, these competitors may be better able to respond quickly to new technologies or devote greater resources to the development, promotion, sale and support of their products and services. We cannot assure you that our customers will continue to use our platform or that we will be able to replace, in a timely manner or at all, departing customers with new customers that generate comparable revenue.

We believe that our ability to compete successfully in our market depends on a number of factors, both within and outside of our control, including: (i) the price, quality and effectiveness of our solutions and those of our competitors; (ii) our ability to retain and add new integration partners; (iii) the timing and success of new product introductions; (iv) our position as an independent third-party within the digital advertising ecosystem; (v) the emergence of new technologies; (vi) the number and nature of our competitors; (vii) the protection of our intellectual property rights; (viii) the adoption of new privacy standards or regulations; and (ix) general market and economic conditions. The competitive environment could result in price reductions that could result in lower profits and loss of market share. If we are unable to compete successfully against our current and future competitors, we may not be able to retain and acquire customers and our business, financial condition and results of operations could be adversely affected.

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System failures, security breaches, cyberattacks or natural disasters could interrupt the operation of our platform and data centers and significantly harm our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Our success depends on the efficient and uninterrupted operation of our platform. A failure of our computer systems, or those of our demand-side integration partners, could impede access to our platform, interfere with our data analytics, prevent the timely delivery of our solutions or damage our reputation. In the future, we may need to expand our systems at a significant cost and at a more rapid pace than we have to date. We may be unable to provide our solutions on a timely basis or experience performance issues with our platform if we fail to adequately expand or maintain our system capabilities to meet future requirements. Any disruption in our ability to operate our platform will prevent us from providing the solutions requested by our customers and partners, which may damage our reputation and result in the loss of customers or integration partners and the imposition of penalties or other legal or regulatory action, and our business, financial condition and results of operations could be adversely affected.

In delivering our solutions, we are dependent on the operation of our data centers as well as those of third-party service providers whether in cloud or dedicated environments, which are vulnerable to damage or interruption from earthquakes, terrorist attacks, war, floods, fires, power loss, telecommunications failures, computer viruses, computer denial of service attacks or other attempts to harm our system and similar events. Some of our systems are not fully redundant, and our disaster recovery planning cannot account for all eventualities. The occurrence of any issues or failures at our data centers (or the data centers of any of our third party vendors) could result in interruptions in the delivery of our solutions to our customers.

The risk of cyberattacks has also increased and will continue to increase in connection with geopolitical conflicts and wars (including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and conflicts arising from Hamas’ attack against Israel). In light of these conflicts and wars, state-sponsored parties or their supporters may initiate retaliatory cyberattacks, and may attempt to cause supply chain disruptions, or to conduct other geopolitically motived retaliatory actions that may adversely disrupt or degrade our operations. State-sponsored parties have, and will continue, to conduct cyberattacks to achieve their goals that may include espionage, monetary gain, disruption, and destruction.

In addition, our ability to operate our platform and deliver our solutions may be interrupted by computer viruses, cyberattacks and security breaches. For example, unauthorized parties have in the past and may attempt in the future to gain access to our information systems and data. Outside parties have in the past and may also attempt in the future to fraudulently induce our employees or users of our platform to disclose sensitive information via illegal electronic spamming, social engineering, phishing, account takeovers, mobile phone malware and SIM card swapping, credential stuffing or other tactics. Our IT and security teams regularly review our systems and security measures and evaluate ways to enhance our processes and controls, including to protect against the increasing sophistication of cyberattacks fueled by emerging technologies like AI. We cannot guarantee that a security incident will not occur or that any such incident will be detected or remediated in a timely manner. Any breach of our security measures or the accidental loss, inadvertent disclosure or unauthorized dissemination of proprietary information or sensitive, personal or confidential data about us, our employees or our customers or integration partners, including the potential loss or disclosure of such information or data as a result of hacking, fraud, trickery or other forms of deception, could expose us, our employees, our customers or our integration partners to risks of loss or misuse of this information. Any such breach, loss, disclosure or dissemination may also result in potential liability or fines, governmental inquiry or oversight, litigation or a loss of customer confidence, any of which could harm our business and damage our reputation, possibly impeding our ability to retain and attract new customers, and cause a material adverse effect on our operations and financial condition.

Certain of our third-party service providers and other vendors have access to portions of our IT system. Performance failures or acts of negligence by these service providers may cause material disruptions to our IT systems. For more information about the cybersecurity risk management program, refer to “Item 1C. Cybersecurity” in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

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Our solutions rely on integrations with demand- and supply-side advertising platforms, ad servers and social platforms.

Our solutions necessitate that demand- and supply-side advertising platforms, ad servers and social platforms accept and integrate with our technology. We have formed partnerships with these platforms to integrate our technology with their software, allowing our customers to utilize our solutions wherever they purchase or place an ad. These platforms may deploy code or change operations that may impact joint solution and combined functionality, which would have a significant effect on our ability to offer our solutions. Some of these integration partners have significant market share in the segment in which they operate. We can make no assurances that our existing integration partners will continue to, or that potential new integration partners will agree to, integrate our solutions. We also cannot assure you that our customers will continue to use our solutions available on these digital media platforms. Some of our integration partners have developed products that compete with us and we cannot assure you that other partners will not also develop competing products in the future. If our customers stopped using our solutions on these digital media platforms or if our integration partners decide to cease integrating our solutions, our business, financial condition and results of operations could be adversely affected.

Even if our integration partners continue their partnerships with us, we are continuously required to update and enhance our solutions to adapt to changes in software, networking, browser, and database technologies. For example, we may be required to make changes based on a unilateral change that an integration partner makes to its platform in order to integrate our solutions or to have the integration operate in the same manner that it did prior to the integration partner’s change. The integration partner’s change may cause a malfunction in the integration leading to a break in services. We cannot assure you that any updated solutions will be compatible or accepted by our integration partners.

Additionally, some of our integration partners are subject to regulatory actions, which, if successful, could cause our partners to be broken into separate companies. Certain of our partners have been the subject of allegations of taking illegal actions to acquire rivals and stifle competition. If our partners and their products are separated into separate companies, it could have a material effect on our ability to gather data and there can be no assurance that all of the separated companies will continue to be our partners, each of which could materially affect our business, results of operations, and revenues.

Our business, financial condition and results of operations could also be adversely affected by social issues or disruptions. For example, if there is public disapproval or boycotting of a specific platform, our ability to optimize ad placement or to forecast usage may be impacted based on unforeseen trends or events. Additionally, how we categorize specific sites in the course of our normal business operations could expose us to risks from publishers or advertisers who may disagree with our categorizations and incur negative ramifications if they believe their ads were monetarily contributing to websites that contribute to the spread of hate speech, disinformation, white supremacist activity, or voter suppression efforts, among other things. If publishers or advertisers believe our categorizations are faulty or unreliable, they may decrease or cease to use our solutions, which could affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

In addition, we rely on our demand-side and social integration partners to report to us on the usage of our solutions on their platforms, as well as revenue generated on their platforms. Any financial, technical or other difficulties our integration partners face may negatively impact our business, as a significant portion of our revenue depends on customers using our solutions on these digital media platforms, and we are unable to predict the nature and extent of any such impact. We exercise very little control over our integration partners, which increases our vulnerability to problems with the services they provide and our reliance upon them for accurate data and revenue reporting. Any errors, failures, interruptions or delays experienced in connection with our integration partners could adversely affect our business, reputation and financial condition.

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Economic downturns and unstable market conditions could adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Our business depends on the demand for digital advertising measurement and authentication and on the overall economic health of our customers and integration partners. There is no assurance the digital advertising market will experience the growth we anticipate. The health of the digital advertising market and the related measurement and authentication sector is affected by many factors. Current or future economic downturns or unstable market conditions in the markets and geographies that we currently serve, and associated macroeconomic conditions such as high inflation rates, high interest rates, recessionary fears, changes in foreign currency exchange rates, the conditions caused by the 2019 novel coronavirus or other future health pandemics and the impact of geopolitical instability in many parts of the world, may make it difficult for our customers and us to accurately forecast and plan future business activities, and could cause our customers to decrease their advertising budgets or slow the growth of their digital ad spend, which could adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations. As we explore new countries to expand our business, economic downturns or unstable market conditions for geo-political or other reasons in any of those countries could result in our investments not yielding the returns we anticipate.

The macroeconomic conditions described above may affect how our customers conduct their businesses and adversely affect our customers’ willingness to utilize our solutions and delay prospective customers’ purchasing decisions. Our customers may decrease their overall advertising budgets as a response to economic uncertainty, a decline in their business activity, and other macroeconomic impacts on their business or industry.

We utilize a “hybrid” working model, combining both in-office and remote work environments. Remote working arrangements may expose us to increased security risk and privacy concerns and there may be heightened sensitivity from government regulators with respect to privacy compliance in the current environment. Over time, hybrid working arrangements may diminish the cohesiveness of our personnel teams and our ability to maintain our culture, both of which are critical to our success. Hybrid working arrangements may also adversely affect our ability to foster a creative environment, hire additional qualified personnel and retain existing key personnel, any of which could adversely affect our productivity and overall operations. In addition, in-office work environments could expose our employees to health risks, and us to associated liability, and we could incur additional costs. We may also have to close our offices again and return to a work-from-home model if a new pandemic arises.

We have completed several acquisitions in the past and may consummate additional acquisitions in the future, which may be difficult to integrate, disrupt our business, expose us to unanticipated liabilities, dilute stockholder value or divert management attention.

We have completed several strategic acquisitions, including of Scibids in 2023, Outrigger Media, Inc. (d/b/a "OpenSlate") and Meetrics GmbH ("Meetrics") in 2021, Ad-Juster Inc. ("Ad-Juster") and Zentrick NV ("Zentrick") in 2019 and Leiki Oy in 2018. As part of our growth strategy, we regularly evaluate and may consummate additional acquisitions in the future to enhance our technology platform, expand our product offerings, broaden our geographic footprint, or for other strategic reasons. We also may evaluate and enter into discussions regarding an array of potential strategic investments, including acquiring complementary products or technologies. Our recent acquisitions and any future acquisitions or investments may result in unforeseen operating difficulties and expenditures. In particular, we may encounter difficulties integrating the business, technologies, products, personnel or operations of an acquired company, and we may have difficulty retaining the customers or employees of any acquired business due to changes in management and ownership. An acquisition may also disrupt our ongoing business, divert our resources and require significant management attention that would otherwise be available for ongoing growth and development of our business. Moreover, we cannot assure you that the anticipated benefits of an acquisition or investment would be realized in a timely manner, if at all, or that we would not be exposed to unknown costs and liabilities. Acquisitions involve numerous risks, any of which could harm our business and financial performance, including:

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Failure to appropriately mitigate these risks or other issues related to such acquisitions and strategic investments could result in reducing or completely eliminating any anticipated benefits of transactions, and harm our business generally. Future acquisitions could also result in the incurrence or assumption of debt, contingent liabilities, amortization expenses or the impairment of goodwill, any of which could harm our business, financial condition and results of operations. We cannot assure you that we will continue to acquire businesses at attractive valuations or that we will complete future acquisitions at all.

We are subject to payment-related risks, and if our ability to accurately and timely collect payments is impaired, our business, financial condition and results of operations may be adversely affected.

We have a large and diverse customer and integration partner base. At any given time, one or more of our customers or partners may experience financial difficulty, file for bankruptcy protection or cease operations. Unfavorable economic and financial conditions could result in an increase in customer or partner financial difficulties which could adversely affect us. In addition, we rely on data from third parties to invoice our clients. Our clients have in the past, and may in the future, dispute the way we calculate billing for our solutions or the data on which rely to calculate billing. If we are unable to resolve such disputes, we may lose clients or clients may decrease their use of our solutions and our financial performance and growth may be adversely affected. The direct impact on us could include reduced revenues and write-offs of accounts receivable and expenditures billable to customers, and if these effects were severe enough, the indirect impact could include impairments of intangible assets and reduced liquidity. Furthermore, the payment risks we face are heightened since (i) our programmatic and certain other partners collect payments from all of our advertiser customers utilizing their platform and remit to us such amounts on behalf of these advertiser customers and (ii) media agencies pay us on behalf of multiple customers who utilize them, each of whom are subject to independent billing and payment risks as well. Although no customer accounted for more than 10% of our revenue in 2023, two programmatic partner platforms collected approximately 18% and 17% each of our total revenue in 2023 on behalf of our advertiser customers using their platforms.

In addition, each of our customers and integration partners may have different payment methods and cycles. The timing of receipt of payment from our customers and integration partners may impact our cash flows and working capital.

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Defects, errors or inaccuracies associated with our solutions could negatively impact our business, financial condition and results of operations.

The technology underlying our platform may contain material defects or errors. If the data analytics we deliver to our customers are inaccurate or perceived to be inaccurate, due to defects or errors in our technology, our business may be harmed. Any inaccuracy or perceived inaccuracy in the solutions we provide could lead to consequences that adversely impact our business, financial condition and results of operations, including:

We often have long sales cycles, which can result in significant time between initial contact with a prospect and execution of a contractual agreement, making it difficult to project when, if at all, we will generate revenue from new customers.

Our sales cycle, from initial contact to contract execution and implementation, is often long and time consuming. Our sales efforts involve educating our customers about the use, technical capabilities and benefits of our software platform. Some of our customers undertake an evaluation process that involves reviewing the offerings of our competitors in addition to our platform. As a result, it is difficult to predict when a prospective customer will decide to execute an agreement and begin generating revenue for us. Even if our sales efforts result in obtaining a new customer, under our usage-based pricing model for most of our solutions, the customer controls when and to what extent it uses our platform. As a result, we may not be able to add customers or generate revenue as quickly as we may expect.

We depend on our senior management team and other key personnel to manage our business effectively, and if we are unable to retain such key personnel or hire additional qualified personnel, our ability to compete could be harmed.

Our company is led by a strong management team that has extensive experience leading technology and digital marketing companies. Our success and future growth depend to a significant degree on the leadership, knowledge, skills and continued services of our senior management team and other key personnel. The loss of any of these persons could adversely affect our business.

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Our future success also depends on our ability to retain, attract and motivate highly skilled technical, managerial, marketing and customer service personnel. We have increased the size of our workforce by more than 36% since the beginning of 2022 to 1,101 employees and expect to continue to grow in the near term. We may incur significant costs to attract and retain qualified employees, including significant expenditures related to salaries and benefits and compensation expenses related to equity awards. Providing equity compensation to employees through our equity compensation program is critical to maintaining our attractiveness as an employer in the technology industry. If there is volatility in our stock price, or new regulations relating to employee equity compensation, it may harm our ability to attract and retain qualified employees. New regulations that prohibit the use of certain restrictive covenants in agreements with our employees could impact our ability to retain existing employees. Further, new employees often require significant training and we may lose new or existing employees to our competitors or other companies before we realize the benefit of our investment in recruiting and training them. In addition, changes to labor and immigration laws and regulations may adversely affect our access to technical and professional talent.

Competition for personnel is intense, particularly those with technological expertise and our key areas of operations, including New York, Tel Aviv, Singapore, Berlin and London. A substantial majority of our employees work for us on an at-will basis, and we may experience a loss of productivity due to the departure of key personnel and the associated loss of institutional knowledge. Our inability to retain and attract the necessary personnel could adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

In addition, our international expansion has led to an increasing number of employees based in countries outside of North America. As a result, we may experience increased competition for employees outside of North America as the trend toward globalization continues, which may impact our employee retention and increase our compensation expenses as we endeavor to attract and retain qualified employees globally. With 453 employees based outside of the Americas as of December 31, 2023, including 127 employees in our Tel Aviv office and 79 employees in our London office, we are exposed to a number of additional country-specific risks. See “We are exposed to the risks of operating internationally.”

Increasing scrutiny and evolving expectations from customers, employees, regulators and other stakeholders with respect to our environmental, social and governance (“ESG”) practices may expose us to new or additional risks.

Customers, employees, governmental organizations, investors, proxy advisory services and other stakeholders are increasingly focused on ESG practices. While we are working to enhance our ESG efforts and related disclosures, if our stakeholders assess that our ESG efforts do not meet their expectations, which may continue to evolve, or we fail (or are perceived to fail) to meet the standards we set for our organization, our reputation, hiring initiatives, employee retention and customer and supplier relationships may be adversely affected. We may also incur significant costs and resources to monitor, report, and comply with various ESG initiatives, laws and regulations. New laws and regulations relating to ESG matters, including sustainability, climate change, human capital and diversity, are being developed in the United States, Europe and elsewhere. These laws and regulations may require considerable investment, including through the potential adoption of target-driven frameworks or disclosure requirements. Any failure, or perceived failure, by us to adhere to our stated ESG goals, comply fully with developing ESG law and regulation or failure to satisfy stakeholders with our ESG practices or the speed at which we implement them could harm our business, reputation, financial condition and operating results.

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Data privacy legislation and regulation on digital advertising and privacy and data protection may adversely affect our business.

There are a growing number of data privacy and protection laws and regulations in the digital advertising industry that apply to our business. We have dedicated, and expect to continue to dedicate, significant resources in our efforts to comply with such laws and regulations. For example, we have implemented policies and procedures to comply with applicable data privacy laws and regulations, we complete several external privacy-related audits each calendar year and we rely on contractual representations made to us by customers and partners that the information they provide to us and their use of our solutions do not violate these laws and regulations or their own privacy policies. However, the application, interpretation and enforcement of these laws and regulations are often uncertain and continue to evolve, particularly in the new and rapidly evolving industry in which we operate, and may be interpreted and applied inconsistently between states within a country or between countries, and our current policies and practices may be found not to comply, which could subject us to legal or regulatory action. Additionally, if our customers and partners’ representations are false or inaccurate, or if our customers and partners do not otherwise comply with applicable privacy laws, we could face adverse publicity and possible legal or regulatory action. Conversely, our partners and communications services providers have adopted their own policies based on their own perceptions of legal requirements or other policy determinations, and these policies have in the past temporarily prevented us, and may again in the future prevent us, from operating on their platforms and possibly result in loss of business or litigation. Any perception of our practices, platform or solutions delivery as a violation of privacy rights may subject us to public criticism, loss of customers or partners, class action lawsuits, reputational harm, or investigations or claims by regulators, industry groups or other third parties, all of which could significantly disrupt our business and expose us to liability in ways that negatively affect our business, results of operations and financial condition.

In addition, U.S. and foreign governments have enacted or are considering enacting new legislation related to privacy, data protection, data security and digital advertising and we expect to see an increase in, or changes to, legislation and regulation that affects our industry. For example, the EU GDPR, which became effective on May 25, 2018, and has resulted and will continue to result in significantly greater compliance burdens and costs for companies with users and operations in the EU and European Economic Area (“EEA”). In addition, the UK GDPR, which became effective in January 2021, imposes similar requirements as the EU GDPR. Under the EU GDPR and UK GDPR, fines of up to 20 million Euros or 17.5 million Pounds, respectively, or up to 4% of the annual global revenues of the infringing party, whichever is greater, can be imposed for violations. The EU GDPR and UK GDPR impose several stringent requirements for controllers and processors of personal data and could make it more difficult and/or more costly for us to use and share personal data. In addition, the CCPA, which went into effect on January 1, 2020, limits how we may collect and use personal data. The effects of the CCPA potentially are far-reaching and may require us to modify our data processing practices and policies and incur substantial compliance-related costs and expenses. In November 2020, California voters passed the CPRA, which expands the CCPA with additional data privacy compliance requirements that went into effect in 2023 and may impact our business, and establishes a regulatory agency dedicated to enforcing those requirements. Other states have also recently introduced or enacted comprehensive consumer privacy laws that broadly protect personal data, including the right to opt out of targeted advertising and certain profiling activities, and more states are expected to follow. It remains unclear how various provisions of the CCPA, CPRA and other state laws will be interpreted and enforced. Further, the COPPA applies to websites and other online services that are directed to children under thirteen (13) years of age and imposes certain restrictions on the collection, use and disclosure of personal information from these websites and online services. The Data Privacy Framework, or DPF, recently adopted by the EU, UK and Switzerland to support data transfers to the United States, which DV relies on, has been challenged by European privacy activists. Additionally, as backup should the DPF be invalidated, we rely on a data transfer mechanism called Standard Contractual Clauses that has also been subjected to regulatory and judicial scrutiny, although they remain valid. In 2022, EU and U.S. officials announced that an agreement had been reached on a framework for data transferred from the EU to the United States referred to as “Privacy Shield 2.0”, but it has not yet been officially adopted by the European Union. The continued uncertainty around the feasibility of onward transfers from the EU to the United States has the potential to adversely affect our operations and business. These and other data privacy laws and their interpretations continue to develop and may be inconsistent from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Noncompliance with these laws could result in penalties or significant legal liability. Our efforts to comply with all applicable laws and regulations may be ineffective, and there can be no assurance that we will not be subject to regulatory action, including fines, in the event of an incident. We or our third-party service providers could be adversely affected if legislation or regulations are expanded

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to require changes in our or our third-party service providers’ business practices or if governing jurisdictions interpret or implement their legislation or regulations in ways that negatively affect our or our third-party service providers’ business, results of operations or financial condition. These federal, state and foreign laws and regulations, which in some cases can be enforced by private parties in addition to government entities, are increasingly restricting the collection, processing and use of personal data.

These laws are constantly evolving and can be subject to significant change or interpretive application. We continue to monitor changes in laws and regulations, and the costs of compliance with, and the other burdens imposed by, these and other new laws or regulatory actions may increase our costs. Our AI initiatives may also subject us to increased compliance costs associated with future laws and regulations. In addition, failure to comply with these and other laws and regulations may result in, among other things, administrative enforcement actions and significant fines, class action lawsuits, significant legal fees, and civil or criminal liability. Any regulatory or civil action that is brought against us, even if unsuccessful, may distract our management’s attention, divert our resources, negatively affect our public image or reputation among our customers and partners and within our industry, and, consequently, harm our business, results of operations and financial condition.

Public criticism of digital advertising technology in the U.S. and internationally, including digital advertising on social media platforms, could adversely affect the demand for and use of our solutions.

Our business depends, in part, on the demand for digital advertising technology. The digital advertising industry has been and may in the future be subject to reputational harm, negative media attention and public complaint relating to, among other things, the alleged lack of transparency and anti-competitive behavior among advertising technology companies. This public criticism could result in increased data privacy, anti-trust and other regulation in the digital advertising industry in the U.S. and internationally. In addition, our solutions are delivered in web browsers, mobile apps and other software environments where online advertising is displayed, and certain of these environments have announced future plans to phase out or end the use of cookies and other third-party tracking technology on their operating systems in order to provide more consumer privacy. While our core technology and solutions do not rely on persistent identifiers or cookie-based or cross-site tracking, these changes and other updates to software functionality in these environments could hurt our ability to effectively deliver our solutions and make them less effective if our solutions are restricted from operating. Moreover, in response to these changes, advertisers may alter the mix of their advertising spend towards platforms on which we offer more limited solutions or towards higher cost inventory that may result in lower impression volumes. We have also experienced significant growth in social media-related revenues and generate significant revenue from the use of our solutions on social media platforms, which have been and may in the future be the subject of avoidance campaigns or similar events, including ad boycotts on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter). Additionally, social media platforms have been subject to regulatory scrutiny in various countries and jurisdictions, including the U.S., which has in the past and could in the future result in the use of certain social media platforms being banned in those locations. Any change or decrease in the demand for digital advertising, including on social media platforms as a result of avoidance campaigns or similar events, may negatively affect the demand for and use of our solutions. If our customers significantly reduce or eliminate their digital ad spend in response to the public criticism of the digital advertising industry or its related effects, our business, financial condition and results of operations could be adversely affected.

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The success of our business depends in large part on our ability to protect and enforce our intellectual property rights.

We rely on a combination of intellectual property rights in our business and rely on patent, copyright, service mark, trademark and trade secret laws, as well as confidentiality procedures and contractual restrictions, to establish and protect our proprietary rights, all of which provide limited protection. We endeavor to enter into agreements with our employees and contractors and with parties with whom we do business in order to limit access to and disclosure of our proprietary information. We cannot be certain that the steps we have taken will prevent unauthorized use of our technology or the reverse engineering of our technology. We cannot make assurances that any additional patents will be issued with respect to any of our pending or future patent applications, that any patents issued to us will provide adequate protection, or that any patents issued to us will not be challenged, invalidated, circumvented, or held to be unenforceable in actions against alleged infringers. Also, we cannot make assurances that any future trademark or service mark registrations will be issued with respect to pending or future applications or that any of our registered trademarks and service marks will be enforceable or provide adequate protection of our proprietary rights. In addition, the laws of some foreign countries where our platform is utilized do not protect our proprietary rights to the same extent as do the laws of the United States. A failure to protect our intellectual property rights in the U.S. or elsewhere could adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

An assertion from a third party that we are infringing its intellectual property rights, whether such assertion is valid or not, could subject us to costly and time-consuming litigation, expensive licenses or other impacts to our business.

There is significant intellectual property development activity in the measurement and authentication of digital ads. Third-party intellectual property rights may cover significant aspects of our technologies or business methods or block us from expanding our platform and delivering new solutions, and we cannot be certain that our current operations do not infringe the rights of a third party. We have received and may continue to receive allegations and/or claims from third parties that our technology infringes or violates such third parties’ intellectual property rights. The cost of defending against such claims, whether or not the claims have merit, is significant and could divert the attention of management, technical personnel and other employees from our business operations. Litigation regarding intellectual property rights is inherently uncertain due to the complex issues involved, and we may not be successful in defending ourselves in such matters. Additionally, we may be obligated to indemnify our customers or partners in connection with any such litigation. Intellectual property claims could harm our relationships with our customers and deter future customers from buying our solutions or expose us to litigation. If we are found to infringe intellectual property rights, we could potentially be subject to injunctive or other relief that could affect our ability to provide our solutions. We may also be required to develop alternative non-infringing technology and may be unable to do so, or such development may require significant time and expense and may not be successful. In addition, we could be required to pay royalty payments, either as a one-time fee or ongoing, as well as damages for past use that was deemed to be infringing. If we cannot license or develop technology for any allegedly infringing aspect of our business, this may limit our platform and solutions, and we may be unable to compete effectively. Any of these results could adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

We may face risks associated with our use of artificial intelligence and machine learning models.

We have made, and expect to continue to make, investments in AI initiatives, including generative AI to develop new products, develop new features of existing products, and enhance our solutions. For example, in August 2023, we acquired Scibids. Scibids builds AI that automates and optimizes an advertiser’s programmatic buying of digital ad campaigns. We also utilize AI and machine learning models in the development of our solutions. There are significant risks involved in developing and deploying AI solutions and there can be no assurance that the usage of AI will enhance our products or services or be beneficial to our business, including our profitability. Our competitors or other third parties may incorporate AI into their offerings more quickly, cost-effectively or successfully than we can, which could impair our ability to compete effectively and adversely affect our results of operations.

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We collect, store, use and share large amounts of data in the ordinary course of business. If the data we use to train our models is incomplete, biased, or inadequate in other ways, there is a risk that AI technologies could produce inaccurate or misleading content or other discriminatory or unexpected results or behaviors that could harm our reputation, business or customers. In addition, the use of AI involves significant technical complexity and requires specialized expertise. Any disruption or failure in our AI systems or infrastructure may result in delays or errors in our operations.

Our AI-related initiatives may also give rise to risks related to intellectual property infringement or misappropriation, defamation, data privacy, cybersecurity, and other issues. For instance, we cannot ensure that we have not incorporated open source software in our AI software in a manner that is inconsistent with the terms of the applicable license or our current policies, and we may inadvertently use open source in a manner that we do not intend or that could expose us to claims for breach of contract or intellectual property infringement, misappropriation, or other violations. We are also subject to a variety of laws, regulations, industry standards, policies, contractual requirements, executive actions, and other obligations relating to privacy, security and data protection. As a result, the performance of our products, services, and business, as well as our reputation, may suffer or we may incur liability through the violation of laws, third-party privacy or other rights, or contracts to which we are a party.

Furthermore, there is growing scrutiny from regulatory and governmental agencies in the United States and foreign jurisdictions regarding AI adoption and its potential impact. We may not always be able to anticipate how existing laws will be interpreted in relation to AI, predict how new legal frameworks will develop to address AI, or otherwise respond to the new and rapidly evolving AI regulatory landscape.

We are exposed to the risks of operating internationally.

Our international operations are important to our current and future strategy, growth and prospects. We currently have operations in numerous foreign countries, including the United Kingdom, Israel, Singapore, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, France, Germany, Finland, Belgium, Japan, Italy and India, and expect to continue to expand our operations internationally. Our international operations are subject to varying degrees of regulation in each of the jurisdictions in which our services are provided. Local laws and regulations, and their interpretation and enforcement, differ significantly among those jurisdictions, and can change significantly over time. Some of the risks inherent in conducting business internationally include:

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In addition, we have a research and development center located in Tel Aviv, Israel, with a significant presence of software and data engineers and employees focused on product development. On October 7, 2023, the Hamas terrorist organization launched attacks against Israel, and conflict and disruption in the region is ongoing. The war between Israel and Hamas could result in disruptions to our business operations in addition to unstable market conditions, which could adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations. We have no way to predict the progress or outcome of the war between Israel and Hamas or its impacts in the region as the conflict and government reactions are rapidly developing.

Our ability to manage our business and conduct our operations internationally also requires considerable management attention and financial resources. We cannot be certain that the investments and additional resources required for establishing and maintaining operations in other countries will hold their value or produce desired levels of revenues or profitability. Any one or more of these factors could negatively impact our international operations and thus adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Exposure to foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations could negatively impact our results of operations.

While the majority of our transactions are denominated in U.S. dollars, we frequently transact in foreign currencies, including for payments from clients, expenses and acquisition costs. We also have expenses denominated in currencies other than the U.S. dollar. Given our investment in international growth, we expect the number of our foreign currency transactions to increase in the future. Foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations could cause our operating results to differ materially from expectations.

Our use of “open source” software could subject our technology to general release or require us to re-engineer our platform, or subject us to litigation, which could harm our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Some of our technology incorporates so-called “open source” software, and we may incorporate additional open source software in the future. Open source software is generally licensed by its authors or other third parties under open source licenses, which typically do not provide for any representations, warranties or indemnity coverage by the licensor. Some of these licenses provide that combinations of open source software with a licensee’s proprietary software are subject to the open source license and require that the combination be made available to third parties in source code form or at no cost. Some open source licenses may also require the licensee to grant licenses under certain of its intellectual property to third parties. Additionally, there is little case law interpreting such licenses and there is a risk that open source licenses could be construed in a manner that imposes unanticipated conditions or restrictions on our ability to provide our platform. If a third party that distributes open source software were to allege that we had not complied with the conditions of one or more of these licenses, we could be required to incur significant legal expenses defending against such allegations and could be subject to significant damages, enjoined from the sale of our solutions that contain the open source software and required to comply with the foregoing conditions, which could disrupt the distribution and sale of some of our solutions. In addition, we may be forced to re-engineer our platform or discontinue use of certain open source software, and related solutions provided by our platform that use such open source software. Any of these events could adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

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Seasonal fluctuations in advertising activity could have a negative impact on our revenue, cash flow and operating results.

Our revenue, cash flow, operating results and other key operating and performance metrics may vary from quarter to quarter due to the seasonal nature of our customers’ spending on advertising campaigns. For example, advertisers typically allocate the largest portion of their media budgets to the fourth quarter of the calendar year in order to coincide with increased holiday purchasing. As a result, the fourth quarter of the year typically reflects our highest level of measurement activity while the first quarter reflects the lowest level of such activity. Our historical revenue growth has masked the impact of seasonality, but if our growth rate declines or seasonal spending becomes more pronounced, seasonality could have a more significant impact on our revenue, cash flow and operating results from period to period.

We have a limited operating history, which makes it difficult to evaluate our business and prospects and may increase the risks associated with your investment.

Our business was founded in 2008 and, as a result, we have a limited operating history upon which our business and prospects may be evaluated. Although we have experienced substantial revenue growth in our limited operating history, we may not be able to sustain this rate of growth or maintain our current revenue levels. We have encountered and will continue to encounter risks and challenges frequently experienced by rapidly growing companies in developing industries, including risks related to our ability to:

We cannot assure you that we will be successful in addressing these and other challenges we may face in the future. If we are unable to do so, our business may suffer, our revenue and operating results may decline and we may not be able to achieve further growth or sustain profitability.

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We are subject to taxation in multiple jurisdictions. Any adverse development in the tax laws of any of these jurisdictions or any disagreement with our tax positions could have a material and adverse effect on our business, financial condition or results of operations.

We are subject to taxation in, and to the tax laws and regulations of, multiple jurisdictions as a result of the international scope of our operations and our corporate entity structure. Adverse developments in these laws or regulations, or any change in position regarding the application, administration or interpretation thereof, in any applicable jurisdiction, could have a material and adverse effect on our business, financial condition or results of operations. In addition, the tax authorities in any applicable jurisdiction, including the U.S., may disagree with the positions we have taken or intend to take regarding the tax treatment or characterization of any of our transactions.

Our revenues and results of operations may fluctuate in the future. As a result, we may fail to meet the expectations of securities analysts or investors, which could cause our stock price to decline.

Our results of operations may fluctuate as a result of a variety of factors, many of which are outside of our control. If our revenues or results of operations do not meet the expectations of securities analysts or investors, the price of our common stock could decline. Factors that may cause fluctuations in our revenues or results of operations include:

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Based upon the factors above and others both within and beyond our control, we have a limited ability to forecast our future revenue, costs and expenses, and as a result, our operating results may, from time to time, fall below our estimates or the expectations of analysts and investors. We believe that our revenues and results of operations on a year-over-year and sequential quarter-over-quarter basis may vary significantly in the future. Investors are cautioned not to rely on the results of prior periods as an indication of future performance.

We maintain cash deposits in excess of federally insured limits. Adverse developments affecting financial institutions, including bank failures, could adversely affect our or our customers’ liquidity.

We maintain U.S. cash deposits in Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (“FDIC”) insured banks that exceed the FDIC insurance limits. We also maintain cash deposits in banks in certain foreign jurisdictions in which we operate, some of which are not insured or are only partially insured by the FDIC or similar entities. In the past year, more than one FDIC insured bank abruptly failed. The failure of a bank at which we maintain balances could adversely impact our liquidity, and could similarly affect our customers. There can be no assurance that deposits in excess of the FDIC or other comparable insurance limits will be backstopped by the U.S. government or any applicable foreign government, or that any bank or financial institution with which we or our customers do business will be able to obtain the necessary liquidity in the event of a failure.

Our estimates of market opportunity and forecasts of market growth included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K may prove to be inaccurate.

Market opportunity estimates and growth forecasts are subject to significant uncertainty and are based on assumptions and estimates that may not prove to be accurate. Our estimates and forecasts relating to the size and expected growth of our market may prove to be inaccurate. For example, the digital advertising industry may not grow at the rate that we currently expect, the migration of advertising from linear television to CTV may not occur on the scale we currently anticipate, or the growth of subscription media platforms as opposed to platforms supported by advertising may all impact the estimates and growth forecasts we have included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Even if the market in which we compete meets our size estimates and forecasted growth, our business could fail to grow at similar rates, if at all.

Our financial condition and results of operations could be adversely affected if we incur an impairment of goodwill or other intangible and long-lived assets.

As of December 31, 2023, we had $436.0 million of goodwill and $274.0 million of other long-lived assets, including property, plant and equipment and intangible assets. We are required to test intangible assets and goodwill annually and on an interim basis if an event occurs or there is a change in circumstance that would more likely than not reduce the fair value below its carrying values or indicate that the carrying value of such intangibles is not recoverable. When the carrying value exceeds its fair value, an impairment loss is recognized in an amount equal to that excess. If the carrying amount of an intangible asset is not recoverable, a charge to operations is recognized. Either event would result in incremental expenses for that period, which would reduce any earnings or increase any loss for the period in which the impairment was determined to have occurred.

Our impairment analysis is sensitive to changes in key assumptions used in our analysis, such as expected future cash flows. Additionally, changes in our strategy or significant technical developments could significantly impact the recoverability of our intangible assets. If the assumptions used in our analysis are not realized, it is possible that an impairment charge may need to be recorded in the future. We identified an impairment of long-lived assets of $1.5 million for the year ended December 31, 2022. We did not identify any impairments of goodwill or long-lived assets for the years ended December 31, 2023 and December 31, 2021. We cannot predict the amount and timing of any future impairment of goodwill or other intangible assets.

See Note 5 to our audited consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for further discussion on the goodwill recognized from our recent acquisitions.

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Restrictions in the New Revolving Credit Facility could adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

The operating and financial restrictions and covenants in the New Revolving Credit Facility, and any future financing agreements, could restrict the ability of DoubleVerify MidCo, Inc., DoubleVerify Inc. and their respective subsidiaries (the “Credit Group”) to finance future operations or capital needs or to expand or pursue the Credit Group’s business activities. The New Revolving Credit Facility contains limitations on the ability of the Credit Group to, among other things:

The New Revolving Credit Facility also contains covenants requiring the Credit Group to maintain certain financial ratios. The Credit Group’s ability to meet those financial ratios can be affected by events beyond our control, and we cannot assure you that the Credit Group will meet any such ratios in the future.

The New Revolving Credit Facility is secured by substantially all of the assets (subject to customary exceptions) of the Credit Group. A failure to comply with the provisions of the New Revolving Credit Facility could result in a default or an event of default that could enable our lenders to declare the outstanding principal amount of that debt, together with accrued and unpaid interest, to be immediately due and payable. We might not have, or be able to obtain, sufficient funds to make these accelerated payments. If the payment of our debt is accelerated and we do not have sufficient cash available to repay such indebtedness, the lenders could enforce their security interests and liquidate some or all of the secured assets of the Credit Group to repay the outstanding principal and interest, and our stockholders could experience a partial or total loss of their investment. For more information about the New Revolving Credit Facility, see Note 9 to our audited consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

In the future, we may need to obtain additional financing that may not be available or may reduce our profitability or result in dilution to our stockholders.

We may require additional capital in the future to develop and execute our growth strategy. We believe our existing cash and cash generated from operations, together with the undrawn balance under the New Revolving Credit Facility, will be sufficient to meet our working capital and capital expenditure requirements for at least the next 12 months. However, we may need to raise additional funds in the future in order to, among other things:

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If we incur additional indebtedness, our profitability may be reduced. Any future indebtedness could be at higher interest rates and may require us to comply with restrictive covenants, which could place limitations on our business operations. Further, we may not be able to maintain sufficient cash flows from our operating activities to service our existing and any future indebtedness. If our operating results are not sufficient to service any future indebtedness, we will be forced to take actions such as reducing or delaying our business activities, investments or capital expenditures, selling assets or issuing equity. If we issue additional equity securities, our stockholders may experience significant dilution and the price of our common stock may decline. Alternatively, if adequate funds are not available or are not available on acceptable terms, our ability to fund our strategic initiatives, take advantage of unanticipated opportunities, develop or enhance our technology or services or otherwise respond to competitive pressures could be significantly limited.

Risks Related to Our Common Stock

The market price of our common stock may be volatile and could decline regardless of our operating performance.

The market price of our common stock may fluctuate significantly based on a number of factors that are outside of our control. Among the factors that could affect our stock price are:

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In particular, we cannot assure you that you will be able to resell your shares at or above your purchase price. Stock markets have experienced extreme volatility in recent years that has been unrelated to the operating performance of particular companies. These broad market fluctuations may adversely affect the trading price of our common stock.

DoubleVerify is a holding company with no operations of its own, and it depends on its subsidiaries for cash to fund all of its operations and expenses, including to make future dividend payments, if any.

Our operations are conducted entirely through our subsidiaries, and our ability to generate cash to fund our operations and expenses, to pay dividends or to meet debt service obligations is highly dependent on the earnings and the receipt of funds from our subsidiaries through dividends or intercompany loans. Deterioration in the financial condition, earnings or cash flow of DoubleVerify and its subsidiaries for any reason could limit or impair their ability to pay such distributions. Additionally, to the extent our subsidiaries are restricted from making such distributions under applicable law or regulation or under the terms of our existing or future financing arrangements, or are otherwise unable to provide funds to the extent of our needs, there could be a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition or results of operations.

Future sales of shares by us or our existing stockholders could cause our stock price to decline.

Sales of substantial amounts of our common stock in the public market, including by Providence, or the perception that these sales could occur, could cause the market price of our common stock to decline. These sales, or the possibility that these sales may occur, also might make it more difficult for us to sell equity securities in the future at a time and at a price that we deem appropriate.

In the future, we may issue additional shares of common stock or other equity or debt securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for shares of our common stock in connection with a financing, strategic investment, litigation settlement or employee arrangement or otherwise. Any of these issuances could result in substantial dilution to our existing stockholders and could cause the trading price of our common stock to decline.

If securities or industry analysts do not publish research or publish misleading or unfavorable research about our business, our stock price and trading volume could decline.

The trading market for our common stock depends in part on the research and reports that securities or industry analysts publish about us or our business. If one or more research analysts downgrades our stock or publishes misleading or unfavorable research about our business, our stock price would likely decline. If one or more of the analysts ceases coverage of our common stock or fails to publish reports on us regularly, demand for our common stock could decrease, which could cause our common stock price or trading volume to decline.

Providence has significant influence over us and may not always exercise its influence in a way that benefits our public stockholders.

Providence VII U.S. Holdings L.P. owns approximately 15% of the outstanding shares of our common stock. As a result, Providence will continue to exercise influence over all matters requiring stockholder approval for the foreseeable future, including approval of significant corporate transactions, which may reduce the market price of our common stock.

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Because Providence’s interests may differ from your interests, actions Providence takes as a stockholder with influence may not be favorable to you. For example, the concentration of ownership held by Providence could delay, defer or prevent a change of control of us or impede a merger, takeover or other business combination that another stockholder may otherwise view favorably. Other potential conflicts could arise, for example, over matters such as employee retention or recruiting, or our dividend policy.

Additionally, Providence will continue to have the right to designate for nomination for election one of our directors so long as it beneficially owns at least 5% of our common stock.

Under our amended and restated certificate of incorporation, Providence and its affiliates and, in some circumstances, any of our directors and officers who is also a director, officer, employee, member or partner of Providence and its affiliates, have no obligation to offer us corporate opportunities.

The policies relating to corporate opportunities and transactions with Providence set forth in our second amended and restated certificate of incorporation (the “amended and restated certificate of incorporation”) addresses potential conflicts of interest between DoubleVerify, on the one hand, and Providence and its officers, directors, employees, members or partners who are directors or officers of our company, on the other hand. In accordance with those policies, Providence may pursue corporate opportunities, including acquisition opportunities that may be complementary to our business, without offering those opportunities to us. By being a stockholder in DoubleVerify, you are deemed to have notice of and to have consented to these provisions of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation. Although these provisions are designed to resolve conflicts between us and Providence and its affiliates fairly, conflicts may not be resolved in our favor or be resolved at all.

Future offerings of debt or equity securities which would rank senior to our common stock may adversely affect the market price of our common stock.

If we decide to issue debt or equity securities that rank senior to our common stock, it is likely that such securities will be governed by an indenture or other instrument containing covenants restricting our operating flexibility. Additionally, any convertible or exchangeable securities that we issue in the future may have rights, preferences and privileges more favorable than those of our common stock and may result in dilution to owners of our common stock. We and, indirectly, our stockholders, will bear the cost of issuing and servicing such securities. Because our decision to issue debt or equity securities in any future offering will depend on market conditions and other factors beyond our control, we cannot predict or estimate the amount, timing or nature of any future offerings. Thus, holders of our common stock will bear the risk of our future offerings reducing the market price of our common stock or diluting their ownership stake in us.

Fulfilling our obligations incident to being a public company, including compliance with the Exchange Act and the requirements of the NYSE, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Dodd-Frank Act, is expensive and time- consuming, and any delays or difficulties in satisfying these obligations could have a material adverse effect on our future results of operations and our stock price.

As a public company, we are subject to the reporting, accounting and corporate governance requirements of the NYSE, the Exchange Act, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and Section 619 of the Dodd-Frank Act that apply to issuers of listed equity, which impose certain significant compliance requirements, costs and obligations upon us. The requirements of being a publicly listed company require a significant commitment of resources and management oversight which increase our operating costs. These laws and regulations also could make it more difficult or costly for us to obtain certain types of insurance, including director and officer liability insurance, and we may be forced to accept reduced policy limits and coverage or incur substantially higher costs to obtain the same or similar coverage. These laws and regulations could also make it more difficult for us to attract and retain qualified persons to serve on our board of directors, our board committees or as our executive officers.

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The expenses associated with being a public company include auditing, accounting and legal fees and expenses, investor relations expenses, increased directors’ fees and director and officer liability insurance costs, registrar and transfer agent fees and NYSE listing fees, as well as other expenses. Failure to comply with the requirements of being a public company could potentially subject us to sanctions or investigations by the SEC, the NYSE or other regulatory authorities, delisting of our common stock, and potentially civil litigation.

Additionally, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires, among other things, that we maintain effective disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting. In order to maintain and improve the effectiveness of such controls, we have expended, and anticipate that we will continue to expend, significant resources. For example, since our IPO, we have hired additional accounting and financial staff with appropriate public company experience and technical accounting knowledge to assist in our compliance efforts.

We have incurred and expect to continue to incur significant expenses and devote substantial management effort toward compliance with the auditor attestation requirements of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. To assist us in complying with these requirements we may need to hire more employees in the future, or engage outside consultants, which will increase our operating expenses.

Despite significant investment, our current controls and any new controls that we implement may become inadequate because of changes in business conditions. For example, because we have acquired companies in the past and may continue to do so in the future, we need to effectively expend resources to integrate the controls of these acquired entities with ours. Further, weaknesses in our disclosure controls and internal control over financial reporting may be discovered in the future. Any failure to implement and maintain effective internal control over financial reporting could adversely affect the results of periodic management evaluations and annual independent registered public accounting firm attestation reports regarding the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting that are required to be included in the periodic reports that we file with the SEC. If our management team or independent registered public accounting firm were to furnish an adverse report, or if it is determined that we have a material weakness or significant deficiency in our internal control over financial reporting, investors could lose confidence in the accuracy and completeness of our financial reports, the market price of our common stock could decline, and we could be subject to sanctions or investigations by the NYSE, the SEC or other regulatory authorities or shareholder litigation.

Anti-takeover provisions in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws could discourage, delay or prevent a change of control of our company and may affect the trading price of our common stock.

Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and our amended and restated bylaws (the “amended and restated bylaws”) include a number of provisions that may discourage, delay or prevent a change in our management or control over us that stockholders may consider favorable. For example, our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws collectively:

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These provisions may prevent our stockholders from receiving the benefit from any premium to the market price of our common stock offered by a bidder in a takeover context. Even in the absence of a takeover attempt, the existence of these provisions may adversely affect the prevailing market price of our common stock if the provisions are viewed as discouraging takeover attempts in the future.

Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws may also make it difficult for stockholders to replace or remove our management. Furthermore, the existence of the foregoing provisions, as well as the significant amount of common stock that Providence owns, may facilitate management entrenchment that may delay, deter, render more difficult or prevent a change in our control, which may not be in the best interests of our stockholders.

We could be the subject of securities class action litigation due to future stock price volatility, which could divert management’s attention and materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations or cash flows.

The stock market in general, and market prices for the securities of companies like ours in particular, have from time to time experienced volatility that often has been unrelated to the operating performance of the underlying companies. A certain degree of stock price volatility can be attributed to being a newly public company. These broad market and industry fluctuations may adversely affect the market price of our common stock, regardless of our operating performance. In certain situations in which the market price of a stock has been volatile, holders of that stock have instituted securities class action litigation against the company that issued the stock. If any of our stockholders were to bring a similar lawsuit against us, the defense and disposition of the lawsuit could be costly and divert the time and attention of our management and could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations or cash flows.

We do not intend to pay dividends on our common stock for the foreseeable future and, consequently, your ability to achieve a return on your investment depends on appreciation in the price of our common stock.

We do not intend to declare and pay dividends on our common stock for the foreseeable future. We currently intend to use our future earnings, if any, to fund our growth, including through acquisitions, and for working capital needs and general corporate purposes. Therefore, you are not likely to receive any dividends on your common stock for the foreseeable future, and the success of an investment in shares of our common stock depends upon any future appreciation in their value. There is no guarantee that shares of our common stock will appreciate in value or even maintain the price at which our stockholders have purchased their shares. Payments of dividends, if any, are at the sole discretion of our board of directors after taking into account various factors, including general and economic conditions, our financial condition and operating results, our available cash and current and anticipated cash needs, capital requirements, contractual, legal, tax and regulatory restrictions and implications of the payment of dividends by us to our stockholders or by our subsidiaries to us, and such other factors as our board of directors may deem relevant. In addition, our operations are conducted almost entirely through our subsidiaries. As such, to the extent that we determine in the future to pay dividends on our common stock, we will rely on our subsidiaries to make funds available to us for the payment of dividends. Further, the New Revolving Credit Facility limits the ability of our subsidiaries to pay dividends or otherwise transfer assets to us. In addition, Delaware law imposes additional requirements that may restrict our ability to pay dividends to holders of our common stock.

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Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation designates the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware as the sole and exclusive forum for certain litigation that may be initiated by our stockholders, which could limit our stockholders’ ability to obtain a favorable judicial forum for disputes with us or our directors, officers or stockholders.

Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation provides that, unless we consent in writing to the selection of an alternative forum, the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware will, to the fullest extent permitted by law, be the sole and exclusive forum for (i) any derivative action or proceeding brought on our behalf, (ii) any action or proceeding asserting a claim of breach of a fiduciary duty owed to us or our stockholders by any of our current or former directors, officers, other employees, agents or stockholders, (iii) any action or proceeding asserting a claim arising out of or under the Delaware General Corporation Law (the “DGCL”), or as to which the DGCL confers jurisdiction on the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware (including, without limitation, any action asserting a claim arising out of or pursuant to our amended and restated certificate of incorporation or our amended and restated bylaws) or (iv) any action or proceeding asserting a claim that is governed by the internal affairs doctrine, in each case, subject to such Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware having personal jurisdiction over the indispensable parties named as defendants; provided that, the exclusive forum provision will not apply to any action or proceeding brought to enforce any liability or duty created by the Exchange Act or any other action or proceeding asserting a claim for which the federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction; provided further that, if and only if the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware dismisses any such action or proceeding for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, such action or proceeding may be brought in another state or federal court sitting in the State of Delaware. Accordingly, the exclusive forum provision does not relieve us of our duties to comply with the federal securities laws and the rules and regulations thereunder, and our stockholders are not deemed to have waived our compliance with these laws, rules and regulations. Unless the Company consents in writing to the selection of an alternative forum, the federal district courts of the United States of America shall be the exclusive forum for the resolution of any claim arising under the Securities Act. By becoming a stockholder in our company, you will be deemed to have notice of and have consented to the provisions of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation related to choice of forum, provided that, if and only if the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware dismisses any such action for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, such action may be brought in another state or federal court sitting in the State of Delaware. The choice of forum provision in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation may limit our stockholders’ ability to obtain a favorable judicial forum for disputes with us or any of our directors, officers, other employees, agents or stockholders, which may discourage lawsuits with respect to such claims. Alternatively, if a court were to find the choice of forum provision contained in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation to be inapplicable or unenforceable in an action, we may incur additional costs associated with resolving such action in other jurisdictions, which could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations.

Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation includes provisions limiting the personal liability of our directors for breaches of fiduciary duty under the DGCL.

Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation contains provisions eliminating a director’s personal liability to the fullest extent permitted by the DGCL for monetary damages resulting from a breach of fiduciary duty, except in circumstances involving:

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The principal effect of the limitation on liability provision is that a stockholder will be unable to prosecute an action for monetary damages against a director unless the stockholder can demonstrate a basis for liability for which indemnification is not available under the DGCL. These provisions, however, should not limit or eliminate our rights or any stockholder’s rights to seek non-monetary relief, such as an injunction or rescission, in the event of a breach of a director’s fiduciary duty. These provisions do not alter a director’s liability under federal securities laws. The inclusion of this provision in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation may discourage or deter stockholders or management from bringing a lawsuit against directors for a breach of their fiduciary duties, even though such an action, if successful, might otherwise have benefited us and our stockholders.

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Item 1B. Unresolved Staff Comments

None.

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Item 1C. Cybersecurity

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We recognize the importance of assessing, identifying, and managing risks associated with cybersecurity threats. In furtherance thereof, we have made information security and protection a strategic priority. We have implemented multi-layered organizational, technical, and administrative measures which we continuously advance and proactively invest in.

Cybersecurity Risk Management and Strategy

We have a cybersecurity risk management program designed to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of our critical systems and information. Our cybersecurity risk management program is integrated into and serves as an important component of our overall enterprise risk management program, and utilizes cross-functional teams to proactively assess risk and ensure that security controls are built-in prior to deployment.

Our cyber risk management program is informed by recognized standards for cybersecurity and information technology, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology Cybersecurity Framework (“CSF”), the International Organization Standardization (“ISO”) 27001:2013 Information Security Management System Requirements and the AICPA Trust Services Criteria, which are independently validated and attested via our SOC 2 Type II report.

Our cybersecurity risk management program includes:

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Cybersecurity Governance

Cybersecurity is an important part of our risk management processes and an area of focus for the Board of Directors of DoubleVerify (the “Board”) and management. Our Board as a whole has responsibility for overseeing our risk management program. The Board exercises this oversight responsibility directly and through its committees. The Board has primary responsibility for evaluating strategic and operational risk management, including cybersecurity risk management, and has delegated to the Audit Committee of the Board (the “Audit Committee”) oversight of the adequacy and effectiveness of the Company’s information and technology security policies as well as the internal controls regarding information and technology security, cybersecurity and privacy related areas. The Audit Committee also oversees management’s implementation of our cybersecurity risk management program.

The Audit Committee receives reports from management at least quarterly on a broad range of relevant topics, which include cybersecurity risks attendant to our business, recent developments in the cybersecurity landscape and practice, third-party and independent reviews, benchmarking and resource allocation, among other topics. In addition, management updates the Audit Committee regarding material or potentially material cybersecurity incidents. The Audit Committee provides reports to the full Board regarding these and other matters at least quarterly. The full Board also receives periodic briefings from management on our information security organization and risk management programs.

The Company’s Chief Information Security Officer reports to our Chief Information Officer and leads the Company’s cybersecurity team. This team is principally responsible for managing the Company’s cybersecurity risk management program, in cross-functional partnership with business leaders across the Company, reporting cybersecurity risks and incidents, among other things, to the Audit Committee, and supervising both our internal cybersecurity personnel and our retained external cybersecurity consultants. Collectively, our cybersecurity team has decades of experience managing cybersecurity risk worldwide and members hold accreditations such as the Certified Information Systems Security Professional, Certified Ethical Hacker and Certified Information Security Manager certifications.

During the period covered by this Annual Report, we have not identified cybersecurity threats, including as a result of any prior cybersecurity incidents, that have materially affected or are reasonably likely to materially affect us, including our operations, business strategy, results of operations, or financial condition. We recognize that we face a number of cybersecurity risks in connection with our business and that institutions like us, as well as our employees, service providers and other third parties on whom we rely have experienced a significant increase in information security and cybersecurity risk in recent years and will likely continue to be the target of increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks. For more information about the cybersecurity risks we face, see the risk factor: “System failures, security breaches, cyberattacks or natural disasters could interrupt the operation of our platform and data centers and significantly harm our business, financial condition and results of operations” under the caption “Risk Factors” in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

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Item 2. Properties

Our corporate headquarters are located in New York, New York, where we occupy approximately 87,500 square feet under a lease that expires in July 2038. We lease several additional properties and flexible co-working space in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. We believe that our properties are adequate for our current needs and if we require additional space, we believe that we would be able to obtain such space on commercially reasonable terms.

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Item 3. Legal Proceedings

We are not currently a party to any legal proceedings that would, either individually or in the aggregate, have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition or cash flows. We may, from time to time, be involved in legal proceedings arising in the normal course of business. The outcome of legal proceedings is unpredictable and may have an adverse impact on our business or financial condition.

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Item 4. Mine Safety Disclosures

Not applicable.

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PART II

Item 5. Market for Registrant’s Common Equity, Related Stockholder Matters and Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities

Holders of Record

Our common stock is listed on the NYSE under the symbol “DV”.

As of February 20, 2024, we had 171,253,902 shares of common stock outstanding and 103 holders of record of our common stock.

Dividend Policy

We do not intend to declare or pay dividends on our common stock for the foreseeable future. We currently intend to use our future earnings, if any, to fund our growth, including for working capital needs, acquisitions and general corporate purposes. Any future determination to pay dividends on our common stock will be subject to the discretion of our board of directors and depend upon various factors, including our results of operations, financial condition, liquidity requirements, capital requirements, level of indebtedness, contractual restrictions imposed by the New Revolving Credit Facility and the agreements governing any indebtedness we or our subsidiaries may incur in the future, restrictions imposed by Delaware law, general business conditions and other factors that our board of directors may deem relevant.

We did not declare or pay any dividends on our common stock in 2023, 2022 or 2021.

Purchases of Equity Securities by the Issuer and Affiliated Purchases

None.

Recent Sales of Unregistered Securities

None.

Use of Proceeds

On April 23, 2021, we completed our IPO in which we sold 9,977 thousand shares of common stock at a public offering price of $27.00 per share, which includes the full exercise of the underwriters’ option to purchase 1,350 thousand additional shares from us. We received aggregate net proceeds of $253.2 million from the IPO, after deducting underwriting discount fees of $16.2 million. We incurred offering costs related to the IPO of approximately $26.1 million, inclusive of underwriting discount fees. All of the shares issued and sold in our IPO were registered under the Securities Act pursuant to a registration statement on Form S-1 (File No. 333-254380), which was declared effective by the SEC on April 20, 2021. The representatives of the underwriters of our IPO were Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC and J.P. Morgan Securities LLC.

In connection with the IPO, Providence and certain of our other existing stockholders sold an aggregate of 5,356 thousand shares of our common stock, which includes the full exercise of the underwriters’ option to purchase 650 thousand additional shares of our common stock from Providence. We did not receive any proceeds from the sale of shares by these stockholders.

On April 23, 2021, concurrent with the completion of the IPO, an affiliate of Tiger Global Management, LLC (“Tiger Investor”) purchased from us 1,111 thousand shares of our common stock in a private placement at a price per share equal to the IPO price of $27.00 (the “Concurrent Private Placement”). We received aggregate net proceeds of $29.0 million from the Concurrent Private Placement, after deducting fees of $1.0 million.

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On April 30, 2021, we used a portion of the net proceeds from the IPO and Concurrent Private Placement to pay the entire outstanding balance under the New Revolving Credit Facility of $22.0 million.

On August 31, 2021, we used a portion of the net proceeds from the IPO and Concurrent Private Placement to purchase all of the outstanding stock of Meetrics for $24.3 million.

On November 22, 2021, we used a portion of the net proceeds from the IPO and Concurrent Private Placement to purchase all of the outstanding stock of OpenSlate for $147.4 million, which included net cash of $124.9 million and common stock transferred of $22.5 million.

On August 14, 2023, we used a portion of the net proceeds from the IPO and Concurrent Private Placement to purchase all of the outstanding stock of Scibids for $121.4 million, which included net cash of $67.2 million, common stock issued of $52.9 million, and a fair value of the Scibids Contingent Payment of $1.2 million.

As of December 31, 2023, all IPO net proceeds have been used to fund acquisitions and for working capital, as described in our final prospectus, dated April 20, 2021 and filed with the SEC, pursuant to Rule 424(b)(4) under the Securities Act, on April 22, 2021 (the “Prospectus”).

Stock Performance Graph

The following graph compares the cumulative total stockholder return on an initial investment of $100 in our common stock between April 21, 2021, and December 31, 2023, with the comparative cumulative total returns of the Standard & Poor’s (“S&P”) 500 Index, Nasdaq Composite Index and Russell 3000 Index over the same period. We have not paid any cash dividends: therefore, the cumulative total return calculation for us is based solely upon stock price appreciation and not the reinvestment of cash dividends. However, the data for the S&P 500 Index, Nasdaq Composite Index and Russell 3000 Index assumes reinvestments of dividends. The graph assumes the closing market price on April 21, 2021, of $36.00 per share as the initial value of our common stock. The returns shown are based on historical results and are not indicative of, nor intended to forecast, future stock price performance.

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Item 6. [Reserved]

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Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations

You should read the following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations together with our consolidated financial statements and the related notes appearing elsewhere within this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Some of the information contained in this discussion and analysis or set forth elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, including information with respect to our plans and strategy for our business, includes forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. You should read the “Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements” and “Risk Factors” sections of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for a discussion of important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results described in or implied by the forward-looking statements contained in the following discussion and analysis.

The following generally discusses 2023 and 2022 items and year-to-year comparisons between 2023 and 2022. Discussion of historical items and year-to-year comparisons between 2022 and 2021 that are not included in this discussion can be found in “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” of our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2022. References to “Notes” are notes included in our consolidated financial statements appearing elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Company Overview

We are one of the industry’s leading media effectiveness platforms that leverages AI to drive superior outcomes for global brands. By creating more effective, transparent ad transactions, we make the digital advertising ecosystem stronger, safer and more secure, thereby preserving the fair value exchange between buyers and sellers of digital media.

Our software platform is integrated across the entire digital advertising ecosystem, including programmatic platforms, social media channels, and digital publishers. We deliver unique data analytics through our customer interface, DV Pinnacle, to provide detailed insights into our customers’ media performance on both direct and programmatic media buying platforms and across all key digital media channels, formats, and devices, with coverage spanning 110 countries where our customers activate our services. Our customers include many of the largest global advertisers and digital ad platforms and publishers. We provide a consistent, cross-platform measurement standard across all major forms of digital media, making it easier for advertisers and supply-side customers to benchmark performance across all of their digital ads and optimize business outcomes in real-time.

Our company was founded in 2008 and introduced our first brand safety and suitability solution in 2010. We launched our first viewability and fraud solutions in 2013 and 2014, respectively. As the global digital advertising market has evolved, we have continued to expand our measurement capabilities and market coverage through new product innovation, increasing our international footprint and new platform partnerships. We announced our first social media platform partnership in 2017 and launched our CTV certification program in 2020.

We have experienced rapid growth and achieved significant profitability in recent years as evidenced by the following:

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For the years ended December 31, 2023 and December 31, 2022, we generated 92% and 90% of our revenue, respectively, from advertiser customers. We derive revenue primarily from our advertiser customers based on the volume of media transactions, or ads, that our software platform measures (“Media Transactions Measured”). Advertisers utilize the DV Authentic Ad, our definitive metric of digital media quality, to evaluate the existence of fraud, brand safety, viewability and geography for each digital ad. Advertisers pay us a Measured Transaction Fee per thousand impressions based on the volume of Media Transactions Measured on their behalf. The price of most of our solutions is fixed. On platforms that charge based on percent of media spend, our pricing includes caps which effectively mirror our standard fixed fees.

We maintain an expansive set of direct integrations across the entire digital advertising ecosystem, including with leading programmatic, CTV, and social platforms, which enable us to deliver our metrics to the platforms where our customers buy ads. Further, our services are not reliant on any single source of impressions and we can service our customers as their digital advertising needs change. In 2023, we estimate that approximately 52% and 48% of Media Transactions Measured within post-campaign measurement were for display and for video ad formats, respectively. In 2022, approximately 55% and 45% of Media Transactions Measured were for display and for video ad formats, respectively. In 2023, approximately 78%, 17% and 5% of Media Transactions Measured were for mobile devices, desktop devices, and emerging digital channels, respectively. In 2022, approximately 76%, 20% and 4% of Media Transactions Measured were for mobile devices, desktop devices, and emerging digital channels, respectively. For the years ended December 31, 2023 and December 31, 2022, 8% and 10% of our revenue, respectively, was generated from our supply-side customers to validate the quality of their ad inventory. We generate revenue from supply-side customers based on monthly or annual contracts with minimum guarantees and tiered pricing when guarantees are met.

We believe that there are meaningful long-term growth opportunities within the digital advertising market. We plan to continue to invest in the development of new and premium solutions that increase our value proposition to customers and to extend our solutions capabilities to cover new and growing digital media environments, channels and devices, including CTV, new mobile apps and other emerging areas of digital ad spend. We plan to continue to invest in sales and marketing to grow our existing customer relationships and acquire new customers. In addition, we have completed six acquisitions since 2018 and maintain an active pipeline of potential M&A targets and intend to continue evaluating add-on opportunities to bolster our current solutions suite and complement our organic growth initiatives.

Furthermore, we believe that there are significant long-term growth opportunities in markets outside of North America. We expect to continue to make investments in product development, sales and marketing, information technology, financial and administrative systems and controls to support our global growth.

Factors Affecting Our Performance

There are a number of factors that have impacted, and we believe will continue to impact, our results of operations and growth. These factors include:

Significant Growth in Digital Ad Spend. Magna Global estimated that global digital ad spend, excluding search, reached over $280 billion in 2023 and is expected to grow to $386 billion by 2027. Our revenues have grown substantially as a result of the growth in digital advertising as well as the continued adoption of digital measurement solutions and analytics. As the digital advertising market has grown, advertisers have increasingly shifted their digital media spend to both programmatic and social media channels in order to directly target advertisements to achieve desired business outcomes. We have been direct beneficiaries of this growth by virtue of our integrations with leading programmatic and social media platforms. In the year ended December 31, 2023, the revenue we generated by providing our activation solutions through programmatic and social integrations and our measurement solutions through social integrations grew 31% and 48%, respectively, over the prior year period. In the year ended December 31, 2022, the revenue we generated by providing our activation solutions through programmatic and social integrations and our measurement solutions through social integrations grew 50% and 28%, respectively, over the prior year period.

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Growth of Existing Customers. Our customers include many of the largest digital advertisers in the world and we have maintained exceptional customer retention with gross revenue retention rates of over 95% in each of the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2022. We define our gross revenue retention rate as the total prior year revenue earned from advertiser customers, less the portion of prior year revenue attributable to lost advertiser customers, divided by the total prior year revenue from advertiser customers, excluding a portion of our revenues that cannot be allocated to specific advertiser customers. Gross retention rates demonstrate strength in underlying business, recurring business profile, level of client satisfaction and lack of churn. We expect to continue to grow with our existing customers as they increase their spend on digital advertising and as we introduce new solutions across key channels, formats, devices and geographies. We have generated strong historical net revenue retention rates, with 124% for the year ended December 31, 2023 and 127% for the year ended December 31, 2022. We define our net revenue retention rate as the total current period revenue earned from advertiser customers, which were also customers during the entire most recent twelve-month period, divided by the total prior year period revenue earned from the same advertiser customers, excluding a portion of our revenues that cannot be allocated to specific advertiser customers. Net retention rates demonstrate strength in underlying business, recurring business profile, level of client satisfaction and lack of churn. Limitations for these metrics include limiting their usefulness as a comparative measure and the metrics not being the best indicator of our cash flows or future operating results.  You should compensate for these limitations by relying primarily on the Company’s GAAP results and using the non-GAAP financial measures only supplementally.

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New Solutions and Channels. We have a strong track record of developing new solutions that have high adoption rates with our existing customers. We intend to extend our solutions capabilities to new adjacencies and cover new and growing digital channels and devices, including CTV, new mobile apps and other emerging areas of digital ad spend. At the end of 2018, we launched our Authentic Brand Suitability solution that allows advertisers to create a centralized set of brand suitability controls that can be automatically deployed across multiple programmatic buying platforms and campaigns. Authentic Brand Suitability, which significantly reduces wasted ad spend, generated $182.0 million and $123.3 million of revenue in 2023 and 2022, respectively. In 2023, we developed and launched several new solutions: (i) Scibids AI, through our acquisition of Scibids Technology SAS in August 2023, empowers global brands to leverage Demand-Side Platform impression-level data, first-party data, measurement data and cost data in order to build algorithmic models that more effectively drive specific key performance indicators and tangible outcomes while improving operational efficiency and reducing manual lift, (ii) expanded brand safety and suitability measurement and activation to enable advertisers to monitor and avoid MFA sites and (iii) expanded brand safety and suitability measurement capabilities to YouTube Shorts and widened TikTok coverage across key markets in Latin America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.

New Geographies. Our customer base is predominately U.S.-based today. We intend to grow our presence in international markets in order to meet the needs of our existing customers and accelerate new customer acquisition in key geographies outside of North America. With offices or commercial operations in 30 locations across 24 countries, our expansion to new geographies has helped us to win the international business of our existing customers and to establish relationships with some of the world’s largest international advertisers. As of December 31, 2023, 453 of our employees were based outside of the Americas.

While the factors above may present significant opportunities for us, they also pose significant risks and challenges. See “Risk Factors” for more information on risks and uncertainties that may impact our business and financial results.

Components of Our Results of Operations

We manage our business operations and report our financial results in a single segment.

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Revenue

Our customers use our solutions to measure the effectiveness of their digital advertisements. We generate revenue from our advertising customers based on the volume of Media Transactions Measured on our software platform, and for supply-side customers, based on contracts with minimum guarantees or contracts that have tiered pricing after minimum guarantees are achieved.

For the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2022, we generated 92% and 90% of our revenue, respectively, from advertiser customers. Advertisers can purchase our services to measure the quality and performance of ads after they are purchased directly from digital properties, including publishers and social media platforms, which we track as Measurement (f/k/a Advertiser – direct) revenue. Advertisers can also purchase our services through programmatic and social media platforms to evaluate the quality of ad inventories before they are purchased, which we track as Activation (f/k/a Advertiser – programmatic) revenue. We generate the majority of revenue from advertisers by charging a Measured Transaction Fee based on the volume of Media Transactions Measured on behalf of our customers. We recognize revenue from advertisers in the period in which we provide our measurement and activation solutions. Advertisers typically leverage the full suite of our proprietary DV Authentic Ad metric to evaluate and measure the existence of fraud, brand suitability, viewability and geography for their digital ad investments. We have long-term relationships with many of our customers, with an average relationship of approximately eight years for our top 25, 50 and 75 customers, and ongoing contractual agreements with a substantial portion of our customer base.

For the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2022, we generated 8% and 10% of our revenue, respectively, from supply-side customers who use our data analytics to validate the quality of their ad inventory and provide data to their customers to facilitate targeting and purchasing of digital ads, which we refer to as Supply-side revenue. We generate revenue for certain supply-side arrangements that include minimum guaranteed fees that reset monthly and are recognized on a straight-line basis over the access period, which is usually twelve months. For contracts that contain overages, once the minimum guaranteed amount is achieved, overages are recognized as earned over time based on a tiered pricing structure.

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See “Critical Accounting Policies and Estimates — Revenue Recognition” for a description of our revenue recognition policies.

Operating Expenses

Our operating expenses consist of the following categories:

Cost of revenue. Cost of revenue consists primarily of costs from revenue-sharing arrangements with our partners, platform hosting fees, data center costs, software and other technology expenses, other costs directly associated with data infrastructure, and personnel costs, including salaries, bonuses, stock-based compensation and benefits, directly associated with the support and delivery of our software platform and data solutions.

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Product development. Product development expenses consist primarily of personnel costs, including salaries, bonuses, stock-based compensation and benefits, third party vendors and outsourced engineering services, and allocated overhead. Overhead costs such as information technology infrastructure, rent and occupancy charges are allocated based on headcount. Product development expenses are expensed as incurred, except to the extent that such costs are associated with software development that qualifies for capitalization, which are then recorded as capitalized software development costs included in Property, plant and equipment, net on our Consolidated Balance Sheets. Capitalized software development costs are amortized to depreciation and amortization.

Sales, marketing, and customer support. Sales, marketing, and customer support expenses consist primarily of personnel costs directly associated with sales, marketing, and customer support departments, including salaries, bonuses, commissions, stock-based compensation and benefits, and allocated overhead. Overhead costs such as information technology infrastructure, rent and occupancy charges are allocated based on headcount. Sales and marketing expense also includes costs for promotional marketing activities, advertising costs, and attendance at events and trade shows. Sales commissions are expensed as incurred.

General and administrative. General and administrative expenses consist primarily of personnel expenses associated with our executive, finance, legal, human resources and other administrative employees. General and administrative expenses also include professional fees for external accounting, legal, investor relations and other consulting services, expenses to operate as a public company, including costs to comply with rules and regulations applicable to companies listed on a U.S. securities exchange, costs related to compliance and reporting obligations pursuant to the rules and regulations of the SEC, other overhead expenses including insurance, as well as third-party costs related to acquisitions.

Interest expense. Interest expense for the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2022, consists primarily of debt issuance costs, commitment fees associated with the unused portion of the New Revolving Credit Facility, interest on balances that were outstanding under the New Revolving Credit Facility and interest on finance leases. The New Revolving Credit Facility bears interest at SOFR plus an applicable margin per annum. See “Liquidity and Capital Resources—Debt Obligations.”

Other (income) expense. Other (income) expense consists primarily of interest earned on interest-bearing monetary assets, gains and losses on foreign currency transactions, and change in fair value associated with contingent consideration related to our acquisitions.

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Results of Operations

Comparison of the Years Ended December 31, 2023 and 2022

The following tables show our results of operations for the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2022:

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Note: Percentages may not sum due to rounding.

Revenue

Total revenue increased by $120.1 million, or 27%, from $452.4 million in the year ended December 31, 2022 to $572.5 million in the year ended December 31, 2023.

Total Advertiser revenue increased by $117.9 million, or 29%, driven primarily by a 25% increase in Media Transactions Measured and a 3% increase in Measured Transaction Fees.

Activation (f/k/a Advertiser – programmatic) revenue increased by $77.7 million, or 31%, driven primarily by greater adoption of our Authentic Brand Suitability (ABS) solution, as well as by new customers activating our non-ABS activation solutions, including Scibids.

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Measurement (f/k/a Advertiser – direct) revenue increased by $40.1 million, or 25%, driven primarily by greater adoption of our social measurement solutions across emerging platforms and formats including short-form video.

Supply-side revenue increased $2.3 million, or 5%, driven primarily by an increase in revenue from existing and new platform customers.

Cost of Revenue (exclusive of depreciation and amortization shown below)

Cost of revenue increased by $28.8 million, or 37%, from $77.9 million in the year ended December 31, 2022 to $106.6 million in the year ended December 31, 2023. The increase was due primarily to growth in Activation (f/k/a Advertiser – programmatic) revenue which drove increases in partner costs from revenue-sharing arrangements, as well as investments in cloud services to provide scale and flexibility necessary to support future growth.

Product Development Expenses

Product development expenses increased by $30.3 million, or 32%, from $95.1 million in the year ended December 31, 2022 to $125.4 million in the year ended December 31, 2023. The increase was due primarily to an increase in personnel costs, including stock-based compensation, of $24.8 million and an increase in third party software costs and outsourced consulting and engineering services of $4.4 million to support our product development efforts.

Sales, Marketing and Customer Support Expenses

Sales, marketing and customer support expenses increased by $18.5 million, or 17%, from $107.4 million in the year ended December 31, 2022 to $126.0 million in the year ended December 31, 2023. The increase was due primarily to an increase in personnel costs, including stock-based compensation and sales commissions, of $13.6 million to support sales and account management efforts globally, and drive continued expansion with existing and new customers. Marketing activities, including advertising, promotions, events and other activities, increased $1.1 million, and personnel travel and entertainment expenses to support marketing and sales activities increased $1.6 million.

General and Administrative Expenses

General and administrative expenses increased by $9.3 million, or 12%, from $78.7 million in the year ended December 31, 2022 to $88.0 million in the year ended December 31, 2023. Personnel costs, including stock-based compensation, increased by $8.9 million. Bad debt expenses increased by $5.0 million, including a reserve established in connection with outstanding amounts owed to us by our activation partner, MediaMath Holdings, Inc., which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on June 30, 2023. Cost increases were offset by a decrease of $4.7 million in other costs which include costs related to the departures of the Company’s former Chief Operating Officer and Chief Customer Officer, the impairment of subleased office space and the disposal of furniture for unoccupied lease office space that did not recur in the year ended December 31, 2023.

Depreciation and Amortization

Depreciation and amortization increased by $6.6 million, or 19%, from $34.3 million in the year ended December 31, 2022 to $40.9 million in the year ended December 31, 2023. The increase was due primarily to an increase in capitalized software development costs, an increase in leasehold improvements at the Company’s new global headquarters, and an increase in intangible assets related to the acquisition of Scibids.

Interest Expense

Interest expense increased by $0.2 million, from $0.9 million in the year ended December 31, 2022, to $1.1 million in the year ended December 31, 2023 due primarily to an increase in interest costs related to finance leases.

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Other Income, Net

Other income increased by $10.0 million, from $1.2 million in the year ended December 31, 2022, to $11.2 million in the year ended December 31, 2023. The increase was due to an $8.5 million increase in interest income earned on monetary assets, and a $1.2 million gain related to the change in fair value associated with contingent consideration related to the Scibids acquisition.

Income Tax Expense

Income tax expense increased by $8.3 million, from $16.1 million in the year ended December 31, 2022 to $24.4 million in the year ended December 31, 2023. The increase was due primarily to an increase in pre-tax book income.

Adjusted EBITDA

In addition to our results determined in accordance with GAAP, management believes that certain non-GAAP financial measures, including Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA Margin, are useful in evaluating our business. We calculate Adjusted EBITDA Margin as Adjusted EBITDA divided by total revenue. The following table presents a reconciliation of Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP financial measure, to the most directly comparable financial measure prepared in accordance with GAAP.

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We use Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA Margin as measures of operational efficiency to understand and evaluate our core business operations. We believe that these non-GAAP financial measures are useful to investors for period to period comparisons of our core business and for understanding and evaluating trends in operating results on a consistent basis by excluding items that we do not believe are indicative of our core operating performance.

These non-GAAP financial measures have limitations as analytical tools and should not be considered in isolation or as substitutes for an analysis of our results as reported under GAAP. Some of the limitations of these measures are:

In addition, other companies in our industry may calculate these non-GAAP financial measures differently, therefore limiting their usefulness as a comparative measure. You should compensate for these limitations by relying primarily on our GAAP results and using the non-GAAP financial measures only supplementally.

Selected Quarterly Results of Operations

The following tables set forth our unaudited consolidated quarterly results of operations for each of the 8 quarters within the period from January 1, 2022 to December 31, 2023. Our quarterly results of operations have been prepared on the same basis as our consolidated financial statements, and we believe they reflect all normal recurring adjustments necessary for the fair presentation of our results of operations for these periods. This information should be read in conjunction with our consolidated financial statements and related notes included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. These quarterly results of operations are not necessarily indicative of our results of operations for a full year or any future period.

We experience fluctuations in revenue that coincide with seasonal fluctuations in the digital ad spending of our customers. Advertisers typically allocate the largest portion of their media budgets to the fourth quarter of the calendar year in order to coincide with increased holiday purchasing. As a result, the fourth quarter of the year typically reflects our highest level of measurement of digital ads while the first quarter reflects the lowest level of such activity. We expect our revenue to continue to fluctuate based on seasonal factors that affect the advertising industry as a whole. While our revenue is highly recurring, seasonal fluctuations in ad spend may impact quarter-over-quarter results. We believe that the year-over-year comparison of results more appropriately reflects the overall performance of the business.

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The following table sets forth our unaudited consolidated results of operations for the specified periods as a percentage of revenue: