Magnite Q2 2026 Earnings Report

Magnite EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $0.26
• Consensus EPS: $0.24
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.02
• One Year Ago EPS: $0.20

Magnite Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $192.82 million
• Expected Revenue: $179.15 million
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$13.67 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: +11.30%

Magnite Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q2 2026
• Date: 8/5/2026
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, August 5, 2026
• Conference Call Time: 4:30PM ET

Magnite (NASDAQ:MGNI) (NASDAQ: MGNI) operates as an independent sell-side advertising platform that enables publishers and digital media owners to monetize their inventory through programmatic advertising. Formed in 2020 through the merger of Rubicon Project and Telaria, Magnite combines technologies for desktop, mobile, connected television (CTV) and digital out-of-home (DOOH) ad exchanges. The company provides an end-to-end solution designed to help media owners optimize yield across open marketplaces, private marketplaces and programmatic guaranteed deals.

At the core of Magnite’s offering is its supply-side platform (SSP), which connects publishers’ ad impressions to demand-side platforms (DSPs) through real-time bidding (RTB). The platform includes built-in tools for auction optimization, header bidding and audience segmentation, enabling publishers to maximize revenue while maintaining control over the quality and targeting of ads served on their sites and apps. In the rapidly growing CTV market, Magnite supports ad insertion across multiple streaming devices and environments, delivering scalable video ads that align with consumer viewing habits.

Magnite’s technology stack also encompasses analytics and reporting services that provide publishers with actionable insights into performance metrics, such as fill rates, price floors and buyer behavior. By combining marketplace data with machine learning algorithms, the company aims to drive more efficient yield management and transparent pricing dynamics. In addition, Magnite offers private marketplace solutions that allow premium publishers to build curated deal structures with select advertisers and agencies.

Headquartered in Los Angeles, California, with offices across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, Magnite serves a global roster of digital media companies, broadcasters and broadcasters-turned-streaming services. The company’s executive leadership team brings together veterans from the digital advertising and technology sectors, underscoring its focus on innovation and the evolution of programmatic media monetization. With its independent status, Magnite positions itself as a partner to publishers seeking alternatives to agency-owned ad tech stacks.

Magnite Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Magnite reported a strong Q2, with Contribution ex-TAC of $190 million, up 17% year over year and approximately $10 million above consensus; adjusted EBITDA rose 30% to $71 million, producing a 37% margin.
• Positive Sentiment: CTV Contribution ex-TAC grew 36% to $97 million, driven by broad-based adoption of programmatic advertising, international expansion, and strength across major media owners; the company expects CTV growth of 29%–32% in Q3.
• Positive Sentiment: Management raised its full-year outlook, now projecting Contribution ex-TAC growth of 13%–14%, adjusted EBITDA growth above 20%, margins of at least 37%, and free-cash-flow growth in the high-40% range.
• Positive Sentiment: The company ended Q2 with $333 million in cash and 0.1x net leverage, while repurchasing or withholding approximately $28 million of shares during the quarter and retaining $165 million under its authorization.
• Neutral Sentiment: Magnite is investing in AI agents and Magnite Orchestration as infrastructure for automated advertising, but adoption remains early: current agentic transactions total only a few million dollars and management does not expect a material near-term financial impact.

Presentation

[Operator]

Hello, thank you for standing by. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Magnite Q2 2026 earnings call. Please note that this call is being recorded. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. There will be some opening remarks followed by a question-and-answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. I'd now like to hand the call over to Nick Kormeluk, investor relations. Please go ahead.

[Nick Kormeluk, Investor Relations Contact at Magnite]

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Magnite's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. Joining me on the call today are Michael Barrett, CEO, and David Day, our CFO, for his final earnings call prior to retiring. I would like to point out that we have posted financial highlight slides on our investor relations website to accompany today's presentation. Before we get started, I will remind you that our prepared remarks and answers to questions will include information that might be considered to be forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, statements concerning our anticipated financial performance and strategic objectives, including the potential impacts of macroeconomic factors on our business.

[Nick Kormeluk, Investor Relations Contact at Magnite]

They reflect our current views with respect to future events and are based on assumptions and estimates and subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from expectations or results projected or implied by forward-looking statements. A discussion of these other risks, uncertainties, and assumptions is set forth in the company's periodic reports filed with the SEC, including our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and our 2025 annual report on Form 10-K. We undertake no obligation to update forward-looking statements or relevant risks. Our commentary today will include non-GAAP financial measures, including Contribution ex-TAC or less traffic acquisition costs, Adjusted EBITDA, and non-GAAP income per share.

[Nick Kormeluk, Investor Relations Contact at Magnite]

Reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP metrics for our reported results can be found in our earnings press release and in our financial highlights deck that is posted on our investor relations website. At times, in response to your questions, we may offer additional metrics to provide greater insights into the dynamics of our business. Please be advised that this additional detail may be one-time in nature, and we may or may not provide an update on the future of these metrics. I encourage you to visit our investor relations website to access our press release, financial highlights deck, periodic SEC reports, and the webcast replay of today's call to learn more about Magnite. I will now turn the call over to Michael. Please go ahead, Michael.

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

Thank you, Nick, and thanks everyone for joining us today. I am pleased to report an outstanding second quarter for Magnite. We significantly exceeded expectations across the business. Contribution ex-TAC came in well above consensus, driven by strength in both CTV and DV+. That translated into meaningful bottom-line outperformance. We expect this momentum to continue. Based on our first half results and the strength we are seeing across the business, we are raising both our full year Contribution ex-TAC outlook and our expectations for margin expansion. Total Contribution ex-TAC exceeded consensus by approximately $10 million. CTV contributed roughly $6 million of that outperformance and grew 36% year-over-year. DV+ contributed approximately $4 million of the beat and returned to growth, increasing 2%. Adjusted EBITDA exceeded consensus by $8 million, resulting in a margin of 37%, demonstrating the operating leverage in our business.

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

These results were broad-based. CTV represented 51% of total Contribution ex-TAC in the quarter, continuing the momentum that began in the second half of 2025. We believe the market has reached an important inflection point as programmatic becomes the desired way to transact on streaming television. We saw strong growth across many of the industry's largest media owners, including Disney and ESPN, Netflix, Roku, VIZIO Walmart, and Warner Bros. Discovery. Across our top 10 CTV accounts, growth accelerated to the mid to high 40% range year-over-year. While the secular shift of advertising dollars towards CTV continues, we are encouraged by the improving trajectory of DV+. In particular, mobile in-app grew 17% year-over-year. We continue to believe mobile in-app is an attractive long-term growth market, supported by deeper DSP integrations, new publisher onboarding, and our SDK strategy.

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

To be clear, this is both an industry and Magnite share growth story. Our results demonstrate that we are expanding our share with growth that is outpacing the broader market as customers increasingly choose our platform. Stepping back, there are three structural trends driving our business today. First, SpringServe has become the operating system for CTV monetization. Second, audience enablement and decisioning are moving from the buy side to the supply side, we believe Magnite is leading that transition. Third, as AI reshapes advertising, our newly announced Magnite Orchestration shows early signs of becoming a critical infrastructure layer for agentic advertising. Taken together, these three trends are improving our long-term competitive position and growth prospects. SpringServe remains our primary differentiator.

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

What began as a best-in-class ad server has evolved into the operating system for CTV monetization. It has become the intelligent control layer for premium streaming, combining ad serving, mediation, monetization, demand facilitation, and data enablement. These functions are increasingly being enhanced by agentic tools. Publishers want to work with a trusted partner capable of maximizing yield while preserving control over their inventory, data, pricing, business rules, and viewer experience. Buyers want direct, transparent, and scaled access to premium streaming supply. SpringServe uniquely sits directly between those objectives. The power of SpringServe is evidenced by a string of major new wins and partner expansions. On the publisher side, we announced Samsung selected SpringServe to power ad serving for its premium smart TV home screen inventory, reaching hundreds of millions of smart TVs globally, to open this inventory to programmatic buying for the first time through our DSP ecosystem.

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

We are excited to add Samsung as another key home screen customer, solidifying Magnite's leadership position among OEMs in this increasingly valuable environment. On the buy side, WPP has expanded ad formats in its media supply hub, enabled on SpringServe, to include pause ads and has validated Magnite's ability to seamlessly pair CTV ad formats with WPP's open audience segments via ClearLine through a custom real-time data integration. Moving to the second structural trend, the acceleration of supply-side audience enablement and decisioning. Historically, many of the most important optimization decisions in digital advertising were made on the buy side. Today, publishers and buyers have access to richer first-party data, commerce signals, AI, pricing intelligence, and much more workflow flexibility. As a result, more valuable decisions are moving toward the supply side and the breadth of our relationships and technology position us well to capture the shift.

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

One of the most compelling applications of supply-side audience enablement and decisioning is commerce media. Commerce media continues to scale with 21 partners now deployed and actively ramping across DV+ and CTV. Partners, including Fanatics, CVS Media Exchange, Best Buy, and PayPal Ads, are all using Magnite to activate valuable first-party data across owned and operated inventory and the broader open internet. With our partnership with Walmart Connect, we are helping combine Walmart's first-party commerce data with premium CTV inventory, including VIZIO supply, while supporting off-site execution and closed-loop measurement. Now turning to AI. Earlier this year, much of the discussion focused on whether companies like Magnite could be disintermediated. Today, the conversation has largely changed. Our customers are increasingly leaning on us to develop and deploy AI capabilities within our platform, converting AI into a tailwind. buyer agents and seller agents will become increasingly common across digital advertising.

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

Agents do not eliminate infrastructure, they increase the need for it. As thousands of agents from publishers, marketers, data providers, and measurement companies interact simultaneously, someone must coordinate those interactions. Someone must discover inventory, interpret campaign objectives, package audiences, enforce publisher controls, protect privacy, optimize monetization, clear transactions, and provide the trust required for advertising to function at scale. We believe Magnite is uniquely positioned to play that role. Last quarter, we announced our seller and buyer agents. Our seller agent allows publishers to seamlessly create custom inventory and audience packages that are discoverable and purchasable by buyer agents. While our buyer agent enables buyers to create custom media plans from simple RFIs, generate ad creatives, and activate and discover audience opportunities. This quarter, we took the next major step by introducing Magnite Orchestration. Earlier, I described SpringServe as the operating system for CTV monetization.

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

As AI reshapes advertising, we believe Magnite Orchestration has the potential to become the critical infrastructure for agentic advertising. Rather than simply introducing another AI agent, we are building the orchestration layer that enables any agent to work together in a trusted environment across a scaled, independent marketplace. Disney Advertising, Spectrum Reach, Kepler, MiQ, Publicis Media Exchange, Dentsu, and DirecTV are already working with different components of our AI suite. These partnerships provide early but meaningful validation of agentic advertising operating across both the buy side and the sell side. As advertising evolves with advancements in AI and becomes more automated, more data-driven, and more interconnected, the value of intelligent decisioning and trusted orchestration only increases. We believe Magnite is uniquely positioned to lead in these areas.

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

If CTV has been the defining growth story for Magnite over the past several years, we believe supply-side audience enhancement, enablement and decisioning and AI orchestration together have the potential to define the next chapter of our growth. Before I conclude, I would like to recognize David. As previously announced, David plans to retire at the end of September after more than 13 years of outstanding leadership and service to Magnite. David has been an exceptional partner and a trusted advisor. His financial leadership helped guide Magnite through transformational acquisitions, significant industry change, and tremendous growth. Just as importantly, he has built a deep and talented finance organization that will provide an excellent foundation for his successor. Our search continues to progress well, and we are evaluating a strong group of internal and external candidates.

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

On behalf of our board, our leadership team, and everyone at Magnite, I want to sincerely thank David for his extraordinary contributions. With that, I'll turn the call over to David for more detail on our financial results. David?

[David Day, CFO at Magnite]

Thanks for those kind words, Michael. Very much appreciated. We are extremely pleased with our second quarter results. As Michael mentioned, we exceeded contribution ex-TAC and bottom-line expectations across the board. Given the momentum in our business and the many catalysts driving our growth, we are raising our guidance for the remainder of the year. Total revenue for Q2 was $193 million, up 11% from Q2 2025. Contribution ex-TAC was $190 million, up 17%, well above the high end of our guidance range. CTV contribution ex-TAC was $97 million, up 36% year-over-year, well above our guide of $90 million-$92 million. DV+ contribution ex-TAC was $93 million, an increase of 2% from the second quarter last year, above the top end of our guidance range. Our contribution ex-TAC mix for Q2 was 51% CTV, 35% mobile, and 14% desktop.

[David Day, CFO at Magnite]

From a vertical perspective, health and fitness, technology, and finance were the strongest performing categories, while automotive, our top declining category in Q1 2026, has returned to growth, but remains depressed. Total operating expenses, which includes cost of revenue, were $162 million, up from $151 million last year. The increase was primarily due to increased personnel costs, higher tech stack-related expenses, and higher facility expenses. These were offset by lower traffic acquisition costs. Adjusted EBITDA operating expense for the second quarter was $119 million, an increase from $108 million in the same period last year, with similar drivers as previously noted. Our net income was $19 million for the quarter, compared to net income of $11 million for the second quarter of 2025. Adjusted EBITDA grew 30% year-over-year to $71 million, reflecting a margin of 37% compared to 34% in Q2 last year.

[David Day, CFO at Magnite]

We're seeing encouraging productivity benefits from AI across engineering, operations, sales, and G&A. While we are still early, these capabilities are helping us accomplish more, improve execution, and support continued margin expansion. GAAP earnings per diluted share were $0.13 for the second quarter of 2026, compared to earnings of $0.08 for the second quarter of 2025. Non-GAAP earnings per share for the second quarter of 2026 were $0.26 compared to $0.20 in Q2 last year. Our cash balance at the end of Q2 was $333 million, an increase from $185 million at the end of the first quarter. Operating cash flow, which we define as Adjusted EBITDA less CapEx, was $57 million. Capital expenditures, including both purchases of property and equipment and capitalized internal use software development costs, were $13 million.

[David Day, CFO at Magnite]

Net interest expense for the quarter was $6 million, and net leverage was 0.1x at quarter end. During the second quarter, we repurchased or withheld over 2.1 million shares for approximately $28 million. Year-to-date, through the second quarter, we repurchased or withheld approximately 4.4 million shares, or about $57 million. As of quarter end, $165 million remained available under our current repurchase authorization, which is effective through February of 2028. I will now share our expectations for the third quarter of 2026 and our current thoughts for the full year. For the third quarter, we expect contribution ex-TAC to be in the range of $188 million-$192 million, which represents growth of 13%-15%. Contribution ex-TAC attributable to CTV to be in the range of $98 million-$100 million, which represents a growth range of 29%-32%.

[David Day, CFO at Magnite]

DV+ Contribution ex-TAC to be in the range of $90 million-$92 million, which represents a growth range of -1% to 1%. We anticipate Adjusted EBITDA operating expenses to be in the range of $119 million-$121 million, which implies Adjusted EBITDA margin of 36%-38%. For the full year 2026, we are raising total contribution ex-TAC growth to be between 13% and 14%, up from at least 11% previously, raising Adjusted EBITDA percentage growth to be greater than 20% from the mid-teens previously, raising Adjusted EBITDA margin to be at least 37% from at least 35.5% previously, raising free cash flow growth to be in the high 40% range from the mid 30% range previously, reaffirming CapEx of approximately $60 million, a reduction from prior year.

[David Day, CFO at Magnite]

On the Google Ad Tech trial front, we have no updates since last quarter, and our estimates do not include any market share gains that might result from potential remedies. A final note of context for our revenue guide, even with our raised full-year guidance, we remain somewhat conservative in our estimates for the rest of the year to properly capture potential macro risk. Finally, on a personal note, I continue to be incredibly pleased with our performance and the robust financial position the company maintains today. I'm very proud of the durable company we've built, our winning culture, and our world-class finance team. We have incredible momentum in the business, and I look forward to another great quarter and closeout to the year. The best is yet to come. With that, let's open the line for Q&A.

[Operator]

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star one again. We will pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Matt Swanson of RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

[Matt Swanson, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

Great. Thank you guys so much, and thank you for taking my questions. David, you will be missed. Hopefully, get to see you a little bit more, before you start fishing and golfing.

[David Day, CFO at Magnite]

Thank you.

[Matt Swanson, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

I guess starting on the top 10 CTV accounts, you're talking about the mid to high 40% growth. Could you just talk about those three buckets in which you grow CTV revenue, being increased supply, people moving up the rate card and increasing take rates or just where that growth is coming from.

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

Hey, Matt, it's Michael. I would see generally in two buckets. One is just greater adoption of programmatic. It just becomes table stakes, in the upfronts to be able to offer buyers the option to buy programmatically. Each year we're just seeing a greater adoption of programmatic with the big streamers, the premium streamers, right? The second bucket is a willingness to have, instead of publisher-led programmatic, publisher-sold programmatic, Magnite demand, Magnite able to come in and bring demand from DSPs that they don't have relationships, advertisers that these premium publishers haven't had relationships with. That obviously carries with it a different profile in terms of take rates. I think that you can look at it in those two lenses, the greatest contributors to that.

[Matt Swanson, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

Thanks, Michael. Maybe this builds on that second part of your answer there. You're now connected to the vast majority of CTV or streaming supply out there. It feels like a lot of the long-term TAM expansion for Magnite comes with also increasing the amount of demand or the amount of people spending on your supply. Two of the three big themes you highlighted seem like they're at least in some ways about making it easier, if not, obviously you're not going to be doing the DSP job, but making it easier to buy within CTV. Could you just talk about how that strategy shifts in terms of making it as easy as possible for dollars to flow to all your inventory?

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

It's a really good point. Listen, I think, if you look at the three pillars we talked about, SpringServe being one, I assume you're alluding to audience decisioning and enablement, and our efforts in AI with Magnite Orchestration. I think they both fit that bill, right? The idea is there's valuable first-party data on the media owner side and on the advertiser side, what's the easiest, most frictionless way to surface that inventory. To your point, you're right, it's not about eliminating DSPs, but you are bringing some very valuable decisioning and enablement onto the supply side that is new. You see the success we're having with commerce media. That's really the tip of the spear there. They have great data on their side. The Disneys of the world, the Netflix of the world, great data on their side.

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

What's the easiest way to get that data to match and open it up so that it democratizes DSP involvement so that you just don't have to use one DSP where that data has been housed. You now are able to bring your own DSP and access the data. That definitely Brings more seamless demand into the picture. AI, obviously, it's early stages. To date, we've transacted a handful of millions of dollars. Next year, it'll be much bigger than that, but it's not going to represent the majority of our overall spend. Building tools that enable these advancements to work closely together in a safe way, a trusted way, is going to be very important for our buyers and sellers to be able to realize the benefits of AI. Yeah, I think those two areas definitely fit the bill of decreasing friction and bringing demand into the ecosystem.

[Matt Swanson, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Shyam Patil of SFG. Please go ahead.

[Shyam Patil, Analyst at SFG]

Hey, guys. Congrats on the very strong results and some of the industry-leading growth rates there. David, congrats again. All the best with the next chapter. Michael, I had a couple of questions. One was on CTV, one on agentic. On CTV, again, very strong growth rate. I think might be the highest in the industry right now. I know you talked about strength over the past couple of quarters, just being broad-based across the board. Just wondering, for this past quarter, was there anything that really surprised you to the upside? Was there one or two things that really surprised you? Then second, on agentic, it sounds like this could be a pretty significant opportunity. Heard you talk about it for a while now, just in terms of the momentum there.

[Shyam Patil, Analyst at SFG]

I was just wondering if you could talk a bit more about what customer conversations are like right now. When this starts to ramp, I know timing's always tough, but when it starts to ramp, do you think this is something that can really inflect the growth rate? Thank you.

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

Yeah, sure. On the CTV front, as we kind of cited in the script, it was quite broad-based. It wasn't certainly led by one publisher. I think the two things drove it. Number one, just increasing adoption of programmatic by the buyers and media owners, particularly with our premium accounts. Secondly, international growth. When these big streamers expand internationally and global, we go along for the ride. They really lean heavily on us in the programmatic channel to activate demand in these markets because they don't have necessarily boots on the ground to sell direct. I think you saw it in Disney's earnings. They cited international growing faster in the programmatic bucket, and we can attest that we see that as well. I think it's just seeing broader-based adoption of programmatic and international expansion, which comes almost as a programmatic-first expansion.

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

As far as agentic is concerned, customer conversations, it's the topic. We recently were at an industry event in France, there wasn't one conversation you had with customers that didn't involve agentic. It's early stages. I think we feel really pleased with the level of investment we made in it. I don't think we've over-invested, but we're ready for it when it comes. I think we've been leading the discussion in the industry, we feel good about that. It's really hard, as you pointed out, to pinpoint when the tipping point occurs. We end every big conversation with customers asking them what their prediction is for 2027, and you get a range of 0 to $1 billion in terms of for the whole industry.

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

For a company that's going to do $9+ billion in ad spend, if $1 billion for the whole industry gets transacted, it's not all that meaningful in terms of impact to our financials in the near term. I definitely think mid to long term, it will definitely be a growth driver. Largely because I think you'll have more money put to work, the working media will be larger. I think that you're going to have TAM expansion because a lot of the experiments that we've seen have been direct IOs that have been converted to the programmatic channel. That will bring in new dollars into the TAM of programmatic, that's a positive too.

[Shyam Patil, Analyst at SFG]

Great. Thank you, guys.

[Operator]

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Jason Kreyer of Craig-Hallum. Please go ahead.

[Jason Kreyer, Analyst at Craig-Hallum]

I couldn't draw up a better quarter for David's last quarter and for investors to see the David Day effect. Congratulations there. Just wanted to get an updated view on the political environment. We're hearing positive trends there. I'm curious if you're thinking any differently about what you were embedding into the guide previously versus the updated guide today.

[David Day, CFO at Magnite]

Yeah, that's a good question. Just to kind of level set again, four years ago in midterms, we had about $11 million in contribution ex-TAC. Presidential, we had about $19 million. We entered this year kind of targeting something in between those. We've continued to include that level in our forecast. That said, I think the primaries ended up a little stronger than we might have anticipated. We're cautiously optimistic that there could be some additional upside there. It's just so hard to handicap given the volatility in these races, candidates in and out and how competitive they're going to be. Yeah, we do think there's hopefully some upside in the political realm.

[Jason Kreyer, Analyst at Craig-Hallum]

Thank you. A follow-up for you, Michael. Sticking with the agentic topic, I want to ask about just Orchestration in your seller agent. Can you just talk about the strategy to get publishers to utilize the seller agent, how that adoption progresses, and how that catalyzes Orchestration to be this critical infrastructure layer that you had called out?

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

Yeah. Great question, Jason. All of the experiments that we have transacted, all the buys, have involved the publishers using our seller agent. I don't think success for us looks like everyone has to adopt Magnite Seller Agent. The idea of the Orchestration layer is to allow people to bring whatever tool they have and be able to have it work seamlessly with the other side of the fence. If you're a buyer working with a seller working with a buyer, data provider, et cetera. We really think the future is being able to be this trusted partner that allows inventory discovery, execution, clearance, brand safety, and I think that only can be accomplished by someone as scaled as we are. I think you're going to see far fewer competitors of ours in an agentic world.

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

You don't need multiple Orchestration layers, and that's why I think we feel so bullish about the prospects of Magnite Orchestration. Just like SpringServe is that operating system for CTV, we think we have a real fighting shot to be that operating system for the agentic-enabled advertising world and feel very good about the level of investment we've made here.

[Jason Kreyer, Analyst at Craig-Hallum]

All right. Thanks for the thoughts, guys.

[Operator]

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Laura Martin of Needham. Please go ahead.

[Laura Martin, Analyst at Needham]

Okay, Michael. I want to stay with agentic, and the minute you tell me that you want the agentic layer to be similar to SpringServe being the OS. SpringServe has a horrible margin and a horrible take rate. I'd like for you first to address, is the orchestration layer sort of going to be free, or is it going to have a better take rate than SpringServe, A. B, when we were talking about agentic and Cannes, you were really quick to say that it was a new total addressable market because it was basically a workforce automation tool for linear TV moving into CTV, automating CTV. To me, the upside there was a $50 billion TAM you guys have never touched. To me, that's the primary agentic benefit so far, having nothing to do with agentic.

[Laura Martin, Analyst at Needham]

Am I just thinking about the two ideas not integrated enough?

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

No, a great question, Laura. Questions. SpringServe, as you know, plays a myriad of roles in our technology suite. There is SpringServe, as you pointed out, the ad server, and ad serving takes a different take rate than mediation or demand facilitation. SpringServe has now become embedded in all of our platforms. There's an instance of SpringServe in everything that we do. To characterize SpringServe as a very low take rate product might refer to it from an ad serving standpoint, but it's certainly not the case for SpringServe enabled across the Magnite technology suite. SpringServe is not a low take rate. In orchestration, we intend to charge for it. It won't represent SpringServe the ad server. Orchestration will do many things that folks will value, and we'll be able to charge appropriately for it.

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

To date, all of our transactions that we've done agentically have carried with it a similar take rate structure to our normal suite of products. You are absolutely right and did note that in one of the questions and answers that we see TAM expansion with agentic because what we have seen to date has been one-to-one deals that normally would have been processed outside the programmatic ecosystem as direct sold deals. Now we're seeing it brought into the programmatic ecosystem. So, you're absolutely right. There's a TAM expansion involved in agentic that will take direct dollars and bring it into programmatic.

[Laura Martin, Analyst at Needham]

Okay. My follow-up question, thank you for that's helpful, especially on the take rate stuff. My other thing, Michael, is one of the ways Magnite is different and not better from my point of view, is you're adding FTEs at the speed of light. At a time when we're saying that technology should be replacing employees. You clearly disagree with me. Could you please tell me why we have to be adding all this headcount at a time when I think tech should be replacing people?

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

We definitely share that worldview. The people that we are adding are mission-critical. They're generally engineers. We didn't over-hire during the pandemic, which a lot of our tech peers did, a lot of the folks that are shedding bodies are shedding extra bodies. We see this opportunity as being so rich, and the path for Magnite so clear, that adding 100 people over the course of a year, we don't think is a counter to the notion that AI is making us more efficient. If you look at what AI has done for us internally, I'll give you two examples of big cost savings for us that involved headcount in one instance, that is we no longer are working with any contractors in our ops organization.

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

We've built agents that do that work for us, we've been able to let go all those, they're not FTEs, but it's real cost for the company, you've seen that in the margin expansion. The second piece is on the engineering side, we've been able to build our own load balancer and not have to use Amazon's, that's resulted in $20,000 of savings on a daily basis. We are experienced in enjoying AI from a margin expansion. The people that we hired, mission-critical superstars, they're going to help us get there faster.

[Laura Martin, Analyst at Needham]

Thank you very much. Great numbers. Congratulations.

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

Thanks, Laura.

[Operator]

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Robert Coolbrith with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

[Robert Coolbrith, Analyst at Evercore ISI]

Hi. Thanks for the opportunity to ask a question. David, congratulations once again on a great run. Michael, we love you too. Just wanted to ask, and maybe sort of related to Laura's question, but some of the early work that people are doing on agentic, it seems like it's less sort of real-time decisions. Wanted to ask you, in the fullness of time, do you believe the agentic sort of infrastructure stack or workflow stack or however you want to talk about this, will that include a robust sort of decisioning and auction component to it that maybe addresses some of the questions Laura had? Wanted to ask a little bit about just any sort of, not one-timers, but cyclical events that may have contributed to some of the Q2 strength.

[Robert Coolbrith, Analyst at Evercore ISI]

Any call-out on World Cup in particular, anything you can tell us about that. Thank you very much.

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

Robert. Good questions. So, on the agentic side, you're very accurate in pointing out that most of the agentic that has been ballyhooed has been one-to-one, publisher to buyer. A lot of folks question, can these agents do one to many? That goes right to the heart of our argument for Magnite Orchestration, that you're not blowing up the infrastructure, because you're right, you can't do this with just agents. You need the infrastructure that exists today. Our scale, our server farms, our cloud capabilities, most definitely agents can do one to many and do RTB, but we will be the processor, we will do the transaction, we will run the auction. It's going to be done on our rails, and the interfaces will be agentic. That's the world we believe in, and that's the reason behind Magnite Orchestration.

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

As far as one-timers in Q2, there really weren't any to speak of. This is broad-based. World Cup, we marginally participated. Most of that was linear pass-through to even when it was streaming. World Cup didn't turn out to be that huge sporting event for us that we're going to have to worry about comps going forward. Q2's a pretty clean You're not going to hear us worrying about any one-time, non-recurring comp problems in 2027. Of course, David won't be around to worry about that, but that's okay. Operator, we'll move to next question.

[Operator]

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Tyler DiMatteo of BTIG. Please go ahead.

[Tyler DiMatteo, Analyst at BTIG]

I guess at a higher level, guys, how do you think about kind of the sustainability of that CTV growth rate? Obviously, things have accelerated, and they're very good, and they continue to outperform. When you take a step back and you look at the multi-year view on that growth rate, I guess, how do you kind of think about that sustainability? That's my first question. Secondarily, obviously margin upside. I'm curious from here, where's the opportunity to continue to pull cost out of the business and see greater operating leverage from here as you take a step back on that front as well?

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

Sure. I'll talk about the growth, David can address the operating leverage. Our stated goal has always been to outpace the market in terms of growth when it relates to CTV. Presently, by any estimate, we're 2.5x-3x the market growth rate. Is that sustainable? I think you'll have ups and downs on that. We fully believe that looking out several years, that a 25% growth rate for CTV is something that we not only aspire to, but we think is achievable. That, of course, then translates into margin expansion at that front. We think if you look at the industry estimates, low teen to mid-teen growth right now is CTV. Will we always be 3x that? Probably not. You can, I think, consistently see us as someone being multiples of the industry growth rate.

[David Day, CFO at Magnite]

Yeah. On the margin front, I think a couple of factors to think about. As we have revenue growth that just gets into the double digits, you see incremental flow-through to EBITDA and to free cash flow at pretty high rates. You'll see natural margin expansion even with some of our current cost levels and cost growth levels. That said, on the cost side, I think you're going to see continuing gains as we continue to work on our tech stack costs. Those tech stack cost gains come from two fronts. One is as we continue to get more efficient in working in the cloud. Michael mentioned this load balancer project that we had recently was just one example of that.

[David Day, CFO at Magnite]

Second is, as we move more and more of our activities from the cloud to on-prem, which can be up to 3x more cost-efficient over time. I think you'll see those factors. Third, from a headcount perspective, we have added a few heads, but we think that's been the right thing to do. There's so much opportunity. We're getting more productivity, but we want to double down because of the opportunity ahead of us. That will also not stay the same, and we're very cognizant of headcount and headcount-related costs. I think you'll see that turning a different direction at some point in the future, and that's another additional bucket of cost savings.

[David Day, CFO at Magnite]

All of which point to you seeing the tremendous increase in our margin just in the last quarter and through the rest of the year. I think that margin will continue to expand. Historically, we've talked about long-term margin ranges of the 35%-40% range, and we're going to start bumping up against the top end of that. There's no reason to think that 40% is a cap on our potential margin, and we have opportunity to certainly exceed that down the road.

[Tyler DiMatteo, Analyst at BTIG]

Great. Thanks, guys. Really appreciate the time.

[David Day, CFO at Magnite]

You bet.

[Operator]

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Shweta Khajuria of Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

[Analyst at Wolfe Research]

Thank you. Retake my question. This is Ken on for Shweta. Congrats, David, again, on the retirement. Two questions from me. Can you help us frame what drove the beat and raise beyond what was already said on the CTV side? Any particular segment, macro conditions, or partnerships that perhaps helped drove the beat? Does the team have any early insights for demand in 2027? Thank you.

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

Yeah. We've kind of touched upon the outstanding growth rate, right? Again, there wasn't really any one-timer. Broad-based, the top accounts outpaced the growth of the rest in the top 40% range. Again, no concentration challenges or worries going forward. I think generally speaking, it just can be attributed to greater adoption of programmatic and greater adoption of Magnite-driven programmatic, which obviously carries a different profile from a take rate standpoint. As far as demand for 2027, our intelligence, generally speaking, comes from talking in the marketplace, talking to our media partners, talking to agencies, to marketers, et cetera. That's a timeline that is even scary for them. The second half is what we're focused on for 2026.

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

There's just so many macro ups and downs that can occur between now and budget planning for 2027 that it's difficult to shed any insights on it at this juncture.

[Analyst at Wolfe Research]

Sounds good. Thanks, Michael.

[Operator]

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Barton Crockett of Rosenblatt. Please go ahead.

[Barton Crockett, Analyst at Rosenblatt]

Okay. Thanks for taking the question. I was wondering about the disparity between revenue growth in CTV and Contribution ex-TAC growth in CTV. I think the delta was like 21% and 36%. What's going on there? Why is that happening? Are you guys basically growing your take rate because you're rolling more services and features? That's my first question.

[David Day, CFO at Magnite]

Yeah, I'll take that. Yeah, good question. It's 100% around our managed service business. That managed service business has represented, I think, 9% of our CTV business a year ago, and it represents 2% today. It's 70% down, and that's what's driving that difference. That's 100%.

[Barton Crockett, Analyst at Rosenblatt]

Okay.

[David Day, CFO at Magnite]

There's no take rate-

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

Take rate.

[David Day, CFO at Magnite]

Impact other than if you consider that a take rate in the average impact. If you look at our core lines of business, there's no other take rate differences that are driving any of that at all.

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

Take rates have been very stable.

[David Day, CFO at Magnite]

Yeah.

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

They're not under pressure, and that's not the result of the difference between spend and ex-TAC.

[Barton Crockett, Analyst at Rosenblatt]

Those two lines should coalesce soon because we're at 2%, so it's nearly done.

[David Day, CFO at Magnite]

Exactly. We'll lap that significant decrease starting early next year. You'll see that continue through the fourth quarter, and then you'll see those numbers conform fairly closely, starting Q1.

[Barton Crockett, Analyst at Rosenblatt]

When that happens, does that mean the CTV CXT growth rate is more like what we're seeing today in the revenue for CTV or vice versa?

[David Day, CFO at Magnite]

It'll be higher. That's currently a drag.

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

Yeah, Barton, if you look at it, that's a similar drag to what we had in the first quarter. If you back that out, the programmatic piece of our CTV business is growing even faster than the 36% this quarter and the 30% last quarter.

[Barton Crockett, Analyst at Rosenblatt]

Okay. All right. Then, for your guide next quarter on CTV, you're talking to a deceleration of the growth rate to, I think, like 31% for CTV CXT. Is there any political in there? Why is it decelerating?

[David Day, CFO at Magnite]

Yeah. Well, listen, we had a great quarter. I think we're hitting some comps from last year as we get into the latter half of this year that we have to take into account. We need to think a little conservatively given potential macro challenges with stubborn inflation and volatile energy prices and the related kind of geopolitical challenges. There's some conservatism, I think, as we're thinking about the latter half of the year. I think those are considerations, then you do have this continued drop from the managed service business. Kind of throw all that in the mix. All that said, on the margin, maybe it's a little drop, but it's a very strong guide when you really step back, there's nothing that has changed that we see in the momentum of our business and our enthusiasm.

[David Day, CFO at Magnite]

We'll certainly be working our tails off to exceed those expectations.

[Barton Crockett, Analyst at Rosenblatt]

Okay. Well, that's great. I guess some people will be working their tails off, and some will be retiring. I appreciate it. Thank you very much.

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

Yeah, to be very clear, we know who's not going to be working there.

[Barton Crockett, Analyst at Rosenblatt]

Yeah.

[Operator]

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Naved Khan from B. Riley Securities. Please go ahead.

[Ethan Widell, Analyst at B. Riley Securities]

Hi there. This is Ethan Widell on for Naved. Thanks for taking my questions and congrats on the strong results. To start, as we think of live sports as a revenue catalyst, how would you frame the upside there, maybe compared to some of the elevated cloud costs from surge viewership during those events? Can you maybe quantify how your take in live sports compares to the rest of CTV more broadly?

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

Yeah. We've often talked about the opportunity of live sports for a couple of reasons. Mainly because in the last several years, every major sports league has renegotiated their broadcast agreements to include streaming. Streaming is now a big carrier of sporting events. We also have pointed out that live sports traditionally has had zero programmatic dollars directed towards it. You not only have an incredibly well-watched, big audience events now in streaming, but all of them have been absent programmatic spend. We've invested a lot of money, time, tools into making live sports work. We think we have one of the best, if not the best product in market. We have often cited live sports as being a driver in certain quarters. This quarter, not particularly because World Cup overwhelmed everything, and that was more of a broadcast story than a streaming story.

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

This fall, we feel really confident about our ability to monetize football, college basketball, et cetera. We think it's going to be a big part of the growth story for Magnite, both domestic and international.

[Ethan Widell, Analyst at B. Riley Securities]

Got it. Thank you. That's helpful. I think you mentioned that your top 10 CTV accounts grew in the 40% range. Can you speak to maybe how much of CTV business that represents? Given that it seems to be a theme that your largest customers are also outsized growers, what would your thoughts be just in terms of customer concentration?

[David Day, CFO at Magnite]

We don't share that concentration of our top 10. From an individual concentration, there's no individual publisher that represents more than 5% of our total Contribution ex-TAC across the company. I'd say CTV is a little more concentrated because there are 30 whatever streamers that matter. Even in CTV, there's a lack of a significant concentration.

[Ethan Widell, Analyst at B. Riley Securities]

Got it. That makes sense. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Tim Nollen of SSR. Please go ahead.

[Tim Nollen, Analyst at SSR]

Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I'd like to ask you about the state of the ad supply chain, given that agentic AI really collapses the supply chain in a lot of ways, and you've got this newish buyer agent. I wonder if you could talk about client take-up of that, and then how would you characterize the roles of ad agencies and DSPs, face-to-face with the SSPs, especially Magnite, obviously, in this evolving landscape?

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

Good question, Tim. State of supply chain. Our belief is that an agentic-enabled programmatic world will lead to far fewer partnerships, or partners. We think we're extraordinarily well-positioned to be one of the few, because the role of the SSP evolves, right? It's not about just harnessing undifferentiated DSP demand like it used to be a Rubicon Project for the open web, right? For a web display. It's much more technical. It requires scale, it requires product, it requires engineering prowess. Gone will be the days where you can make an easy buck just stringing a bunch of DSPs together and slinging banners. I think that that really bodes well for Magnite. Maybe not for the whole ecosystem, but it bodes well for Magnite.

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

As it relates to DSPs, SSPs, certainly, we are introducing products that are DSP-like, but we, in no way, shape, or form, are trying to replace the DSP. As a matter of fact, I think they'll just do fine. There might be fewer of them. The agentic interface is wonderful, but at the end of the day, when this becomes one to many, and you're bidding on trillions of ad impressions a day, you're going to need your DSP to be there for you. Whether you bring an agentic interface to the DSP engine or the DSP becomes agentic and you use that, I think they're going to be just fine in an agentic world, just like we're gonna be just fine because we're gonna be that system of record, the person that processes the transaction, that makes all of this work from an orchestration layer.

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

We feel very good about where this is heading from an agentic standpoint and for Magnite's prospects.

[Tim Nollen, Analyst at SSR]

Thanks, Michael. It does feel like the pendulum is shifting in your direction. Your results are speaking to that, I guess. Maybe just any quick comment on client take-up of the buyer agent, which you began to roll out, I think, last quarter?

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

I think that by the end of this year, we won't have a major buyer or seller that won't dabble in it, but that's a far cry from shifting their complete spend to the agentic channel. I think this is a crawl, walk, run, and we are in the crawl stage.

[Tim Nollen, Analyst at SSR]

Got it. Thanks very much.

[Operator]

Nick.

[Michael Barrett, CEO at Magnite]

Thank you, operator. Before we conclude, I want to thank the entire Magnite team for their dedication, hard work, and accomplishments to date. We believe these outstanding results are just the beginning, and we're incredibly excited about our recent momentum and the opportunities ahead. I'll turn it back over to Nick to cover our upcoming marketing events.

[Nick Kormeluk, Investor Relations Contact at Magnite]

Thanks, Michael. After this quarter, we are very much looking forward to speaking with many of you at our upcoming investor events. We're participating in our post Q2 virtual NDR tomorrow, hosted by Susquehanna, the KeyBanc Tech Leadership Forum in Park City on August 10th, BofA MidCap Conference on August 11th, the Cannonball Virtual Conference on August 11th as well. Investor meetings in London on August 13th, Rosenblatt's Virtual Tech Summit on August 18th. Investor meetings with Wells Fargo in Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York on August 25th and 26th. The Citi TMT Conference in New York on September 8th. BofA Media, Communications, and Entertainment Conference in New York on September 9th. The B. Riley Conference and Lake Street Conferences in September in New York on September 10th. The Wolfe Conference in San Francisco, with a different team there on September 10th as well. Investor meetings in Boston on September 15th.

[Nick Kormeluk, Investor Relations Contact at Magnite]

Benchmark StoneX Conference in New York on September 17th, investor meetings in San Diego, L.A., Seattle, and San Francisco with Rosenblatt at the end of September. Thank you very much for joining, and have a great evening.

[Operator]

Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Nick Kormeluk, Investor Relations Contact
• Michael Barrett, CEO
• David Day, CFO

Analysts

• Matt Swanson, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets
• Shyam Patil, Analyst at SFG
• Jason Kreyer, Analyst at Craig-Hallum
• Laura Martin, Analyst at Needham
• Robert Coolbrith, Analyst at Evercore ISI
• Tyler DiMatteo, Analyst at BTIG
• Analyst at Wolfe Research
• Barton Crockett, Analyst at Rosenblatt
• Ethan Widell, Analyst at B. Riley Securities
• Tim Nollen, Analyst at SSR