DoubleVerify Q1 Earnings Call Highlights

Key Points

• DoubleVerify reported Q1 revenue of $181 million, up 10% year over year, with adjusted EBITDA margin at 31% as AI-driven operational efficiencies boosted profitability.
• Social and streaming TV remain the main growth engines: social measurement rose 23% and social activation jumped 92%, while CTV measurement volumes increased 28% as advertisers adopted more transparency tools.
• The company reiterated full-year 2026 guidance for revenue of $810 million to $826 million and adjusted EBITDA margins of about 34%, while also repurchasing $100 million of shares year to date and ending the quarter with $174 million in cash and no long-term debt.

DoubleVerify NYSE: DV reported first-quarter 2026 revenue growth of 10% year over year and said newer products tied to social media, streaming TV and artificial intelligence are becoming larger contributors to its business.

Chief Executive Officer Mark Zagorski said the company delivered “strong Q1 results” as it continued executing against its product and financial plans. Revenue reached $181 million in the quarter, while adjusted EBITDA was $55 million, representing a 31% margin. Zagorski said the margin performance exceeded expectations, largely because of operational efficiencies tied to AI.

Chief Financial Officer Nicola Allais said total advertiser revenue, including activation and measurement, accounted for 90% of total revenue and grew 9% year over year. Supply-side revenue represented 10% of total revenue and increased 12% from the prior-year period.

The company reiterated its full-year 2026 outlook, calling for revenue of $810 million to $826 million, representing growth of 8% to 10% year over year. DoubleVerify also expects adjusted EBITDA margins of approximately 34% for the year.

Social Products Drive Growth

DoubleVerify highlighted social media as its fastest-growing area, with Zagorski pointing to accelerating demand for the company’s verification and optimization tools across major platforms.

Social measurement revenue grew 23% year over year in the quarter, while social activation grew 92%, up from 62% growth in the fourth quarter. Zagorski said the growth was driven by continued scaling of social pre-bid products, including enhanced capabilities on Meta, as well as expanded capabilities across TikTok and YouTube.

Meta Activation has now been used by 87 advertisers since launch, up from 68 in the fourth quarter, including 31 of DoubleVerify’s top 100 clients. Zagorski said the Meta Activation product reached a $12 million annualized run rate by the end of the first quarter.

On YouTube, DoubleVerify said DV Authentic AdVantage, which combines Scibids AI optimization with pre-bid filtering and post-bid measurement, is on track to deliver $10 million of expected annual contract value in 2026. Zagorski said some customers using the product have seen media CPMs decline by as much as 36%, while reach expanded by 64%.

During the question-and-answer portion of the call, Zagorski said the strength in social activation shows that DoubleVerify’s tools are playing an important role inside “walled gardens,” not just across the open web. He said the company is seeing growth from both new advertisers and existing customers increasing spending on Meta Activation and Authentic AdVantage.

Streaming TV Transparency Remains a Focus

DoubleVerify also pointed to streaming TV as a key growth pillar. Zagorski said CTV measurement impression volumes increased 28% year over year in the first quarter, helped by greater adoption of products designed to give advertisers more transparency into where streaming ads appear.

The company said its ABS-enabled streaming TV pre-bid “do not air” list became generally available in January. Zagorski said three top 15 customers, representing hundreds of millions of dollars in CTV spending, have implemented the streaming TV controls. He also said eight of the company’s largest advertisers have adopted ABS do-not-air lists.

DoubleVerify announced during the quarter that Spectrum Reach became the first partner to join its Certified Transparent Streaming program. Zagorski said Spectrum Reach will share show-level data across programming, including news and live sports, for both direct insertion order and programmatic buying. Those insights will be available through DV Authentic Streaming TV reporting.

In response to an analyst question, Zagorski said advertisers generally receive less granular verification data in CTV than they do in social or short-form video environments. He said DoubleVerify’s newer streaming tools are increasing attach rates and helping advertisers confirm ads are running in high-quality streaming TV environments.

AI Creates Both Product Opportunity and Operating Efficiency

Management framed AI as both a growth opportunity and an internal efficiency driver. Zagorski said DoubleVerify is focused on three AI-related opportunities: agentic buying and selling of media, tools to help advertisers address AI-generated content and AI-fueled fraud, and future advertising models on large language model chatbot platforms.

The company said its AI SlopStopper measurement solution for mobile, online video and display is already applied to more than 40% of measured impressions. The pre-bid version is being tested by six of DoubleVerify’s largest advertisers, and the company has launched AI SlopStopper for social starting with YouTube.

Zagorski said the product is designed to help advertisers avoid low-quality AI-generated content, while noting that “not all AI content is bad.” He said the tool can help with customer retention, improve attach rates and differentiate DoubleVerify in competitive deals.

DoubleVerify also said its Fraud Lab is using AI to detect increasingly sophisticated fraud schemes. Zagorski said AI-powered bot scheme variants increased 140% in the first quarter of 2026 compared with the first quarter of 2025. He also said the company has classified more than 1,300 apps as fraudulent since the beginning of 2026, particularly across mobile and CTV.

Internally, Zagorski said the company is using AI agents for software development and IT workflows. He said DoubleVerify has seen 40% faster software development, a fourfold productivity increase in classification and substantially faster content labeling. He added that the company expects to reduce the number of contractors supporting labeling by more than 100 by the end of the year.

Guidance Reiterated as Company Repurchases Shares

For the second quarter of 2026, DoubleVerify expects revenue of $199 million to $205 million, representing approximately 7% year-over-year growth at the midpoint. The company expects second-quarter adjusted EBITDA of $63 million to $67 million, or a 32% margin at the midpoint.

Allais said the company’s first-quarter adjusted EBITDA margin improved from 27% in the prior-year quarter to 31%, while revenue less cost of sales was 82%. She said AI tools are allowing DoubleVerify to verify and classify content more efficiently as impression volumes rise.

DoubleVerify also continued returning capital to shareholders. Allais said the company repurchased 9.8 million shares year to date for $100 million, including 7.3 million shares in the first quarter for approximately $75 million and another 2.5 million shares in April for approximately $25 million. The repurchased shares represented about 6% of fiscal year-end 2025 shares outstanding.

The company ended the quarter with approximately $174 million in cash and no long-term debt. Allais said net cash from operating activities was $4 million in the first quarter, affected by the timing of collections and payments, and that DoubleVerify expects free cash flow conversion of approximately 60% for the full year.

Management said growth in 2026 is expected to come from continued adoption across social and streaming TV, broader use of DoubleVerify products by existing enterprise clients and new customer acquisition. Zagorski said the company’s priorities remain deepening adoption of core products, accelerating growth in social, streaming TV and AI solutions, and using AI to support margins.

About DoubleVerify NYSE: DV

DoubleVerify, Inc is a leading digital media measurement and analytics company that helps advertisers, publishers and platforms ensure their digital advertising campaigns are viewable, fraud-free and brand-safe. The company's platform integrates data science, machine learning and proprietary analytics to authenticate the quality of media across display, video, mobile, CTV and social channels. By delivering real-time insights into ad viewability, fraud detection and contextual relevance, DoubleVerify empowers marketers to optimize campaign performance and drive better return on ad spend.

At the core of DoubleVerify's offering are solutions for viewability measurement, invalid traffic (IVT) detection, brand safety and suitability, contextual targeting and campaign performance analytics.

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