DoubleVerify Holdings Inc

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.