Running DoubleVerify, Mark served as the Chief Executive Officer at Telaria, a New York Stock Exchange-listed video management platform from July 2017 to April 2020. Following Telaria's merger with Rubicon Project, he served as the President and Chief Operating Officer for the Rubicon Project through June 2020. Prior to that, he was chief executive of eXelate from 2010 and until its acquisition by the Nielsen Company in March 2015. Nicola Allais has been DoubleVerify CFO since November 2017. Prior to DoubleVerify, Nicola was the CEO of Penton, an Informa- CFO. What's that, honey? CFO. S- Okay. CFO. Oh, I can't read. I apologize. The CFO—an information services company, and, and he held various finance positions at, at Downtown Music, Primedia, and HBO. Okay, great. Oh, my gosh, standing room only, and I have no empty chairs for you. I'm so sorry. You guys are popular. You got the- Yeah ... the thumbs-up review here. It's the first time, you know? Oh, my gosh. It's the first time you've ever been popular. I know. Usually, we have, like, four people in these rooms. They're like, "DV, what's that? Including you. It's 'cause you're, it's my top pick. Oh, me. That's why everyone's here. Oh. DoubleVerify is my top pick this year. The pressure's on. Yeah, pressure's on. Okay, so I wanna start with culture and leadership. So Mark, as one of the things you know is we do every quarter sort of a asset efficiency, and I really think employees are the actually key asset to drive an ad tech firm. So you're managing 1,000 employees now, and my question is: When I think about retention and the highest return on capital, people, I think about culture. So tell me what culture you're trying to create at DoubleVerify, and how... What are the metrics you use to determine whether that culture is actually being effectively executed in the ranks? Well, it's great being here, Laura. Thanks for that. Thank you for being here. ...invitation. It's a neat one- Apparently, it's the hot ticket to get here, Mark. It's a neat one to start with. So the culture we're trying to build, or that we are building at DV, is based on kind of two key tenets that I've leveraged since I started running businesses, you know, almost 20 years ago, which is this idea of transparency and empowerment. Okay. The idea that you need to be open, direct, and transparent with employees, to give them as much information as you possibly can for them to do their jobs, and provide both good and bad news, in equal measure. So being super transparent, and balancing that, giving them the power to make decisions with that data, and not putting barriers in the way for them to take chances, not putting barriers in the way to actually make decisions that matter. And these two things, I think, are intrinsically linked because a lot of cultures will be very transparent but don't give anybody the ability to do anything, right? You see that in a lot of really large tech companies, where they provide lots of information to their employees, but no one has the ability to make a decision on their own. It goes through too many layers. So what you get is a lot of frustrated employees who quit. You get high turnover. Okay. You have companies that give a lot of empowerment but don't provide any information to do anything with it. Okay. So you see this in a lot of smaller businesses, right? Where, "Hey, someone's gotta make this decision. Do it," but a lot of the actual knowledge exists in a very small cadre of people. So you have... and in those cases, you see failures, right? Because people make really bad decisions. Okay. So I think putting these two things together allows for strong employee understanding of what your vision, and values, and motivations, and information are, but also strong employee retention, because they have the ability to make decisions. They feel comfortable making decisions. They feel empowered to do so. These two things work together really well, and if you, you know, look at our turnover rate, last year was under 10%. Okay. Um- What do you think industry averages is? I know the industry average is around 17% in the tech space. Okay. The last CEO said it was 12, so- Okay ... apparently, no is a different thing, but okay. Yeah. Okay, so yours is about half. It's 10 versus 17- Yeah, yeah ... numbers? Okay. Less than 10 is probably high, like, on- Probably half, like eight. It was about eight. Okay. Okay, right. Okay, so that's a great metric. Any other metrics you look other than... retention is really, really valuable. Yeah. Um- We do- Any other ones? ... an annual employee engagement survey- Okay ... which we measure ourselves against both companies in our sector and across the sector. Okay. We ask 50+ questions. This year, we've got over 2,300 comments- Okay ... written comments. We read all of them. We share both the good and bad of what comes out of that survey, and we had 90% participation across- Oh, wow. Which is insane. That's a cool metric. Yeah, that's crazy. 90% of the employees filled stuff out, and we take action based on it. Okay. So, it's a big deal. So people feel empowered- They do ... back to this empowerment metric. Exactly. Okay, great. Okay, so this ties in, Nicola, to the future of work. So what's the required time in office, and what percent of people are not obeying that, not coming into the office? So our policy right now is two days in the office per week, plus one full week per quarter. Okay ... and that ties to the philosophy that we have, which is in person enhances learning, enhances collaboration, so we're trying to figure out a way that it makes it work. The week that we require every quarter is called Anchor Week. We use that to plan for travel to various offices, for departments to kind of collaborate together in person. We do learning events around that week. We do product demos for our own employees. So that week has really turned out to be a very nice way to enhance the collaboration and, as Mark was saying, the empowerment of the teams to kind of present what they're doing. The attendance has been good. There's been no issues around coming two days plus the week in the office every quarter. We've actually enhanced it with a third day, so now we launched Flex 3. We call it Flex 3. The third day is kind of up to the managers to decide which day works best for parts of the teams that they're managing 'cause every team doesn't have the same requirements, right? If we have a sprint around a product development, it doesn't make sense for the engineers to be traveling that particular week, right? So we let the managers kind of figure out what that third day looks like for each of their sub-departments, and it's worked very well. ... Great, I haven't heard about the one week a month. That is a really interesting innovation. One week a quarter. Yeah. One week, oh, it's one week a quarter- Yeah ... not a month. Yes. Okay, I wrote that down. Yes. Okay. It's Anchor Week, and we do a lot of activities around it from all various departments. My guess is your participation there is very high? Correct. Very high. Correct. Okay, so this is interesting, the prior CEO had just had to go from three days to two, even though he would like people to be in five. So he's losing control of his workforce- Yeah ... and you guys are going from two, and now you have a Flex 3. Yes. You're going the other way. Correct. This Anchor Week is a really... Or, yeah, Anchor Week per quarter. Yeah ... is a really interesting idea I hadn't heard before. So future of work, what do you think long term? What is the future of work, and how does that tie into culture? I think hybrid is the future of work- Okay ... right? Hybrid is the future of work. I think, I think the going back to the theme of empowerment, if you allow the managers to figure out how it works best for their teams, I think that's the way to, that's the way to make it happen. Okay. Cool. But to be clear- Yep ... we are not a remote organization. Right. I think there's incredible value in getting human beings together in a room. And we see that, but I think there's also incredible wastefulness of having a single contributor on the engineering team spend five days on a train- Yeah ... when he's coding, right? And he can do that from home- Yeah ... just as efficiently. But I want him in that office when they're doing a scrum or they're having a meeting and, you know, spending time- Creating something ... to create something. Yeah. Okay, let's move on to DoubleVerify. Yeah. But I just, I'm really interested in those as a context. I feel like there's things changing in the context, and sometimes we ignore them at our own risk. Yeah. Future of work. Yeah ... feels like it might be one of those. Okay, DoubleVerify. Let's talk about, Mark, your goals. So sitting here a year from now, what do you want DoubleVerify to accomplish over the next 12 months? And I'm gonna write it down, and on this stage, I'm gonna say, "So, Mark"- Oh, boy. Okay? Did we do these things? I'm gonna hold you to this. Did we do these things? All right. Number one, we wanna be more global. More global. Um- Right ... so last year we leaned into additional resources outside the U.S., particularly in APAC. So we opened offices in the Philippines and Vietnam. We expanded our presence in India. We're gonna be leaning in even further this year, so we wanna be- So is this more global revenue? Am I gonna be able to see this in P&L, or is it just more global costs? I'm gonna be yelling at Nicola about- Nope, we're gonna see it in- International costs ... we're gonna see it in revenue. Okay. If you look, you know, last quarter, international revenue growth was over 60%. Yeah ... with, I think 75% in EMEA, something like that. Mm-hmm. Yep. And a high 40s in APAC. Okay. We are still seriously under-leveraged outside the U.S. Okay. 'Cause 25% or less of our measurement revenue comes from outside the U.S. Yep. We know digital spend, 50% of it- Yep ... is outside of the U.S. So, we're gonna become more global, number one. Okay. Number two, we've had this drive to verify every impression across every platform, in any media, in any market in the world. Yep. We're gonna cover more platforms. Today we announced the launch of verification and brand safety verification across Meta and the newsfeed environment, as well as Instagram Reels- Mm-hmm ... and the Meta Reels product. There'll be more of that. Okay. More global, more platforms. Okay. and the third is more customer-centric innovation, and what that means is, you know, last year- This one I've got to understand. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, we are in this evolution as a company, to not only protect ad spend, but to help our customers perform better as well. So you're gonna hear a lot of this. We're gonna be beating this drum around protection and performance. Okay. People know us as a brand safety company. Yep ... as a verification company. Like an insurance company. Exactly. Which is great, but that same data, we found, is helping advertisers perform better as well. So we acquired a company called Scibids last year, which we can, we'll talk about in a little bit. We've launched an attention solution over the last few years. These are performance solutions that are customer-driven because it not only helps them save their brands, it helps their media perform better- Mm ... helps them drive better. So when we talk about innovation, we want our innovation to be things that are helping advertisers drive better performance. It's customer-centric. We met with a huge CPG company yesterday. They said, "We love everything you're doing on brand safety, but you know what? This year we've gotta drive share. I need help driving share. I want you and your solutions to not only help us make sure that our brands don't get screwed up in the environment, but help us get better reach, help us find inventory that works better, and do so using the data that we currently have." So that's the kind of customer-centric innovation you're gonna see more of coming out of us as we evolve from protection to performance. So think of more global-... more coverage, and then, you know, a greater level of innovation that's focused on customer performance. Okay. Fair enough. Okay, let's talk about social as a growth driver. Boy, were you aided by the fact you had a non-same store comp this year with TikTok, and next year it's gonna be Meta. So let's talk about... So one of the things I wanna make clear is, you know, marketers paid a fixed fee, round numbers, we estimate $0.08 per 1,000 impressions. So actually things like TikTok, which have lots and lots of impressions, 'cause they're 30-second videos, that's even too long, 15-second videos- Yeah ... is way better for, I should say, DoubleVerify, than CTV, which is $30 impressions- Yeah ... which just isn't that many impressions. So my question is, when does this train run out? Like, you're gonna have a TikTok. How fast can that same store growth be compared to going from zero to measuring TikTok? Sure. Meta, you have this year. There's a lot of non-same store impressions. Does this train end next year? Like, tell me how the growth trajectory is for impression growth over this, let me call it, social video and social- Yeah ... impressions. So we think this train keeps a-humming. Yeah. All right? Keeps humming? Let's mix our metaphors here. The reason why, because a few things. We still have new markets, we just to roll into with TikTok. Yeah. Okay. So we expanded- Right, international markets, and this ties into your international. Yep. Um. So we expanded our coverage across TikTok just recently into some South American markets, and that will continue over time. Those platforms themselves continue to grow. Okay. It's not just our penetration and launch across them, it's the growth of dollars that flow into them. We're seeing—you know—dollars are coming from everywhere into short-form video. Yeah. They come from television, they come from, you know, even, you know, it could come from- CTV, I'm sure. CTV. So, I think we've got growth internationally across short form. Okay. We've got dollars coming into it that will help grow. So I think we see a long, steady growth across social over the next several years. Social videos. Okay. So, and you think that could go on three years or four? You think more? Yeah. No, and you know, the one thing to note, again, going back to that international coverage, is that, outside the U.S., social is even a bigger factor than it is, and short-form is an even bigger factor than it is here. Mm-hmm. Because many markets, particularly in APAC, are mobile-first markets. Yeah, that's true. Right? And those mobile-first markets are. That's why TikTok is so big there. That's why short-form is so big there. It's mobile first, it's small screen. And, you know, again, we're just scratching the surface in some of those markets of how big we can be there. And if you're going there, what you need to do is do mobile, and what's driving mobile growth in advertising is short-form video. But advertising, in fairness, is the largest in the U.S. by a lot, followed by China, which you're not in. Yeah. Even if you have a lot of impressions, the ad dollars being put to work offshore in some of these communities just isn't as high. Yeah. I mean, that's fair. Yeah. The CPMs are considerably lower. The CPMs are lower, but we're so- But you don't mind, 'cause you're getting your $0.08- Yeah ... whether regardless of CPMs. Yeah. That's the point I started with. We're also under-penetrating internationally, so this is our way to get in there with the advertisers. Follow, follow TikTok. Yeah. Yeah. Like, ride on TikTok's tail- Follow the platform. ... or Reels. Correct. I mean, Reels might be bigger in the end. Okay. All right, so, so this fear that some investors have that TikTok this last year, Meta this year, and then it comes to a grinding halt, not right, we're gonna follow 'em offshore, and so social video is gonna be a three to five-year growth driver, even if it's not in the U.S. Yeah. It's gonna be other countries. Yeah. Totally fair enough. Okay. Cost structure, Nicola- Yeah. Where do you see the most operating leverage in 2024? You projected revenue growth of over 20% in 2024, but we're holding our EBITDA margins flat at 31%. So what costs are rising, and what is DV investing in that I'm not..." And typically, there's a lot of operating leverage- Yeah ... in these businesses. Yeah. So if you're growing your top line to over 20%, which makes you a growth stock, sorta hard to- Right ... it's sort of hard to keep your costs going up so much- Right ... that you're not seeing it in EBITDA. So let's talk about what's going up in terms of the costs. We're seeing investment opportunities rather than just costs rising, right? The cost- That's- ... the general cost structure of our business is very, very efficient. So anything you're seeing, as you said, anything that you're seeing for us to maintain a margin of 31% is because we're deciding to invest in certain areas. And so let's just go through that list. Okay. G&A is no longer really an area of investments, right? It's less than 20% of revenue, and the scaling will continue there. Sales and marketing, we spent a lot of dollars in the last two years investing in those categories. So whatever you're gonna see in 2024 will be opportunistic around specific countries where we may not have a presence. So really, all the investments are in R&D. You know, we are a tech company, and that's where we're choosing to invest. The investments there are around AI and introducing AI into our processes. So I'll explain where the efficiency come from. AI will allow us to label content more efficiently. Okay. Right? Allows us to do language translation a lot faster than if employees were doing that. It allows us to classify video smartly. Like, we don't have to classify every single frame of a video. AI will allow us to tell us when it actually changes and when we actually have to classify, right? So that creates huge efficiencies around costs. Specifically for our business, we're also gonna invest in Scibids, right? So an acquisition that we made last summer, we're gonna integrate into our own systems and scale it, right? We think the opportunity there is very large. We talked about a $100 million opportunity in the next five years for that product. So we're gonna invest in that. All those are opportunities and efficiency that allow us to reinvest in the business. We feel like this is the right thing to do, right? We have, we have industry-leading growth on the top line. You do. To the extent- Absolutely ... that that's there, the investment that we're making, we feel, are justified, and it's a 31% margin business. Well, the point I take from your answer, though, that's important, is that it sounds like you're investing in 2024, but you kept using the word efficiency- Yeah ... which says to me that somehow that ends up lowering the cost structure structurally from after you get finished with this investment. Is this a one-year investment cycle or two years? How long does this take? I think this is, I don't think it's a one-year investment, but that's because it's our choice, right? It, the efficiencies free up dollars for us to invest in other areas. Okay. Right, and so, for example, we're investing in Authentic Attention, which is still a small product. Yep. We're investing in making it an actual standard in the industry. It's well ahead of revenue, right? And those are the opportunities that we're able to invest in. So the efficiency just free up dollars for us to reinvest in the business. Yeah, and I think it's, it's also important to note is that, we're still really under-penetrated- Yeah ... right, when you look at the global market. So there's—I don't wanna, I hate to use the word land grab because it sounds like it's, like, chaotic, but there is a brand grab going on right now, right? Particularly outside the U.S.. So for us to lean into these markets, and it's not a ton of sales and marketing people, but we want more, this is the time to do it. Mm-hmm. Right? Because we know average customer tenure for us, of our top 50 customers, is over seven years... when we land a customer, Mm-hmm. They stick with us. We've seen this investment pay off for us over time. You know, three years ago, our number one competitor was the same size we are. In three years, we're now $100 million bigger. Well, you're winning 80% of new business- We're winning. ... so, like, you have to go fly past them. So why, why would we stop, like, leaning in and investing now? When we lock these guys in, they become customers for life, and we continue that momentum. Like, this is the time to do it, and that's what we're investing in. R&D, to make sure our technology is ahead of the marketplace. Mm-hmm ... and sales and marketing at some level to make sure that we're at the places where our brands are going, so we can build that relationship with them. Okay. Well, I don't, I don't really mind costs that are linked to revenue. Mm-hmm. Like, if you're talking to sales and marketing, I'm like, "I'm gonna back off," because if the guys don't perform, you're going to fire them- Yeah ... right? Yeah. But when you talk about stuff like R&D, and I do worry, Mark, that this pivot that you talked about strategically in your goals from insurance, where you are one of two- Mm-hmm ... and you're winning 80%, which means your product's just a lot better compared to your pricing at $0.08, which I'm always giving you trouble about how low your price is. But the point is, that is a two-competitor market. The minute you go into performance, you're competing with a lot more guys, and bigger guys, and guys that have been there longer. So to me, that feels like lower margins. And now, Nicola is telling me, "I'm gonna spend a lot of money." So please reassure me that what we're not about to do is take the returns on invested capital down because you're going into a more competitive segment. No, we're able to manage to a margin that we feel is comfortable for the business. Mm-hmm. The investments we're making... I'll give you an example. We invested early into the ABS product, right? We were able to launch that- Tell them what that is. I know. Authentic Brand Suitability is a product that allows our data that's collected on the measurement side to be used on the pre-bid side of the business. It creates a loop for the data that the advertisers are using for their entire spend, whether it's on the measurement side or on the pre-bid side. That product, we were able to launch well ahead of our competitor, and that was tied to investment that we were able to make in the product. So I think when we talk about moving to performance, these are products that are still tied to the data that we collect. Yeah. So we're not, we're not sending people outside to do- I see ... some research somewhere. Yeah. It's a way to make- We're not starting from scratch. ... the data have another revenue stream. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Okay, that's fair. Exactly. Okay. Okay, that, that actually is helpful, actually. Let's go to Scibids. Mm-hmm. So, I would say there was a sort of a misunderstanding when you bought Scibids, that what you'd just done is gone into direct competition with Google and Trade Desk, and then you did an all-day analyst meeting- Mm ... and two of the very high-profile people you either put on stage or were in the audience in a very high-profile way, were Google and The Trade Desk. Yeah. So basically, it became clear that they actually think they'd benefit from the Scibids tech. My question is, is this one of your goals for next year- Mm ... is this new, helping not only companies ensure there, but getting better performance. Yeah. Talk about how you think... I'm gonna focus on the economics, but why don't you talk about strategically across the business, how you think Scibids helps overall DoubleVerify increase its market share and drive economics, which is what I actually care about. Yeah, for sure. I mean, Scibids was, is, is a really exciting acquisition for us, and it fits perfectly into our long-term strategic goals. I don't wanna go too far in the weeds here, but if you think about what we do in what we call our activation business, which is over 50% of our revenue. Activation, as Nicola noted, is the ability to filter out bad behavior, bad stuff, before someone even buys it. And we do that on the pre-bid side through platforms like The Trade Desk, and Xandr, and, and Google, and all the big DSPs, Amazon, right? So and we've always done that in a very binary way. We started off with you know, a brand safety filter, right? Good or bad, don't bid on this impression. That became advanced into ABS, which we launched, and ABS, with Authentic Brand Suitability, gave a little bit more flexibility. It allowed for dynamic campaign-by-campaign criteria, it took data from measurement and fed it into the tool set. And now ABS is by far our biggest product. We'll do... How much will ABS generate this year? We have almost $100, something like 117 million. Over $100 million. Yeah. Still growing at 40%- Plus percent. Mm. Plus, I mean, this is a product that was launched over five years ago- Mm-hmm ... growing at 40%. Net-net, ABS is a performance product, right? Yep. How this relates to SciBids is, ABS is a performance product, but still kind of binary. It still says good or bad. Okay. Right? Says yes or no. Say yes or no. We're just not even gonna look at this impression. Right. Okay. We're not gonna look at the impression. Okay. What SciBids does is it works with the DSP, and this is where the complementary aspect of this to, to The Trade Desk or a Google is. It works with the DSP to not say yes or no, but maybe. Okay. Maybe you should bid on this impression based on the data that DV has, if it's cheap enough- Okay ... and if it meets your outcome goals. Okay. So now we've moved from static in our s- brand safety products, to dynamic with ABS, to actually algorithmic optimization with SciBids. It's just an advancement of what we already do. It plugs into the same platforms that ABS does, but provides an advertiser the ability to look at a maybe answer. And when it comes to things like viewability, right? Viewability is something that the industry has defined as, this is viewable or not viewable. Mm-hmm. People don't buy viewable. But what if it's kind of viewable? Right on the edge. It's right on the edge. right on the edge. It doesn't meet the two-second criteria for video- Okay ... but maybe it ran long enough that someone actually can click on it, and it's so cheap- ... mm-hmm, that it's worth me buying it. Okay. Right? It adds value to the equation. It adds value. Yes, no, it adds value. It's all ROI. Okay. Sure. That becomes critically important to that basket of goods. Think of it's an advancement of what we already do, and then the second advantage of Scibids is it adds to our basket of goods. Okay. This is critically important when we talk about the competitive nature of the space we're in. We, like other software businesses, have moved from point solutions to platforms. Yep. Advertisers don't want to work with 15 different point solutions- Right ... that do 15 things. They want a broad basket of goods. SciBids adds to that basket of goods, gives us a complete solution now from, you know, binary brand safety to measurement on the other end. Pre-bid to post-bid. Gives us a unique set of solutions that our competitors and no one in the space has. And so, A, that gets us stickier with current customers, but gives advertisers another entry point- Mm-hmm ... into DV. We have advertisers that work with our competitors for measurement, are coming to us- Mm ... on performance tools because our competitors don't have anything comparable. So it gets us in conversations with advertisers who said, "Well, we're kind of a sh- you know, we're a blah, blah, blah shop. We're good with measurement right now with another competitive platform, but they don't have anything like this. Maybe we should be talking to you." So it fits into the strategy of protection to performance, but it also fits into our strategy of acquiring a bigger market share by having customers start to work with us with one product and then expanding them over time into all of our products. So is this new product for performance mostly focused on the customers you have, or do you see it as a nose under the tent to get new customers that you can then backwards sell? Yeah ... your insurance product, what I call insurance product? Yes. Which one is it? Yes. It's the nose under the tent. It's the nose under the tent. I think as an opportunity- So it's more insidious. Okay. Well, it's not insidious. Well- I think it's a product that's not available. I meant that as a positive! We say it's good business strategy. Yes. That's what I meant. No, it's- I see it as a positive. It also goes back to one of the goals that Mark mentioned at the beginning, right? Which is, you know, client-focused innovation, right? Yeah. Because this what Scibids allows the customer to do is use highly customized data sets- Okay ... to put into Scibids, along with other measurements that we're providing, right? So customers will have their own data set that they want to maximize against. Yes, yes. They can put it against our own data and then create a perfect bid, right, through Scibids. Gotcha. So- So we're using first-party data with this- Yeah, yeah ... to create new customer demand- Yeah, yeah ... that we can backwards sell into the ins- Correct ... the insurance product- Yeah ... which is not what it is. Questions. I got 100 people in this room. Who has a question for these gentlemen before I go on? Oh, good. Okay. Generative AI. So generative AI is something you guys are using really extensively, so I want them to hear about that. Tell us how you're using generative AI today and how you think it... What... I know, Nicola, what I liked best is, like, what it does to your cost structure over time- Right ... getting faster to market. But talk about Generative AI. Yeah. So Nicola already mentioned this, that we're using it, if you think about what DV does at our core, we're just a big decision engine, right? We look at stuff and we make a call on it. Yeah. Is this viewable? Is this brand safe? Good question. Is this fraud? Mm. We classify content- Okay ... we classify transactions. What AI does is it allows us to make those decisions faster, more efficiently, and with less, less humans involved. So we talked about becoming more global. Becoming more global means we need to understand languages. 'Cause when we look at the context of a page in a foreign language, we need to understand what a word means in French versus what it means in Portuguese versus what it means in English, right? Yep. Because the context of that page can be very different. We had translators do that in the past. Right, right, right. You know, human translators. Now we're using AI to actually do translation for us. Right. When we look at video- Mm-hmm ... so short-form video, when we look at a short-form video, we look at the video itself. Mm-hmm. We look at the text that goes with the video. Mm-hmm. We listen to the audio that goes with the video- Yeah ... and we look at the metadata around that video. Mm-hmm. All in one 20-second TikTok spot, we need to look at all of those things. Right. Right? It's a lot to say whether or not this is brand suitable or brand safe- Right ... because in many cases, the video has nothing to do with the audio. Seriously? You ever watch a TikTok video? There's crazy audio that goes over video. You're like, "What, what is this about? What is that? You have to look at all those separately. What AI allows us to do, as Nicola noted, on the video side, rather than look at every frame, we can use predictive AI to determine what's gonna happen in the next frame. It cuts our costs, rather than looking at every frame of a video, which is pretty expensive- Mm-hmm ... right? Yeah. There's even people in the space have said, "Our costs are gonna go up because we're gonna do more video. Mm-hmm. Right? We look at it as now- Yeah ... we can, we can look at this more efficiently, because we're only gonna look at a portion of that video- Mm-hmm ... because we can predict what's gonna happen next. That's AI at work doing that as well. Well, what every CEO has said is Generative AI makes more crappy content. Well, that's- Now you have more demand for insurance. Now... Yes. That's the other part. They're saying 10x. So- They're saying 10x this year. So yeah, it helps us save money, but it creates so much demand. We launched an MFA product, right? MFA. It was made for advertising content. Oh, okay. Right? Mm-hmm. Made for Advertising content went from a bunch of college kids typing out really bad articles about the Brady Bunch- Yeah ... you know, that they jammed out through a few websites, to literally thousands of pieces of content a day across tens of thousands of websites that's clogging up the digital ecosystem. Yep. Advertisers don't wanna be around that stuff. Yep. That's all Generative AI doing that. Yeah. It creates a demand for tools like our MFA tool. Mm-hmm. It creates, it amplifies misinformation, disinformation, and hate speech, which- Yep ... terrible. Yep. Um- But that creates demand for your core product. Creates demand for core product. Mm-hmm. We're running into an election year- Yep in which we run an election task force, which we launched in 2020, and then we rebooted in 2022, and now we're just keeping it on all the time. Mm-hmm. And that election task force looks at the incidents of hate speech, right? The incidents of things that occur around political discussions. 2022, we saw over a 20% increase in hate speech in November, October, November- It's gotta be the war. ... leading up to the election. It's gotta be the Hamas and Israel war. We saw in competitive markets, in markets where there was a competitive Senate or governor's race in 2022- Oh, for politically you're saying? For political. I gotcha. We saw over a 30% increase in hate speech. So- Shit! ... we know- Yeah ... you know, 2024- It's gonna be bad. ... is gonna be a banner year for really bad stuff online. Well, today GroupM raised their estimate again to $17 billion of political ad spending. Ah. Every three months they took it up. It started at $12 billion, then it was 15 billion, now it's 17 billion in political. Oh, yeah. How much could that benefit the P&L of DV this year, the political year that we- We don't directly benefit- Yeah ... from political, 'cause we don't sell to politicians because- Yeah ... A,... A, they're fly-by-night. B, they don't pay their bills. But the hate speech product doesn't sell, or? Not to politicians. It sells to advertisers. But that's what I mean. Yeah. I'm gonna call- Yeah, yeah ... but I'm gonna call that political derived. Yeah. That's what I'm trying... Yeah. Is there incremental revenue to you because there's all this political hate speech this year, or no? I think there's incremental demand. Awareness. Or incre- And awareness. Awareness and demand. Okay. Awareness, yeah. Yeah, it's hard, it's hard to kind of say how much, how much more freaked out are advertisers gonna be- A lot more freaked out. ... 'cause they're freaked out every three months, right? Yeah yeah. Something always occurs. There's a new war. Yeah, yeah. Yes. There's a new election. It's just another thing. Right, right. Okay. It just creates stickiness, let's put it this way, because- Okay ... it creates greater, you know, need for, "Hey, you know, I, I definitely need insurance. Stickiness for insurance. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Cookie Deprecation is gonna be the big issue in ad tech this year, so, let's talk about that. So Google has already started deprecating, I think January, or maybe it's next week, January 24th- Yeah ... and they're gonna be fully deprecated cookies. Tell me how that affects targeting the ad tech ecosystem and DoubleVerify specifically. I think someone asked me the other day, like, "What was CES like this year?" And I was like- Yeah ... "Oh, you know, people were more positive. They thought..." You know, versus last year, everyone was, like, worried about a recession. But, like, I think the other thing about CES was the actual Cookie Deprecation- Uh-huh ... like, like- Storm ... storm had actually hit. People were like, you know, they saw the Google Privacy- Oh, this is happening? Yeah. They're like: "This is actually happening?" Like, Google had, like, a Privacy Sandbox meeting room. Like, they had their own suite just for Privacy Sandbox, right? Oh, my God. Like, it's actually happening. Yeah. And, I think- By the way, it started in 2019, Mark. Yeah, yeah. They keep putting it off, so it's now 2024. Now it's kinda like one of those things, like, "Oh, my kid's finally gonna leave home. Yeah. Like, he finally left the door. Like, "I've been waiting for this." Well, so it actually happened. And I think that, you know, for us it's important to note that we don't traffic in cookies. Like, our, our measurement doesn't use cookies, our analysis doesn't use cookies, because we look at the what, the how, and the where- Okay ... not the who. Okay. Right? Cookies are always tied to identity and the who around it. So I think it's gonna create challenges for folks who have not built some type of privacy safe proxy- Mm-hmm ... for an individual, who've not leaned into things like contextual advertising- Yeah ... and other areas like that. Yeah. And I think that, for us, if anything, it's neutral to positive because we do have some contextual solutions. You know, we look at context. With, we have a contextual targeting tool. It's not, it's not a big revenue driver for us, but I think it, it just creates more interest in those things. It also creates more interest in non-user or non-individual based proxies like attention, right? Well, and the other thing I was gonna say is I think it is possible that money moves from an open internet to walled gardens, and you measure both. Yes, yes. You're sort of hedged. In a year where there's gonna be a lot of uncertainty about- Yeah ... what happens to demand and targeting, pricing, and ad spending in the open internet, you're sort of indifferent. If the money moves, you benefit- Correct ... $0.08 per thousand in both places. Yeah. I mean, I would say that's- Yeah ... a key thing. Yeah. I mean, I don't know what's gonna happen, but I am worried. I'm gonna go back to questions. Come on, somebody must have a question that's smarter than mine. Come on. Come on, one question. No? They thought they were in the Magnite room. Yeah, exactly. That's why everyone's here. That's why everyone's here. That is everyone's here. That is such a big bet. EU regs. You just said, and this will be our last one, EU regs, you said that you think international growth is one of your primary goals. I wrote it down, and I will hold you to that next year. Okay. The EU is about to lock down with the Digital Services Act. So it's gonna make targeting and return on capital and attribution much harder in the EU. Now, by the way, they're also gonna regulate Generative AI. Yeah. So, talk about, as one of your three key goals for the next 12 months, how the EU expansion actually can happen with all of this, this EU regulation that's coming? Wanna talk to... I mean, I think, look, the, the growth that we're getting internationally, just to be clear- Mm-hmm ... is advertisers that we haven't really spoken to before. Okay. Right? So it's... there's expansion from existing advertisers, right? Okay. There's also just the fact that we're on the ground, we're able to participate in RFPs. Yeah. We're going after greenfield opportunities as much as, you know, takeaways, and that's much more pertinent for outside of the U.S., right? Greenfield opportunities, there's a lot more outside of the U.S.- Yep ... than there are in the U.S. So whatever the environment is, I think just the organic growth from us just being there, present, and winning RFPs is really gonna help and drive the growth internationally. That's kinda how we see it, and you know, that's part of that 80% win rate, right? Mm-hmm. That's kinda how we get there. The regulatory environment in Europe has never been a challenge for us. It's... Yeah ... because, again, we don't traffic- Pretty well ... in individual data. We don't traffic in, really in targeting. If anything, you know, a lot of these privacy regs and new regs tend to favor walled gardens, as you've noted. They do. Um- They do favor Walled gardens. You know, our relationship with Walled Gardens is very strong. Yeah ... and will continue to grow, and I think it goes back to, you know, that second thing I said. We wanna make sure that we expand our presence across platforms. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Because, you know, wherever dollars go from an advertising perspective, we wanna be there and verify it so that we don't get concerned about a shift from one- Mm ... platform for another or from one country to another. Mm-hmm. I think that's where we wanna be. Okay, I'm gonna call it there. Thank you very much, everybody, for coming, right on time. Thanks very much. All right. Thanks, Laura. Thank you, Laura. Fantastic. So nice to see you.