Integral Ad Science - Q3 2022

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to IAS third quarter 2022 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press Star one one on your telephone. I would now like to hand the call over to Jonathan Schaffer, VP Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Jonathan Schaffer (VP of Investor Relations)

Thank you. Good afternoon, and welcome to the IAS 2022 third quarter financial results conference call. I'm joined today by Lisa Utzschneider, CEO. As announced this afternoon via press release, Tania Secor has been appointed as CFO effective December 5th. We look forward to Tania joining for our next earnings call. On today's call, Lisa will address high-level financial results in her comments. In addition, we have posted Lisa's prepared remarks along with a more detailed financial review on our investor relations site, investors.integralads.com. Anil Sukumaran, our Chief Accounting Officer, will also be available with Lisa during the Q&A session on today's call. Please note that today's call and prepared remarks contain forward-looking statements.

We refer you to the company's filings with the SEC, which are posted on our investor relations site for more details about important risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations. We will also refer to non-GAAP measures. A reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is contained in today's earnings release available on our investor relations site. All financial comparisons, unless noted otherwise, are based on the prior year period. With these formalities out of the way, I'd now like to turn the call over to our CEO, Lisa Utzschneider. Lisa, you may begin.

Lisa Utzschneider (CEO)

Thanks, Jonathan, and welcome everyone to our 2022 third quarter earnings call. As mentioned, we posted detailed financial review on our IR site, but let me start with a few financial highlights. We reported a 28% increase in third quarter revenue year-over-year to $101.3 million, which compares favorably to our previously revised outlook of $99 million-$101 million. International represented 31% of third quarter revenue, unchanged from the second quarter. Gross profit margin was 81%. Adjusted EBITDA increased 19% year-over-year to $30.1 million at a 30% margin as we exceeded the Rule of 50. We also reached net income profitability for the third consecutive quarter.

As a result of our positive Q3 performance and current business trends, we are modestly increasing our previously revised full-year revenue outlook. We are also raising the midpoint of our revised full-year adjusted EBITDA range. During the quarter, we delivered innovative and differentiated solutions to our customers that drove upsell and cross-sell opportunities. The adoption of Context Control, which includes both avoidance and targeting, is a great example of how we meet the evolving needs of our customers. Since launching Context Control in 2020, the business has grown to represent 45% of programmatic revenue in Q3 and more than $80 million in revenue expected in full-year 2022. The tremendous growth of Context Control demonstrates our ability to develop and scale products that become meaningful revenue contributors over time. New Context Control avoidance wins include Toyota in the U.S. and American Express in Italy.

We're committed to providing coverage of Context Control globally and have expanded to 45 languages. In addition to further penetrating our top 100 customers, we see additional opportunities to grow the avoidance business in the mid-market, as well as internationally, where adoption is increasing. Context Control targeting represents a large addressable market. We're activating, testing, and learning with new customer wins in the U.S. and EMEA across industry verticals, including travel and entertainment, finance, consumer packaged goods, and tech telco. In social media, which continues to represent a dynamic and growing opportunity for IAS, we are making significant gains with our major platform partners. IAS leads the market with the launch of a full end-to-end measurement suite in TikTok's live feed, including brand safety, brand suitability, viewability, and invalid traffic or IVT detection. In October, we launched a post-bid measurement brand safety and suitability solution in TikTok.

We are leveraging our 100% machine learning multimedia classification technology for video, image, audio, and text enhanced by our Context acquisition. We can analyze content with greater granularity at the video and frame levels in the live feed, offering both pre-campaign targeting and campaign measurement solutions. With Twitter, we plan to roll out our beta for our post-bid brand safety solution in the coming weeks. The recent Netflix announcement further validates IAS's technology leadership in the important CTV market. We were delighted to announce that Netflix has selected IAS as a transparency partner to support their much-anticipated ad-supported plan starting in Q1 2023. Our initial focus will be on viewability and IVT post-bid measurement. We've established a leading market presence in CTV. Unlike linear TV's one-size-fits-all approach to advertising, CTV is an addressable and measurable medium, and we're building confidence and trust with marketers and publishers.

Our Publica business acquired last year is a leading solution to drive yield for streaming publishers. We provide superior technology while maintaining independence from the media selling business. We are focused on maximizing revenue for our publisher clients across device manufacturers, broadcasters, and multi-channel video programming distributors, including Samsung, AMC, Fox, DirecTV, and Philo. We also deliver the best experience for the consumer by incorporating the video recognition technology acquired through the Context acquisition. By utilizing Context before an ad runs, along with our server-side ad insertion stitching capabilities in the live stream, Publica ensures that the viewer has a positive experience without having to endure duplicative or repetitive ads, or in some cases, offensive or mistargeted ads. For marketers, Publica provides insights into which ads have been delivered, in what content, and to what audiences.

We also enable buyers to easily activate campaigns programmatically across private marketplaces, connecting them directly to the highest quality CTV inventory. We are focused on delivering CTV solutions to provide content-level transparency, fraud detection, targeting of contextually relevant suitable content, and ensuring that ads have been rendered while TV is on. According to a recent study by GroupM and iSpot 17% of impressions delivered through CTV streaming devices are delivered while TV screens are off. Our new on-screen completion rate metric addresses this issue and validates if a TV was off while a device continued to stream, if an ad was fully rendered on screen, and if the ad played to completion. Publica is on track to contribute approximately 8% of total revenue for the full-year or approximately $32 million.

We are also extending our capabilities into the fast-growing audio and gaming markets, where advertisers are increasingly looking to our solutions. In Audio, we are partnering with Spotify to create the industry's first third-party brand safety and suitability reporting tool. At Advertising Week in New York, Dave Byrne, Director of Global Advertising Platform Integrity at Spotify, commented that it's great to have a partner like IAS, and together our responsibility is to make sure that advertisers feel safe, secure, and trust what we're bringing to them in the audio space. In Q3, we announced the launch of a post-bid verification product for audibility and IVT measurement. We're actively working to expand these capabilities to additional audio platforms. In gaming, we partner with Israeli-based Anzu, where we are in market with viewability and IVT measurement solutions.

We're looking to extend these capabilities beyond mobile in-app to other gaming environments, including consoles, PCs, and desktops. We're also testing with other platform providers to expand our coverage within gaming. We're delighted to announce that Kimberly-Clark selected IAS as their global ad verification and proactive brand safety prevention solution in a multi-year agreement at the end of the third quarter. This partnership with a major CPG company was secured after a head-to-head against other providers. We were awarded the opportunity based on the value of our solutions, our high standard of service and global support, and our insights-as-a-service approach. I couldn't be prouder of the team for this win. We continue to strengthen our senior leadership team to help guide IAS in our next phase of growth. In May, we appointed Yannis Dosios to the newly created position of Chief Commercial Officer, responsible for global sales and marketing.

Under his leadership, Yannis is enhancing our go-to-market strategy across functions to bring best-in-class enterprise-level sales and activations to our customers globally. International is a key differentiator for IAS as global marketers look to simplify and consolidate verification under one provider. In August, we welcomed Thomas Joseph, or TJ, as our Chief Technology Officer. TJ brings a high degree of technical expertise and global enterprise experience with Microsoft. Most recently, he helped drive the Pandora integration at Sirius XM. TJ is already making an impact aligning the engineering organization to support our product roadmap and long-term growth strategy. Today, we are excited to announce another key addition to the senior leadership team. Tania Secor will join IAS as Chief Financial Officer.

Based in New York, Tania is a highly accomplished finance leader with 25 years of financial leadership experience and a proven track record of building teams and scaling organizations for growth. Most recently, Tania was Global CFO for R/GA and Reprise, Interpublic Group's digital innovation and digital media agencies, respectively. Her deep background in FP&A and capital markets, along with her relevant industry experience, make Tania a great fit for IAS. We look forward to Tania joining the team on December fifth and to introducing her to everyone. Lastly, we're excited to support marketers' efforts to track and reduce their carbon footprint. We recently announced a partnership with U.K.-based Good-Loop, a purpose-led advertising platform that's moving the industry towards positive climate-friendly advertising. We are working with Omnicom and Sanofi-Aventis on pilot testing in Q4 with broader availability in 2023.

In closing, 2022 is shaping up to be another year of expanding capabilities and delivering revenue growth and profitability that exceed the Rule of 50. We continue to focus on driving efficiencies in our business and prudent expense management as reflected in our adjusted EBITDA outlook. With the recent additions to our senior leadership team, including today's announced CFO appointment, we are adapting and aligning our execution for the current environment. We are currently in the thick of planning for 2023, and we believe that we are setting the stage for long-term durable growth. With that, we are ready to take your questions. Operator?

Operator (participant)

As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press ]Star one one on your telephone. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Andrew Marok of Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Andrew Marok (VP of Equity Research)

Hi, thanks for taking my questions. First off, on the advertiser direct line in particular, saw a nice little acceleration in 3Q. Is there anything specific to call out there that's a driver behind that, and then have a follow-up after?

Lisa Utzschneider (CEO)

Sure. Hi, Andrew. Great question. Yeah, we're pleased with our results in the third quarter and also the fact that we're seeing strong programmatic results and advertiser direct. With ad direct in particular, where we saw strength were in a couple of verticals, including CPG, retail, and auto. We saw a nice uptick in growth from the EMEA market with 14% year-over-year growth, and that was primarily driven by advertiser direct.

Andrew Marok (VP of Equity Research)

Got it. That actually did kind of dovetail into my next question that EMEA revenue seemed pretty solid in 3Q despite all the bad news that we've heard about energy costs, macro, et cetera. I guess, what does your 4Q guide assume for U.S. versus international growth and anything to look out for macro-wise?

Lisa Utzschneider (CEO)

Great question. Again, we saw a nice uptick in growth in EMEA, as I mentioned before, 14% increase year-over-year for Q3, primarily advertiser direct. We're seeing solid performance in the fourth quarter. We typically don't break out U.S. from international revenue, but we're feeling good about fourth quarter and the trajectory of the business across all of the regions right now.

Andrew Marok (VP of Equity Research)

Great. Thank you.

Lisa Utzschneider (CEO)

Okay. Thanks, Andrew.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Mark Mahaney of Evercore ISI. Please go ahead. Mark Mahaney of Evercore ISI, your line is open.

Mark Mahaney (Senior Managing Director and Head of Internet Research)

Okay, I'm here. I couldn't hear my name being called. Sorry about that. Hey, Lisa, let me ask two questions. First, just on your macro commentary there, I assume you are seeing some softness in end market demand. I assume that's why, you know, I know you didn't kind of change your fourth quarter guidance, but it does imply this, you know, pretty material deceleration in growth rate. I just wanna go back to that. Like, to the extent that there's softness in the end markets, where does it show up for IAS? Fewer new advertisers, less spend per advertiser, higher churn per advertiser? Anything, like what are you seeing so far? Yeah, I just wanna go back to you on the macro outlook.

Lisa Utzschneider (CEO)

Yeah, sure. First off, we did exceed guide in third quarter, Mark, and we modestly increased our Q4 and full-year guide. We're seeing double-digit growth on all three revenue lines in the third quarter. The Q4 guidance increase, we are seeing an uptick in programmatic demand. We're seeing improved performance in advertiser direct, as I mentioned before, in particular verticals like automotive CPG and in the streaming vertical. Also I should note we are seeing strength in CTV and strong performance with Publica.

Mark Mahaney (Senior Managing Director and Head of Internet Research)

Could we just double click just on the Netflix relationship or the Netflix deal? Can you put that in context, like how big of a win is this? What are the solution sets that they are purchasing? Is this something where they're just doing a modest amount and then you can expand it over time? Is this across just their U.S. properties or is this a global deal? Just talk about how big the deal is so far and how to think about how it could grow, you know, over the next couple of years.

Lisa Utzschneider (CEO)

Sure. We were delighted with the announcement that IAS was selected by Netflix as a transparency partner, to support their much-anticipated ad-supported model. I actually think it's a great initiative for the entire digital industry. Our initial focus, it will be available in Q1 of 2023, we'll be providing viewability and invalid traffic post-bid measurement, to inform both brands and agencies on campaign reach and engagement. Our offering will be rolled out across multiple markets. Wherever Netflix is providing advertising, we will be providing our measurement solutions. Again, this is just the first inning of hopefully a very long game with Netflix and really looking forward to the launch of the partnership.

Mark Mahaney (Senior Managing Director and Head of Internet Research)

Just last question, Lisa, please. Does the Netflix deployment require a lot of extra work customization on the part of IAS, or are they essentially acquiring your off-the-shelf solutions?

Lisa Utzschneider (CEO)

Great question. It's an integration that we focus on scalability and ensure we have global reach of our solution. There's not much customization required. When you take a look at how fast Netflix is moving to launch their ad-supported solution, I think all of us agree the faster we can get an offering out to the marketers, the faster they'll be spending on Netflix. I really think it's a win-win-win across the board for the entire industry.

Mark Mahaney (Senior Managing Director and Head of Internet Research)

Okay. Thank you very much, Lisa.

Lisa Utzschneider (CEO)

Thanks. Thanks, Mark.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Brian Fitzgerald of Wells Fargo. Your question please.

Brian Fitzgerald (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Thanks. Maybe a follow-on to the Netflix line of questioning. As we see new premium AVOD platforms coming to market and aiming to establish ad businesses and keep pretty high CPMs, are they, in some cases, proactively purchasing viewability and IVT solutions, or is it more about them enabling these capabilities and advertisers, you know, driving the verification revenue opportunity for you guys?

Lisa Utzschneider (CEO)

Yeah, great question, Fitz. I would say what we're seeing, the industry trend is, you take the example of Netflix. Netflix represents premium inventory with this ad-supported solution that they're rolling out. What marketers are asking for is for the independent verification providers to provide viewability and invalid traffic coming out of the gate. They obviously want independent platforms like IAS in the mix coming out of the gate for the launch of their ad-supported offering. I could see later in the game that marketers would potentially be interested in additional solutions like brand safety and suitability, but coming out of the gate, it's IVT and viewability.

Brian Fitzgerald (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. Maybe one kind of follow-on or wrinkle to that's on the advertiser side. Wanna get a sense of advertisers' level of concern about viewability and IVT in these premium AVOD environments.

Lisa Utzschneider (CEO)

Yeah. I would say that, I mean, the marketers, they're cheering wildly over Netflix's announcement, and they want to focus first, especially with premium inventory and non-programmatic inventory on viewability and IVT, and they really want independent third-party players like IAS in the mix at the start of the launch just to ensure that there's that independent offering for the marketers.

Brian Fitzgerald (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. Awesome. Thank you, Lisa.

Lisa Utzschneider (CEO)

Yeah. Thanks, Fitz.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Jason Helfstein of Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Jason Helfstein (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Thanks, Lisa. Let me try too. Can you give us a sense of the opportunity as Meta comes on board? I mean, I assume most advertisers probably spend 2x-3x more on Meta than maybe any other platform besides Google. Is that kind of representative of the opportunity for you, even on a per client basis? Then, you know, one of the things that we've been asked is, I think 'cause The Trade Desk is putting it out there, like, is UID, you know, a potential currency? And then it's kind of like, well, if UID could be a currency, why couldn't IAS be a currency?

Maybe just if you can, you know, opine on kind of just how you think about, you know, kind of the evolution of currency with, you know, over the next, you know, period and kind of your role in that as well. Thanks.

Lisa Utzschneider (CEO)

Yeah, great question. I'll take them in order. Thanks, Jason. The first is about Meta, and we are following Meta's lead in terms of their plan to open up the live news feed for independent verification badged partners. They have shared that publicly that they do plan to open up the live feed with the badge partners. IAS is one of the badge partners. I believe there are three of us, and we're really looking forward for that to happen. They have shared that they expect it to open and ramp in 2023. As you know, Jason, we don't provide our 2023 outlook, so I'm not at liberty now to share any anticipated contribution with any Meta revenue.

Given the massive volume of Meta and how large the entire social platform is, we just can't wait to partner with Meta, once they open up the live feed. Then to your second question about IAS being a potential currency, you know, the reality is, and I know Jason, we've talked about this before, but in macroeconomic conditions, the reality is marketers care even more deeply about ROI and efficiency in their spend. They-- that's why they're leaning into our solutions, is we're helping marketers identify where higher quality media is. As we have demonstrated in dozens of case studies that we've shared with our marketers, higher quality media leads to higher ROI.

We do see a future where IAS could potentially be a currency for marketers when it comes to things like attention metrics or outcomes as marketers need to do more with less, especially with the macroeconomic headwinds that marketers are facing today. We'll see what the headwinds look like in 2023.

Jason Helfstein (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Thank you.

Lisa Utzschneider (CEO)

Thanks, Jason.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Raimo Lenschow of Barclays. Your question please.

Speaker 9

Hi, this is Frank on for Raimo. Thanks for taking the question. Are you seeing any uptick in new customer urgency given the ROI argument of the product? Specifically, have you noticed any more greenfield deals?

Lisa Utzschneider (CEO)

Yeah, great question. As I was mentioning before, you know, given the current macroeconomic conditions, advertisers are leaning even more into IAS' solutions, given both the efficiency of our offering. We're helping marketers identify higher quality media leading to ROI. Absolutely. You can see with things like programmatic increasing by 40%, the rapid adoption of our Context Control avoidance product, they are absolutely leading into our solutions. In terms of greenfield opportunities, yes, we are seeing loads of greenfield opportunities. We don't really disclose RFP win rates, but in terms of greenfield opportunities, our emerging markets, we're seeing really nice growth, as I mentioned before, internationally in some of those emerging markets like Latin America, like Southeast Asia.

The big wins, like I had mentioned previously on the call with Kimberly-Clark, which is a multi-year, multimedia, million-dollar win that was a direct jump ball, doing deep tech diligence, us against our competitors and winning Fortune 500 brands. You know, I'm just so incredibly proud of our team for that win.

Speaker 9

Very helpful. Thank you.

Lisa Utzschneider (CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Brent Thill of Jefferies. Your question please.

Brent Thill (Tech Sector Leader of Software and Internet Research)

Just wanna take another approach on the macro. I think last quarter you took the guide down due to macro concerns. It, you know, in your commentary, it doesn't sound like you're saying it's getting worse, it's maybe stabilized from what you're seeing. Are you just saying, hey, we're able to kind of fly through this because we're effectively helping so many different constituencies in the ad market that we're really not seeing the macro flame out that we're seeing across the rest of the ad industry. I think everyone's a little confused about your view and ultimately how you're positioning for the next six months in this environment.

Lisa Utzschneider (CEO)

Yeah, I would say, Brent, thanks for the question. We're actually seeing resilience in our business. We're seeing, as I said before, improvement in certain verticals, auto in particular, also CPG. As I mentioned before, as we're all living in these macroeconomic headwinds, marketers are seeking out solutions that deliver a higher ROI from them, and they need to just generate as much ROI as possible with every dollar that they invest in digital advertising. Again, that is why they're leaning into the IAS solution. We're feeling really good about our Q3 results, the fact that we exceeded guide and that we were able to modestly increase our guide for fourth quarter.

Brent Thill (Tech Sector Leader of Software and Internet Research)

Okay, on Netflix, is it fair to say that a lot of the ads will be up front and that you'll have pretty decent visibility in the revenue stream? I think many are kind of asking what CPMs could look like for this solution.

Lisa Utzschneider (CEO)

Yeah. With Netflix, again, we're thrilled with the announcement of the Netflix partnership, and they had selected IAS. I see the first half of 2023 as a ramp, right? Get through the integration, marketers, drive adoption and start buying and running the ads on Netflix, and then getting our viewability and IVT solution up and running and ramping and getting the feedback from the marketers.

Brent Thill (Tech Sector Leader of Software and Internet Research)

Thank you.

Lisa Utzschneider (CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mark Kelley of Stifel. Your question please.

Mark Kelley (Managing Director)

Great. Thank you very much. I wanted to ask you if retail media is an area we can expect you to maybe focus on in the future. You know, it's been a lot of talk around retail media or commerce media in the market. Just curious to get your thoughts there. Nice to see the announcement of Tania today. Maybe a better question for her once she gets settled in, but would love to get your thoughts on what you think her priorities will be once she joins in December.

Lisa Utzschneider (CEO)

Yeah, great. Thanks, Mark. Let's start first with retail media. Retail media is a big bet for IAS. We currently have deep partnerships with the major players, including Amazon and Walmart. When you take a look at the retail media TAMs, the combination of those two players represents close to 80% of the total TAM. We also have deep partnerships on the advertiser verification side with players like Walmart, Amazon, Shopify, Walgreens, CVS, Albertsons, and Home Depot. We have been investing in retail media. We are partnering with all of the major players, both from a partnership and integration and a verification perspective. We see a ton of greenfield opportunity to go get when it comes to expanding our retail media partnerships and presence.

In terms of Tania, we are thrilled with the announcement of Tania Secor as our new CFO. I know we were cheering wildly right before the call when the announcement went out. Just so excited to bring her on board. Given that she has 25 years of financial leadership experience, she has deep experience both in media and technology, and also deep FP&A experience. In terms of priorities, she will join IAS in early December, roll up her sleeves, and we will get going on our annual operating plan. We're in the thick of our 2023 planning now, and we will be partnering with her, also spending time with all of you and going out and meeting with our key investors and analyst community and obviously spending time with the team.

Mark Kelley (Managing Director)

All right. Thank you, Lisa.

Lisa Utzschneider (CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. At this time, I'd like to turn the call back over to Chief Executive Officer Lisa Utzschneider for closing remarks. Madam?

Lisa Utzschneider (CEO)

Sure. Thanks everyone for joining today's call. We're pleased to have delivered on our expectations of profitable growth for Q3 and to increase our full-year outlook. We're leading the market with credibility and innovation, and we're excited to partner with major platforms including Netflix and TikTok, among others. As we move into 2023, we look forward to anticipating our customers' needs as a trusted independent provider across platforms, formats and geographies. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.