Measurement and analytics company DoubleVerify is double-clicking on Scibids.
The ad verification provider touted its decision to acquire Paris-based AI startup Scibids during its Q2 earnings call on Monday. DoubleVerify bought Scibids for $125 million with a mixture of cash and equity. The company will pay roughly $66 million of the purchase price with cash on hand and the remaining balance in DoubleVerify common stock, according to DoubleVerify CFO Nicola Allais. The transaction will close by the end of Q3.
Scibids pulls in impression-level data – including DoubleVerify attention data – to automate and optimize programmatic bids across demand-side platforms, according to DoubleVerify CEO Mark Zagorski.
Advertisers like Spotify, Allianz and Dell use Scibids to improve digital ad campaign targeting and determine how much money to dedicate to each campaign. “It looks to minimize the bid to deliver the maximum return,” Zagorski said.
Scibids’ tech plugs directly into DSPs and gathers first- and third-party data as well as pricing, contextual, performance measurement, programmatic bidstream and measurement data, among others, from clients. Using this data, it dynamically creates “bespoke” bidding algorithms based on specific advertiser KPIs. Scibids is integrated with DSPs such as The Trade Desk, Google DV360, Microsoft’s Xandr and Comcast’s Beeswax.
The algo does the trading, bid optimization and decision-making on its own, Zagorski said.
The Scibids deal follows on the heels of a June partnership between the two companies, dubbed the DV Algorithmic Optimizer. In its initial tests with Scibids, DoubleVerify saw, on average, 45% lower media CPMs, 63% higher attention levels and 95% more impressions. DoubleVerify expects Scibids to generate $15–$17 million. In 2024, based on a 30%–40% YOY growth rate, according to Allais.
The acquisition comes as DoubleVerify experiences continued growth. Its second-quarter revenues increased by 22% YOY to $133.7 million. The company analyzes about 300 billion data transactions every day.
Activation revenue, which refers to DoubleVerify’s revenue related to brand safety and suitability, shot up 29% to a total of $77.9 million. Measurement revenue grew 16% to reach $45 million. DoubleVerify predicts full-year revenue to come to between $557 million and $569 million, or 24% growth YOY.
The company has seen strong performance across social media, CTV and retail media.
“We want to have a basket of goods that covers all the bases,” Zagorski said, from an enterprise advertiser like Sam’s Club or Pizza Hut to TikTok and Facebook and Instagram Reels to Uber, which DoubleVerify inked a partnership with in Q2.
And no basket is complete without AI, which powers Scibids’ tech and will infuse DoubleVerify’s activation and measurement lines of business. “It’s a huge differentiator for us,” he said. “No other company in our space has a product like it.”
Brian Andersen, Dick Filippini and Mark Greenbaum advised Scibids as their last deal for LUMA Partners.
