Add another ad tech IPO to the pile, folks. DoubleVerify filed its S-1 Wednesday (read it) in its bid to IPO.
According to the filing, DoubleVerify experienced strong but slowing revenue growth last year. Gross revenue in 2020 was $244 million, a 34% increase from 2019 revenue of $183 million. The company’s 2018 revenue meanwhile was $104 million, reflecting a 75% increase from 2018 to 2019.
Notably, DoubleVerify’s net income has increased dramatically, from $3 million in 2018 to $23.3 million in 2019 – though it dipped to $20.4 million in 2020, due to a jump in expenses.
What does DoubleVerify do?
DoubleVerify’s tech is designed to detect ad fraud, ensure ad viewability and brand safety. It’s recently leaned into its ability to detect and stop ad fraud in CTV, an area that’s seeing growing amounts of ad spend.
The company, founded in 2008, has raised a total of $549.5 million – its most recent round of $350 million coming last October. Back in 2017, PE firm Providence Equity Partners acquired a majority stake in the company, with a valuation of around $300 million.
Customer splits
No exact customer numbers, but DoubleVerify says it has over 1,000 across major verticals like CPG, financial services, telco, tech, automotive and healthcare. Forty-five customers contributed to at least $1 million of the company’s revenue in 2020, compared to 41 in 2019 and 25 in 2018. No company represented more than 10% of DoubleVerify’s revenue, though, in 2020 or 2019.
Ninety-one percent of DoubleVerify’s customers in 2020 were advertisers. In that year, the company generated $106.4 million from working with advertisers directly, and $116.1 million from buyers purchasing DoubleVerify’s services through programmatic platforms. That programmatic revenue, currently the most lucrative of DoubleVerify’s revenue categories, has been fast-growing. Back in 2018, programmatic revenue was only $36.9 million, compared to $60.1 million in advertiser-direct revenue.
Advertiser-driven revenue comes from DoubleVerify charging a fee per 1,000 impressions it analyzes.
Meanwhile, DoubleVerify has also been pushing into the sell-side – it purchased Ad-Juster in 2019, for instance, to further that incursion. Sell-side revenue was $21.4 million in 2020, up from $14.8 million in 2019.
Sell-side revenue is subscription-based.
