Q1 2021 Viant Technology Inc Earnings Call
So our full year 'twenty, one guidance across all metrics and we believe we are poised for an excellent Q2 and strong second half of 'twenty, one 2020, one as our investments in sales and marketing begin paying dividends and as the economy continues to rebound from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
With that let me discuss some key financial and operational highlights for the quarter.
Total spend in the first quarter grew 9% on a year over year basis. This growth was primarily driven by continued momentum on connected TV spend which grew 66% in Q1 and represented the remarkable 45% of total spending on our platform in the quarter.
Overall video related spending on our platform, which includes the G. D represented over 67% of total spend on our platform in the quarter.
We expect CTV to continue to be of strong contributor to our growth going forward as our expertise and industry, leading CTV solution continues to gain market share across the growing and important channel.
In terms of customer verticals as we expected Q1 continued to be negatively impacted by macroeconomic conditions related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
More specifically, our retail automotive and travel customers continued to hold back budgets with total spend across these three important verticals down 25% in the quarter compared to Q1 of last year.
And remember as I have previously indicated these three of our customer verticals represented 43% of total spend on our platform of 2019 pre COVID-19.
Conversely across all of the customer verticals platform spend increased 31% during the quarter.
As travel automotive and retail come back to more normalized levels as we move through 2020. One we believe we are poised for accelerated growth in the coming quarters. We are already seeing early signs of recovery in Q2 with solid growth in spend with our retail and travel customers automotive remains weak at this point.
But we believe is the current industrywide chip shortage. The gets resolved spending on auto will also pick up and contribute to a strong second half of 2021.
Now moving to our revenue performance for the quarter GAAP revenue for the first quarter was $40 $1 million on increase of 5% compared to Q1 of 2020.
Revenue ex Tac the key metric we focus on in evaluating revenue performance was $26 7 million for the quarter, an increase of 15% year over year.
As a reminder of revenue ex Tac represents the net contribution after deducting all third party media and data costs.
As I already mentioned in Q1 of our growth in both GAAP revenue and revenue ex Tac was largely driven by the significant increase in CTV related spend on our platform. Additionally growth across our percentage of spend pricing model continues to outpace growth across our fixed price and subscription price offerings. This highlights line.
The continued strength of its agency customers.
As we've indicated percentage of spend customers also have also have very high retention rates and typically increase their spend over time as they consolidate budgets on our platform.
Another set of metrics that we focus on are the number of active customers and the average revenue ex Tac per active customer customer.
<unk> and increased revenue ex Tac within our existing customer base, our key metrics that we track to assess the momentum in our business. We define of active customers any customer generating a minimum of $5000 of revenue ex Tac over the prior 12 month period.
At the end of Q1, we had 266 active customers compared to 260 for at the end of 2020 average revenue ex Tac per active customer at the end of Q1 totaled $428000 versus 400000 at the end of Q1 last year, an increase of 7%.
Since the COVID-19 related downturn, we saw on Q2 of 2020, we have now seen three consecutive quarters of growth in both the number of active customers and the average revenue ex Tac generated per active customer.
Our focus moving forward is to increase the number of active customers using our software while continuing to increase the revenue ex Tac generated per active customer as we continue to ramp up our sales of investment in 2020, one and forward. We expect further momentum around new customer acquisitions, which ultimately will serve as another engine to fuel growth going forward.
Turning now to operating expenses, given the significant stock based compensation flowing through our numbers beginning in Q1, we intend to report operating expenses on the non-GAAP basis going forward, excluding the impact of stock based compensation.
Total operating expenses, excluding stock based compensation totaled $37 8 million in the quarter essentially flat with the prior year period.
This is particularly notable given that we have increased our head count by 17% over that same period.
We continue to remain focused on balancing our investment of growth with driving operational efficiency efficiencies in the business ultimately with the goal of driving profitability and revenue growth for many years to come.
In a moment of our co founder and Chief operating Officer, Chris Standard up we'll share a little bit more color with you about recent of the head count additions, but let me give you some high level details. We ended the quarter with 321 employees, which represented an increase of roughly 10% since year end with a significant number of these new hires coming on the sales side or Rick.
Pruning efforts continued to reap rewards as we are attracting extremely qualified candidates, including from some of the best Tech companies out there.
Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $4 9 million compared to $3 2 million of Q1 of 2020, representing a year over year increase of 51%.
Our adjusted EBITDA margin as a percentage of revenue ex Tac was 18% in the quarter compared to 14% from the same period last year.
As we continue to scale the business our mid to long term targeted adjusted EBITDA margins as the percentage of revenue ex Tac remain at <unk> at 35%.
In terms of net income we also intend to report and focus on the metric of non-GAAP net income, which represents net income excluding stock based compensation. We believe this is a more appropriate metric by which to measure of the operating performance of the business.
For the quarter non-GAAP net income totaled $2 2 million versus $329000 last year, representing an increase of nearly six times on a year over year basis.
Non-GAAP earnings per share of class a common stock totaled the one cents for the quarter.
From a cash flow perspective, we generated $14 8 million of net cash from operating activities for the quarter compared to $3 5 million in Q1 of last year. We ended the quarter with $246 6 million of cash which includes the $232 5 million of net proceeds generated from our IPO in February.
We believe that our growth profile and healthy balance sheet positions us extremely well to take advantage of the rapidly growing market opportunity in front of us.
And finally, turning now to guidance as Tim discussed, we feel great about our strong positioning in the market and we are in the very early stages of capitalizing on the market opportunity for programmatic advertising and of Cookie less world as we think about guidance. We recognize that we are still early in the year and there is a fair amount of uncertainty.
Around the advertising demand in some of our key end markets, including on our travel retail and automotive customer segments.
That being said the early signs of recovery across two of our three COVID-19 impacted verticals in early Q2 gives us increased confidence in our overall 2021 performance.
With that background for the second quarter of 2021, we expect GAAP revenue of the range of $45 million to $47 million, which represents year over year growth of approximately 48 to 54 per cent.
Revenue ex Tac in the range of $29 five to $30 5 million, which represents year over year growth of approximately 47% to 52%.
And adjusted EBITDA in the range of three 5% of $4 5 million or a margin as a percentage of revenue ex Tac of 12% to 15%.
For the full year 2020, we are raising our previously issued guidance and we now expect GAAP revenue in the range of 200 for $205 million, which represents year over year growth of approximately 21% to 24%.
Revenue ex Tac in the range of 135 to 140 $40 million, which represents year over year growth of approximately 22% to 27% and finally adjusted EBITDA in the range of $24 million to $27 million or a margin as a percentage of revenue ex Tac of between 18 and 19%.
In summary, we believe we are uniquely positioned to meet the needs of advertisers and their agencies in the post cookie world as our platform does not rely on browsers and the identifiers.
Couple that with our continued over index thing across CTV, our increased sales and marketing investment and the beginnings of of returned to normal across our retail and travel customers. We expect momentum to continue to build as we move through 2021.
With that I will now turn the call over to per center of Chris.
Thank you Larry.
We continue to invest in the future and we are focused on execution and growth within three primary categories customer adoption omni channel partnerships and investments in our technology.
This is our third consecutive quarter of growth in customer spend and on software Q2 is already starting off very strong and we believe that trend will continue through the rest of the second quarter and into the second half of the year.
Our intention is to continue to accelerate that growth, which starts with the investment in people.
In the past few weeks, we've announced several key hires including the expansion of our C suite with Chief people Officer, Kendra engineer, who will lead our who will lead volume people strategy and operations.
She will prepare she will propel our employee experience and help attract the best and brightest talent to the organization.
As Larry mentioned, we've increased our direct sales footprint recruiting strong sales leadership with extensive experience in programmatic software sales many of which are coming to us from across the big Tech and other leading technology companies.
For example, we recently appointed David Fay, a Google veteran to the newly created role of head of agency partnerships to drive the continued expansion of our AD agency of holding company partnerships and buying.
We're excited about the prospects of our new team members and look forward to their contributions once they've had time to ramp up.
Next I want to talk about some exciting product announcements and omni channel partnerships that we believe will continue to enhance our customers our customers experience.
And the last couple of weeks, we've announced the successful integration with double verify which enhances our customers' ability to validate premium content in CTV. We've also announced another successful integration with true optics data marketplace, which enables rich CTV data available for targeting all with the goal of delivering a superior return on.
<unk> been in CTV.
Okay.
In addition, today, we are announcing a partnership with T. Mo a technology agnostic streaming company, which provides both programming and add exposure data across millions of U S households for better audience targeting and measurement for both linear and connected TV I'm, particularly excited about this partnership and look forward to.
Clients leveraging tivo within our software for both of our linear and connected TV AD campaigns on.
Now I'm going to spend some time talking about our recent investments in technology.
Later this quarter, we will be making a large software release called WWE, <unk>, which stands for world without cookies.
As you as you will recall our household Eddie has been available to customers. So they can easily tests of our people based approach and cookie less environments like connected TV.
We've continued to grow spend with these customers.
As they continue to adopt our scaled household I D. As the amount of cookie less AD impressions on the Internet continues to grow our scaled household IV is now becoming the preferred choice by our customers.
With the release of Ww C. N of Delphic marketers are now on powered with enhanced capabilities to plan using our household by the against any data partner supply channel site or App we've.
We've always made it easy to buy using our household items, but with this release, we will be enhancing our standard measurement reporting to more seamlessly incorporate conversions at the household versus the dine cookie.
We are seeing the marketers are experiencing greater results in campaign performance when utilizing our scaled household I D versus relying on cookies or other upstart identifiers.
Recently, we completed a test for a customer who is the national pizza chain. They utilized our household lady on purchasing connected TV with our household idea that customer was able to see how many exact households, they reached and how many times. Each household was shown on AD, but more importantly, our household items measured other devices in the household.
That actually went to our customers' website and placed an order for a pizza we were able to show their true return on AD spend there was an excess of 160% in connected TV something that competing platforms. Just cannot do this client has since increased their budgets by over 60% in adulthood.
WWE <unk> will be the release of the allows marketers to not skip a beat on the world is left without cookies on.
Our focus has been to provide a platform for marketers and their agencies that proves the return on AD spend and our Ww SEC release will ensure that for our customers.
We are confident that this release will have an even bigger impact on improving our customer's campaign performance in adults, which should result in increased spending in our software.
In addition to Ww seen this week, we also announced the release of our deals marketplace in adult ex.
This release allows for customers to seamlessly select from our deep roster of integrations with premium content owners across all channels and specifically within the CTV.
Marketers can leverage both of our own direct deals negotiated with content owners in the upfront or how the flexibility to source new deals with premium content owners directly on our software and.
And speaking of premium content owners were separately on announcing a partnership with Fox News media, which will be leveraging our software for better audience insights and measurement capabilities that will ultimately drive better results for their advertisers and increased monetization of their AD inventory and cookie less environments.
The volume of household items will be the currency with which we continue to expand this partnership and others like it going forward.
Lastly, as we continue to scale our business, we will need to increase our EPS or queries per second which is the total amount of AD impressions that are software receipts.
With the continued innovation in our immediate of product, we're now seeing more than four times of the efficiency in <unk> up from three times. The efficiency. We reported in the last quarter. We are confident that as <unk> scales of its business. We believe that we will do so at the lowest cost of technical infrastructure in the industry.
I'm excited about the progress that we're making with that I'm going to pass it back to Tim.
Thanks, Chris volume is well positioned for future growth there is an increasing consumer spend and trends in their digital consumption habits that are growing at faster rates and within new formats and channels alongside this dynamic we're seeing advertising revenue growth projections increase marketers are embracing the.
The <unk> to reach people in new and much more targeted and strategic ways of.
Our vision, which we started more than 20 years ago is finally coming to fruition.
<unk> and agencies are embracing our competitive our competitive advantages they rely on <unk> people based approach household I D and our scale and expertise in connected TV, we take the complexity and most importantly, the anxiety out of advertising and ultimately help brands and agencies maximize their return on investment.
We are very pleased with our start to 2021 and are excited to be raising guidance for the year I want to thank you for your attention today and your interest in <unk>, we look forward to building on our momentum in the quarters ahead.
At this time, everyone. We'll go ahead and take your questions. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question. Please use the raise your hand function located at the bottom of your screen.
And we will take our first question.
From Laura Martin.
With Needham.
Laura Your line is now open.
Can you guys see and you hear me.
I can't hear anything on the.
Fantastic Great I'll, just ask one and then a follow up so can you talk about universal I'd.
I understand the hustle tech doesn't rely on cookies, but can you talk about whether you think universal I'd will be successful and by other people based solutions will work in the open web and I understand how you.
Household ideas really great for CTV I get that but it does feel like there are uses for our personal I'd in the open internet debt.
Drive faster growth for you guys outside of CTV, which I'll talk about that.
Yes. Thanks for the question on we'll get to your follow up question right after that.
Our competitive our competitors have taken an approach of our cash.
Email identifier as a replacement for the Cookie, we've taken a different approach, which is the household and aggregating those users and going back to the statistics, we shared on the slide this is all about scale.
So if we really look at where you I need to point out is that today.
At the ground stages ground zero it hasnt, even really launched with any momentum versus our household I D, which has 80% scale. It's been in market for many years and now with <unk> coming in in such a strong way. This idea is becoming kind of of the tobacco need in the way forward because of its delivering on the scale of marketers need.
One one challenge that everyone talks about in this new way forward of of Cookie less world is all around what's going to work for targeting but theres an important other side of the vehicle, which is what works for measurement targeting and email theoretically might work in terms of connecting of logged in user on the website to enable audience segments. So data driven.
Advertising can still happen I think one of the biggest ways and one of the biggest gaps that we see is yes. The marketer can buy ads through unified I'd E. But can they actually measure of the responses that are happening on the website at beginning of broad categories like automotive many of these transactions aren't taking place on line it simply key buying activities.
That are taking place on these marketers website the ability to measure those interactions on the advertising of website in attribute them to which adds drove that is a key differentiator that the household items brings relative to you items to point out. So let me just say this in layman's terms, if I show on AD on CNN, and let's say that user is logged in.
And I later come to the marketers website and performed the key buying ads and our software will actually report record an attribute that conversion to the appropriate app.
Contrast that to <unk>, two point or any hashed email based identifier.
Where theres not a purchase with an email, let's catch the marketer of loses the visibility into that conversion and being able to decide which publisher, which add message drove that conversion on the website. So you I E coupon of everyone's focused on the targeting side. There is equally bigger challenges for the adoption. When you look at marketers would have to adopt this entire framework as well.
And a lot of marketers aren't selling the actual product on the website relative to a household Ivy we are a frictionless system. We don't require publishers the stop and register on our website. We don't require marketers to include anything our system works seamlessly with the same pixel same AD delivery same programmatic setup that's.
Currently in place today, and we've achieved the scale of 80%, which is now more that is 80% is now bigger than 55% of cookies across the midstream. So our household IV has far surpassed what cookies are today in the midstream and as more and more marketers understand our solution and the implementation of a truly it's frictionless.
We think adoption towards our approach is going to be substantial.
Okay. Thank you and then.
Larry maybe my second follow up question for you.
My recollection from the IPO as the CTV was about 30% of your revenue is now 45% because it is growing 66%.
But your overall revenue growth was only 5%. So can you talk about what's happening in the 70% of the business at the IPO day by not by not by AD vertical like autos versus travel.
Hi, what's happening on mobile what's happening of say, what's shrinking in order for total revenue to be growing at 5%.
Television revenue to be growing at 65 per cent.
Great Great question, Laura couple of things outside of that so we are certainly seeing a trend of advertisers shifting dollars into CTV away from desktop and mobile.
Basically as CTD generally provides a better ROI for these marketers are platform in particular works extremely well on CTV as we can provide as Tim said, both the targeting and the true measurement and we're benefiting from the strength trend, which is what youre seeing in the.
Significant increase in CTV. Additionally.
Additionally, if you look at not to get into verticals, but in particular retail travel and automotive clients are typically much more direct response oriented which is typically more targeted at mobile and desktop so of the decline in these verticals in Q1, we did see modest declines in <unk>.
Mobile and desktop during the quarter that being said, we do expect that trend will reverse as the sub sectors.
True in the coming quarters.
Super helpful. Thanks, guys. Thank you very much.
Our next question will come from range Maria <unk> with Canaccord.
Please go ahead.
Can you hear me.
Yes.
Thanks, so much congrats on strong results on that did you see that sort of raising your guidance on that I. Appreciate all the color on that.
But I guess at this point, how much visibility do you have or on your full year outlook and what are some puts and takes that could potentially impacted and then I have a quick follow up.
Larry.
I'll take the beginning of that so certainly with Q2, we have.
Now in the middle of May we have very good visibility obviously, there's still some work to be done there I think in the back half of what we're seeing as a general matter as the planning cycles with a lot of our marketers and agencies have shortened so while we're having the discussions.
And we're getting.
Very positive feedback and commitments.
We have less visibility kind of longer term and this really was more of came in play when COVID-19 came through and it is continuing through that we're seeing shorter planning cycles.
With that that being said.
Based on in terms of a lot of factors in terms of the increase in sales investments.
In terms of the momentum we're seeing in CTV.
In terms of the verticals now starting to come back that have been heavily impacted by COVID-19, especially with travel and retail we're seeing that right. Now in Q2 that gives us a lot of confidence in terms of going forward into the year in terms of of what we can do in the second half.
Yes.
Great and just the follow ups on or around the guidance.
It seems like it implies a pretty strong profitability of smoke or can you just made the comment on what's driving that on this the queue line can be much stronger on the way and other any changes sort of the piece to the beat.
For the investment this year.
Just driven by revenue upside and maybe more broadly can you maybe sort of refresh us on your op margin expansion of philosophy over the next year or two.
Yes, so the first part of that certainly we've increased the revenue for that that will flow through to EBITDA, hence our higher guidance relative to EBITDA. The other things, we're seeing though in terms of investment we're on pace with what we thought we were doing in terms of incremental head count.
We expect to be largely or the large majority of the way through our 2021 hiring plans by the end of Q2. So we're not pulling back in terms of investments that's kind of in line with what we had originally expected, but as we've always done we are very focused on finding efficiencies in the business Chris talked about the media.
Of the product that results in a huge efficiency and savings for us.
And we continue to look of non personnel areas, where we can and sweep money out of out of the out of our budget. So I think its increase revenue increase the efficiency. It is not a lack of investment we're continuing to drive forward with investing and growing the team and really getting most of that done by the <unk>.
The second half are by the way.
The end of Q2, such that we can truly benefit from that investment in the second half.
In terms of margin expansion, obviously that will come with revenue growth, we will continue to.
Invest as we are in 2021, we will continue to invest and take advantage of the opportunity going forward, but we think in the near the mid to near term that we can.
With the investment get that EBITDA margin as the percentage of revenue ex Tac up to 35%, which is what has been our plan since before we went IPO.
Got it that's very helpful. Thank you very much.
And as a reminder to the audience. Please raise your hand, if you would like to ask a question you can find the raise your hand feature and the lower part of your menu at the bottom of the screen and we'll move on to Aaron Kessler with Raymond James.
Okay.
On your line of 78 area great. Thanks, guys.
Couple of questions, maybe just on the direct costs as a percentage of revenue as I noticed those increased a bit sequentially Kansas.
You can't give us the reason behind that I assume that is maybe a shift away from percentage of Spanish the.
How should we think about that going for and then to just the pipeline just given all of a theme.
Shift to a cookie less feature what are you starting to see from our conversations with some of the agencies and direct clients are you starting to see that the pace of those conversations increase as we.
Moving to a cookie less kind of futures over the next year or so thank you.
Thank you Aaron in terms of direct costs I assume you are looking at platform operations, Yes the network.
Direct costs as a percentage I think I went up to about 33% of the GAAP revenue versus about 31% from Q4.
I mean part of that is just a couple of things going on there and one of the increase in head counts.
Which on a year over year basis is up something like 17%.
On a if you look at it on a quarter over quarter basis, our total.
Let me, let me restart that the first thing that should be important to note is that we have $17 million of.
Classes of stock based comp.
In our operating expenses in Q1.
Hence why we're pulling from where we're going on.
Gonna be talking a lot about non-GAAP opex, which excludes that if you look at operating operating expenses. Excluding SBC is essentially flat with last year, So and that is the <unk>.
The fact that we have made over the last 12 months of pretty significant investment in additional head count.
I'm not sure of that answers. Your question I just want make sure I got the right. Yes. So I was just looking at the GAAP between I think the revenue ex Tac versus GAAP revenues.
Some of the tech have widened a little bit on more than what we saw on the previous year.
The portion of that $70 million of stock based comp is included in that number.
Okay got it.
And then just maybe if you can comment on the kind of the pace of conversations around kind of the suggests the trend on what it means for the pipeline.
Yeah, so definitely pace of conversations of definitely increase.
On the news every day, whether it be changes in the ecosystem, whereas six seven months ago. We were educating clients that this is happening the start getting ready for the clients understand the have to be ready for this coming year zone.
So definitely the pace of increasing new customer or excuse me new sales hires of Kickstarting new conversations.
One other thing I want to point out our Ww SEC release, I think is going to help us quite a bit we essentially are more effectively embedding everything grow the platform.
Really making the household.
Idea of apparent in all of those areas not just in the buying section. So I really think that that is really going to increase customer adoption towards us come second half of the year. We do we did previously said that we think the real payoff is going to be in 2022, when Google does delete cookies.
But we are seeing of real interest in testing of the solutions Our agency partners.
Leaning forward excuse me they were waiting for because they know they've got to be ready.
We expect.
The pace to pick up even more as we go throughout the end of the year.
Great. Thank you.
And our final question will come from Rocco Strauss Rocco. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Alright. Thank you very much I hope you can give me.
I have two for me the first is on on items again.
I mean, I'm I'm, just I'm, just curious to what extent you're how's the household IV is still driven off the old Myspace assets and then more generally around unified our day to day, though of the commentary that the Jeff given already as of <unk> any kind of capacity kind of like using the unified ideal planning to use it a contra.
Thanks for that.
That would be one question on then the other one is probably more of a bit of in the educational one here I mean, I guess, if I'm using the midpoint of your fiscal year 'twenty one guidance. It seems like Youre monetizing I'd like a 67% take rate.
It just seems quite high versus peers like <unk> like the trade for us. So I guess will be helpful. If you could walk us through your inventory mix of owned and operated the business like third party as well as any kind of of additional services.
With the net revenue that May drive the checkmate up thank you.
I'll leave Larry for Rocco. Thanks for the questions I'll take the first of all of the blurry for the take rate question there. So.
As household debt driven off of my state data set the that answer is an emphatic no.
Totally irrelevant from the my space dataset not used at all.
<unk> two point of <unk> plans.
One of my it was when we changed our name to buy it in 2015, we launched people based on kind of brought it to market under a programmatic platform really the first one to do that our approach at the time was E mail, so our ability to accept the hashed email identifier from of publisher. We've had since 2016 for the trade desk is re architect their software for.
That basic concept there, but the issue with E mail is that the publisher of simply don't have that data point. So.
False premise to say that every publisher.
Available universally is going to be able to capture an email on pass through certainly of the hashed email identifier comes through of midstream, we have the ability to bid on that hashed email identify or just like anyone on the <unk> two point of framework prior to it being called new items to point out what's called the Iab project re argue is an entire industry.
Wide effort, but the trade desk.
Renamed it to their own <unk>, but what is it if the publisher captures an email address incentive through we have no problem bidding and buying off of that cash you know of identifying we just don't see of scaling costs of 20% to 30% of all available AD requests given our history and experience in dealing with this important identifier for the past six years, it's Tim.
He doesn't scale because publishers don't have the data points required debt.
The head of the Internet the major media companies in connected TV will likely be able to authenticate a large portion of their subscribers paid subscribers.
But we see the better identify our being the household identifier of approach.
Which really aggregates all devices in the household and doesn't rely on that device for storage of it or any for any change that big Tech does so we believe that the household ideas the scale that all of our competitors will move to over the course of time once they see what's around the corner of the hashed email identifier Larry I'll leave it for you on the take rate is.
Well yeah.
Morocco in terms of the take rates so Rev. Ex Tac as a percentage of GAAP revenue is not a take rate and in.
In our model.
<unk> spend as a number of that is much higher than GAAP revenue. So the reason we show Rev. Ex Tac is because we have different pricing models with different revenue accounting treatment. So our GAAP revenue represents spend on our fixed pricing options, but on our subscription on a percentage of spend option. It represents.
And after deducting media and data costs. So it is not of spend number is the GAAP revenue number but what we focus on is Rev. Ex Tac of that essentially then takes out the media and data costs out of the fixed pricing option such that Rev. Ex Tac normalizing of the three different pricing options.
All net of media and data costs, but it is not of take rate. When you do Rev. Ex Tac divided by GAAP revenue would have to do that divided by spend but spend is not a metric that we disclose.
Alright, great guys. Thank you.
Now moving.
We'll take a question now from Andrew Boone Andrew. Please go ahead with your question.
Hi, guys.
Thanks for taking the question I just wanted to touch base in terms of the sales force and the cramping and just any progress you guidance can share in terms of getting that up and scale of and kind of the client perception as you guys kind of half the market on the strength. Thanks, so much.
I mean first and foremost, let's just talk about the quality of the candidates coming in from the pipeline really has posted the IPO the product in the marketplace I think everyone in the industry recognizing the scale on accuracy that our it brings and the frictionless nature that we can use the current ecosystem and when you have that brand halo going on in the <unk>.
<unk> and attracts a huge level of talent much higher quality of caliber of individuals coming on board to the team. We mentioned 10 dropped from the Chief people Officer, David Day, He leapt heading up our agency partnerships came to us from Google and I could go on and on and on about the great companies that need the individuals of left to come join the buying team and really.
It's because of the product works and it's scaled today and I think that's what's drawing it debt.
The big talent here I'll, let yes as far as the sales hires making.
On making headway there, we're well on our way there I would expect debt.
We're hopeful that we're going to hire on the majority of those.
Really by by second half.
So our plan is to the well through that hiring plan for the second half we want to make sure. We're hiring the right people, but as Tim said, we are seeing absolutely great candidates.
Across great technology companies coming our way one of the point I want to note.
I think obviously, we are of challenger brands and I think both from people who are coming to work here of the understand the opportunity and they want to make an impact I think commercially and move into the clients I think clients like the calendar as well.
What we hear consistently is they don't want to just see.
The more Google They don't so a company like us coming I think it's been very refreshing for them, we are having great conversations.
A lot of times when you are getting great sales hires youre also providing familiar faces for those clients. So we've seen that pay some dividends as well.
Well, it's still early we're going to give them time to ramp up but.
We're excited about what they're going to contribute in the back half there.
So just to clarify on this may be more of a of Leerink question, but this is more of kind of the 2022 of that is because we start to see kind of that fully sales capacity fully get up and kind of scaling and running.
Certainly fully ramped, but we do expect and we always had planned and that's why we were very aggressive in terms of trying to bring as many of them on in the first half of this year. So that we get some benefit in 'twenty in the second half of 'twenty one.
But clearly it is much more of a it will have much more profound effects on 2022.
I mean really just let's talk about which events matter. The most googled the leading the cookie from chrome is going to be one of the biggest accelerators for our business because as of right now our competitors can still rely on that cookie to execute their business day to day, when Google pulls that rug out and there is no cookie, we really get to see who is <unk>.
Some really has the scale and the accuracy that marketers are looking for we've got many many years of experience in doing this and of clear patented process. So again, we focus on all in bringing the team in in hiring. This is all getting ready for 2022 on Google Chrome actually pulls that cookie and the QTS pipe goes from 55% of.
The cookie down to zero and then we will see what our competitors really have fun there behind the software.
Great. Thanks, guys.
And there are no further questions Tim Chris on Larry I'll turn it back to you for any closing remarks.
Thank you very much for everyone joining us today and last thing I want to thank our employees, we wouldn't be here without you your dedication effort level and tremendous level of brainpower of that you bring to work each and every day and I just wanted to say thank you for all of that and we look forward to continuing to build the momentum in the future quarters to come thanks, everyone.
Thank you so much on again this does conclude today's webinar. We thank you all for your participation you may now disconnect.