Q2 2022 Comscore Inc Earnings Call
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The conference will begin shortly. To raise your hand during Q&A, you can dial star 11. Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the ComScore second quarter 2022 financial results call. At this time, all participants are in the listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session.
To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising that your hand is raised. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker for today, Mr. John Thinker.
Thank you, operator. Before we begin our prepared remarks, I'd like to remind all of you that the following discussion contains forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements include comments about our plans, expectations, and prospects, and are based on our view as of today, August 9, 2022.
Our actual results and future periods may differ materially from those currently expected because of a number of risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties include those outlined in our 10-K, 10-Q, and other filings of the FCC, which you can find on our website or at www.sex.gov. We display any duty or obligation to update our four looking statements to reflect new information after today's call. We will be discussing non-GAAP measures during this call for which we have provided reconciliation in today's press release and on our website.
Please note that we will be referring to slides on this call which are also available on our website www.comsor.com under investor relations and events and presentations.
I'll now turn the call over to the Consul's Chief Executive Officer, John Carpenter.
Thanks, John , and thank you all for joining us this evening.
Well, what an honor stepping into the role of CEO , and I couldn't be more excited about the prospects ahead for this company.
I want to thank the Coscor board for this opportunity and their confidence in me, and our clients and employees for their warm welcome over the last couple of weeks.
Having been the CFO for the last seven months, I certainly understand both the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for the company.
which has no doubt helped me get a head start on the work we need to do in order to unlock the value that I believe this company has the ability to deliver on.
I want to take a moment to thank Bill Libick for his tireless work over the past three years and for building a complete measurement product that gives us a very strong foundation for future growth.
I'm joined today by Mary Margaret Currie, who was recently named Chief Financial Officer, as well as Carol Hennet, Tanya Yuki, and from a product standpoint, David Algernati and Greg Dale are here with me this evening.
Finally, I'd like to highlight Nana Banerjee as the new chairman of the board. Nana brings extensive operating experience in big data and technology, having served as CEO of McGraw Hill. His vast experience leading large product and technology organizations will be immensely helpful to me personally as well as the entire management team as we execute on our strategy.
There's no doubt that this is a critical time for the industry. We're committed to and focused on delivering innovative products and solutions that our customers want while driving the growth and profitability our shareholders expect.
This is the second quarter we're reporting on our new revenue solution groups. And as a reminder, our focus is on measuring content and ads and enabling the planning and activation of media in a privacy-forward way across all screens.
This quarter we reported revenue growth of 4% to $91.4 million and a near 150% increase in adjusted David Dow to $6.5 million.
We're also tightening our guidance, calling for 5 to 7 percent revenue growth, coupled with an increase in our full year adjusted EBITDA margin that we now see exceeding 9 percent on the year.
I wanted to take some time to provide everyone with a sense for how I think about the business, the opportunities we have, and where we're going to be focused as an organization.
We've got a strong foundation built on a diversified business with over one third of our revenue coming from growing local and national television business lines.
nearly 60% of digital, rounded out by almost 10% from our leading movies business.
Our client base is also diverse, with almost half of our business coming from media companies, one third from agencies and advertisers, and 1% for both local TV and movie customers.
The diversity of our business across the client set is a big advantage as we position the company to tackle the challenges our industry is facing.
Finally, roughly three quarters of our revenue is generated from our syndicated offerings.
which provides a sustainable, recurring revenue stream.
We're anchored by a broad set of strengths.
We operate within several large end markets with room to grow in each. We've got a proven ability to create scalable syndicated products. We've got best in class data assets and methodology. We measure one in three households nationally in the linear TV space, in addition to our massive digital census network.
Finally, as I just highlighted, we've got a strong, longstanding relationship.
with industry leading clients and well established, trusted brand.
Thank you.
Perhaps our biggest strength.
is that we have one of the most complete data sets in the industry.
We ingest more than 50 billion events per day across digital, linear TV, on-demand, connected TV, and theatrical. All coupled with advanced audience insights.
In linear TV, we measure more than one in three households on more than 75 million screens via our MVPD partnerships, supplemented by 13 million smart TV screens.
Additionally, our digital census-based data collection measures content in a privacy-forward manner across more than 200 million mobile devices, 150 million desktop screens, and more than 50 million connected TVs via a combination of tagged content and direct integration with the polishers.
Our census level TV and digital data is augmented by an opt-in panel with more than 600,000 global active participants, adding additional context and detail to the audience as we measure.
It's that combination of TV advertising digital data that positions us incredibly well as we think about solving cross-platform measurement.
In summary here, across the roughly 120 million video households in the U.S.,
We've built a dataset and methodologies that capture viewing from multiple scale sources.
And that is a massive differentiator from others in the measurement space.
Given everything I've just laid out, it's reasonable to ask why we're not growing faster.
why we haven't made more progress. And over the last couple of weeks, we've spent time listening to our clients, our employees.
feedback from shareholders.
And I've definitely heard plenty of positive feedback.
But I've also heard what isn't working and what it is they need us to be focused on. I wanted to share some of that feedback with you and let you know how we plan to address it.
First, we're not fast enough. We're not fast enough, if it's fast enough to innovate, if it's not fast enough to deliver the data that our clients need in order to run their businesses effectively.
So we're going to focus intently on speed in the ways that matter most.
to our clients. And one of the first tangible results of this initiative
will be our move to deliver preliminary data in Comscore TV within 48 hours, which we plan to have in market by early Q4 this year.
Well, this is a significant step forward. We're not going to stop there. We'll continue to find ways to move even faster on behalf of our clients.
Second, I've also heard that we have complex solutions, complex deliveries, and we can be hard to work with sometimes.
One of the ways we're going to address this...
is by having an increased focus on execution, on what we do and don't do, making sure that we're executing in a way that doesn't just produce the right data.
but also produces it in a way that's easier for our clients to work with.
We're going to simplify our offerings.
We've got some amazing products, but we need to make sure they're more accessible. We're going to work to deliver more scalable, interoperable solutions because we know that the value Comscore can deliver to our clients.
goes way up as the complexity of working with us goes down.
Finally, it's no secret that our costs have been high.
It's not cheap to have the most complete data access of measurement.
But I'm focused on building a comp score that's more profitable.
I'm committed to pursuing scalable growth that expands our margins and increases our free cash flow, providing value to shareholders and enabling the development of the path-breaking solutions that our clients tell us they want and expect from us.
In terms of our opportunity,
One of the things that I've heard consistently is that we've got a compelling offering in local measures and it's a place we should be winning.
There are a lot of reasons for that. One is that Comforter is the only measurement provider that has a common methodology for both local and national measurement. Simply put, our national measurement numbers are the sum of all of our local markets, unifying two of the larger silos of programming and ad inventory, which nobody else in the market has done.
This lets the national advertisers see how their ad was delivered down into the local markets, from the biggest markets to the smallest ones.
And the single methodology also gives us a massive advantage in delivering the complex cross-platform measurement solutions that our industry is seeking.
You couple that capability with the fact that the opportunity for us in local is a significant one.
There's somewhere around $24 billion in local advertising spend right now. And the market's been comfortable with roughly 2% to 3% of that ad spend going towards measurement.
Our estimates are that the leading player in local measurement is somewhere between $400 and $500 million in local measurement revenue today.
comScore has about 10% of that in there.
The gap between our 10% and that $400 to $500 million is significant and a near term opportunity for us and a place we expect to win.
First off, it starts with speed, and we've got to get this right. As I mentioned a minute ago, we're addressing speed of data delivery in early T4 when we plan to release 48-hour preliminary data in the market.
Second, we must drive further penetration and demand on the buy side with our agency and advertise appliance.
We've made a lot of really great progress here with recent announcements from Verizon Media and others about testing ComScore as a new currency for local advertising.
Third, we're working on expanding our partnership with the CELSA, adding a greater share of station groups as consort clients. The main wins in this area include our relationship with Scripps as well as great television.
Finally, our path to growth and local measurement is going to require us to focus on embedding ourselves more deeply in our clients' existing workflows, adding things like advanced audiences for local advertising, which requires a thoughtful approach to make sure that buying on those advanced audiences is as easy as possible.
Moving on, obviously the biggest battleground in the space today is around solving cross-platform measurements. No one has done it yet.
But it's here where I believe we are uniquely positioned to get it done.
When we talk about cross-platform, we're talking about following and measuring content and ads wherever they're distributed, linear, both local and national, ad supported on demand, and subscription on demand.
When it comes to measuring content across these means of distribution, ComScore has one of the most complete data sets. Again, measuring 75 plus million screens.
13 million smart TVs, more than 600,000 panelists.
Excuse me.
Coupled with tagged content and direct publisher integration across hundreds of millions of mobile devices, desktops,
It's T.V.
More importantly, we know that each type of data has unique attributes, positives and negatives.
that must be accounted for when combining these data sets to produce accurate, reliable, and stable measurement.
Comscore has the years of expertise and the patents to prove that we know how to use this data effectively. And the good news here is that our clients know we're uniquely positioned to deliver on cost platform because of these data assets.
If anything, I've heard some frustration from clients that we haven't delivered fully on their demands for cross-platform measurement, given the access we have.
We have a data advantage, the market's been waiting for us to deliver, and we're going to make sure we do just that.
As an example of recent progress, we're revamping our Comscore campaign ratings for our CCR product to start delivering on cross-platform ad measurement today.
CCRs are cross platform ad measurement products that provide the duplicated person level reach and frequency for ads wherever they're viewed, linear, CTV, desktop and mobile, including walled gardens.
On that note, our CCR partnership with YouTube continues to progress.
In June , Comscore and Google released insights from a six month, 20 plus campaign study run exclusively on CCR to highlight findings of the overlaps of linear and CTV for the largest ad supported CTV platform.
The results and highlights covered by this slide cover campaigns across diverse brand verticals including travel, automotive, and CPG. We're encouraged by the results and what they mean for our clients and industry in moving towards reliable, independent, cross-platform editing.
Having a campaign measurement solution combined with the depth of our linear TV data at both Step Top Box and Connected TVs provides one of the most powerful solutions in the space.
This past quarter we made progress with more of the largest walled gardens to begin formal CCR integration and I anticipate sharing our progress here in the upcoming quarters as we complete our work.
Digital was a big part of our solution set. In the integrations we have it published with us across the ecosystem uniquely advantageous as we evolve as a measurement company to deal with the converges of audiences and media consumption across platforms. And media consumption across platforms.
As I just covered a minute ago, the data and integrations that underpin our digital product are also central to our ability to deliver the cross-platform measurements that our clients are asking for.
It's no surprise to this group that as a standalone offering, our digital product has languished.
It's one of the reasons that we purchased share.
We're actively taking steps to enhance our digital products. One of the first steps we're taking is combining our social platform packed with real-time insights from Meta, TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram.
enhance our digital products. One of the first steps we're taking is combining our social platform packed with real-time insights from meta, TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram with our Media Methods products.
This critical step makes our digital data easier to use and unlocks new insights.
Second, Comscore has led digital measurement through disruption in the past. We're intent on doing that again as we help the industry build a bridge to the third party cookie of the future whenever that becomes a reality.
Lastly, we're working hard to drive product synergy, create products that are simpler, and bring together the data sets that our clients tell us are most important.
Thank you.
Moving on, as many of you have heard me say before, it's critical that we drive greater profitability as we deliver on the opportunities I've been highlighting.
To do this, we're committed to transforming how we operate in order to increase our margins and bring added value to shareholders, employees, and customers.
We believe that by better aligning how we work to our strengths and what our clients demand of us, along with other steps to optimize our business, that we're well on our way to delivering on our 15% adjusted EBITDA margin goal in 2020.
As I wrap up and summarize, I'm focused on three big things.
First.
Culturally, we're going to be obsessed with our customers and what they need. We're going to be faster, leaner, we're going to be disciplined in our innovation, making sure that we're innovating in the areas that will yield the biggest impact for our clients.
Second, when it comes to execution, we'll be laser focused on investing our time, money, and resources into expanding as a local currency, delivering on cross platform, and maintaining our market leading position in movies. These are all things we're more than amply equipped to deliver on.
And third, while no company cuts their way to growth, we know we've got work to do to optimize how our capital gets put to work. Capital allocation is a full contact support and companies that get it right almost always come out on top.
We're taking measured steps to hone our focus or top line growth scales profitably. And we've set aggressive goals to improve or adjust the DBA cell margin so we can hit our goal of 15% in 2023.
With that, I'll turn it over to Mary Margaret.
Thanks, John , and let me add how excited I am to be here as CFO as we focus on becoming more financially disciplined. Thank you. Thank you, John . Thank you,
As John mentioned, we reported another quarter with solid results. Revenues of $91.4 million were up 4% versus the same quarter a year ago. Adjusted EVA-Dot of $6.5 million was up 147% versus a year ago.
When we look at revenue growth by solution group, cross-platform solutions grew 13% from $35.2 million in the second quarter last year.
to $39.8 million this year.
This growth was driven in large part by double digit growth in our local and national TV businesses.
We also saw continued growth in our movies business, which was up 12% from 7.5 million in the second quarter last year to 8.4 million this year as the business continued to rebound on the pandemic.
Revenues from digital ad solutions of $51.6 million declined 2% compared to $52.5 million a year ago. The decline was largely due to a pullback in digital ads then that impacted activation and other digital products.
Given the uncertainty in today's economy and the unknown impact inflationary pressures may have on outspends in the short term, we're updating our full year revenue guidance to reflect a growth rate of 5 to 7% over 2021.
We expect our growth rate to continue to be driven by double-digit growth in cross-platform solutions, with digital ad solutions remaining nearly flat compared to the prior year.
However, as John mentioned, we're putting the wheels in motion to become more fiscally disciplined.
which we believe will allow us to achieve an adjusted EBITDA margin in excess of 9% and improvement over the prior year.
With that, I'll turn it back to John .
much work to be done. I'm excited and energized about the opportunity that we've got ahead.
Thank you all for your support.
and for trusting us with your investments.
Operator, we can go ahead and open up the line for questions.
As a reminder to ask a question, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster.
Your first question comes from the line of Sarinder Singh from Jeffries. Your line is open.
Thank you. John Murray, congrats on the promotions. I'm going to start with a question about just balancing the need with investment for increasing profitability.
John , can you talk about that a little bit in the sense of where you guys have been in the past year or so and where you guys are heading? And what I mean by that is when you talk about things like investing for speed in terms of getting data and solutions faster to customers, decreasing the complexity of your solutions, it seems like you would want to increase...
investment spend, but yet it seems like you're looking forward to large margin improvements over the next coming year or so.
Yeah, surrender. Thanks for the, thanks for the question. I think the good news is much of the investment that has been needed to roll out a lot of our cross platform solutioning has already been made, right? The investment in the data assets is done. It's about stitching these things together in a way that solves the problem for the marketplace. So I think in large part, much of the investment on that front.
is behind us. I think what I will say is as an organization, we have the opportunity to be a little bit more disciplined and focused on what parts of the ecosystem we continue to serve. And I think what you heard in my comments, our priorities are going to be around cross-platform measurement, where you need to be positioned to solve that, winning in local, regional, and international are environmental impacts on our lifetimes. Oftentimes, these are tough challenges for people.
And then I think that there are some things that we can do around the organization to be more disciplined that will drive improved profitability. And that work is well underway.
Understood. And then in terms of just
When I look back over the past year or so, and I look more recently in terms of all of the partnerships announcements, the pilot programs.
How should we think about the top line growth on a go forward basis here? It just seems like there's been a lot of positive announcements, but we really haven't seen the needle move at this point. And so are we approaching an inflection point related to maybe investments that you've talked about, you know, kind of being there at this point?
How should we think about the top line?
We feel pretty good about, I think what you're seeing, if you kind of unpack the growth a little bit, I would look at cross platform as an area where we're growing double digits. We expect that to continue as our offerings continue to scale nicely there. Where we've kind of been short has been in our digital solution is a standalone product. That product is immensely important.
as we think about our cross-platform solution set. But in terms of the near term, the growth rate on that business is likely, as Mary-Margaret highlighted, to kind of be more flattish than anything. And we'll leverage the asset to really roll out our cross-platform solutioning, which again, is where we see the accelerated double-digit growth that we talked about in the narrative.
Got it. And then one final question here just related to the near-term picture.
Can you talk about how much of headwinds or maybe your sensitivity to the digital ad spend at this point and then obviously we're in an election year. So it sounds like there's. Anticipation of significant or record political ad spend this year and I assume that's where a lot of the back half growth is coming from.
Or a big chunk of it.
a big chunk of it. Yeah, I think I think that the.
Just to take the last part of that, that's certainly a tailwind in the second half of the year in terms of the accelerated ad spend. I think from a digital standpoint, what you saw in the guide overall is some
I will, yeah. I would say.
Some thinking around the uncertainty in the ad market for the second half of the year. You know, if you looked at earnings that have been out there, it's kind of been all over the map. In terms of what that looks like, it's pretty clear to me that we're in a bit of a pullback. And so I think what you see in the guide.
at least on our digital ad business, is some pullback in our expectations around the growth rate on that side of the business.
Thank you. That's it for me.
Once again, you may press star 11 to ask a question.
Your next question is from the line of Jason Crayer from Craig Hallam. Your line is open.
Hi, everybody. Cal Vardizal here for Jason. I was just curious if you had any feedback on recent upfront and kind of how you feel about your ability to increase the use of Comscore as an alternative currency moving forward. Since you are in the immediate market there is no idea when market Majority Communists
I'm going to let Carol talk about what we're seeing in terms of the up-front.
I think that the feedback that we've heard from our core media clients has been that the
that the upfront went.
the way of the traditional meaning that they didn't move to new currencies as fast as the marketplace would like.
However, there was progress and movement kind of across the board from small network to large network and almost activity across all of the agency holding companies.
Perfect, thank you. And then, John , just real quick, any specific areas of strategic focus from your perspective? And how should we think about your regime being a little different from Bill's? Jean, are you okay?
I think what you heard in the narrative is we're going to be focused on our opportunity in winning currency and local. That's a very clear path to near-term opportunity for us. Cross-platform, as I said again in the narrative, there's no company in my mind that's more uniquely positioned to solve that problem for the marketplace and Comscore.
And so those are the two areas from a growth standpoint that we're focused on. And then as I mentioned in my comments, the financial profile of the company will be improved as a result of obviously that growth, coupled with a more disciplined approach on the bottom line.
Perfect. Thank you.
Thank you.
There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back to our presenters for closing remarks.
Thank you very much everybody.
This concludes our conference. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
begin shortly. To raise your hand during Q&A you can dial star 1 1.
I have.
you
The.
Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the ComScore 2nd quarter 2020 to the Financial Results Call. At this time, all participants are in the listen only mode. After the speaker's 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. You will then hear an automated message advising that your hand is raised.
Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand a conference over to your first speaker for today. Mr. John Binker, please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Before we begin our prepared remarks, I'd like to remind all of you that the following discussion contains forward-looking data. These forward-looking statements include comments that are planned, expectations, prospects, and I'll be on our view over today all this 9 2022. And I'll be on our view over today all this 9 2022.
Our actual results in future theories make different clearly from those currently expected. There's a number of risks and uncertainty. These risks and uncertainty, those outlined in our 10K, 10Q, and other findings with the FTC, which we'll find on our website, or at www.fect.gov. We just claim any shooting or observations what data for the constraints to reflect new information after today's call. We'll be discussing non-gap measure strings call, for which we have provided reference to the aviation in today's press release, and on our website.
Please note that we will be referring to slides on the school, which are also available on our website, www.comsport.com under Investurulations and the Bans & Crackle presentations. And then the Bans & Crackle presentations. www.comsport.com
I'm now turning the call over to Constable's chief executive officer, John Carpenter. John .
Thanks, John , and thank you all for joining us this evening.
Well, what an honor stepping in the role of CEO and I couldn't be more excited about the prospects I had for this company.
I want to thank the cost for a board for this opportunity and their cost to be imitants and employees. It is mistakat to do so per time. At this day we changed to nine days a week on as we signed out the draft hire and employees for the law and will take away in a thousand weeks. you
I'm event to see a phone for the last seven months. I certainly understand both the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for the company.
which is no doubt help me get a head star of the work we need to do in order to unlock the value that I believe this company has the ability to deliver them. I want to take a moment to thank Gollibix for his tireless work over the past three years.
and for building a complete measurement product that gives us a very strong foundation for future growth. It gives us a very strong foundation for future growth.
I'm joined today by Mary Margaret Curry, who was recently named Chief Financial Officer, as well as Carol Henan, Tony Yuki, and from a product standpoint David Algonotti and Greg Gayle are here with me to receive him.
Finally, I'd like to highlight the non-obanergy of the New Chairman of the Board. Non-obrins extensive operating experience of big data and technology, having served as CEO of McGraw Hill. The vast experience leading large product and technology organizations. Technology organizations.
will be immensely helpful to me personally as well as the entire management team that we have to tune on extra. and we have to tune on extra.
There's no doubt that this is a critical time for the industry.
We'll come into focus on delivering innovative products and solutions that our customers want while driving the growth and profitability of our shareholders expect. We'll come into focus on delivering innovative products and solutions
This is the second quarter reporting on our new revenue solution groups. And as a reminder, our focus is on measuring content and as enabling the planning and activation of media in a privacy-forward way across all screens. You
This quarter we reported revenue growth of 4% to $91.4 million and a near 150% increase in adjusted the EBITDA out of $6.5 million. $1.5 million.
We're also tightening our guidance, calling for five to seven percent revenue growth, coupled with an increase in our four-year of just a EBITDA margin, so we now see exceeding nine percent on the year.
I was picking time to provide everyone with a sense for how I think about the business, the opportunities we have, and where we're going to be focused as an organization.
You've got a strong foundation built on a diversified business with over one third of our revenue coming from growing local and national television business.
You know, the 60% of digital rounded out by almost 10% from our leading movies, persons.
My face is also diverse, with almost half of our business coming from media companies, and one third from agencies and advertisers, and nearly 10% for both local TV and moving customers. Chase Rap ?? más más daño de las urnas porque, es solo un jedoch hecho hace lange Flation.
The diversity of our business across the client set is a big advantage of the position of company to tackle the challenges our industry is facing. I am talking the fishing club along the channels to understand the changes in principal responsibilities all the closest to common headaches for facilitators. I am also talking about the discipline of discussion within which we talk useful for the engagement in job itself.offs are a long time before Smart embedded that gets drawn to California as seeding you
Finally, roughly three-quarters of our revenue is generated from our syndicated offerings.
Finally, roughly three quarters of our revenues generated from our syndicated offerings, which provides a sustainable, recurring, revenue stream.
We're anchored by a broad set of strengths.
We operate within several large end markets with room to grow in each that go through an ability to create scalable syndicated products. We've got best in class data assets and methodology. We measure one in three households nationally in the linear TV space in addition to our massive digital census network. In addition to our massive digital census network.
Finally, if I just highlight it, we've got strong, long standing relationship.
with industry leading clients and well established, and we're a well established trust of grant. We're a well established trust of grant.
Thank you.
Perhaps our biggest strength.
If everyone have one of the most complete data sets in the industry.
You're just more than 50 billion events per day across digital, linear TV, on-demand, connected TV, and theatrical. All coupled with advanced audience insights.
In linear PV, we measure more than one in three households on more than 75 million screens via our MBPD partnerships supplemented by 13 million smart TV screens.
Additionally, our digital census-based data collection measures content in a privacy-forward manner across more than 200 million mobile devices, 150 million desktop screens, and more than 50 million connected TVs, via a combination of packed content and direct integration with publishers.
Our census level TV and digital data is augmented by an often panel with more than 600,000 global active participants adding additional contact and details to the audience that we measure. The census level is augmented by an often panel with more than 600,000 global active participants and the people of the audience that we measure.
It's that combination of TV, advertising, digital data that positions us incredibly well as we think about solving cross-platform data.
In summary here, across the roughly 120 million house video households in the U.S.
We've built a data set in methodologies that catch reviewing from multiple scale sources. with the trial test.
And that is a massive differentiator from others in the measurement space.
Keep it everything that just laid out is reasonable to ask why we're not growing faster.
Why we got to make more progress. In over the last couple of weeks, the time was in court clients or employees. The time was in court clients or employees.
Feedback from shared holders.
And I definitely heard 20 positive feedback.
But I've also heard what is important and what it is they need us to be focused on. I wanted to share some of that feedback with you and let you know how we plan to address
First, we're not fast enough. We're not fast enough. We have been fast enough to innovate, and nothing fast enough to deliver the data that our clients need in order to own their business and effectively.
So we're gonna focus intently on speed in the way that matter most.
to our clients. And one of the first tangible results of this initiative. And one of the first tangible results of this initiative.
We'll be our move to deliver preliminary data in ComSport TV within 48 hours. We plan to have a market by early Q4 this year. We plan to have a market by early Q4 this year.
While this is a significant step forward, we're gonna start there, we'll continue to find ways to move even faster on the half of our points. Let's start there.
Second, I'm also heard that we have complex solutions, complex deliveries and we can be hard to work with sometimes.
One of the mails we're going to address is
is by having an increased focus on execution, on what we do and don't do, making sure that we're executing in a way that doesn't just produce the right data.
but also produces it in a way that's easier for our clients to work with.
this in a way that's easier for our clients to work with. We're going to simplify our offerings.
We've got some amazing products, but we need to make sure they're more accessible. We're gonna work to deliver more scalable, interoperable solutions, because we know that the value, off-scorts and deliver to our clients.
goes way up as the complexity of working with us goes down.
Finally, it's no secret that our costs have been high.
It's not cheap to have the most completed assets of measurement.
But I focus on building a cost floor that's more profitable.
Commitants to pursuing scalable growth that expands our margins and increases our free cash flow, providing valuable shareholders and enabling the development of the path-breaking solutions that our clients tell us they want and expect from us.
In terms of our opportunity.
One of the things that I've heard consistently is that we've got a compelling offering in local matter. And if it's a place we should be one.
There are a lot of reasons for that. One is that comp orders the only measurement provider that has a common methodology for both local and national measurement. Simply put, our national measurement numbers are the sum of all of our local markets. You're buying two of the larger silos of programming and adding the Tories, but nobody else in the market has done. And adding the Tories, but nobody else in the market has done.
This was the national advertiser see how their ad was delivered down into the local markets from the biggest markets to the smallest ones.
In the single methodology also gives us a massive advantage in delivering the complex cross platform measurement solutions to our industry's safety.
A couple of that capability was the fact that the opportunity for us in MoCo is a significant one.
There's somewhere around $24 billion in local advertising spend right now. In the markets being comfortable with roughly two to three percent of that I spend going towards measuring.
Our estimates are that the leading player and local measurement is somewhere between $400 to $500 million dollars in local measurement revenue today.
Tom score has about 10% of them now.
The gap between our 10% and that $400,500,000,000 is significant and a near term opportunity for us and a place we expect to win.
First off, it starts with speed, and we've got to get this right. As I mentioned a minute ago, we're addressing speed of data delivery in early two four when we plan to release 48 hour preliminary data in the morning.
Second, we must write federal penetration to demand on the buy side with our agency and have a kind of clients.
We've made a lot of really great progress here. We've reached an announcements from Verizon Media and others about testing cons for as new currency and we will move on to the next slide.
Third, we're working on expanding our partnership with the South Island, adding a greater share of station groups as conscript ones. Recent wins in this area include our relationship with Stryps, as well as great, great television.
Finally, our passive growth and local measurement is gonna require us to focus on embedding ourselves more deeply in our clients' existing workflows. Adding things like advanced audiences for local advertising, which requires a thoughtful approach to make sure that buying on those advanced audiences is a living possible.
Moving on, obviously the biggest battle round in the space today is around solving cross-platform measurement.
Moving on, obviously the biggest battleground in the space today is when I'm solving cross-platform measurements. I don't want to start here.
But it's here where I believe we are uniquely positioned to get it done.
When we talk about cross-platform, we're talking about following and measuring content and ads wherever they're distributed, linear, local and national, ad supported on demand and subscription on demand.
When it comes to measuring content across these needs of distribution, Cons score has one of the most complete data sets. It's measuring 75 plus million screens.
30 million smart TV, more than 600,000 panelists.
Shooting.
Couple of attacks, content, and direct publishing integrations across hundreds of millions of mobile devices, test apps.
It's TV.
More importantly, you know that each type of data has unique attributes, positive and negative.
That must be a counter-formed when combining these data sets to produce accurate, reliable, and stable measurements.
CAHM score has been years of expertise and the patents to prove that we know how to use this data effectively. And the good news here is that our clients know where unique in condition and has been able to run a cause that we've covered.
If anything, I've heard some frustrations from clients that we have delivered fully under demands for cost platform measurement, given the access we have.
We have a data advantage, the market's been waiting for us to deliver, and we're going to make sure we do just that.
As an example of recent progress, we're revamping our constable campaign ratings or CCR product to start delivering on cross-platform ad measurement today.
CCRs are cross-platform ad-mediment products that provide de-duplicated, person-level reach and frequency for ads wherever they're viewed across linear CCB, desktop and mobile, including wall gardens. On that note, our CCR partnership with YouTube continues to progress.
June , Com4 and Google released insights from the six month, 20 plus campaign study went exclusively on CCR to highlight findings of the overlaps of linear and CTV for the largest ad support in CTV platform. The results and highlights covered by this slide covered campaigns across diverse brand verticals, including travel, automotive and CPG, were encouraged by the results and what they mean for our client and industry in moving towards reliable.
independent cross-platform editing. Having a campaign measurement solution combined with the depth of our linear PV data, both step-top box and connected TVs provide one of the most powerful solutions in the space.
This past quarter we made progress with more of the largest wall gardens to begin formal CCR integration and I anticipate sharing our progress here in the upcoming quarters as we complete our work. Thank you.
Digital was a big part of our solution set. In the integrations we have it published with the across the ecosystem uniquely advantageous as we evolve as a measurement company to deal with the converges of audiences and media consumption across platforms. And media consumption across platforms.
As I just covered a minute ago, the data and integrations that underpin our digital product are also central to our ability to deliver the cross-platform measurement that our clients are asking to.
So, surprise for this group that is a standalone offering, our digital product has language.
It's one of the reasons that we purchased Shira.
We're actively taking steps to enhance our digital products. One of the first steps we're taking is combining our social platform packed with real-time insights from Meta, a six-talk YouTube and Instagram.
actively taking steps to enhance our digital products. One of the first steps we're taking is combining our social platform packed with real-time insights from Metta, a six-talk YouTube and Instagram with our media metrics products. The first step is to make a six-talk YouTube and Instagram and create a six-talk YouTube channel.
This critical step makes our digital data easier to use and unmark new insights.
Second, Comfort has led digital measurement through destruction in the past. And we're intent on doing that again. And we help the industry build a bridge to the third party cooking the future, whenever that becomes reality.
Lastly, we're working hard to drive product synergy, creating products that are simpler, and bring together the data sets that are clients, and tell us our most important.
Moving on, as many of you have heard me say before, it's critical that we drive greater profitability as we deliver on an opportunity to dive in high light.
To do this, we're committed to transforming how we operate in order to increase our margins to bring added value to shareholders, employees, and customers.
We believe that by better aligning how we work to our strengths and what our clients and managers, along with other steps to optimize our business, that will well on our way to delivering on our 15% and just to be the top margin goal in 20-20.
They wrap up into summarized and 40 done, three big things.
They wrap up and summarize and focus on three big things. First.
Culturally, we're going to be obsessed with our customers and what they need. We're going to be faster, leaner. We're going to be disciplined in our innovation, making sure that we're innovating in the areas that will yield the biggest impact for our clients. We're going to be making sure that we're used attack for a punch.
Second, when it comes to execution, will be laser focused on investing or ton, money, and resources into expanding as a local currency, delivering on cross-platform, and maintaining a market-leading position in movies. These are all things worth more than amply equipped to deliver them. And third, when no company cuts their way through, we know we've got work to do to optimize how our capital gets put to work. Capital allocations are full contact support companies that get a right almost always come out and talk.
We're taking measures to assess the horror focus or the top line growth scales properly. And we've set aggressive goals to improve or just the divotal margin, so we can hit our goal of 15% in 2023. So we can hit our goal of 15% in 2023.
With that, I'll turn it over to Mary Margaret.
Thanks, John , and let me add how excited I am to be here at CSO as we took some of the coming more financially good to play.
As John mentioned, we reported another quarter with solid results. Revenue of 91.4 million were up 4% versus the same quarter a year ago. Adjusted EBADOP of 6.5 million was of 147% versus the year ago.
When we look at revenue growth by solution growth, cross-platform solutions grew 13% from 35.2 million in a second for last year. starts in the second floor last year.
to 39.8 million this year. This growth was driven in large part by double digit growth in our local and national community.
We also saw continued growth in our movie business, which was about 12% from seven and a half million in the second quarter last year, to 8.4 million this year, as a business continues to rebound following the pandemic.
Revenue from digital absolutions of 51.6 million to climb 2% compared to 52 and a half million a year ago. The decline was largely due to a pullback in digital absin that impacted activation and other digital products. Given the uncertainty in today's economy and the unknown impact inflationary pressures may have on absin in the short term, we're updating our full year revenue guidance to reflect a growth rate of 5% to 70% over 2021.
We expect our very great to continue to be driven by double-digit growth in cross-platform solutions with digital solutions remaining nearly flat compared to the prior year.
However, as John mentioned, we're putting the wheels and motions the cum boards are going to be disciplined.
which we believe will allow us to achieve an adjusted EBITDA margin in excess of 9% and improve them over the prior year.
But that, I'll turn it back to John . Well, there's so much work to be done, excited and energized about the opportunity that we've got ahead.
Thank you all for your support.
and for trusting us with your investment.
trusting us with your investment. Operator, we can go ahead and open up the line for questions.
As a reminder to ask a question, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. Please stand by, we'll recompile the Q&A roster. Thank you. Thank you.
Your first question comes from the line of Surrender Thin from Jeffreys. Your line is open. Your line is open.
Thank you. John Murray congrats on the promotions. I'm going to start with a question about just balancing the need with investment for increasing profitability.
John , can you talk about that a little bit in the sense of where you guys have been in the past year or so and where you guys are heading? And what I mean by that is when you talk about things like investing for speed in terms of getting data and solutions faster to customers, decreasing the complexity of your solutions, the things that you want to increase.
investment spend. But yet it seems like you're looking forward to large improvements with the next coming year or so.
Yeah, sir, thanks for the, thanks for the question. I think the good news is much of the investment that has been needed to roll out a lot of our cross platform solution is already been made, right? The investment in the data assets is done. It's about stitching these things together in a way that solves the problem for the marketplace. So I think in large part, much of the investment on that front is behind us. I think what I will say is as an organization.
We have the opportunity to be a little bit more disciplined and focused on what parts of the ecosystem we continue to serve. And I think what you heard in my comments, our priorities are gonna be around cross-platform measurements where uniquely physicians solve that, winning in local. And then I think that there are some things that we can do around the organization to be more disciplined that'll drive improved, improved profitability. And that work is well on the mind.
Understood. And then in terms of just, when I look back over the past year or so, and I look more recently in terms of all the partnership announcements, the pilot programs. The partnership announcements, the pilot programs.
How should we think about the top line growth on an on-and-go forward basis here? It just seems like there's been a lot of positive announcements, but we really haven't seen the needle move at this point. And so are we approaching an inflection point related to maybe the investments that you've talked about, and then kind of being there at this point? And I'll kind of be there at this point.
How should we think about the top line? We feel pretty good about, I think what you're seeing and if you kind of unpack the growth a little bit surrender, I would look at cross-platform as an area where we're growing double digits. We expect that to continue as our offerings continue to scale nicely there. Where we've kind of been short has been in our digital solution is a standable product. That product is a-
couple of injured growth that we talked about in the narrative.
Got it. And then one final question here. Just related to the near term picture.
You talk about how much of headwinds, or maybe your sensitivity to the digital ad spend at this point, and then obviously we're in an election year. So it sounds like there's anticipation of, you know, significant or record political ad spend this year. And I assume that's where a lot of the back half growth is going to be coming from.
or a big chunk of it. So
Yeah, I think the
just to take the last part of that. That's certainly a tail end in the second half of the year in terms of the accelerated outspend. You know, I think from a digital standpoint, what you saw in the guide overall is, you know, from some.
You know, I would say, I would say, some thinking around the uncertainty in the ad market for the second half of the year, you know, if you've looked at earnings that have been out there, it's kind of been all over the map in terms of what that's looked like. It's pretty clear to me that we're in a bit of a pullback. And so I think what you're seeing the guide.
Least on our digital app business is some pull back in our expectations around the growth rate on that side of business.
Thank you, that's it for me.
Once again, the me press star one, one to ask the questions.
Here next question is from the line of Jason Kraer from Craig Hallum. Your line is open.
Hi everybody, CalBard is all on here for Jason. Just curious if you had any feedback on recent upfront and kind of how you feel about your ability to increase the use of comm scores, alternative currency moving forward.
I'm gonna let Carol talk about what we're seeing in terms of the out one.
I see that the feedback that we've heard from our core media clients has been the
that the upfront went the way of the traditional meaning that they didn't move to new currencies as fast as the marketplace would like.
However, there was progress in movement kind of across the board from small network to large network and almost activity across all the developing countries.
Perfect, thank you. And then John , just real quick, any specific areas of strategic focus from your perspective and how should we think about your regime being a little different from bills? I think what you heard in the narrative is we're gonna be focused on our opportunity in winning, you know, currency and local. That's a very clear path to...
to your term opportunity for us cross platform as I said again in the narrative. You know, there's no company in my mind that's more uniquely positioned to solve that problem for the marketplace and cons floor. And so, you know, those are the two areas from a growth standpoint that we're focused on. And then as I mentioned in my comments, you know, the financial profile of a company will be improved as a result of obviously that growth.
coupled with, you know, a more disciplined approach on the bottom line.
Perfect. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.
There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn a conference back to our presenters for closing remarks. Thank you very much everybody.
This concludes our conference. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.