Direct Digital Holdings, Inc.

Welcome to the Direct Digital Holdings first quarter 2022 earnings call. At this time all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a question and answer session. I will now turn the call over to your host, Brett Malott, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations, ICR. Mr. Malott, you may begin.

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Direct Digital Holdings first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. My name is Brett Malott, and I'm representing Direct Digital Holdings Investor Relations from ICR. On today's call are Mark Walker, Chief Executive Officer, and Susan Edgard, Chief Financial Officer. The information discussed today is qualified in its entirety by the Form 8K accompanying earnings release that's been filed today by Direct Digital Holdings, which may be accessed on the SEC's website and DRCT's website. Today's call is also being webcast in a replay we posted to DRCT's Investor Relations website. Immediately following the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Please note that statements made during this call, including financial projections or other statements that are not historical in nature, may constitute forward-looking statements. Such statements are made on the basis of DRCT's views and assumptions regarding future events and business performance at the time they're made. We do not undertake any obligation to update these statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks which can cause DRCT's actual results to differ from its historical results and forecasts, including those risks set forth in DRCT's filing BSE statement. and you should refer to and carefully consider those for more information. This cautionary statement applies to all forward-looking statements made at your premise call. Do not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. During this call, VRCT referring to non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP measures are not prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. Reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures to the most recently comparable GAAP measures is available in the earnings release VRCT filed for its form at 8K today. I will now hand over to the conference to Mark Walker, Chief Executive Officer.

Mark. Thanks, Brett, and good afternoon, everyone. This is our second earnings call as a public company, and I'm incredibly proud to report record financial performance for the first quarter. Before I go into details, I want to provide a brief overview for those of you joining us for the first time. Direct Digital Holdings is a company that leverages technology to assist clients in driving ROI through the buying and selling of media. Our technology platform meets the demands of the underserved middle market and provides access to general multicultural market publishers through our proprietary sell-side platform, Colossus SSP. Our company's business was founded in 2018 through the initial acquisition of Huddle Masses and Colossus SSP, which was the genesis of our end-to-end programmatic platform. Colossus is our sell-side platform technology that enables publishers to sell media to buyers, while Huddle Masses, along with Orange 142, is our buy-side platform which enables middle market businesses across the United States to purchase media that drive ROI. In 2020, we acquired Orange 142 to further develop and grow our buy-side platform and to expand our industry offerings into education, travel and tourism, financial services, and other vertical. I will begin the call by providing a brief overview of our business strategy and main highlights for the quarter. Finally, I will turn it over to Susan Eckert, our CFO, who will share detailed financial results and will reiterate guidance for the full year of 2022. We will be happy to answer your questions at that time. In the first quarter, we continue to capitalize on the significant growth opportunities we're seeing in the market, driven primarily by industry inefficiencies and under-optimized customer opportunities. As digital media has grown and emerging marketing channels continue to gain adoption, including along multicultural lines, media targeting has become more granular. A growing and increasing segment of those audiences is the multicultural audience who has been traditionally underserved in the industry. Both advertisers and publishers face the same challenge, notably seeking new avenues and opportunities to connect with multicultural and general market audiences in the highly engaged media environments while publishers are producing unique content to attract loyal consumers. The advantage will go to those innovative companies able to directly connect both sides to those audiences and leverage the insights flowing from those connections. We believe being able to go into a programmatic platform and target general market and multicultural audiences at scale across all digital inventory is a major competitive advantage for direct digital holdings. We're happy to report that the success of this strategy is apparent in our first quarter 2022 results. For the first quarter, we generated 11.4 million of revenue, an increase of 5.7 million or 100% higher than the same period in 2021. This was primarily driven by our sell-side advertising segment and the continued increase in buyers, publishers, and impression inventory. We saw steady accelerated growth during the first quarter. Our SSP platform processed an average of over 90 billion monthly impressions, which is an increase of 93% over the same period last year, and served approximately 69,000 buyers, which is an increase of 87% over last year's performance. Our buy-side customer count grew by over 41% year-over-year, increasing the number of customers we serve from roughly 91 to 128 for the quarter. Our recent growth in the supply side platform has been driven by a variety of factors, including an increase in buyers and impressions, which has fueled our unprecedented growth. For the first quarter, we processed approximately 3 billion bid requests and increased our overall media properties to over 13,000 for the quarter. For the first quarter, we delivered an adjusted EBITDA of 1.1 million, up 113% year over year. I'll now hand things over to Susan Eckert, our CFO, who's going to walk you through some of our strategic highlights for the quarter.