Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the comScore Second Quarter 2022 Financial Results Call. [Operator Instructions] 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 Tinker. 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 statements. These forward-looking statements include comments about our plans, expectations and prospects and are base on our view as of today, August 9, 2022. Our actual results in 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 with the SEC, which you can find on our website or at www.sec.gov. We disclaim any duty or obligation to update our forward-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 reconciliations 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.comscore.com, under Investor Relations, and Events and Presentations. I'll now turn the call over to comScore's Chief Executive Officer, Jon Carpenter. Jon?

Thanks, John, and thank you all for joining us this evening. While 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 comScore Board for this opportunity and their confidence in me and to our clients and employees for their warm welcome over the last couple of weeks. Having been the CFO for the last several months, I certainly understand both the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for the company, which is no doubt help 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 Livek for his tireless work over the past 3 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 Curry, who was recently named Chief Financial Officer; as well as Carol Hinnant; Tania Yuki; and from a product standpoint, David Algranati 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…

Thanks, Jon. And let me add how excited I am to be here as CFO as we focus on becoming more financially disciplined. As Jon mentioned, we reported another quarter with solid results. Revenues of $91.4 million were up 4% versus the same quarter a year ago. Adjusted EBITDA of $6.5 million was up 147% versus a year ago. When we look at revenue growth by solution growth, 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 following 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 ad spend that impacted activation and other digital products. Given the uncertainty in today's economy and the unknown impact inflationary pressures may have on ad spend 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 Jon 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%, an improvement over the prior year. With that, I'll turn it back to Jon.

Well there's so much work to be done, I'm excited and energized about the opportunity that we've got ahead. I want to thank you all for your support and for trusting us with your investment. Operator, we can go ahead and open up the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Surinder Thind from Jefferies.

Jon, Mary, congrats on the promotions. I'm going to start with a question about just balancing the need with investment for increasing profitability. Jon, 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 to -- 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 going to -- you're looking forward to large margin improvements over the next coming year or so.

Yes. Surinder, 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 asset is done. It's about stitching these things together in a way to solve 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. We're uniquely positioned to 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 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 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 and if you kind of unpack the growth a little bit, Surinder, I would look at cross platform as an area where we're growing double digit. 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 as a stand-alone 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, where -- 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?

Yes, I think that -- 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 would say, some thinking around the uncertainty in the ad market for the second half of the year. 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.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question is from the line of Jason Kreyer from Craig-Hallum.

[indiscernible] 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 alternative currency moving forward?

I'm going to let Carol talk about what we're seeing in terms of the upfront.

I think that the feedback that we've heard from our core media clients has been 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 networks to large networks and almost activity across all of the agency holding companies.

Perfect. And then, Jon, 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 sales?

Yes, 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 than comScore. And so those are the 2 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 more disciplined approach on the bottom line.

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.