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Operator
Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the IAS Second Quarter 2021 Financial Results Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. (Operator Instructions)
I would now like to hand the conference over to your host, Jonathan Schaffer. Please go ahead.
Jonathan Schaffer - MD
Thank you. Good afternoon, and welcome to the IAS 2021 Second Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. I am joined on today's call by Lisa Utzschneider, CEO; and Joe Pergola, CFO.
Before we begin, please note that today's call contains forward-looking statements. We refer you to the company's IPO prospectus filed on July 1 and any subsequent reports filed with the SEC for more detail about important risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations.
On today's call, we will also refer to non-GAAP measures. A reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is contained in today's earnings release available on the company's IR site, investors.integralads.com.
So with these formalities out of the way, I'd now like to turn the call over to Lisa Utzschneider. Lisa, you may begin.
Lisa Utzschneider - CEO & Director
Thank you, Jonathan, and thank you to everyone for joining us. I'm delighted to speak with you today on IAS' first earnings call as a public company.
I'll start my comments with a few highlights of our Q2 financial performance. I'll then provide a brief overview of IAS and how we believe we are uniquely positioned as the global benchmark for trust and transparency in digital media quality. I'll talk about our 4 growth drivers and our Q2 progress in each of these areas, including a discussion of our acquisition of Publica, a leading connected TV, or CTV, advertising platform. Finally, Joe will review our financials and outlook in detail before opening it up for questions.
IAS delivered an outstanding second quarter. We generated revenue growth of 55% year-over-year to $75.1 million compared to last year's COVID-impacted quarter. Our revenue was fueled by the continued strength of our advertiser direct channel and acceleration of our programmatic business, highlighted by the strong contribution from our contextual targeting offering. We also achieved strong profitability with gross margins of 83% and adjusted EBITDA of $25.7 million at a 34% margin.
Our second quarter results reflect IAS' continued dedication to our customers and commitment to making every impression count. The world's leading advertisers, publishers and platforms trust us to create accountability within the increasingly complex digital advertising ecosystem. Our global customer base is loyal and diverse, composed of over 2,000 marketers and publishers with an average tenure of over 6.7 years among our top 100 marketers.
IAS offers cookie-free solutions that address ad fraud, viewability, brand safety and suitability. We are deeply embedded in the advertising ecosystem providing solutions for both the buy side and sell side across open web, social platforms and in every major demand-side platform, or DSP. Our solutions are always on, measuring all impressions on behalf of our advertisers.
Prior to IAS, I spent 20 years in leadership roles at global tech platforms like Microsoft and Amazon and was always field-based in order to be close to customers. When I joined IAS in January 2019, my first priority was to listen to the customer and learn how IAS could deliver better outcomes for marketers. I met with dozens of marketing and publisher customers. This customer-first obsession is reflected in how we go to market with new products to meet our customers' needs. Our product pipeline is based on offerings that are global, scalable and repeatable in multiple markets. Our deep partner integrations are one way in which we lead the market with innovative solutions. Google Automated Tag is a great example of a first-to-market technology we created in partnership with Google.
Let's now discuss our growth strategy and our recent progress. An acceleration of digital-first consumer lifestyles due to COVID-19 means marketers are permanently shifting ad dollars out of linear TV budgets and following consumers onto digital platforms for better engagement and increased ROI. This fundamental shift in the digital ecosystem is driving increased demand for our solutions in 4 key segments: international, programmatic, CTV and social platforms.
Let's take a look at each of these growth areas, starting with our global footprint. International revenue grew 58% in the second quarter. Currently, approximately 40% of our revenue comes from markets outside of the Americas, which we believe is considerably higher than any other competitor. We began implementing our global strategy over 8 years ago. And today, we have a well-established global infrastructure that is generating revenue in 111 countries and in over 40 languages. We have successfully signed international brands such as Disney, GSK, Nestlé and adidas to multiyear contracts and serve as their trusted partner in every region across the globe.
EMEA and APAC revenue grew 61% and 51%, respectively, in the second quarter. Growth was driven by both new contracts with local brands as well as continued upsell and renewals of large existing customers. IAS' position as the premier verification partner in these regions allows us to develop long-term relationships with marketers such as Volkswagen, Bayer, Sanofi and Shiseido, who then trust IAS to be their partner as they activate new territories. For example, we signed an advertiser direct deal out of India this quarter with Samsung, who also partners with IAS in the U.S., Germany and the U.K., among other locations.
We see this trend in other emerging markets like LatAm as well. We partner with Coca-Cola in many regions across the globe. And because of the success of our partnership, Coca-Cola has activated in new markets across LatAm. We believe that Latin America and APAC regions represent substantial growth opportunities, and we are investing in developing our business in these markets by way of expanded in-market customer service investment and by leveraging our global relationships.
Turning to programmatic. As programmatic buying becomes a larger part of the advertising ecosystem, marketers are increasingly focused on maximizing the impact of their digital ad spend and verifying the quality of digital media. Privacy legislation, third-party cookie deprecation and other audience ID changes, including Apple's identifier for advertisers, are increasing demand for targeting tools that do not rely on gathering audience-based data. To address this, IAS launched our market-leading contextual targeting solution, Context Control, with The Trade Desk in March of 2020.
Context Control classifies content on a page level and analyzes it using our proprietary semantic technology. By the end of 2020, we had integrated with all major DSPs, including Google DV360. And we've seen strong market adoption with Context Control representing over 30% of programmatic revenue in Q2.
Context Control has been a major driver of our programmatic growth overall. This quarter, programmatic revenue reached 42% of total revenue, up from 34% last year, and we believe on track to reach 50% in 2023.
In Q1, we also acquired Amino Payments, which is branded as our total visibility offering within programmatic. Total visibility provides transparency into supply path optimization of DV360. For example, a brand such as State Farm is able to gain transparency into both supply path costs for ad inventory as well as clearer understanding of the corresponding ad inventory quality. They can then dial up and down their allocated spend accordingly.
Next, I'd like to highlight the opportunity in CTV for IAS. According to eMarketer, the average amount of time spent with smart TVs and other OTT devices among U.S. consumers rose 34% year-over-year in 2020 to reach an average of 77 minutes daily. And our own IAS research suggests more than 9 out of 10 CTV users in the U.S. say they watch some form of ad-supported streaming video content. For marketers, this represents a tremendous opportunity based on consumer adoption and engagement with streaming content. But as ad dollars shift, fraudsters follow. IAS was the first to bring ad verification to CTV with the world's first fraud and view completion solution in June 2019.
This week, we are enhancing our leadership position in this space with our acquisition of Publica. As I mentioned earlier, Publica is a leading CTV advertising platform. Publica delivers true TV-like experiences to streaming audiences by connecting supply-side platforms, or SSPs, to unique CTV inventory. Its ad server and unified auction for CTV inventory help publishers to obtain the highest yield. Publica can also measure the frequency and placement of ads in CTV environments, helping to solve a significant challenge for publishers. Publica reports that it delivers over 3 billion ads on CTV every month with publisher partners such as Samsung, ViacomCBS and FOX. Publica reports that publishers using its platform have seen on average a 30% lift in yield for their CTV inventory.
We see both sell-side and buy-side synergies that will advance IAS' position in the CTV market. Through this acquisition, we are gaining valuable access to content and first-party data that enables us to accelerate our CTV product road map. We believe that combined, IAS' capabilities will enhance Publica's publisher solutions. And IAS' reach, international presence and current market position will enable us to further address large CTV publishers' needs to scale. In the future, we expect that IAS will be able to help advertisers with a trusted way to invest more budgets in CTV and measure the results by providing protection against ad fraud, along with brand safety and suitability controls when buying CTV inventory.
IAS has a long-standing relationship with Publica, dating back to 2019, and we could not be more excited to welcome the Publica team to IAS. It's early innings in CTV for all verification providers, but Publica really enhances our standing in the market. According to eMarketer, CTV in the U.S. is approximately $13 billion out of $455 billion overall market ad verification opportunity today, but we're very bullish on the product road map. Our CTV revenue has grown 404% versus second quarter 2020 off of a small base. We are expecting a more meaningful contribution starting in late '22 into '23.
Finally, we're focused on bringing our ad verification and brand safety solutions to social platforms, which are trying to keep pace with increased consumer engagement and the proliferation of user-generated content. Social engagement is translating into an incredible share of the global digital advertising spend shifting to social platforms. As ad budgets move to social, marketers are calling for third-party solutions like ours that bring speed, transparency and precision to their social campaigns. We believe innovation in social live feeds will create durable and sustainable revenue growth in this segment.
In Q2, social already makes up 37% of our advertiser direct revenue, and we expect this number to reach to 45% by 2023. We are currently developing our own in-house solutions to detect and protect marketers from undesirable content in live news feeds. By relying on our own proprietary technology, we create the opportunity to scale our solutions to multiple platforms once opportunities become available.
IAS has recently partnered with TikTok to provide a brand-safe experience in the live feed. I'm excited to share that IAS and TikTok have launched an international brand safety beta, providing advertisers with industry-leading controls aligned with the Global Alliance for Responsible Media standards for in-feed video. Our new global solution utilizes proprietary frame-by-frame video, audio, text classification technology specifically designed for social environments allowing advertisers to confidently promote their brand on TikTok. We look forward to sharing more news on our exciting partnership as we progress throughout the year.
Other notable social updates this quarter include IAS' differentiated platform-wide integration with the LinkedIn Audience Network. IAS is the first and only platform-wide provider for LinkedIn Audience Network.
Thank you again for your interest in IAS. As you know, our common stock began trading on NASDAQ on June 30. We're excited to be speaking with you today as a newly public company with a tremendous opportunity ahead of us. We believe we have the right team, talent, technology and partners to extend our leadership in the market. We look forward to reporting to you on our progress.
And with that, I'll turn it over to Joe to review the financials.
Joseph T. Pergola - CFO
Thank you, Lisa. I would also like to welcome all of you and look forward to working with you now that IAS is a public company.
Before I review our second quarter results, I would like to remind everyone that my comments today include certain financial measures that will be presented on a non-GAAP basis. A reconciliation to GAAP measures is available in today's release.
Let me start with our efficient and highly scalable business model and KPIs before turning to a review of Q2 '21 results and our outlook moving forward. IAS has an agile and scalable business model, focused on high revenue growth and margins. We have significant reoccurring revenue that provides us with predictability in our forecasting. We partner closely with our advertisers and publishers to build multiyear minimum impression commitments as well as fixed fee arrangements. Our revenue model is primarily based on impression volume with a blended CPM rate.
The success of this quarter is not only seen through our revenue growth but the result of our strong and long-term customer relationships. As we continuously review our business effectiveness, efficiency and execution, I'd like to first highlight a few key business metrics that we believe will frame the performance of IAS going forward, and then I'll speak about their drivers.
Our second quarter net revenue retention was 142%, a significant improvement compared to 110% the previous quarter. Our total customers grew 17% to 2,155, which includes 2,018 advertisers and 137 publishers. Additionally, our total number of large advertising customers with annual revenue over $200,000 grew by 21% versus the prior year period, ending the period at 187.
Turning to our financial results. We reported a strong quarter driven by double-digit gains in our programmatic and advertising direct channels. Second quarter revenue was $75.1 million, which was a 55% increase from the prior year period. It is important to note that last year, several macro events affected our business in different ways, including, but not limited to, the global pandemic, social and civil unrest and, as Lisa previously discussed, the acceleration of the digital-first lifestyle.
Almost 90% of our total revenue comes through our advertiser direct and programmatic channels. The balance comes from our partnerships with our publishers, who we believe benefit from a higher yield and optimization from accessing our data as well as contributions of our CM pixel business.
Our advertiser direct grew 40% to $35.3 million versus the prior period. This $10.1 million increase was a result of higher impression volume, particularly across Facebook and YouTube, as clients such as Coca-Cola, Nestlé, LVMH, Sanofi, L'Oréal and Estée Lauder invest more in social. We saw strong second quarter growth in video revenue, which now accounts for 39% of our total advertiser direct revenue.
Total programmatic revenue grew 94% to $31.8 million versus the prior year period as a result of impression volume growth and an increase in our average CPMs. Our Context Control solutions continue to scale and gain adoption since their launch in early 2020 and made up 30% of total second quarter programmatic revenue. We are seeing some of our larger clients such as American Express, Deutsche Telekom, Disney, Johnson & Johnson and Volkswagen embraced our Context Control offering, driving up their programmatic spend year-over-year.
Our international investments and footprint continued to pay off. Our Americas to Rest of World revenue mix finished the second quarter at approximately 60-40. I'm immensely proud of our dedicated global teams. And looking forward, I am confident in their ability to further grow and generate revenue in established and emerging markets. Our geographic revenue splits were as follows: for the Americas, total revenue for the quarter came in at $45.4 million, up 54% versus the prior year period. EMEA finished at $22 million, up 61% versus the prior year period. And APAC finished at $7.6 million, up 51% versus the prior year period.
Total gross profit was $62.2 million, resulting in a gross margin of 83% for the period compared to 82% in the prior year period. The high margins are reflective of our efficient cost structure.
For operating expenses, we incurred $41.5 million in stock compensation expenses during the quarter as a result of our IPO. I'll walk you through our operating expenses now, excluding the impact of stock-based compensation to assist with comparability.
For sales and marketing expense for the second quarter of 2021 was $16.5 million, down 2% from the prior year period. Our cost structure reflects an efficient go-to-market strategy and is a testament to our investments in building a scalable platform, both domestically and internationally. Product and tech expenses were $13.2 million, up 3% from the prior year period as we continued to invest in order to maintain our leadership in technology and innovation. G&A expenses increased to $10 million or 17%, primarily due to professional fees and costs incurred to support our initial public offering.
For the second quarter, our adjusted EBITDA increased to $25.7 million from $3.8 million in the prior period, reflecting an adjusted EBITDA margin of 34%, driven by our top line growth and ability to leverage fixed cost as we scale. Cash generated from operations was $31.7 million for the second quarter. Our net loss for Q2 was $35.1 million or $0.26 per share compared to a loss of $16.5 million or $0.12 per share in the prior year period. However, excluding onetime IPO-related stock compensation expenses, net income was $6.4 million.
We ended the second quarter with cash and equivalents of $73.2 million compared to $51.7 million at year-end 2020. Our financial position has strengthened following our IPO, which closed in the third quarter. We raised approximately $275 million in net proceeds from our IPO as well as the exercise of the underwriters' option, which will be reflected on the Q3 '21 balance sheet. Proceeds will be used to reduce long-term debt, and we are also prioritizing investing in the business through organic and, as you saw from this week's acquisition announcement, M&A initiatives. Publica is a fast-growing, profitable business operating at similar margins as our core business.
Turning to our guidance. For the third quarter of 2021, we expect revenue in the range of $74 million to $76 million and adjusted EBITDA in the range of $16 million to $18 million. For fiscal year 2021, we expect revenue in the range of $308 million to $312 million and adjusted EBITDA in the range of $87 million to $91 million. Our guidance includes an anticipated contribution from the Publica acquisition of $3 million in revenue for Q3 and $7 million in revenue for Q4 2021.
Let me share with you a few notes for modeling purposes. We experience fluctuations in revenue that coincide with seasonal fluctuations in the digital ad spending of our customers. The global advertising industry experiences seasonal trends that affect the vast majority of participants in the ecosystem. Most notably, advertisers spend least in the first quarter, increasing spend throughout the year with the fourth quarter being our most important quarter, which includes the holiday shopping season.
Additionally, we expect an annual effective tax rate of 10%. For calculating third quarter 2021 EPS, we expect basic weighted average shares outstanding to be approximately 153.5 million to 155 million.
Lisa and I are now ready to take your questions. Operator?
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from Brent Thill of Jefferies.
Brent John Thill - Equity Analyst
Lisa, maybe you can just bring us up to speed on kind of the overall adoption of your services and just describe how you would characterize the inning or wave that we're in right now in terms of where you think the overall movement for your spaces would be the first question. And just a quick follow-up on Publica. Why couldn't you do this on your own? What did they bring to the table that's going to significantly enhance your CTV opportunity?
Lisa Utzschneider - CEO & Director
Thanks, Brent. So I'll take the first question. I believe the first question was about what are some of the trends that we're seeing right now in the industry. These are tailwinds, Brent, that we have talked about in the past, including programmatic. As you heard in the script earlier, programmatic is a big accelerator of growth for our business. We saw close to 100% growth year-over-year in our programmatic. A big reason for that was our Context Control product. Programmatic is here to stay, and we'll continue to grow.
Second big growth driver is social platforms. And over the last 12 to 18 months, as everyone's spending so much time at home, both viewing stream content, spending time on social platforms, the user adoption of social platforms, marketers want to be in front of those consumers. So we'll continue to see social platform, again, accelerate our business.
And then the third big growth driver, and this would be a nice segue into Publica, is CTV. And CTV, I'd like to say, it's the first inning of a long game. We are so excited about the acquisition that we announced earlier this week with Publica. And we see Publica as an opportunity to accelerate our CTV efforts, just given what they bring with their global addressable CTV advertising platform, both in terms of giving us access to massive amounts of CTV programmatic inventory and also access to data. So those are the trends that we're seeing and also a big reason why we acquired Publica.
And to answer your second question around why couldn't we build it ourselves, again, Publica, they come with a unified auction, a video ad server and have such deep strategic relationships with video publishers, relationships with many of the leading SSPs and being able to build those types of partnerships. It would take quite a bit of time and enables us to leapfrog in the CTV space.
Operator
Our next question comes from Raimo Lenschow of Barclays.
Unidentified Analyst
This is [Frank] on for Raimo. Congrats on the quarter. Just given the strength in international, I'm wondering how you'd frame that opportunity in the longer term. And specifically, how far would you say your average global account is penetrated internationally?
Lisa Utzschneider - CEO & Director
Yes. Great question, [Frank]. So we're thrilled with the progress that we've made international. Our revenue split is 60-40, and international is growing faster. With international, IAS has had a deep established footprint internationally. For over 8 years, we have deep partnerships in EMEA, in APAC. We continue to invest in emerging markets and seeing tremendous growth like our investments in Latin America last year, same thing with Southeast Asia. And again, we're seeing so many global marketers looking to partner with IAS and sign 1- to 3-year contracts. So combination of investing in international, our overall international growth. And also, we expect to see more and more global marketers looking to lean into IAS as their sole verification provider globally.
Operator
Our next question comes from Mark Mahaney of Evercore ISI.
Benjamin Wheeler - Analyst
This is Ben on for Mark. Two if I could, please. Can you just comment on the adoption you've seen of Contextual Control since the new iOS version rolled out? Has it upticked noticeably? And any impacts since the third-party cookie delay announcement from Google?
And then just can you talk about any cross-selling benefits you see to the -- from the Publica acquisition, any revenue synergies that you can quantify?
Lisa Utzschneider - CEO & Director
Okay. Thank you, Ben, for your questions. So with Context Control, Context Control has been a big hit with our marketing customers. We launched the product over a year ago. It was actually the end of Q1 in 2020 following our acquisition of ADmantX. And it has been such an accelerator, again, of our programmatic growth. Also, it is a differentiated product given our contextual intelligence technology. It's global. We offer it in over 40 languages. And also, the other big differentiator for our Context Control products, we operate across all of the major DSPs, including DV360.
So we're thrilled with the results we've seen out of Context Control, the demand that we're hearing from marketers to be able to offer contextual targeting both for avoidance and also to be able to seek out content that they want their brands to run adjacent to. In terms of future forward-looking with Context Control, we see it continue to accelerate our revenue. We haven't had any hiccups with the product whatsoever.
And then in terms of cross-selling with Publica, another big differentiator and what excites us about the Publica acquisition is there's very little overlap between our customer base and Publica's customer base. Our customer base -- the majority of our customers are global marketers. We have over 2,000 customers globally. And Publica, the majority of their business is publisher base. So it's a nice marriage of the buy side and the sell side of the business. And again, we're just thrilled and looking forward to working with the Publica team.
Operator
Our next question comes from Brian Nowak of Morgan Stanley.
Unidentified Analyst
This is [Alex Wong] on for Brian. Two, if we can. One, can you talk to IAS' momentum and visibility into adding new advertisers in the second half and what you view as the key drivers behind that? And overall, just shortening the sales cycle there.
And second, Joe, of the revenue growth you saw in 2Q, about 55%, how much of it was attributable to growth in impressions versus CPM? And are you able to quantify within CPM uplift from contextual control?
Lisa Utzschneider - CEO & Director
Okay. Thanks, [Alex], for the questions. So I'll take the first one, then I'll have Joe take the second one. So in terms of new advertisers for H2, I couldn't be prouder of our sales team with all of the nice wins that they put on the board, both in second quarter and in H1, wins including global accounts like Air France, Samsung India, Uber, I could keep going down the list. But when we turn to H2 and new advertisers, we're feeling really good about the pipeline that's in place.
But in terms of shortening the sales cycle, the beauty of programmatic and our Context Control product is it's flip a switch in the products, lights up, and it's on. So as we continue to see the increase in investments in programmatic, in Context Control, in particular, it enables us to turn on advertisers faster to our solutions and get them live and up and running.
Joe, do you want to take the second question?
Joseph T. Pergola - CFO
Yes. Thanks, [Alex]. So with regards to programmatic, we're outpacing the programmatic market growth that's defined by eMarketer, and we're gaining share in programmatic due to contextual. And that trend will continue as there are a lot of greenfield opportunities out there, and you could see that in our impression lift.
And to answer your second part of the question, we are seeing a premium on our contextual control pricing and fully expect that to accelerate throughout the year.
Operator
Our next question comes from Dan Salmon of BMO.
Daniel Salmon - Analyst
Lisa, you mentioned some in-house technology that you were building for social platform news feeds. I'd love to hear more about that in your comment that you're ready to add activate it when given the opportunity. Because investors, I'm sure, have asked you and asked us a lot about the opportunity to expand your partnership with Facebook to their news feed. I'd love to hear your latest views on that and how this technology may impact that dialogue.
And then just one for Joe. I think I heard you mention that Publica has similar margins to IAS. I may have missed it, but any color on the revenue base or the impact to your top line growth?
Lisa Utzschneider - CEO & Director
Okay. Thanks, Dan. So I'll take the first question. So 1 of our 4 growth accelerators is social and social platforms, in particular. And the area that we're very excited about to innovate on behalf of our advertisers is within the live feed. Marketers, they continue to ask for a product that helps them with brand safety, brand suitability in the live feed and with video, in particular.
And we're thrilled to announce that our team built an in-house technology in partnership with TikTok, where we're able to classify video in audio frame-by-frame and tech classification technology so that we can classify if the content is brand safe and brand suitable for marketers. Right now, the beta, it's early innings of the beta. We just launched the beta in a handful of markets with some marketers, but the product should be available towards later in the year. But again, it's just an illustration of how we innovate on behalf of our customers and just the caliber of our data science team and engineers.
Joseph T. Pergola - CFO
Yes. And Dan, on Publica, on the guide and the revenue upside for the year, we defined for you that there's about $10 million for this year. It's a very efficient, as you cited, business model, similar to our own. So we expect very similar revenue and expense profile. As I defined, there's a lot of greenfield and synergy opportunities for us to work through with them. It's early days. It's just a couple of days from the acquisition, but we fully expect a tremendous amount of opportunity with Publica.
Operator
And next question comes from Jason Helfstein of Oppenheimer.
Jason Stuart Helfstein - MD & Senior Internet Analyst
I'll ask two. So I want to dig a little more on Publica. I think you said that they've largely focused on publishers as clients. Can you take then the technology and ultimately make something that appeals to advertisers? So that's kind of the question. So the idea that you bought more than revenue. But technology, you can turn some bigger.
And then the second, in the release, in your comments, you highlighted both kind of TikTok and LinkedIn. Any meaningful amount of contribution assumed in the back half guidance or not yet?
Lisa Utzschneider - CEO & Director
Okay. Thanks, Jason. So the first question on Publica, whether or not we can leverage Publica's existing technology for marketers, given that we just announced the acquisition earlier this week, we will take some time to determine what the forward-looking integration looks like. And for the foreseeable future, Publica will be a stand-alone entity, but we will start coming together and putting a plan in place. And once we have that plan in place, we're happy to come back out and share what that looks like.
Yes. And then, Joe, you want to take the second question?
Joseph T. Pergola - CFO
Thanks, Lisa. So with TikTok and LinkedIn, they're in beta. We would fully expect them to contribute towards the end of the year and really start contributing in a big way in 2022.
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our next question comes from Andrew Marok of Raymond James.
Andrew Jordan Marok - Analyst
Wanted to dive a little bit deeper into the strength in the advertiser direct segment. So I guess how much of that was driven by existing customer cross- and upsell versus new customers? And anything notable to call out on things like advertiser verticals or customer types that were particularly strong into 2Q and indicating into 3Q?
Lisa Utzschneider - CEO & Director
Okay. Thanks, Andrew. I'll have Joe take that one.
Joseph T. Pergola - CFO
Yes. Andrew, as you saw, it was a great quarter for us with advertiser direct achieving 40% year-over-year growth for the period. And then to your question regarding those verticals, we see strength across quite a few but notably CPG, retail and auto and tech telco. And we expect that continued momentum throughout the year.
Operator
I'm showing no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call back over to Lisa Utzschneider for any closing remarks.
Lisa Utzschneider - CEO & Director
Okay. Thank you. Well, thank you, everyone, for your time today and for your questions. I hope this gives you a better understanding of IAS' momentum that we have right now in the business. I could not be prouder of the results that we delivered in Q2. It was a very strong quarter for us and also could not be prouder of the IAS team. And we'll continue to focus on the 4 growth accelerators that we have mentioned before from programmatic, social platforms, CTV and international expansion. And also, I want to welcome the Publica team. We are thrilled to announce that acquisition earlier this week, and we look forward to transforming the CTV industry moving forward.
So with that, I hope everyone has a great day.
Operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference. Thank you all for participating. You may all disconnect. Have a great day.