Business Description

We are an end-to-end, full-service advertising and marketing platform primarily focused on providing advertising technology, data-driven campaign optimization and other solutions to help brands, agencies and middle market businesses deliver successful marketing results that drive return on investment ("ROI") across both the sell- and buy-side of the digital advertising ecosystem. Direct Digital Holdings, Inc., incorporated as a Delaware corporation on August 23, 2021 and headquartered in Houston, Texas, is the holding company for DDH LLC, the business formed by our founders in 2018 through acquisitions of Colossus Media and Huddled Masses. Colossus Media operates our proprietary sell-side programmatic platform operating under the trademarked banner of Colossus SSP™. In September 2020, DDH LLC acquired Orange 142 to further bolster its overall programmatic buy-side advertising platform and to enhance its offerings across multiple industry verticals. In February 2022, we completed our initial public offering and certain organizational transactions which resulted in our current structure. In October 2024, we announced the unification of our buy-side businesses, Orange 142 and Huddled Masses. Our sell-side advertising business, operated through Colossus Media, provides advertisers of all sizes a programmatic advertising platform that automates the sale of ad inventory between advertisers and marketers leveraging proprietary technology. Our platform reaches across a wide array of media partners to help brands, media holding companies, independent agencies or emerging businesses reach audiences, curated creators and helps publishers find the right brands for their readers, as well as drive advertising yields across all channels: web, mobile, and connected TV ("CTV"). Our platform offers advertising inventory and creator content that aligns with brands, media holding companies and mid-market agencies focusing on key growth audiences. Our buy-side advertising business, now operating as Orange 142, provides technology-enabled advertising solutions and consulting services to clients through multiple leading demand side platforms (“DSPs”), across multiple industry verticals such as travel and tourism, higher education, energy, healthcare, financial services, consumer products and other sectors with particular emphasis on small and mid-sized businesses transitioning into digital with growing digital media budgets. In the digital advertising space, buyers, particularly small and mid-sized businesses, can potentially achieve significantly higher ROI on their advertising spend compared to traditional media advertising by leveraging data-driven over-the-top/connected TV (“OTT/CTV”), video and display, in-app, native including programmatic, search, social, influencer marketing and audio advertisements that are delivered both at scale and on a highly targeted basis. Providing both the front-end, buy-side operations coupled with our proprietary sell-side operations enables us to curate the first through last mile in the ad tech ecosystem execution process to drive results. Programmatic Marketplace Transaction The Sell-Side On the sell-side of the digital supply chain, the supply side platform (“SSP”) is an ad technology platform used by advertisers, agencies, DSPs and publishers. Advertisers, agencies and DSPs utilize the SSP to access publishers and markets that they might not be able to access directly or through larger DSPs and ad exchangers. Publishers utilize the SSP to sell, manage and optimize the ad inventory on their websites in an automated and effective way. The SSPs help the publishers monetize the display ads, video ads, and native ads on their websites and mobile apps. The SSPs have enhanced their functionalities over the years and have included ad exchange mechanisms to efficiently manage their ad inventory. Also, SSPs allow the publishers to connect to DSPs directly instead of connecting through ad exchanges. The SSP allows publishers’ inventory to be opened up and made available to advertisers they may not be able to directly connect with. SSPs sell ad inventories in many ways - for example, directly to ad networks, via direct deals with DSPs, and most commonly via real-time bidding (“RTB”) auctions. The publisher makes its ad inventory available on an SSP and the SSP invites advertisers to bid based on the user’s data received.…