Sentiment Analysis of the earnings transcript to help figure out if there are any bullish or bearish sentiments that could be gathered from it. We're doing ML and AI based analysis on the earnings call to get some more insights.
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| Statement |
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| We think there's a lot of opportunity there to grow, and it's coming through the offering that we give them that is very strategic, the combination of the feed and Keystone, sort of looking at e-commerce optimization, subscriptions, and others gives us, we believe, a big advantage there, and also the quality of Onyx demand and the Mid-Africa placement |
| As an entrepreneur, I view times of change as times of opportunities for companies like Outbrain and therefore, I'm very excited about the company's prospects to do this |
| We believe the unique foundational assets we own give us a strong opportunity to capitalize on these changes |
| We're very excited about this new chapter for the company with exciting strategy pillars like the enterprise brands with Onyx, extending advertiser share of wallet with our performance marketing suite, and expanding our exclusive code on page through improved monetization in Keystone as well as the programmatic reach through our [indiscernible] |
| We believe this will result in growth this year as well as double-digit growth and a 20% plus EBITDA margin in 2025 |
| So if you take that as an indication of what's coming with Google Chrome this year, I think we've done quite well |
| To sum it up, we are confident that our investment strategy, started in H2 2023 and continuing into 2024, will strengthen our strategic value as a leading cross-funnel platform for the Open Internet |
| Onyx, in terms of the acceptance in the market, has been something that's been very successful and we think that's going to be a big growth driver in the future, really focused around increasing our ability to share wallets from the demand side, both on the brand with Onyx and on the performance side |
| Outbrain is well-positioned to capitalize on this opportunity, providing a single access point for advertisers |
| We have an excellent starting point due to our foundational business assets and core AI prediction technology, which has been developed over the last 17 years |
| This data, coupled with our core prediction technology fuels our successful performance advertising business |
| But the brand side is very exciting |
| We've seen great success with adoption of our key automated bidding product, Conversion Bid Strategy |
| And I'm also very excited about, again, the other growth drivers that that Jason referred to, I think, again, Keystone brought us |
| These Q4 wins complement our premium publisher wins in the last two years, demonstrating the strategic value and our relative advantage in the market |
| Onyx has delivered better than expectations in the second half of last year |
| So by delivering better value higher monetization, better audience tools and a broader value proposition strategically with Keystone |
| Onyx has enabled us to grow our business with enterprise brands and agencies, significantly expanding our total demand addressable market |
| We believe this will drive substantial growth and profitability in the coming years |
| And sort of its Unimex, by doing that, increasing that third-party supply by our very strong bidding technologies, we also grow shareholders from advertisers |
| As a founder, I'm tremendously proud about that |
| Also, with publishers, with some of the pressures, I think Outbrain is their number one best partner of choice, because we're both a reliable, solid monetization partner, growing the monetization opportunity through things like Onyx with code on page and the tremendous size of our footprint |
| We're doing it in 2024, and that's where we have really good confidence around 2025 |
| Both of these strategies create incremental margin opportunities for us |
| We also continued to secure strategic publisher partners, which is a testament to the value of our full page monetization and our total revenue offering |
| And we've been just going from strength to strength on the main indicator that we have which is click-through rate ever since |
| I'm personally very excited about the decisions we've made and the speed in which we are executing them |
| We're very excited about the future |
| Expanding our supply beyond our traditional fees growing enterprise brand and agency spend, growing performance advertiser spend, and growing and optimizing publisher revenues |
| We expect that the engagement-based bidding capabilities on our DSP will enable us to drive differentiated performance and outcomes across this new supply, providing a single access point to Open Internet consumers while driving outcomes in ROAS |
| Statement |
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| Revenue in Q4 was approximately $248 million, reflecting a decrease of 4% year-over-year |
| Net revenue retention of our publishers was 91%, which reflects the continued headwind from the impact of the demand environment on pricing, which remains the consistent factor driving pressure on our revenue and on our net revenue retention |
| Accordingly, publishers on the Open Internet are also challenged on both ad monetization and audience developments |
| We did also experience a decline year-over-year of ad impressions also contributing to the retention being below 100%, driven largely by page view volatility from certain supply sources and platforms as opposed to churn |
| From a demand perspective, I had mentioned last quarter that October has shown a flatter pattern than the seasonal lift we historically see that time of year, which we believe was driven by transient factors, the delaying or reducing of budgets in the early part of the quarter, resulting from geopolitical and macro uncertainties, along with lower monetization from the war-related news that dominated much of our large publisher partners content in October |
| But clearly, I mean, that industry is under pressure |
| As discussed today and in prior quarters, visibility to advertising budgets remains limited |
| And cookies deprecation risks signal loss in the open Internet which may push ad spending, at least in the near term, into walled gardens where there is no signal loss |
| While yields remain up year-over-year, continuing the momentum from Q4, the supply volatility from certain partners and platforms has driven ad impressions to be down year-over-year |
| Consistent with recent quarters, churn has remained at similarly low levels with logo retention of 96% for all partners that generated at least $10,000 and our five largest churns amounted to only three combined points of year-over-year headwind in Q4 |
| The events of October 7 and the ensuing war are devastating and continue to impact so many of us |
| Before going into the specifics of the year, I wanted to acknowledge the challenging events that faced us on a geopolitical level |
| The largest component of this is compensation-related expenses, which were down approximately $4 million or 11% year-over-year |
| We're also considering the isolated supply volatility that I talked to on the call, which we think is temporary, but we're obviously expanding our range and being cautious about it |
| It just feels like it's very tough splitting out there for digital publishers |
| CEO transitions can be difficult for companies, especially after a tenure as long as 17 years |
| and we expect adjusted EBITDA of negative $1 million to positive $1 million |
| We began 2024 with a headcount of approximately 870 FTEs, which is down about 11% from January 2023 as we have focused our attention on driving greater efficiency in our operations and now on redeploying resources towards higher confidence growth areas that David mentioned |
| Journalistic content will only become more valuable and differentiated |
| And that's a real rarity in tech |
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