Outbrain Inc. (NASDAQ:OB) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

So, not all of our supply is news based, but it is a meaningful portion. And obviously the lower RPMs do affect take rates as well. So, hopefully that gives you a little bit more color. And I think you also asked about the Onyx. We do still expect…

David Kostman: Let me take Onyx.

Jason Kiviat: Sure.

David Kostman: I’ll take Onyx. Shweta, I think you heard from Jason, I think it’s — I could tell you from looking at my career, I mean, it’s a huge level of volatility and uncertainty in the — I haven’t seen before, just generally, which is impacting, what Jason said. On Onyx specifically, we had — we launched [indiscernible], we had great feedback. We launched more than 100 campaigns at this point. We’re seeing both new advertisers advertising. We see cross-sell to existing performance markets that are leveraging Onyx to also drive awareness. So, we’re very excited about it. We see the numbers growing significantly month-over-month. I mean, we talked about relatively small numbers. So, it’s exciting. So, we stand behind the number even for this year.

And looking into ’24, generally, we see Onyx and video as significant growth drivers for us as a company to move to become a full-funnel partner on the open web. It’s been a big move this year. So, we see the fruits of that effort — these efforts will bear fruit and result in growth next year. AI that Yaron mentioned also we see significant potential from that. On our performance business, the growth of share of wallet that we see through moving some of our segments and large customers to Zemanta is also an important growth driver for next year. And just growing our publisher relationships with innovation and broadening the strategic value with Keystone. So, these are the growth drivers. We haven’t given any guidance for 2024, but overall when we look at all the reports out there, I think the general sort of growth and sort of EBITDA margin levels that we’ve seen, I think we still believe that we can achieve those.

Jason, anything else?

Jason Kiviat: No.

David Kostman: Okay.

Shweta Khajuria: Thank you, David. Thanks, Jason.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question will be from Andrew Boone, JMP Securities. Please go ahead.

Andrew Boone: Thanks so much for taking my questions. I wanted to touch on new publisher revenue. It’s slowed to $11 million. I think that’s the lowest number you guys have reported as a public company. How are you guys approaching new publisher deals going forward? And how do we think about that — the process of adding more content?

Jason Kiviat: Sure, I could start. So, obviously, we had pretty big numbers for the last four or five quarters in double digits, and it was 12% growth from new publishers last quarter. There were a lot of large wins. We talked about them last year in 2022. We’re obviously focused on the premium side of the market, premium publishers and full-funnel advertisers. Before the 12% and so on for a few quarters, 7% was really our average for a long time. It’s not a linear thing now. Obviously, some partners are larger than others, and it’s really not something we expected to stay at that level going into H2, as we really focused on calibrating supply and demand, improving the performance on current deals in this demand environment. I think 7% is probably a good average over time to continue to think about that, Andrew.

David Kostman: Andrew, we feel pretty good about sort of competitive position there. I mean, also these deals, they’re not linear sometimes. In certain quarters, we have many of these potential new deals. I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we’re excited about what is in the pipeline. I think the differentiators of focusing on the premium side of the market are helping us. Onyx is exciting for publishers. Keystone, the vision and the value that it brings also. So, we feel good about that. And I think that number will continue to fluctuate also depending on market situation. When we look at new deals, we look at sort of the total economics of the deal, the impact for advertisers, the margin, but also the total dollar value that we can generate. So, we feel good about competitive position and outlook for new business, but it will fluctuate.