So you can imagine that will be the nucleus of a hero campaign of a brand relaunch. These are coming throughout the rest of the year, early 2024. I think you will be pleased to see the efforts ramp here domestically but also around the world. And everything is really working backwards from the customer pain points. So they are solving members’ issues, which is leading to real tangible results. I actually think there’s an important note here for everyone tuning in. Demand for love is at all-time high. Demand for relationships is higher today than ever, right? We’re a lonely society. We’re super isolated. We’re super disconnected. Social media does not introduce us to our love lives. That said, we see such potential with all of our products, and giving Badoo this real clear intent of solving for confidence has already been proving to be working.
So stay tuned. We’re really excited with the early progress, and the results should speak for themselves.
Operator: Our next question comes from John Blackledge with TD Cowen.
John Blackledge: Two questions. First, on Bumble app paying users. What are kind of the key geographies for Bumble app paying user growth in the fourth quarter and next year? And then on the recent products, Compliments and Best Bees, are they more so driving payer growth or ARPPU or both? If you can just provide some more color there, that would be great.
Anu Subramanian: Yes, sure. So as we think about payer growth, our focus is on making sure that we have payer growth across every market. So obviously, the U.S. will continue to be a big focus area for us, and we want to make sure that we continue to grow our user base there. So you’ll definitely see us focus extensively on that. Obviously, our international markets are growing really well. So you’ll see — we are hoping again this is not just a Q4 statement, right, going into ’22 — ’24 as well, focusing on our core English-speaking markets like the U.K., Australia, Canada, outside the U.S. are important. Western Europe, as we’ve been saying now for a while, has been a very important market for us, especially in countries like Germany where we are the second most downloaded dating app.
Again, those are strong payer additions for us. Also markets like Switzerland, Netherlands, France, again, markets in Western Europe, I think, will be important. Asia, especially India, is a big market for us. So making sure we have a sizable user base of active users there. So making sure that we increase the payer penetration there is something that the team is quite heavily focused on. Certain other markets in Asia as well are — have green shoots that we are looking at. And recently, we’ve launched in LatAm. There are certain markets in LatAm that we are focused on. Obviously, as we always say, when we enter a new market, our focus is on active users, growing the user base and then slowly as they get to a sizable user base, we then start to convert them into paying users.
So our playbook for how we think about international growth is largely the same. We are, obviously, in the middle of figuring out exactly which countries will — new countries we will enter into next year. So when we come back in Feb, we’ll look forward to sort of providing more details on that. And then as it relates to your second question around Compliments and Best Bees, we said this before, obviously, depending on how a product is engineered, often these can be drivers of payers, drivers of ARPPU or in many cases, both. For both of these products, I will say, we are — our goal is to drive both of these metrics. Right now, Compliments is still very much an ARPPU driver. Obviously, we’ve gotten new payers as a result of that, but we are definitely seeing higher adoption from existing payers.
So you’re seeing that reflected in the ARPPU. And then on Best Bees as well, Best Bees, I would say is still early days. As we said before, it’s part of Bumble Premium. And so we’ve seen strong adoption from people entering Bumble Premium as an entry point from Best Bees. But we look forward to it becoming a payer driver as we continue to build out the product and we continue to refine it.
Operator: Our next question comes from Mark Kelley with Stifel.
Mark Kelley: I just had 2 quick ones. The first one is just on the new — 2 new pricing tiers with Bumble app. I know, Whitney, you said that they would be protective of ARPPU. It’s a good starting point for ’24 just to see kind of flattish ARPPU for Bumble app. That’s the first one. And then the second one, completely understand that you’re early in the planning phase for ’24, and there’s a lot of moving pieces. But I guess what line items should we look to for that operating leverage that you’re calling out for next year?
Anu Subramanian: Yes. I can take both of those. I think it’s a little bit too early to be talking about the sort of puts and takes of what ARPPU will look like next year. I think obviously, ARPPU is a function of several things. It includes our international mix, includes pricing changes that we are doing in different markets. It includes the new products that we are launching. So I’ll just say, wait for us to provide more details on exactly what ARPPU looks like next year. Just at a high level, if you think about the different pricing tiers, our goal is to make sure that we are capturing more payers across the ecosystem of users that we have. And so if you think about the higher price tier, it’s an opportunity for existing premium users to potentially upsell and pay more, in which case, it becomes an ARPPU driver.
And then over time, our goal would be to get nondaters and non-Bumble users directly into the Premium Plus ecosystem as well, which then becomes a payer driver. And then in the beginning, on the lower tier, our goal would largely be for it to be a payer conversion. We have a lot of people on our app today, especially in the — on the sort of younger side of the demographic that use the app for free but then don’t necessarily want to pay for Bumble Boost or Bumble Premium. So having a lower price tier allows them to pay for the product in a way and start getting used to the payer feature. So that one, I would say, our goal would definitely be for that to be a payer driver. Again, as we increase the number of subscription products that we have in our ecosystem, our goal is to make sure that we are constantly managing the ecosystem in a way that is — continues to be healthy.
And then on your question around operating leverage, I think, again, if you think about the building blocks for next year, it should — it won’t be too dissimilar to how we thought about leverage in 2023. So you will see us continue to invest, again, very strategically in products and technology. I’ve always said this before, and our company knows that the bar for investment is high. And so we want to make sure that we continue to maintain that high bar. But obviously, innovation is what drives growth for us. So you’ll see us invest in that. We want to continue to show leverage on areas of marketing spend. So building our brand is always going to be important for us. So while we will be spending towards it on a percentage of revenue basis, our hope is that we will see some leverage there.
And then we always strive to — as we get bigger and as we have more, we always try to get leverage in other areas such as G&A. I think cost of revenue is likely going to be largely steady to what you’re seeing right now. Again, more to come. Hopefully, that’s helpful.
Operator: Our next question comes from Chris Kuntarich with UBS.
