Jayme Mendal: Yes. From last year, we are seeing the carrier — the subset of carriers that have gotten their rates in line, have largely returned to more sort of normalized historical approach to setting their budget, which varies by carrier. Some operate a relatively unconstrained way. Some will set their budget on a quarterly or monthly basis. But we’re seeing budgets return to normal in pockets. In other areas, we’re seeing just carriers manage through budget caps, and that’s being reflected in the lower levels of demand and spend with the balance of carriers who haven’t yet achieved rate adequacy. And those budgets tend to get revisited, if not monthly, quarterly. And so we tend to get information from some of these carriers, and we obviously have an open dialogue with them.
And in general, I’d say that are moving to a more constructive stance, meaning they’re looking for pockets — on balance, they’re looking for pockets where they can lean in where they have profitability. But we sort of learn more as they learn more about their underwriting results with each month or quarter that passes.
Ralph Schackart: Okay, super helpful. Thank you, Jayme.
Jayme Mendal: Thanks, Ralph.
Operator: Thank you, Mr. Schackart. Our next question comes from the line of Aaron Kessler with Raymond James. Your line is now open.
Aaron Kessler: Great. Thank you. Maybe can you just talk a little bit about as well the agency performance in the quarter, kind of what are you seeing from agents? And then additionally, can you talk — I think you noted in the report on some market share gains, just how are you thinking you’re doing versus competitors currently? And lastly just the non-auto verticals, kind of where do you think you see the most opportunity for reacceleration in 2023? Thank you.
Jayme Mendal: Sure. So agents, sort of competitive landscape for market share in non-auto. And just to clarify, we talked about two different agent channels, and I can — happy to talk about both, but we have our local agents, our third party agent network and then we have our direct to consumer agency, is the one that you were inquiring about?
Aaron Kessler: Yes, the local auto agents.
Jayme Mendal: Yes, sure. So that part of the business has demonstrated really strong resilience over the last year as the direct carriers contracted meaningfully, we were able to continue growing demand from local agents. And that’s in spite of the industry headwinds. It’s in spite of cost controls that we placed on that business just as part of our overall OpEx management efforts. And I think we are pretty confident that today, EverQuote is both the largest and highest performing provider to the local agent base, predominantly those captive agents that Allstate or State Farm or Farmers agents of the world. So it’s been a strength for the business in ’22. As we look out to next year, we’re going to continue to invest in it. So we expect demand from agents to continue growing while we drive further efficiency through it.
And we look forward to really expanding the suite of products and services that we’re offering these agents with the goal of building just deeper longer term relationships with them. So it’s a part of the market where we feel we are in a great position right now, and we’re going to continue to invest behind. I think that probably relates to the second part of your question around I guess competitive dynamics and market share. Based on all of the data that’s available to us publicly and information that we get from carriers, I think we’re pretty confident that we have gained share by and large over the last year. I think we’d attribute that both to the strength of our agent distribution. It’s both third party agents and our direct to consumer agency as well as just our effectiveness in managing traffic operations in response to fluctuating demand over the course of the year.
