And Vivian’s also done, by the way, a very nice job in deploying AI tools to get the, to enhance the chat experience between the healthcare professional and the employer. We’re seeing some fun things on engagement there. And then the other one, which is very, very small for IAC, but as media things do, they make a lot more noise than the size of their business. We’ve got great real leadership with incredible experience at Daily Beast now with Ben Sherwood and Joanna Coles. They’re making real changes at the business. They’re bringing a ton of energy to the business and who knows where they go with that, but I’d say that there’s an exciting reboot happening there and we’ll be interested to see how that turns out.
Christopher Halpin : Okay, thank you, Brent. Operator, one last question.
Operator: The last question comes from Tom Champion with Piper Sandler.
Tom Champion: Hi, good morning. Maybe just two quick ones on DDM, maybe for Chris. Just looking at core sessions growth of 8%, certainly solid and consistent with the fourth quarter, but there was an extra day in the quarter. All else, fairly easy comp year-over-year. Just curious if there was any one-timer or headwind or anything else that we should think about that in the context of a trend that was previously improving sequentially. And then just any comments on the Amazon partnership, would love to hear about that. Thank you.
Christopher Halpin : Yes, definitely, Tom. Thanks for the question. We actually did want to talk about core sessions trends. So the decline from 10% core growth in Q4 of last year to 8% growth this quarter is entirely driven by declines in traffic to our properties coming from Facebook. This has been a significant trend across the publisher ecosystems since middle of last year. It hit the whole industry hard. Thankfully for us, it’s a small part of our growth, which is why we can keep growing. But they really ramped it up again from what we can see mid quarter. For the first quarter, our Facebook traffic was down 50% year-over-year in the first quarter as they aggressively to keep to seek more audience on their own platform.
Again, thankfully, Facebook only represents about 4% of our traffic today, down from 7% a year ago. So we felt that this quarter, it will continue to reiterate. And we feel great about how everything else is growing and the ability to keep growing sessions. We also note, we’re seeing excellent growth at Apple News, which does not show up in our sessions numbers because that consumption happens on their platform. Instead, it shows up in our licensing line. So it’s a bit of movement from one platform, not exactly, but we’ve got declines in one platform that’s pretty small at this point and then growth in another where we see a lot of opportunity. I’d say in some, we feel great about session growth across the portfolio. And also when you talk about comps, we’re optimistic for our entertainment properties as we move further into the year, given we’ll be lapping the strikes.
I just want to add one thing on that, which is whether 8% versus 10% or one more day in the quarter or whatever, 8% growth in core sessions is excellent. We’re primarily US businesses. Generally the internet is not growing right now in terms of users. And so what you’re seeing happen is the folks who have invested in content, and we’ve invested an enormous amount in content, and continue to invest an enormous amount in content, are being rewarded with increasing share of audience. And we feel very good about that. And, again, whether it’s 8% or 10% or whatever, growing in that environment and growing healthily in that environment is a real testament to winning products.
Joey Levin: And then, Tom, the question on Amazons and the demand side, integrations for D/Cipher. Look, I think it’s credit to Neil and team that they’ve positioned us to be in the spot we are with D/Cipher, given the industry trends. The data science there, the technology that underlies it, are very strong. And we know whether it’s Amazon as a brand or the brand that it represents through its retail media network or when you look across the whole brand ecosystem. Companies are focused on privacy friendly solutions and getting to a way — getting to cookie list platforms whenever that rolls out. And we continue to have productive conversations with other large demand side platforms and creating the capabilities in their infrastructure to utilize D/Cipher and offer cookie list based targeting.
It’s, we also think the integration of generative AI will be a positive in the perception of investors, and it’s just head down blocking and tackling executing the integrations and explaining the story but we are very bullish on the dynamics. Yes, integration of generative Chris meant advertisers, not investors, although perhaps both.
Christopher Halpin : Oh, yes, sorry, Joey. I have investors on my mind, but I might say advertiser.
Joey Levin: Advertiser. Thank you all very much for joining us. I know it’s a busy morning and appreciate the questions and support and we’ll talk to you next quarter. Thanks all.
Operator: The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.
