Daniel Day: Yes, morning guys, and thanks for taking the questions. So, this iconic consumer brand that you’ve mentioned here, possible to say whether it’s a traditional open web publisher that you typically partner with, but maybe on a bigger scale. So, you feel like it’s worth specifically calling out or maybe like a new type of partner. I’m thinking something like a retail media network or a company maybe new to the advertising business or something along those lines. And then, if there’s any prepayment or anything else that could impact cash flow associated with this publisher with.
Adam Singolda: Yes, we can’t say the name. It’s not a traditional publisher. So, it’s an iconic brand that signed and rolling out to us. I don’t think we can mention the name, but I hope we can mention that soon.
Daniel Day: Okay, great. So, question, it seems like every week, since you last reported, we’re hearing about layoffs at open web publishers, how much this industry is really struggling to survive for a lot of them, especially how they’re struggling to generate traffic off search and social and anywhere near the levels they have in the past. So, given you’re in part dependent on them generating traffic to their properties, how do you think about that as either a headwind, an opportunity for you to help them through these struggles?
Stephen Walker: Sorry, Daniel. I missed a part of that question. Can you give it to me again?
Daniel Day: Yes, just generally, open web publishers are struggling. A lot of them going through layoffs and struggling to generate traffic. So, just how you think about your role as an ad tech partner here in helping them continue to generate traffic and what you can do there.
Stephen Walker: Sure. So, I can take this one. So, overall, on our network, we’re not seeing any material impact to date. I think also many of our publishers are enterprise big publishers that have a lot of direct traffic. So, to date, we haven’t seen any material impact. And then, also, I think this is an opportunity for us because the way we approach working with publishers it’s really at the most strategic level, whereby they’re able to use our homepage for you to drive homepage personalization. They’re able to use our e-commerce business to drive diversification of revenue, subscription. We have mentioned AI to help them kind of personalize a page once users lands on it. And I think if you’re a publisher, especially if you’re a senior person on the publisher side or a senior product manager, when you think about who do you want to work with, you just want to make sure that you can work with companies that can drive audience growth, because you’re concerned about that going down.
You want to make sure you work with companies that can increase your engagement with consumers, and then as well as kind of like your ARPU or your lifetime value. So, I think this is such an important differentiation we have. I can tell you I just had a call a week ago with a fairly big publisher from the CEO and the CEO asked me, what about Taboola News? Are we getting Taboola News as part of the deal? And I said, well, of course. And I said, but we have to work for a long time because we can’t just put people on and off. And the entire conversation was about added value. It wasn’t about CPMs. It wasn’t about yields. So, it wasn’t about guarantees. It wasn’t about redshirt. It was about other things publishers are thinking about. So, this is, to me, such a fun part of my job, as well as an exciting moment that publishers want to work with us because all of the technology investments we make beyond just money.
Adam Singolda: So Daniel —
Daniel Day: Okay, great. Just to — sorry, go ahead.
Adam Singolda: Back to your first question about the iconic consumer brand, I checked with our PR folks, and what we’re allowed to say is we were selected by Apple as an official advertising partner for Canada and Australia at this point. So, I think that’s what we’re allowed to say.
Daniel Day: Okay, awesome.
Adam Singolda: Yes, good to hear.
Daniel Day: Thanks, guys.
Operator: Thank you. One moment for the next question. Our next question is coming from Justin Patterson of KeyBanc. Your line is open.
Justin Patterson: Great. Thanks for the question. I just want to up level the conversation a little bit around these bigger brands that are opening up like Yahoo originally and now Apple in there. It seems like this is just a new opportunity for Taboola power a lot more of these bigger brands. I guess, one, just what’s really changed around that? Was it just Yahoo that opened this door over the past year? And then two, as you’ve gone through Yahoo, how should we think about just the incremental investment to support more of these brands to win more business and scale up over time? Thank you.
Adam Singolda: I will start, Justin, because I can’t believe the CFO was able to break about Apple. Now, Steve, we are going to have to talk about this afterwards. But obviously we are very excited about Apple choosing to invest into this exciting market. So, to your question I think to me what’s fascinating is that, you can already see companies like Amazon and others speaking about advertizing being the second or EBITDA they have. So, the trend is that advertizing is going to become a trillion dollar market. And, I believe board members of all Fortune 500 companies are going to ask their CEOs what is your advertizing strategy because it’s too big. And if you reach consumers, it cannot be ignored. Not only that, it can be a fantastic if not one of the most lucrative growth engine for Fortune 500 companies all around the world.
Now, I think the way it’s going to pan out is that many of these great companies would want to sell directly to the top of the market. We would like to build relationship with enterprise account. However, there are two things that would be missing. One, it’s unlikely they are going to sell to tens of thousands or hundreds of thousand’s performance made from the advertisers. And the second thing that it is unlikely they will develop a technology that use AI and data and match make between users and ad in a way that works for advertisers to continue to buy. And this is exactly I think where Taboola has an opportunity which I am very excited about. I mean I never knew — I never thought few years ago, we will be in a position where we will announce a billion dollar partnership with great company like Yahoo And now, Steve stole my thunder.
But now, Apple chose Taboola. And I think this potentially can become an opportunity for the company to kind of be this ad engine or call it advertiser in a box for these companies that say, well, we should get a billion dollar or more from the advertizing space. So, I am excited about it. This is more than I ever thought will happen. But I do think it’s happening. Again, we are seeing exciting partnership, Pinterest, with Yahoo Netflix, with Microsoft. This is really a whole new beginning in my opinion. And, I hope we can play a big part of it.
Stephen Walker: In terms of — sorry.
Justin Patterson: No, go ahead. Sorry, Steve.
Stephen Walker: Yes. In terms of incremental investment required to support these types of partnerships, I guess what I would say is the reason I think we are winning some of these great partnerships is because we have invested so much in our performance advertizing capabilities. And while I think we have a long ways to go, I still consider us in the early innings here. In terms of being great, we are well-faceted at it. And I think that’s what helps us win these partnerships. Obviously every partnership we do of significant scale has some unique requirement. Yahoo, we are definitely learning from — as Adam mentioned earlier, we are learning from the advertisers things that they would like. Maybe they got to move it from Yahoo previously.
Maybe there is new things we’re learning that they would like but they never got from Yahoo, but we could do. So, yes, you always invest something in terms of building capabilities for any large partnership. But it’s all part of kind of our core business like as Adam said, we’re learning from these advertisers things that they want. We will invest in it that will impact — then positively impact all of our business not just that partnership. So, while there is investment, it’s basically just a way to advance your business. And it’s true of all these partnerships that we are signing.
Justin Patterson: Got it. Thank you both. And from what it’s worth, Adam, you still brought the thunder there.
Adam Singolda: Thank you. Thank you, sir. I appreciate that. And Steve will still get a review after this, but thank you.
Operator: Thank you. And this does conclude today’s conference call. You may all disconnect.
