And then, of course, as UID adoption continues to go up, the efficacy will as well. So even though I think we’re doing the most effective advertising that we’ve ever done in television, I think there’s still lots of room for exponential growth in efficacy. So when you look at all of those sort of macro trends and with the facts, I think it’s inevitable that CTV gets the vast majority of that transitioning from linear and traditional and even potentially, additional spend. So Laura, your portion of that question.
Laura Schenkein: Yes, fantastic. So in talking about the guide, what I would say is that we guide to what we see. We always have since I’ve been here. That includes what’s been observed quarter-to-date through the 9th of November. It also includes what our team and what our clients are indicating for the rest of the year. And though I recognize that there’s cautiousness in the environment, so all of that is taken into consideration. So I’m optimistic for the remainder of Q4. And we believe in this environment. It’s good to listen to our customers, listen to our team and it’s better to be cautious.
Operator: The next question comes from Youssef Squali with Truist.
Youssef Squali: Just one question on CTV. Jeff, can you maybe expand a little bit more on your comments around the different ways of buying CTV programmatic versus insertion orders versus programmatic guaranteed. Maybe where are we today in terms of percentage of CTV that’s bought programmatically? And what is the biggest kind of hurdle to kind of get in it to become kind of the standard, the majority of the way people buy it — interact with it?
Jeffrey Green: You bet. So I would say today and these are very broad buckets. This isn’t a reflection of our spend. This is me giving a commentary on the macro space. As the dollar moves over from traditional television into CTV, it’s mostly gone into 3 different buckets relatively evenly. The first is to work directly with the content owner and create essentially an insertion order again. The second is to work with us through a programmatic guaranteed and then the third is to work through biddable fully decisioned programmatic. Those have roughly been equal. You’re seeing the first and second converge and then the third category is, of course, the fastest growing. So when I talk about the need for television to embrace programmatic, I’m really talking about the need for it to embrace fully-decisioned programmatic because that’s where content owners get higher CPMs. That’s also where advertisers get the highest effectiveness and that’s the only place where they’re willing to pay a premium.
The first and second have been increasingly converging over the last couple of years, while those were even a few years ago. More and more, they’re moving towards the second and third category with the final destination really being that third category. That’s how we see all of CTV moving because that’s where efficacy and price and the healthiness of the ecosystem stabilizing.
Operator: The next question comes from Tim Nollen with Macquarie.
Tim Nollen: Jeff, I’ve got a CTV question as well, please. If I heard you right, in your prepared remarks, you spoke about some OpenPath efforts already taking shape in CTV. OpenPath, you started what, 1.5 years ago, if I remember right, on — focused on journalistic publishers. Could you just elaborate on what you were doing with OpenPath with direct relationships into CTV, please?
Jeffrey Green: You bet. I appreciate the question. So let me just remind everybody what OpenPath is. And Tim, again, really appreciate the question because I think this is something we haven’t talked enough about. And you are right. OpenPath celebrated its first birthday at the beginning of this year. And it’s been the fastest-growing path, if you will, or a route supply chain to inventory on our platform. And what it is, is the ability for publishers who want to do their own yield management to plug in to us directly. Where historically they would use an SSP. This time, they can plug into us directly. Part of the reason for that is because more and more companies are wanting to do their own yield management. We initially really highlighted the need for journalists or journalistic outlets to embrace this because their need for authentication as well as CPMs to go up was greater than any other part of the ecosystem.
So it was really launched with journalism because that’s where they needed the help the most. Where it moves the needle perhaps the most is in connected television. And the reason why it moves the needle so much in connected television is because the content ownership, unlike on the browsing web, where you have millions of websites, you only have dozens of companies in the U.S. And as I’ve said before, I believe television is perfectly fragmented for a business like ours. But that makes it so that they’re all big enough for them to have their own yield management functions. It makes it so that we can plug in directly with them and then make certain that the option has a higher degree of integrity than if it were routed through Google or somewhere else for that matter.
So we’ve launched OpenPath as a means of making certain that the pipes are clean and that has made certain that connected television has an ecosystem or a supply chain that is cleaner than others which is really great for CTV and its future. Thanks for the question.
Operator: The next question comes from Matt Swanson with RBC Capital Markets.
Matt Swanson: Jeff, you’ve talked a few times on this call about taking market share about macros and then being able to invest more aggressively in a positive. We’ve obviously seen in the numbers that you’ve taken market share over the past couple of years. Can you just talk to us when that macro does flip hopefully sooner than later, one, how do you protect those market share gains? And two, like what are those first steps when you return to investment, whether it is to protect that market share or go after new markets as the macro improves?
Jeffrey Green: You bet. So implicit in the question is that, hey, when — as the macro continues to improve, where will you make additional investments? We’re investing as aggressively as we can right now. So I know we’re sort of showing our operating leverage but that’s not because we’re saying let’s flex our operating leverage. We’re instead trying to grow as aggressively as we can. But as Laura highlighted in the change in headcount both this year and next year as it relates to our overall growth, that’s in part because we surged our hiring during the pandemic and over the last few years so that we could capture opportunities like this one, including that we’re shipping the biggest release in the history of the company this year.
We started that in June. We’ve been releasing throughout the year. So we’ll continue to make investments in that same way. But I believe those are the investments that are making it so that it’s really hard for anybody to take that away from us. We spend most of our time thinking about how we compete with the biggest technology companies in the world. And the way that we compete is not to play the game the way they do. Most of them have conflict of interest all over the place and most brands are terrified to hand over their data and honestly to hand over their future to those businesses so that they’re dependent on growth to come from just handing over their budgets and hoping that they get good stuff. Instead with us, they have somebody who doesn’t own any media and that is a feature, not a bug, in that we help them objectively decide what media they should buy because we don’t have a dog in that hunt.
