Erica Gessert: So a couple of things on that. I would say we’re really pleased with the performance marketing — the performance of our performance marketing spend. We do see some improvements in yield there. We’re going to continue to balance our commitments on EBITDA margin accretion with investments into growth. Right now that — those investments in new growth are really focused on R&D. The other thing that you’ve seen us do since we reduced our brand spend at the beginning of the year is make some surgical investments in brand spend around new product and feature launches. We certainly do plan to do that next year as well, and so you will see us from time to time making brand spend investments. I think beyond that it’s a little bit too early to tell beyond the fact that I think that over time while balancing the kind of EBITDA margin accretion, I do think that we believe that we can make a good return on brand investment as macro factors return.
Hayden Brown: Yeah. The other thing I’d add on this Andrew is on the sales side specifically. We’re very focused as you can see from the performance of our numbers on the enterprise side right now on increasing the efficiency in our model and on sales team optimization. I mean this is a great time for us to be doing that and driving those improvements, which we think we can continue to deliver over time, which will help us in any demand environment, the current macro or an improved macro and just help us have a more efficient team to deliver the results that we want.
Andrew Boone: And then Hayden, I wanted to ask you a product question so Upwork Chat Pro. Understood this is basically the first version of the product. How did you see AI tools evolving as you guys help freelancers be more efficient on the platform?
Hayden Brown: This is definitely the first version of — frankly, there’s a lot of different features that we have been working on here. We launched the features in Q2. This is the latest in Q3, and Q4, we got more in the pipeline, and we’re going to continue experimenting. I think to the question of how do these tools evolve, there are so many different touch points that we have with talent across their lifecycle of matching with clients of delivering the work with clients and really delivering great outcomes. And so I think we are still in the early days of with the partnership side making sure that they have amazing tools the best in the market at their fingertips at discounted rates, and knowing which are the best tools to be using to deliver that work.
And then within our own platform with chat — with Chat Pro, clearly there is a lot we can do to smooth out the workflows, to give them even better experience for the work delivery through the pieces of the puzzle that we serve them as directly. So again this is early days. I think these tools are going to get better and better, both our own tools and those in the market, and we’re just excited to be pushing things forward, innovating on the forefront and getting a ton of customer feedback along the way that will continue to guide product roadmap as we go.
Andrew Boone: Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Eric Sheridan of Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.
Eric Sheridan: Thanks for taking the question and hope everyone on the team is well. And I’ll just ask maybe one big picture one is as we’ve gone through a lot of the big topics. When you look at these newly announced partnerships, can you take a step back and help us better understand what that will do to demand and supply on the platform over the longer term? And how we should be thinking about potentially partnerships like you’re announcing potentially improving the return of the efficiency of your go-to-market strategy over the medium to long term? Thanks so much.
Hayden Brown: Yeah. Thanks, Eric. We’re doing a number of different types of partnerships right now and we feel really good about this progress because as we look at it, it’s really building an ecosystem that is valued by customers and further differentiates Upwork, leveraging our unique data, our insights, our scale to really strengthen our competitive moats. And so to your question about return on the investment and the go-to-market strategy medium to long-term, there is a bucket of partnerships we’re doing around client acquisition, which really is about — if you saw the open ad partnership we did the previous quarter, this is an example of how we use a partnership to give talent to customers who otherwise may not know about Upwork and really use that as an acquisition vehicle with through open eye in this case to get to their end customers and give them the talent they need right here on Upwork.
And that is — it’s really early and yet exciting opportunity for us to replicate that model with other partners who we have lined up and very eager to work within that kind of capacity so they can get access to their end customers, the type of talent we have on Upwork to really achieve their business goals. So there is a whole acquisition motion that’s possible there, and again, we’re in the early days of building that out and seeing how it could play over the medium and long term. Then there are the other types of partnerships we’re doing around tools for talent, which really are around driving our flywheel around the value of talent on the platform, the efficacy of their work delivery, the quality of the results that they deliver, and as you can imagine the more effective they are delivering this work, the higher value they are and that really describes again our flywheel, which helps with all of the metrics and characteristics of what Upwork is.
And then the third category is around the education partnerships so things like Coursera and Udemy which again is around enabling talent to upskill themselves skill in new and better ways, particularly in this moment around this AI revolution which is incredibly relevant. And again that will touch our flywheel as the talent on Upwork is the most AI-enabled is delivering those 10X, 30X outcome. This is a place to come find that talent and again, that will drive so many of our metrics over time as that strategy delivers. So again, it’s early days on all of this, but that’s how it can connect to our broader vision for the existing business, our existing flywheel and things like client acquisition, in particular.
Eric Sheridan: Thank you.
Operator: All right. Thank you for your questions. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Maria Ripps of Canaccord. Your line is now open.
Maria Ripps: Great. Thanks for taking my questions. First, is there anything you can share with us in terms of how we should think about the pace of customer growth in 2024? Is this largely a function of the macro environment, improved sales productivity, or something else?
