This meeting is being recorded.
Thank you for joining the call today. I'm Chantale Millard, the Chair of Tinybeans, and our CEO, Zsofi Paterson, will be taking you through the FY 2024 results update. There will be some time at the end for some questions, so I'll now hand you over to Zsofi to run through the presentation.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining the Tinybeans annual results presentation. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Zsofi, and I was appointed as CEO in July last year, after a decade of strategic leadership across the U.S. and Australia in consumer technology businesses. I was and still am a passionate and avid user of the Tinybeans app, and I'm delighted to be here, presenting the results. I'm going to just jump off, camera while we go through the presentation, then I'll come back on for some Q&A at the end if there are questions. With our private family photo sharing app, Tinybeans is loved and trusted by thousands of families around the world to safely and securely save and share, photos and videos.
We combine technology with a deep understanding of family needs and digital privacy to make parenting more joyful, simple, and meaningful. Starting the presentation with some highlights. 2024 has been a year of transition for the company, with a new CEO, a refined strategy, refreshed brand, updated mobile products, new marketing plan, team changes, and a refreshed board. Tinybeans boasts market-leading consumer subscription metrics with high retention, engagement, and referral rates, and crucially, record subscription revenue growth over the year. We service a large regenerating global market with five million births each year, and reaching currently less than 1% of these offers a massive room to grow. We have a strong board with new appointments in our key markets of the U.S. and Australia, and with a renewed focus on Australia, given the privacy sensitivities and ability to compete in our home market.
We've demonstrated a disciplined approach to costs, reducing OpEx by 15% year on year, and we have plans for material costs out in 2025 as we continue to pursue a subscription-led strategy. Some of our key numbers and metrics on a page. As I mentioned, we grew subscription revenue by 40% year on year, up to $2.9 million, and subscription revenue now contributes over 50% of our overall revenue. This is primarily due to high retention, 89%, of our paid subscribers over the year. We held our paid subscriber and monthly active user numbers at 51,000 and 950,000, respectively, which was no small feat, given the material price increase our subscribers faced for the first time. We increased our average revenue per paid sub by 42% and our customer lifetime value by 11%.
We have really high engagement with our daily active over weekly active user rate, around 59%, which is up there with the likes of Candy Crush and Instagram. We have over 64 million memories uploaded over the year and a huge 93% recommendation rate from paid subscribers in our most recent survey. Looking a bit more specifically, while total revenue was down, subscription revenue increased by 40% year on year, with 36% ARR. As mentioned, subscription revenue is now our major revenue line, contributing 53% of total revenue. This is in line with our go-forward strategy, focused on growing our subscriber base and subscription revenue, as these are key to the company's valuation moving forward. The focus of the year was to stabilize the product and retain subscribers following the May 2023 price increase, and we did this.
Our average revenue per subscriber is $72, being a 43% increase over the year. And as we've talked about previously, a key indicator in a new subscriber's propensity to engage and convert to being a paid subscriber is inviting and activating their family members or followers. And we've successfully seen this number grow over the last six months due to product and lifecycle updates. On average, our active paid subscribers invite 18 family members to follow their journal, so we have really strong network effect potential. All of this sets us up really well for the year ahead. Moving on to the business update. Tinybeans caters to new parents, and with over five million births each year in our key markets, we are currently acquiring less than 1% of these every year.
So with a strong platform and brand and building our marketing, distribution, and acquisition efforts, there is substantial opportunity to grow market share. You just have to watch the news or read the newspapers to see the ongoing discussion about privacy and the risks and dangers of sharing kids' photos or information on social media. Tinybeans provides a solution for this, and this is key to our go-forward growth initiatives. Further, when compared against the native platforms, Tinybeans has been custom-built for multigenerational families sharing over multiple years. It's platform-agnostic, with features designed for family use and with privacy at its core. The added benefits of printed albums and relevant age-and stage-based content further differentiates us in market. And as a freemium product, we cater both to those with and without the ability to pay for the service.
In summary, we compete in a big market with a relevant and robust solution. Over the year, we have done a lot to improve the product performance and address stability and quality issues, and it shows in our ratings and reviews. Our app really is better than ever. We've uplifted the end-to-end experience, have focused on some key UI enhancements, and importantly, the crucial steps of onboarding and activation, which are key for any subscription business and the strongest indicators of LTV. With a go-forward focus on growing a valuable subscription business, having a product that is stable, easy to use, and seamless for family use is essential. Earlier this year, we rolled out our refreshed brand, built around the value proposition of privacy, joy, and connection.
Whether when you're using our mobile apps, reading content on our website, or engaging with the social channels, you get a seamless brand experience. This service has allowed us to confidently engage in partnership conversations, attract new advertising partners, and we've seen some uplifts in our marketing efforts driven by a stronger web and brand experience. Tinybeans is a high-trust platform for advertisers to safely reach a desirable audience. However, with the decline in advertising revenue since 2022, we've had a lot of work to do to rethink our sales proposition, especially at a time when publishers around the world are struggling. We've had some recent wins and improvements, securing campaigns from great national and international brands, including NBCU, LEGO Duplo, and Paramount.
We believe that commercial revenue plays an important role for the company, but we are continuing to think about the model that makes the most sense given our go-forward strategy and our core asset. And you will have seen over the last two months, we've announced two key appointments to our board: James Warburton, the former CEO of Seven West Media in Australia, and Mike Rothman, the founder and former CEO of Fatherly in the U.S.. Both bring great strategic and operating experience and relationships across the media, digital, and investment communities in our key markets. We've also made some key hires in Australia across data and analytics and brand and marketing, which you'll see are already having an impact in our strategy section overview. I'll touch on the financials and then refer people to the presentation or annual report for more detail.
Turning to operating performance, noting that all references are in U.S. dollars. The company delivered $5.41 million in total revenue, with $2.34 million coming from advertising revenue and $2.97 million from subscription revenue, a 40% increase year on year. Our operating expenses were reduced by 15% year on year to manage the softer revenue outlook. The cash balance as at 30th June was $3.39 million, following the successful completion of a capital raise in May this year. Operational cash burn for the year was $3.08 million. Moving into FY 2025, we're continuing to review our cost base and expect to see substantial cost reductions as we continue to rationalize our strategy and our operating model. You'll find our P&L and balance sheet on the following pages for your reference.
Now, turning to our strategy. While relatively small today, we have big, aspirational, long-term goals that drive our strategy. We are focused on growing our monthly active users substantially from one million to a goal of 10 million. We want to see one in four first-time parents use Tinybeans to save and share their precious moments. We want to be a global leader in digital parenting category, and we want to grow our revenue to $25 million, ensuring a concentration and most growth coming from the subscription revenue line item. Looking at our strategy, our key pillars are: number one, grow brand awareness and subscriber acquisition with a brand-centric, insight-led marketing growth strategy focused on Australia and the US, and utilizing partnerships where possible for cost-effective access.
Secondly, increasing subscriber activation and engagement, knowing just how important those first few interactions with the app are for retention, growth, and LTV. And thirdly, pivoting our monetization strategy, continuing to move away from a publisher-led model and centered more around our core assets and first-party data. A quick look at some insights. During our capital raise, we talked about the importance of making data analytics more central to the company. Over the last few months, with the addition of a small analytics and data team in Australia, we've begun that transformation, and we're using those insights to inform everything we do. We recently conducted a survey of our Tinybeans subscribers, in which we discovered 90% cite privacy as a key reason for choosing Tinybeans.
A whopping 93% of subscribers have recommended Tinybeans to friends and family, and in line with that, 72% of our subscribers discovered Tinybeans from friends and family. You'll see how these insights feed squarely into our marketing and product strategy in a moment. Further, in mining our rich behavioral data, we have confirmed over 60% of our subscribers are acquired in a baby's first two months. 75% of our subscribers return a second month, once a follower engages with their kid's journal, and a subscriber's propensity to return to the app materially increases after four interactions. Similarly, you'll see how these insights inform our product and lifecycle strategy. Turning to our first objective, marketing and growth.
Job number one this year is to continue our transition to a full funnel marketing strategy, leveraging top and bottom funnel tactics to grow brand awareness, and importantly, drive subscriber acquisition. This is key to our go-forward plan, and we're seeing some early traction with our recently announced Babylist partnership in the U.S., starting to contribute highly qualified potential new subscribers. And we have many more activations with Babylist in the works to roll out this year and in 2025 . We also have a pipeline of other conversations underway with a range of highly aligned brands and potential partners in the U.S. and Australia, which we will keep the market updated on.
Other top-of-funnel new initiatives include: a recently launched PR strategy to position Tinybeans as a solution for parents concerned with social media and privacy, and utilization of ambassadors and social media influencers to tell our story and promote our brand, and using genuine Tinybeans users as ambassadors where possible, because these people really are our greatest allies. Of course, we're continuing to optimize SEO, performance media, affiliate marketing for cost-effective bottom funnel activity, as well as retention and lifecycle marketing to nurture, engage, and retain our valuable and large user base. Switching gears to product, where our efforts are all focused on initiatives to support sustainable product-led growth. We've done a lot of work to address the stability of the product, and we remain focused on ensuring the core photo sharing functionality is seamless.
We know just how important those early activation steps are for new free subscribers, so we continue to iterate and optimize that experience, and we're seeing some nice results. We're reviewing pricing, plans, and product tiers to make sure we're finding the balance between value and offering for families across the free and paid layers, and we're iterating our referral functionality and building out a gifting solution, which will be hopefully launching in the next month or two. And this both of these things enable the organic behavior, address an often requested customer support request, and allow for registry integrations to support broader distribution, including registry integration into Babylist. And finally, looking at monetization, where we continue to shift away from publishing and towards a commercial model, more focused on our core assets, being first-party data and the photo sharing app.
We're thinking a lot about the products that sit around our digital experience, including photo books, digital frames, and other photo-based opportunities to offer more value to our subscribers and increase average revenue per user. We'll take a partnership approach where we can. Further, we think about how we provide a safe, differentiated platform for brands to reach our highly engaged families in the Tinybeans free experience, including our powerful email products. We're talking smart, contextual, and targeted brand spots that don't rely on heavy content creation and publish-like scale. We believe that commercial revenue plays an important role for the company, and we're continuing to think about the model that makes the most sense given our go-forward strategy. To wrap up, FY 2024 was a big year of transition for the company.
We're pleased to have the year behind us and now to be focused on growing brand awareness and subscriber acquisition. Our core metrics are excellent. We just need more people knowing and trying Tinybeans. Shifting our commercial strategy away from publishing and in line with core product offering and reducing our reliance on advertising revenue. We're gonna be disciplined with our cash, allocating resources efficiently in areas that will generate long-term value, with further cost outs expected over the year and leveraging the expertise of our bolstered board, which is now staffed with great operators who can contribute meaningfully to growing the enterprise value of our company. We're excited for the year ahead and thank everyone for their support to this point.
Great. Thanks, Zsofi. And and we did note that it seems there was a bit of a delay with some of the documents getting released by the ASX this morning, so but they did all pop up out just before the call started, which is great. We were a bit worried for a while, so you will be able to find the document and all the other announcements once once you get off this call. So, yeah. So I think we'll go open it up if there's any questions at all. No? Nothing at all. You've been let off lightly, Zsofi.
Also sitting in the dark.
Fantastic. All right, look, we know that it's a big day for a lot of results coming out, so if there aren't any more questions, I'll just we'll just wrap it up. It has been a massive year of change, and Zsofi and the team have have pushed a lot through and really setting us up for that sort of growth in FY 2025 and beyond, and now to really drive some of that people grow through paid subscribers. So as a board, a new board and new members as well, look, we're all really, really excited as Zsofi is and look forward to getting more updates as the year progresses and then particularly at the AGM. So so I'll just give one more shout out there. No questions at all? No. Okay, fantastic.
And, of course, as always, anything, a lot of you have probably got our direct emails, so and there's always at the bottom of the announcement. So if you've got anything you think of later on, please send it through. Otherwise, we look forward to giving you more updates shortly. Thank you for attending.
Thanks, everyone.
Bye.