Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the strategy update of ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE. This conference is being recorded. Today's call is hosted by Mr. Dirk Voigtländer. Please go ahead, sir.
Yes, thank you, operator, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our conference call on the occasion of the presentation of ProSiebenSat.1 strategy update. Bert Habets, our Group CEO, will guide you through the presentation. The related press release, as well as the presentation documents, are available for download on our website. Following the presentation, Bert Habets, as well as our Group CFO, Ralf Gierig, will be available to answer your questions. With this, I would now like to hand over to Bert.
Thank you, Dirk, good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining our analysts and our investors call on the strategy update today. I'm very happy to do my first presentation as Group CEO of ProSiebenSat.1 and share my observations from the past months, as well as the strategic direction we are taking as a group. I'm well aware that you are all keen to know when we will publish our 2022 results, which we had to postpone by the end of February. As we have communicated, regulatory questions related to the business of Jochen Schweizer mydays occurred, which we have to resolve first before closing the books for 2022. More concretely, this means that we are examining possible regulatory requirements for Jochen Schweizer GmbH and mydays GmbH in connection with the Payment Services Supervision Act, the so-called ZAG.
We need to clarify if and to what extent vouchers may also fall under this law. We are currently in close and constructive exchange with the supervisory authority, BaFin, to clarify whether, and if so, how we need to adapt. This process is ongoing. We currently expect it to take further between four to six weeks. Rest assured that our teams are working full speed on this to resolve this matter. As soon as we have certainty over the timeline, we will provide you with a new date for the publication for the details of our full year figures for 2022 and our outlook for 2023. With this, let's get started. The media and entertainment business is close to my heart, with 22 years of professional experience in this field.
ProSiebenSat.1 is a great company with many passionate employees that I've been excited to work with every day over the last five months. Our industry is in a constant flux of change, and we will further strengthen our leadership position in the German-speaking entertainment market over the next years. I believe that the power of TV will enable us to become a powerful player in the streaming video market, but also into other businesses. I have known ProSiebenSat.1 for a long time when I was working for RTL, and I always valued ProSiebenSat.1 as one of our major competitors with a strong entrepreneurial and innovative power. Since November, I've been able to look behind the curtains and gain deeper insights into the heart of the company, where we produce not only great entertainment, but so much more.
We have found a very solid business model with lots of strengths, and we have all it takes to reach millions of people every day. We operate 15 TV channels in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. In Germany alone, over 60 million people are watching our programs, and 12 million monthly unique visitors are visiting our digital platforms. Digital is the right keyword. We have 13 successful digital entertainment destinations for our consumers, with over 54 video views every month. Also, our commerce and venture segment, as well as dating and video, have a strategic closeness to our entertainment business. With our commerce and ventures business, we gather around 248 million visits on our commerce platforms.
These strengths are all bundled in a great set of assets and capabilities that we can build upon to address the current challenges in the market and to turn this into future growth. We have a very strong and diversified entertainment portfolio. By acquiring the full stake in Joyn at the end of this last year, we made an important step in taking this entertainment power digital. The 100% stake finally makes us owner of our own destiny in the streaming domain. We are the market leader in smart advertising products with our leading position in advertising technology. Our advanced TV offerings allow us also to tap into new advertising client pools. We continuously successfully develop local, live, and relevant entertainment. With many well-known content creators from the German-speaking region.
Together with them, we develop state-of-the-art content for a young target group that also appeals to our advertisers. A great example for tapping into growth markets is our audio business, podcasting. We have grown our advertising revenues in our podcasting business throughout the German-speaking region and are already ready to expand even more in this segment. This setup holds great growth potential, but it will need full focus in the upcoming years to lever our advantages. In our commerce and venture segment, we have a proven business model with media for equity and media for revenue participations. Here, we invest in young companies and offer them advertising space by using our idle inventory. In return, we receive either a revenue share or convert the value of our airtime into a shareholding in the company itself. A smart way to further monetize our reach while building strong consumer brands.
Finally, we have high-quality dating brands in Europe and North America, as well as market-leading tech solutions for digital interactions. Before we dive into the details, I would like to take a step back and look at the strategic direction we are laying out. On what principles do we build our future success? First of all, we continue to increase our reach and impact in the German-speaking entertainment market by rigorously putting the consumer first in all we do. Secondly, we strengthen our leadership position in the German-speaking entertainment market and further optimize and experiment to diversify our monetization. We strive to maximize the time consumers spend across all our media offers and build more attractive digital services. At the end of the day, we are competing for leisure time of our consumers and thus want to outgrow our competitors.
Number four, we continue to synergistically create new digital businesses with entrepreneurs in the German-speaking region while crystallizing value for the group. At the same time, we will maintain strict financial disciplines while we save and prepare for future growth as part of our transformation journey. Therefore, we will focus on cost efficiency, profitability, and free cash flow across our portfolio. Based on our strength and this strategic direction, we have now defined our plan for ProSiebenSat.1 and what we want to tackle first this year. We are putting our entertainment back at the core of what we are doing with more focus on and expanding our digital business. By that, we want to strengthen our leadership position in the German-speaking entertainment market. How do we get there? First, we establish Joyn as the central digital touch point for our users' journey.
This will lead to an increase of our overall reach. Secondly, we focus on local, live, and live and relevant content, as well as build out our portfolio of in-house produced formats. We therefore strengthen our content production house and intensify our content partnerships. Thirdly, we optimize and diversify our monetization with smart advertising products under the umbrella of our advanced TV offering, and we will experiment and build new monetization initiatives. We are also becoming increasingly tech and data savvy. This secures and increases our monetization opportunities throughout the whole group. We thus transform our core business with a focus on digital growth and without economic compression. We want to reach our viewers anytime, anywhere, and we are adapting our organization to this objective following the acquisition of Joyn. In the commerce and venture segment, we focus on operational performance of our assets.
We maximize media synergies and redefine our portfolio. This means we have a closer look at how we can further crystallize value in the midterm. We have already established a position in supporting young digital companies to build a strong brand and accelerate their growth by using our entertainment power, and we will continue this path and be the enabler of young digital companies and support the next generation of entrepreneurs in the German-speaking countries. For Dating and Video, operational performance improvement and user-based growth are the main objectives for this year. In the midterm, we aim to further penetrate ParshipMeet Group existing international markets and crystallize value for our stakeholders at an appropriate time. Let me sum up what this means for our group as a whole. In 2023, we will work intensively on our cost base while adjusting our operational setup.
Our clear goal is to build a highly profitable local all-in-one entertainment champions that builds on multiple forms of monetization and leverages as much as possible our position in the markets where we operate in. Let's now deep dive into our plans for entertainment. The first prerequisite for growth is to reach a large audience. That's why we aim to maximize our total viewing time across all platforms, adapting more than ever to changing media consumption and establish digital offerings with a high appeal. Let me give you some examples on how we are driving reach and usage. We are establishing Joyn as the central digital hub, with all our platforms directing traffic towards Joyn. We aim to increase our local content and our own IP across all platforms. Our own production capabilities give us quick access to the right content and its development.
In addition, we maintain and develop lighthouse brands and family entertainment shows. Our linear TV channels have great reach, which we are also able to translate successfully into the digital world. We want to conclude more and new content partnerships to boost our media libraries. Therefore, as the brand Joyn suggests, we will enhance Joyn's aggregator's role again. We want the industry, being other media companies, producers, publishers, advertisers, but also agencies and creators and other talent, to join us in developing the premium content offering of Joyn. We use the strength of our news department that started on January 1st. Its content contributes to our live formats as well as our news snippets on Joyn, and of course, it underlines the public value of our offerings. We will further develop our windowing and multi-platform strategy and focus on creator-led premium content.
We reinterpret classic TV shows, combining them with the greats of social media cosmos and exploit it digitally. We enrich the content experience and improve user engagement on our platform. We already launched 16 special interest playlists for AVOD content on Joyn, the so-called FAST channels. They play curated advertising finance content back to back, like a playlist of thematic content. This allows us to retain viewers on the platform and to increase their time spent with our content. Other interactive features, as well as shopping, will also lead to higher user engagement. Let's now talk about Joyn as the cornerstone of our digital offerings. We aim to position our streaming platform as the number one freely accessible entertainment and lifestyle brand in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland for the entire family. Therefore, we focus on three types of content that reach different target groups.
First of all, kids and the young generation are our target group for growth. We will thus develop new flagship formats to bring them to our platform and strengthen their retention. Interactivity and creator-led content, such as live events with our well-known influencers, play an essential role here. For our largest target group, adult consumers, we will enhance our TV experience as well as our libraries. First, we expand our offering in Joyn original releases. Secondly, we offer them exclusive previews for the programs aired on our TV channels. Thirdly, we use selected U.S. premium content from our licensing deals. Fourth, we increasingly use special interest playlists from AVOD content with attractive topics to drive retention at Joyn. For the best agers, we will strengthen our live TV offering, especially with news and sports.
We will strengthen Joyn's aggregator role and distribute our partners in live TV on our platform. If the platform doesn't make a difference and we can adapt to the viewing habits of our viewers, then content alone decides on our success. This significantly improves our competitiveness compared to other streaming providers. The underlying element of Joyn's success will be our multifaceted content strategy, as it allows us to maximize reach across our platforms. Next to our local and live strategy, multi-usage deals like our recent deal with NBC Universal are key. They represent the future of windowing and give us the necessary flexibility to address viewers on all platforms at any time. Let me give you some details on this deal, as this is an example on how we want to source content going forward.
The NBC deal includes both linear, free, and pay TV rights, as well as extensive and long-run digital on-demand rights, both for AVOD and for SVOD. As you can see, our package includes feature films and series, both first runs like The Fast and the Furious, but also extensive library content deals, as well as factual and kids content. This perfectly fits our offering of Joyn. In Germany, this is the very first deal that such a large scope of digital rights has been put on the market by a major Hollywood studio. It is the first time that when we can flexibly decide in which order and where we want to air. For us, this is a real game changer as we now can perfectly cater to our viewers' needs. When it comes to our digital offering, Joyn will be the central hub for our reach.
To further strengthen Joyn's positioning in the market, we use all linear and digital channels, such as our TV websites, but also our social media channels as traffic engines. Additionally, we aim to build relevant partnerships for future growth. This is a key element in our strategy. We also want to partner with young creators to leverage our access to the creator ecosystem with Studio71. I'll give you an example how we have already demonstrated that this strategy works. Our Austrian streaming platform, ZAPPN, shows how we can use the strength of our TV offerings to create a compelling overall family household offering. With our streaming platform, ZAPPN, we focused on three growth levers: local, live, and relevant content, a great user experience, and an excellent windowing strategy between our digital and linear channels. This approach had a clear impact on the user base.
Unique monthly active users grew by 66% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2022. The minutes users spent on the platform increased by 60% to an impressive two hours and two minutes per day in the past 12 months. ZAPPN is a proof point on how we are able to shift eyeballs from TV to our streaming platform with a great content offering. Of course, Austria finds itself in a very different competitive landscape than Germany. Still, the power of our channels can massively leverage our viewing habits in the streaming world. What does this mean for the development of revenues in our entertainment business? Digital platforms and addressable forms of advertising offer the potential to monetize our advertising inventory at significantly better conditions.
The data on this slide show that the expected increase in the usage of Joyn and the growing share of addressable TV advertising come along with higher TV prices. This notably improves the monetization potential with more users and reach on our digital platforms. Thus, longer dwell times will fuel our future growth in the entertainment segment. Focusing on digital also supports us in optimizing and diversifying our revenue streams. We follow an approach with 3 steps that we can build. We optimize classic TV advertising. Monetizing our business with linear TV advertising, distribution, and media for revenue and media for equity deals are a proven business model for us, and they continue to be a strong revenue basis for our group. Therefore, we continue to leverage the high pricing power of TV mass reach. Additionally, we have the monetization potential of our idle advertising inventory.
Most importantly, we scale our advanced TV advertising products, such as addressable TV, programmatic TV, or advanced targeting by digitizing our TV inventory and introducing new sales offerings. We achieve higher reach and higher CPM, as explained, and thus a better monetization of our ad inventory where these products come into play. Thirdly, on top, we want to build and expand on that new direct-to-consumer initiatives. shoppable ads or live interaction can give us access to our customers and open up new direct-to-consumer revenue streams. To sum this up, we will be able to monetize our growing digital reach via our smart advanced TV advertising products and thus increase the digital share of our advertising revenue significantly. This is important to remember. On the one hand side, we are facing structural challenges in the TV business.
On the other hand, the digitization of our core business is opening up new revenue streams that will allow us to grow in the entertainment business in the long run. In the last few minutes, I have outlined our different initiatives we are focusing on that will accelerate our digital expansion. As you can see on this slide, we are thereby tapping into attractive focus markets. The prospects for the in-stream video advertising market alongside the markets of podcast advertising and content production are very good. Also, we expect e-commerce to gain importance in the entertainment sphere. We are experimenting with social shopping and shoppable ads to further develop this new revenue stream. The growth potential of this market segment is likely to exceed that of the e-commerce market as a whole. At the same time, we expect the combined classic and advanced TV market to remain flattish.
Transforming our entertainment business into an overall structural growing business means that our revenue split will continue to shift. Classic TV advertising will remain an important contributor but decline slightly over time. Our advanced TV advertising products will grow faster and offset this increase. We will see growth potential in our distribution and content business. The highest growth lies in the development of Joyn. I'm convinced of this path that it will lead the company to mid-term organic growth in our core business. Let's now have a closer look at our Commerce and Ventures business. Our Commerce and Ventures business has a strategic and successful closeness to the core entertainment business. Since over 10 years, we have been using our idle inventory, advertising inventory, to push the development and brand building of aspiring digital companies.
Since 2013, we have invested a total of EUR 400 million in capital in companies and realized over EUR 1 billion of proceeds from disposals. On top of that, our Commerce and Ventures assets have contributed for more than EUR 600 million in cumulative net advertising synergies. On the minority side, we are monetizing our idle inventory through media for equity and media for revenue investments. This is a proven business model for us and a model that benefits our group. We will continue to be the enabler of young digital companies and the next generation of entrepreneurs in the German-speaking countries. Regarding our majorities, we will continue to improve our portfolio operationally. At the same time, we will also continue our best owner strategy and verify how we can crystallize value for our group.
This means that we exit our investments whenever we can drive growth predominantly, we cannot drive our growth predominantly through our reach in our core markets anymore. In the future, following our investment criteria, we will only make majority investments in case it fits perfectly to our entertainment core business. We have also introduced stricter cash allocation discipline for our commerce and ventures activity. We will only apply moderate amounts of investments and thus only add cash to the airtime used in very selective cases. By doing this, we will push for a more synergistic approach for commerce and ventures for the future while preserving our cash for developing the entertainment segment. Our dating and video segment is a great proof on how we build market leaders through media. Back in 2012, we had a minority investment in Parship, thus in a pure dating brand based in Hamburg.
By adding our brand power, our operational knowledge, as well as our financial firepower, we built one of the top three leading online dating players in only 10 years' time. Today, we are majority owner of ParshipMeet Group, a dating and video group with eight brands operating in three continents. As such an international company, ParshipMeet Group now generates around two-thirds of its revenue outside of the DACH region, which means that media synergies with our core business are becoming of less importance over time. This is a journey that we all can be very proud of. After this build-up, we are now focusing on operational performance of our dating and video business.
This includes a much more integrated approach of the business, which allow the ParshipMeet Group brands to complement each other even better with regard to product, target audiences, user intentions, and territories. This reorganization is reflected in a new leadership structure. Our previous co-CEO, Marc Schachtel, has been appointed as Group CEO of the ParshipMeet Group, and CFO Henning Rönneberg also takes over the role of COO. Both of them are with the company since the early days. Former co-CEO and co-founder of the Meet Group, Geoff Cook, leaves the company on the best of mutual terms possible to pursue new entrepreneurial endeavors outside of the group. In alignment with the new leadership structure, ParshipMeet Group will also streamline its organizational setup and implement efficiencies, including personnel costs. These adjustments will mostly affect the U.S. operations, especially in the video segment.
I'm confident that the company will tackle the growing online dating market with even more vigor and cohesion in the future. Our primary objective continues to be value creation for all of our ParshipMeet Group stakeholders. For this, we continue to assess all options for value crystallization in the midterm. Although we have not yet published our financial results for the previous year and our financial targets for the current financial year, 2023, we have some clear financial goals when we implement our strategy. We are expecting growth in the entertainment business and see growth potential in businesses outside the core business. This makes us optimistic that we will be able to achieve average organic growth in the medium term in the already communicated range of 4%-5%.
The main growth drivers will be the digital initiatives in the entertainment business, especially Joyn, as well as the commerce and dating portfolio. We will continue to achieve this growth with sustained high capital efficiency. We will continue to target our ProSiebenSat.1’s return on capital employed to be above 15% in the medium term. This shows that we are always making planned investments against the backdrop of achievable value contribution. We will specifically support those businesses that promise high earning potential with modest capital requirements. Finally, we will continue to aim for a financial leverage ratio in 1.5 -2.5x adjusted EBITDA to net financial debt at the respective year-end. This policy has been in place for several years.
This range enables us to maintain a balanced relationship between attractive return on equity and the balance sheet strength. Before finishing this presentation, I want to make it very clear. What I presented today is not a revolution. It is an evolution, an impactful evolution with focus on speed and consistency in our day-to-day operations. Now it is all about how we execute. We need to be quick, we need to be agile, and we need to foster a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship. With this, let me sum up today's four most important takeaways. We strengthen ProSiebenSat.1's leadership position in the German-speaking entertainment market. We expand our reach with a focus on digital and continue to diversify our monetization. We invest in brands, in assets and talents that make a difference to our audience and to society. Finally, we save and prepare for growth.
I'm really convinced that we have all it takes. We're just getting started. Thank you so much for your attention. I'm looking forward to your questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, press star one to ask a question. We will pause for just a moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. Our first question today comes from Annick Maas of Société Générale. Please go ahead.
Good morning. My first question is, you speak a lot about how you want to be, you know, focusing on profitable growth and so on, but you don't really give a target on what the EBITDA margin is going to be in the future. Maybe you could highlight or give us a bit more details about this going forward. The second one is, you mentioned you want to do moderate investment in commerce and ventures. Can you maybe give us an envelope of the size of investments you want to do? The third one, you mentioned that in Parship, the cost-cutting is coming through the video segment. If I recall, well, video segment was the segment that was going to actually fuel the growth in Parship. Does that mean this video opportunity within Parship is not as significant as you may have thought so before? Thank you.
Thank you for your questions. Let me take them and tackle them one by one. Our focus on profitability, I think for today, as we are less focusing on the results presentation of 2022, which is pending as I gave and highlighted in my introduction, we will have to postpone all target settings for the 2022 results, but also for 2023 outlook and trend years. We will revert on that in a later stage on this specific part. With regard to our investments in commerce and ventures, we have introduced the concept of investing less cash and more synergistic, so more idle inventory as the basis for our minority investments going forward.
We are setting boundaries at the level of around EUR 50 million-EUR 75 million cash maximum on an annual basis across all the value buckets that we are looking into. That is, I think, the guidance we can give on your second question. With regard to ParshipMeet Group, indeed, the video business has seen a less favorable development in the last quarter of 2022. Also, this is a continued trend that we see at the beginning of this year.
This, together with the new leadership team, has led us to look into streamlining the organization, which was a topic that we had discussed for a longer period of time, and to really prepare the platform for future growth by aligning and bringing the European and the U.S. organization much closer together.
Thank you very much.
We will now take our next question from Nizla Naizer of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Great. Thank you. I hope you can hear me. I have two from my end as well. Firstly, just on the Jochen Schweizer review, could you give us some color as to the timing? Why now? You know, it seems like we're a few days away from reporting and this news had to come out, so some color there would be great. Secondly, on the addressable TV and targeted advertising, could you remind us just how ready is the underlying sort of German market for such technology? You know, do people have smart TVs en masse in their homes, or could that penetration improve? Some color on maybe the underlying market and your ability to reach consumers in Germany would be great. Maybe one final question, related to Joyn.
What are the factors that convinced you to maybe pursue an AVOD strategy with the streaming business, which is the impression I'm getting, versus more of an SVOD strategy? Would you still want to drive the subscription part of Joyn as well going forward? Some color there would be great. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you for these questions. With regard to Jochen Schweizer and the regular issues that we are tackling there, we guided that we would probably need up to four to six weeks in order to come back to you and indicate a new timing frame of our annual results release. As we are in constructive dialogue with BaFin, this process takes time, and this is our estimate based on today's insights. I think with regard to addressable TV and targeted ads, this is an ongoing development in the German landscape.
We're trying to improve our base for a rollout of these products by on the one hand side, making our inventory increasingly available for these products after the test phase that we have gone through. At the same time we see a very positive adoption from the advertisers and the agencies towards these products. This is a very positive sign that there is increasing interest from the market in adopting to these new services. We're also preparing for offering these product offers at scale going forward, which is an ongoing tech development roadmap that we are developing and which we are prioritizing in the company.
Maybe lastly, through the new distribution deals that we have in the marketplace and increasing tech and data capabilities that we are implementing, I think we become increasingly savvy in generating and rolling out these business models at scale. I think we are making good progress in developing this new market and new revenue line in the coming years. On your third question, Joyn as an AVOD strategy. Indeed our primary goal is to grow the reach offering of Joyn through our own content offering and make it into a broad entertainment and lifestyle brand for the whole family, as I try to explain. As we are late to the game in the streaming video space, I think the first priority on our side is now to build a meaningful streaming video platform with critical mass.
That is the priority. From there we can still develop other revenue lines like subscription, which we currently also are building. I think first in the upcoming period, we will focus on the AVOD part and attracting as many as viewers to the platform and enjoy the offer that we have there.
Thank you. Very helpful.
Our next question today comes from Julien Roch of Barclays. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Three question, please. The first one is, what you said today in terms of strategy makes perfect sense, but I struggle to see the significant difference between the new and the old strategy. You said it yourself, evolution, not revolution. Could you tell us what is the main difference between the old and the new strategy? Second question is, you gave us a couple of targets. You said that we would have to wait for margin target, but will there be any extra investment? Is the new strategy implemented with no extra investment like TF1? Will you have significant investment like ITV? The last question is what KPIs will you give us? 'Cause you talk about increasing the digital share of advertising revenue, but you weren't disclosing that.
You talked about concentrating on maximizing viewing time across all platforms, but you stopped giving us total viewing since 2020. What KPI will we have to track your progress? Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you for your questions. I think the main differences between the old and new strategy come to putting our entertainment business back at the center of the core of our group again, and within the entertainment to put Joyn at the very center on where we want to grow and where we want to build a meaningful digital presence. Now that we own the platform 100%, I think we finally are capable of developing this streaming video platform going forward. There we will continue to build also our further presence in the entertainment market with other digital assets, which could be a combination of organic growth and small M&A transactions.
I think if we look at Commerce and Ventures, we will be much more disciplined in our cash allocation, primarily focus on minority investments going forward and crystallize value of the existing portfolio when deemed appropriate. On ParshipMeet Group, we basically have been very clear that we want to crystallize value of this investment over time, and in the meanwhile, we streamline and optimize the business by bringing the U.S. and European organization much closer together. Second question, third question are actually all going into direction of KPI sets, which are something that we will come back on in a later stage once we share the financial results.
Yeah, Julien, Ralf speaking. On, in terms of, let's say, content investment, I think it's important to note that not much will change. You know, our EUR 1 billion number from the past and this will also be the benchmark for the future periods. It will be much about windowing, yeah. It will be much about exploiting digital rights, which so far we couldn't use on our streaming platform. In this sense, yeah, we will stick to our investment policy as we did in the past.
Thank you very much.
Our next question today comes from Adrien de Saint Hilaire of Bank of America.
Yeah. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. First of all, do you mind giving us some operating and financial KPIs around where Joyn is today? Secondly, there is on slide number 13, you showed the different buckets of entertainment. Just wondering what is the underlying profitability of each bucket and how you see it going forwards? Thirdly, maybe I've missed it, but I don't think there is any mention of like what sort of dividend payouts you would like to have under that new strategic direction?
Adrien, I can start with your first question maybe. We will put out a full set of obviously, operational and financial KPIs for Joyn when we release our full year financials and talk about the 2023 outlook. Just one, yeah, one figure you know, yeah. December 2022, we had more than 4 million monthly video users, which is a number you probably know, and obviously we want to develop it from there. Yeah. Also with respect to your second question, yeah, all the underlying KPIs, profitability buckets, et cetera, we will elaborate on when we have our full year results released and obviously the outlook for 2023. Yeah.
I think the third question is going into the same direction. Obviously we will talk about dividend when we have our full year results released and talk about the outlook.
Yeah, that's great, Ralf. Thank you. Maybe if I can squeeze in one more. I think we heard from RTL in Germany that they have Q1 or they see the Q1 German TV ad market down 15%, 20%. Is that also what you're foreseeing at the moment?
I mean, as you know, when we look at the comps, obviously Q1 is providing the toughest comp. As you might recall, Q1 last year was up 9%, 10%. Also given the macro environment, I think it's a tough start to the year, but we expect gradual improvement. More to come when we talk about 2023. I don't want to put out a precise % number right now. Obviously, we have seen the figures from ITV. We have heard RTL. I think the trends in the big markets are similar, I would say, for the start of the year.
Yeah. Very clear. Thank you.
Our next question today comes from Matthew Walker of Credit Suisse.
Thanks, good morning. I just wanted to get a bit of clarity on the current trends in the dating on the revenue side. If you could say a little bit more, you obviously, I think you said it was a little bit weak in video. Could you give us a bit of a feel for how dating revenue is trending? Obviously, how deep is the cost cutting on dating? I know you don't wanna say because, you know, you haven't put out your 2022 results, but if you could give us a feel for how much either in absolute EUR or margin uplift, you know, we should be assuming in dating because it feels like quite a significant change in policy on dating.
Also could you just, comment on, you know, you mentioned on just recently on the advertising front, but given that the IFO has been improving and energy costs are coming down, wouldn't you expect that to show up, in the advertising market? When do you think that might happen?
Hi Matt, Ralf speaking. As we said at the beginning of our presentation, we will elaborate on 2023 trends in detail when we put out our full year financials and talk about, let's say, the outlook. Apologies that I don't want to go into detail for dating at this point in time. You will get all relevant KPIs and our views on how we see the business when we talk about our full year financials. Maybe but one comment on ad trends.
When you, when we look at the macro picture in our core market, Germany, the biggest market in which we operate, we see a distinction between first half year and second half year with for GDP forecasts and also consumption patterns.
Clearly, we would also expect and hope that the trends in particular in the second half year will improve. This is as much as we can say at this point. Apologies, but we will talk in more detail when we have our full year results.
Okay, thanks a lot.
As a reminder, should you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. We will now take a question from Conor O'Shea of Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Just a couple of questions from my side. Just the first question on the Jochen Schweizer mydays situation. Just to give us a little bit more background about this, but just wondering about the timing of this issue. You've owned these businesses for some time now. Why, why now? Is this suddenly, you know, an accounting problem? You know, if it is found that the activity is covered by the Payment Services Supervision Act, can you give us a sense of what the practical implications of that would be? Also is this something to do with the repayability of vouchers as a result of the pandemic? Is this why it's an issue now?
The second question, just in terms of... I know you said about the advertising outlook that you don't want to comment about 2023, but just in general, you, I think, have a higher exposure to, say, digital native advertisers, and you mentioned that this was compatible with your strategic vision. Obviously a lot of those digital native companies, e-commerce companies are going through a much more difficult time now with the model, with the reset in interest rates and so on. Are you still confident that that is gonna be a source of growth in the medium term, as strong as it has been in the last decade?
Thank you for your question. I think on Jochen Schweizer mydays, it's important to understand that we are dealing with a possible regulatory issue here and not an accounting issue. The discussion here is whether parts of our business are subject to the, what we call, a Payment Services Supervision Act, ZAG in Germany, it's called, and we are currently investigating to what extent this might possibly be the case. We as I indicated, we are in constructive dialogue with BaFin on this matter, which takes time to resolve. We indicated we would need four to six weeks of that. It's important to understand that it's very difficult to control the timing aspects of this matter.
Secondly, I think, if I understood the question correctly, we are very much committed and convinced to continue investing in the commerce and venture space as we build a very strong position in this community of enabling young digital companies to grow quickly by providing them with our power of air time, which we will continue to do. I think there is a large portfolio of companies that is still looking for cash and the power of our air time to further build the company. I think even in this difficult macroeconomic environment, there we're finding new rounds of financing become increasingly difficult. There is an additional opportunity for commerce and ventures to build new relationships and build new partnerships in the commerce and venture space. I'm quite positive on the future development and opportunities we will see there.
Okay. Fair enough. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Richard Eary of UBS. Please go ahead.
Apologies up front, but I'm traveling, and I've had sort of bad signal. If you've answered these questions before, I apologize. Just to go back to obviously a couple of comments in the statement earlier about reinvesting or investing in originals and talking about cost out. While I appreciate you don't really want to talk about 2022 and 2023 numbers, is this part of a multi-year reinvestment curve where ultimately you think you'll come out stronger, but there might be some reinvestment in the business over a period of years at the outset? That's the first question. The second question is that you put up a slide talking about CPM increases 1.3 times, 1.4 times linear.
I'm just trying to get an understanding of that, is that that seems quite low from what we're hearing from other broadcasters across Europe. Is that, is that an issue around ad load or is that an actual CPM number, and whether you can talk to that number? Just lastly, in the slide on revenues, you talked about the in-streaming revenue opportunity. That's where the growth was coming from to drive the entertainment business. Can you just expand on that and talk about how big that opportunity is and exactly how that advertising model will work and how that is gonna be different from your essentially current advanced advertising or addressable TV platform within the existing entertainment business? Many thanks.
Richard, let me start with your first question. Obviously, we are looking year by year. We are looking into our investment needs. I already briefly touched upon what we see as a relevant number for content, which in our view does not necessarily need to change and is around EUR 1 billion. This is our annual investment cycle. We invest regularly every year into content. As you know, with a focus on local live, where we have decent successes. The combination of our linear channel network with our streaming platform Joyn now offers the opportunity to apply a kind of multi usage of content.
The deal we struck with NBCUniversal also enables this for, let's say, licensed content much better than in the past where our digital rights were really limited. Maybe on the CPM topic. We will develop obviously the CPM views. I need to compare what other broadcasters do, but the German ad market is attractive. We will be working on improving obviously all relevant KPIs. On the streaming opportunity, I mean, this is something we would like to elaborate on when we have our full year financials and the 2023 outlook. Please bear with us. This we will touch on when we sit down next time.
Thanks. Bert, can I just ask a follow-up? Just with regard to the content. What you're suggesting is that we're not going to see a significant step change in content investments over the next couple of years to drive the strategy change. It's going to be done with the existing envelope. That envelope includes buying additional rights for digital beyond what it is on linear, such as the NBC deal.
Yeah. Let me shortly comment on that, because I think it's definitely part of our strategy to optimize within the existing content budget of the mentioned EUR 1 billion by half, to optimize as many as digital rights in this strategy going forward, which is a process we have already started in 2022 and will continue to optimize in 2023. Also with all the new deals that we will source going forward. We will selectively invest into original content. Coming from the content budget that we have shared with you today. It will be a continuous optimization within the existing content budget to learn also from the performance this will bring to the platform. From these insights, we will decide on any additional subsequent investments in the coming years.
Also bear in mind that in building Joyn, we want to actively also aggregate and partner with other players in the ecosystem, which means that we do not have additional content investments from these partnerships. We will also be able to be open for revenue shares or different monetization models between partners in order to build a platform going forward.
Thanks, Bert. Just maybe can I follow up with regards to the Warner deal? Obviously, the Warner deal has now expired. Is that correct? That was obviously your largest output deal. Does that provide more flexibility or is that flexibility being taken up with an expanded NBC deal?
The deal we highlighted is the NBCUniversal deal. I think there we versus our previous long-term partner, Warner Bros., we had a significant improvement of terms and rights in the new deal that we concluded.
Thank you. That's helpful.
This concludes today's question and answer session. I would now like to turn the call back to your host for any additional or concluding remarks.
Yeah. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this was the last question for today's call. Thank you again for joining us today, and we hope you found the conference call informative. As always, my colleagues in the investor relations team and myself will be available for any follow-up questions shortly. Thanks everyone and goodbye.
This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.