Good morning, everyone. I'm delighted to be here this morning to present our FY 2024 full-year results. I will start with some opening remarks before handing it over to Sharjeel to cover the financials. I will then come back to present an update on our strategic progress before opening up to Q&A. Turning to slide three. Before diving in, I just want to address my intention to step down. It was a very difficult decision for me to make, but it was the right one for my family. I'm relocating to Florida for the next school year. With 75% of our employees in the U.K., I believe the CEO needs to be here. This was a tough decision, but what I really want you to get from this presentation is that my commitment is intact.
I'm going to continue to focus on the growth acceleration strategy, and I'm very enthused by the early signs of success. How you come is how you go. So my involvement and commitment have not changed. But what is also important is that Future is bigger than just me. There are 3,000 people on our team. They are led by a strong and engaged executive leadership team. While the board has already started the process of a search, I am not going away just yet, and with that, let's turn to the purpose of today's presentation, FY 2024 results. Turning to slide four. A year ago, I stood in the same spot and promised a return to organic growth. We are very pleased to have returned the group to growth and the H2 momentum. This was supported by the growth acceleration strategy, which I presented in December 2023.
GAS is starting to deliver, and I am so pleased with the progress so far. The group has demonstrated once again its ability to generate cash with an excellent cash conversion, and we've returned GBP 69 million back to shareholders through two buybacks and our progressive dividend. Today, we announce a new share buyback program for up to GBP 55 million. Sharjeel has hit the ground running and is already having an impact on the organization. We are lucky to have him, and I personally enjoy working with him each day. With that, I will hand it over to Sharjeel to cover the results, and then I'll come back and do strategy. The floor is yours.
Thank you, Jon, for the warm welcome. Before I cover the FY 2024 results, I'd like to take a moment to introduce myself and to highlight why I'm excited to have joined Future. I've been in the media industry for over 20 years now, having gained in-depth financial and operational experience across the value chain, including management of content, brands, and formats, monetization through advertising and distribution, as well as acquisitions and disposal businesses. So why Future? Well, two key attributes attracted me: Future's unique assets and operations, and its strong margins and cash generation. Firstly, the assets. As a consumer of Future myself, Retro Gamer and Edge, I know firsthand the power of specialist content that ignites your passion. Right now, there's a lot of content in the market competing for eyeballs. The key to engaging passionate audiences is that they trust the content being presented to them.
Future has more than 200 well-known brands that people trust across digital media, print magazines, and price comparison and in conjunction with its efficient operations and strong tech, Future is well-positioned to create, distribute, and monetize. Secondly, the finances. Future has a compelling business model, one that produces high profit margins, converting the vast majority of those into cash. The assets, along with the financials, provide a solid foundation to create shareholder value. I have now been at Future for just over two months, and I wanted to share my first impressions. It has been great to meet my colleagues across the group and to understand the finances of the business in detail. In terms of the business itself, the strategy is clear, and as you'll see today, the strategy is working. There's always more to do and to continuously improve.
But Future's strong assets and operations, coupled with the focus and disciplined investments made in the past year, mean there is a solid foundation to grow from. A talented leadership team who are focused on strategic and operational execution, more content creators in key brands and a larger social media presence, and a renewed U.S. sales team with increased digital ad skills, a stronger organization with more engaged employees. In a content company, the key ingredient is often its people. Success coming from strong talent and a positive culture across the organization, which Future has. With this momentum, Future can drive results. I wanted to share my confidence with you and to highlight that I will have a very strong focus on cash generation and driving shareholder value. Right, let's move to the FY 2024 business performance and financial results.
We are pleased to deliver financial results in line with expectations and ones that show that the growth acceleration strategy is working. We have invested in the business with discipline in the past year, and it is really pleasing to see that the financials are starting to reflect the benefits of these investments, as H2 momentum shows. We are on track across all of the key measures on this slide. Revenue of GBP 788.2 million was flat year-on-year on a reported basis, but on an organic basis, it was up 1%. Importantly, in the second half of the year, the group showed organic growth of 5%. Adjusted operating profit of GBP 222.2 million reflects the expected margin of 28%.
The group continued to generate cash flows with a robust cash conversion at 100% of adjusted operating profit, and the balance sheet remained strong, with net debt leverage at 1.1 after having returned GBP 69 million to shareholders. So my top-line message is that the strategy is working and the business has returned to organic growth. Slide 10 shows our businesses by geography. The UK-US split is how the business has been managed to date. The slide highlights how the diversification of our group has helped us manage the difficult market conditions. In the UK, revenue grew by 6% on an organic basis as a result of the very strong performance of Go.Compare during the year. Importantly, the UK revenue was stronger in the second half of the year at 8%, with better performance from e-commerce affiliates.
The U.S. declined by 6% on an organic basis as our U.S. business was impacted by market conditions. It is important to note we saw U.S. digital ads growth in the second half of the year of 2% and an acceleration to 6% in Q4. The growth in digital ads shows that the investment in the U.S. sales capability is working. This is a good start and will be an ongoing focus given the size of the U.S. digital ad market. The next three slides show our business, but this time broken down by division. This is how the business will be managed and reported on going forwards, starting with B2C. This represents 66% of the group with GBP 523 million of revenue in the period. B2C is made up of circa 50% from magazines, 35% from digital ads and other media, and the remainder from e-commerce.
Over the year, B2C declined by 6% on an organic basis, with challenging market conditions in advertising and consumer pressures on e-commerce. Within B2C, we also saw the continued secular decline in magazines. It is worth highlighting that this full-year performance reflects that there was a significant improvement in the second half, only declining by 1%. Going a bit deeper in terms of the three revenue streams within B2C, firstly, digital ads and other media. We saw growth in audience sessions of 2%, which was driven by the planned investment in expert content with more editorial and video. Across the portfolio, our digital ad deals were stable year-on-year, both in the U.K. and in the U.S., with more direct client revenues. U.S. digital ads saw a year-on-year decline of 6% but had good momentum in Q4, exiting the quarter up 7%.
The U.S. sales team investment is translating into green shoots. The U.K. digital ad market continued to experience difficult conditions during the year. However, we are now leveraging the U.S. playbook in the U.K., and more on this from Jon later. A focus in the coming year will be to increasingly optimize our inventory mix between first-party, premium programmatic, third-party, and open auction. The group has also focused on branded content deals, and this area saw good growth during the year. Again, Jon will cover this in a bit. Moving on to e-commerce affiliates. Overall, e-commerce revenues were down 9% year-on-year, with a continued volatile environment. However, in the second half of the year, we saw e-commerce grow 12%, with an improvement in basket size, such that basket was flat year-on-year. Recent peak trading was in line with our expectations, with year-on-year growth. Last but not least, magazines.
Our magazines business is a well-diversified portfolio and remains a significant part of the B2C at circa 260% of revenue. Our premium titles and weeklies both performed well. These saw less-than-anticipated decline as a result of improved content and price increases. Despite this, the business saw a secular decline of around 5%. Within the magazines business, subscription-based revenues are about 50%. Going forward, subscription will remain a focus as we seek to mitigate the secular decline. Turning to Go.Compare on slide 12. At GBP 203 million, Go.Compare now represents a quarter of the group's revenues. The performance across the year was very strong, with a growth of 28% as consumers look to reduce their costs following increases in car insurance premiums. Importantly, we have grown market share. Go.Compare is now number two in the car vertical, which is 64% of the business.
As well as car, Go.Compare saw growth in market share across home, van, life, and pet, which all represent further growth opportunities. Additionally, the tech replatforming is now complete. As part of GAS, we have proactively invested in the business, and it is now well-positioned to take advantage of further growth initiatives. And finally, B2B on slide 13. B2B represents 8% of the group with GBP 62 million of revenue. B2B is made up of 58% of digital ads, 28% from demand generation and webinars, and the remainder for magazines and media. During the year, we have refocused the portfolio, exiting loss-making businesses, and unified the organization to drive growth going forwards. Overall, B2B grew 2% year-on-year despite a challenging market backdrop, especially within the tech segment. There is more detail on the revenue and profit performance of the three divisions in the appendix.
In the future, we will continue to drive the clarity of our reporting and seek to add more color in terms of our key measures. Moving on to the P&L on slide 15. The group's gross margin remained relatively stable at 71%, down 1 percentage point. This slight dilution reflects the change in revenue mix during FY 2024, with more revenue from Go.Compare, which is dilutive at the gross margin level. During the year, sales, marketing, and editorial costs increased by 11%. This reflects the planned GAS investments, such as more spend on editorial and video, plus U.S. sales capability. Within this line, we also had increased marketing costs in Go.Compare, which enabled us to drive share in the strong car market. Admin and other overhead costs saw an 8% increase.
This was driven by the 5% average pay rise to colleagues from January 2024 and the GAS investments in areas such as organizational health. There was a reduction in depreciation and amortization year-on-year as a result of lower lease and some CapEx being fully amortized. Overall, this meant the group's AOP profit was GBP 222.2 million. Across the P&L, there was about GBP 20 million of GAS-related spend during the year. As planned, we expect GBP 5-GBP 10 million incremental GAS costs for FY 2025, as previously guided. We will remain disciplined on where this is spent. The next slide brings these P&L drivers together and shows our margin change. FY 2023, margin stood at 32%, with the following key drivers taking us to 28% by the end of FY 2024. The planned GAS investments reduced margin by 2 percentage points. Inflation and increases in salaries reduced margin by further 2 percentage points.
Future remains a strong margin business. As we progress through the plan, our expectations that FY 2025 margin will remain around 28%. In the medium term, we expect to be in our stated range of 28% to 30%. Moving on to the net debt bridge on slide 18. Cash is my personal favorite topic, and it is good to see that Future has continued its strong cash performance. Our opening net debt position of GBP 327.2 million and the leverage of 1.3 times. Future had a net cash generation of around GBP 150 million after CapEx, tax, interest, and exceptionals. We used this cash generation to pay down GBP 93 million of debt and to return GBP 69 million to shareholders. And even after those uses of cash, the group still reduced its net debt to GBP 256.5 million and a leverage of 1.1, with continued cash conversion expected to remain strong.
This highlights the group's solid financial position. Onto capital allocation. In line with our framework, this morning, we have announced a further GBP 55 million share buyback and have maintained our annual dividend at 3.4p. I wanted to highlight a few specific points regarding the framework going forwards. Our first allocation will continue to be organic investment. However, Future is relatively light in terms of CapEx requirements and can grow without needing significant working capital. Secondly, while strategic M&A is not a current focus, as highlighted by the gray box, if we do acquire small bolt-ons, they will be for a specific capability or technology requirement. For any small bolt-ons, I can assure you that we will have strict financial criteria. Thirdly, we will continue to maintain a strong balance sheet.
And if we have excess cash, we will return it to shareholders such that the group maintains a floor leverage of one times. Overall, the framework remains the same. However, this should give you more clarity on how we will apply our framework and how we will maximize value creation for our shareholders. Finally, turning to the outlook on slide 22. Our return to revenue growth in H2 puts the group in a good position to achieve current market expectations for FY 2025, with a slight weighting to the second half. From a profit standpoint, we expect to maintain an adjusted operating margin of 28%. As always, the group would continue to generate strong cash flow at around 95% plus of adjusted operating profit. Looking beyond FY 2025, we now expect to be able to deliver accelerating revenue growth in line with market expectations.
This is a call on the rate of recovery of the macro and on the media market, which we now anticipate will take longer. As I said at the start, the strategy is clear and the strategy is working, and the business is set to benefit from the GAS investment program, and with the end of my very first opening spiel, I will now hand over to Jon.
Thanks so much, Sharjeel. I will now kick off the strategic update. You would have heard me talk about this slide before many times, so just a quick recap. Our strategy is simple. As I've said many times, I believe simplicity fosters alignment, which is paramount for flawless execution. In the first column, we have three strategic objectives: reaching valuable audiences, diversifying and growing revenue per user, and optimizing the portfolio, which we announced a year ago.
These objectives are supported by four enablers in the middle column, which we believe create a competitive advantage. By driving these objectives, we have three outcomes: revenue growth, cash conversion, and rigorous application of our capital allocation framework. With that context set, let's turn to slide 25. Before covering our strategic progress in FY 2024, I just wanted to come back to a fundamental aspect of our business: our audiences. The ecosystem in which we evolve is constantly changing, from Google algo changes to AI, but one thing does not change, and that is the value and quality of our audiences. This morning, we are pleased to announce a partnership with OpenAI, the financial impact of which is not material. However, across Future's brands, we are focused on growing engaged audiences and building global communities.
Our partnership with OpenAI helps us achieve this goal by expanding the range of platforms where our content is distributed. ChatGPT provides a whole new avenue for people to discover our incredible specialist content. Our audiences have intent, whether it is about discovering the best running headphones or spring fashion looks. Intent is valuable for advertisers, given where users are in the funnel. Whether users are looking for a buying guide, news, or how-to type content, what they are looking for is expertise. We believe the quality of our editorial content is paramount, with brands acting as strong leading indicators. Our brands and expertise constitute a competitive advantage. Our audiences are platform agnostic. They come to us through social media, email newsletters, events, organic search, as well as the potential for emerging new channels of AI-powered search like ChatGPT.
As a result, the unique and intentional characteristics of our audience present opportunities, opportunities for our content to reach new platforms, emerging, or ones that are not even there yet. I hope you will take from this slide that our foundations are strong, with audiences at the heart of everything that we do. We entered FY 2024 with five objectives: invest in content to ensure, as I just mentioned, that we uphold our quality standards, depth of coverage, and relevancy. Diversify audience and revenue to ensure consistent delivery. Fuel revenue growth through a strong focus on U.S. digital advertising. Portfolio optimization, which is a continuous process to ensure that we position the portfolio for consistent growth, all while maintaining the strong financial characteristics of cash and margin that Sharjeel has covered, as well as a rigorous application of our capital allocation framework to create additional value.
Let me now give you an update on the progress of each of them. Turning to slide 27. I mentioned earlier the importance of content to ensure we remain relevant and keep our high editorial standards. We needed to invest in editorial creation and talent while making sure that we position these resources where they matter the most. During the year, we hired 50 net new editorial heads, focusing on key brands to create the greatest outcome. This allows us to create more and better content, which is paramount for our audience. The teams are focusing on balancing editorial efforts between buying guides, how-tos, and news to ensure that our sites remain relevant. The benefit of our investment has paid off with an increase of editorial output by 15% during the year, as well as continued stabilization of audience.
Moving on, I always think that theory comes to life through an example. Let me briefly explain the work that happened with TechRadar, the number one UK consumer tech website. TechRadar is a well-known tech brand that was launched in 2008, initially focused on phones. Post-COVID, it suffered from a lack of identity, and we were losing website users. We decided to invest in the brand to give it a second life. We redesigned the website: cleaner, better organized, easier to navigate, focused on a mobile-first approach. A revised taxonomy of content to make it easier for Google to navigate the site. Focusing on content creation and new editorial franchises. Diversification of audience sources. More social. More email visits, all with the goal of improving the user experience and driving traffic. This focus has paid off with a GBP 5.5 million monthly average session increase in FY 2024.
Moving to slide 28. Our second priority was to diversify our audience and revenue, starting with B2C. The reason why this is important is because it removes the risk of being overly reliant on any one revenue stream and enables us to manage group performance. We have progressed our reach outside of website users and sessions by increasing our social media followers, Apple News readers, and our email newsletter subscribers, a very valuable cohort. And we have progressed on new or newer monetization routes, such as vouchers, which is now GBP 13 million of revenue, thanks to a combination of strong SEO traffic and the rollout and annualization of some of our proprietary technology on some of our websites. Branded content is another route of monetization. It grew by 9% overall, led by the U.S. Let me just pause for a moment to lift the hood on branded content.
During the year, we launched Future Creative, our branded content center of excellence. Future Creative unifies the scale and expertise of who, what, where to the rest of the portfolio. The way to be effective and lead to high customer engagement in branded content is to have full integration from planning to post-sales. The reason why this is key is that branded content often leads to packaged sales, which include first-party direct display campaigns. So having this capability is not only important to our clients, but also for us to generate what I call 360-degree packages that bring many of our advertising products onto a single client plan. This example showcases how we lean into areas of opportunities, but also embodies how we adapt to advertising trends. Turning to Go.Compare. Sharjeel has already covered the fantastic performance from Go.Compare during the year.
This performance, combined with market share gains, is a testament to the work that has been conducted in 2024. From making sure our advertising spend is delivering the right outcome through content and mix of spend to the completion of the replatforming, and anyone involved in a full replatforming knows how much work goes into that, which enables us to push innovation and improve the user experience. As a result, we have made progress on diversification of revenue, with now 36% of revenue coming from outside of car. Turning to slide 30. Driving U.S. digital advertising. This was an objective close to my heart because it's my background. This has been a key area of focus, and I am pleased with the progress. U.S. digital advertising is in growth in H2 with an accelerating exit rate. We have implemented a lot of actions to drive this.
I've already mentioned the launch of Future Creative to drive branded content growth. We have reorganized the U.S. sales force, aligned incentive schemes, and created a one-Future approach where a salesperson can sell all of the Future inventory rather than just a single vertical. And we have complemented this with new talent. For example, during the year, the team won a tech client who wanted to reach a women's audience for a new product launch, showcasing the benefit of the platform. And that's just one example. I am very pleased with the momentum in U.S. digital ads, with plenty of energy in the team. Number four, portfolio optimization. This is a new pillar of the strategy launched a year ago. We mentioned at our half-year results that the board's view is that the businesses making up the group are significantly undervalued, and this view has not changed.
The board continues to keenly appraise performance and actively looks at further options to accelerate value creation across the group's business units. During the year, we carried out the work to build optionality for the group's divisions if it was right for shareholders. At the heart of this strategic pillar is our philosophy of being rigorous buyers, but also sellers. Price matters. We have also reviewed our portfolio and exited a number of assets in B2C and B2B to position the portfolio for growth. These decisions are not easy, but necessary when assets are dilutive to revenue and profit growth. As announced in September, we exited GBP 15 million of revenue. This process is continuous to ensure that we are well-positioned to deliver on the strategy.
We've done a huge amount of work in FY 2024 to lay a strong foundation and position the group for growth, and we will carry on in FY 2025. Our priorities for the next year resonate with the work we did in FY 2024, but we want to go further. First is yielding the editorial investment. We have invested in FY 2024, and some investment will annualize in FY 2025. Audience and editorial will continue to work closely together to drive traffic and continue to write quality expert content. Secondly, we will improve monetization. In digital advertising, we will deploy the learnings from the U.S. sales transformation to the U.K., focusing on modernizing product and a one-Future sales approach. We will continue to drive hard Future Creative to increase our sales of branded content. We will deliver on the B2B strategy by diversifying our customer mix and offering innovative products.
In magazines and in subscriptions in particular, we will be focused on pricing and marketing efficiency to improve subscriber acquisition and retention. Importantly, these priorities will be delivered by a strong and engaged team. As always, we will do this while driving portfolio optimization, maintaining our strong financial characteristics, and applying capital allocation, as evidenced by this morning's third buyback program, and to conclude on slide 33, I hope what you will take from this morning is that gas is driving momentum and that we are seeing encouraging green shoots of the effectiveness of the strategy. We have delivered on our promise to return to organic revenue growth. We have positioned the portfolio for growth through the closure of low-to-no-growth assets, combined with a change in structure to be more agile. There is more to do in FY 2025. The plans are in place, and the teams are engaged.
Importantly, the exit rate is giving us confidence to meet FY 2025 expectations. Thank you. And with that, let's do some Q&A.
Morning, Gareth Davies from Deutsche Numis. Maybe kick off with two from me. The first, the e-commerce affiliate revenue, plus 12% in the second half, is an impressive performance. Certainly, I wasn't modeling that. Can you just talk through the volatility there, maybe dig into it a little bit in terms of what's going particularly well, which categories are doing well, and sort of how you're feeling at exit and sort of tied to that? Any first thoughts on Black Friday and the trade in there? And then secondly, sort of interesting comments on Go.Compare and clearly diversification going well in terms of the 36% already coming from non-car.
Could you talk a little bit sort of strategically about execution in terms of how are you thinking about the further expansion? Is it, right, we're going to target mortgages, we go out, find all the product we possibly can, and then we specifically market at it? Or just any color you can give there on sort of what that execution looks like?
Good. Let's do it. I think what I'll do is I'll answer, and then you should chime in with any additional color commentary. Okay. E-commerce affiliate revenue. There's two factors that are at play there. The first is the vouchers performance really helped that. And what we've seen in vouchers is that people that did third-party partnerships for vouchers were significantly impacted negatively by algorithm changes. Google, in fact, had a specific algorithm change targeting people who were effectively outsourcing vouchers and e-commerce.
We do it all in-house. Our people review the products. Our people do the e-commerce shopping guides. Our people compile the voucher savings and put them on their own voucher pages. We've deployed that to multiple sites now as well, too. So we benefited from that significantly. The category that's doing well is tech, and tech definitely feels like it's bottomed out. And as I presented at the half-year results, we had seen e-commerce troughing and rebounding. The negative rates had improved in the half-year, and we had felt like there was some momentum. So this is a continuation of that trend. Black Friday. They are literally up on the fourth floor right now, furiously trying to tabulate the output, given that Monday was Cyber Monday this year, which is pretty late. What I will say is this: it was positive, and it was in growth.
It's within our expectations to meet the full-year consensus as part of having Black Friday perform how we had it perform. So initially pleased, and we will see the final numbers and kind of go from there. Go.Compare execution. The replatforming is complete. And I don't see us imminently entering new categories. We have a lot of opportunity and work and low-hanging fruit in categories like home, where we're number four, as compared to car, where we're number two. What I'm particularly excited about there is a few enhancements. The first is we've now created, if you forget your password, you can put your email in and automatically get a login link. That may sound trivial, but given that Go.Compare is a once-a-year activity, people forgetting their passwords is a big problem.
We will roll that out to all users so that people will be able to all log in with just their email address and a magic link if they don't want to have to try to find their password. The second area of development I'm particularly excited about is called indicative quote, which is where if you ask for a car insurance quote, we automatically send you a suggested home insurance quote. So cross-selling. So really, it's cross-selling, UI improvements, driving that 36% to even higher levels of diversification, and of course, continuing to be best in class in car. What did I leave out?
Not much, Jon. I mean, you've got a lot of it. Look, the only thing I'd add is, look, it's going to have tougher comparators, but the thing I would say, it doesn't mean you can't get market share.
And all the things that Jon described, whether it's car or whether it's home, you can get more market share. So that's the only thing to add.
Thank you, Morning. It's Lara Simpson from J.P. Morgan. Just a first follow-up on the outlook that you've given. I think you said top line would be H2-weighted, so just wanted to follow up on that and the moving parts, what's sort of underpinning that acceleration towards the end of the year. And then just to follow up on Go.Compare, clearly a lot of things to get excited about. I know the government has set up a task force to sort of look at the rising cost of car insurance in the UK. Just interested in first thoughts on that, any implications, particularly around sort of switching, price discovery, how are you thinking that scenario could play out?
Then just a last question on portfolio optimization. I mean, clearly a strong message from the board that you'll continue to look at the portfolio rigorously. We've seen the GBP 50 million disposals already. Do you think over the next 12 months there's still a bit more pruning of the portfolio to do, or how are you looking at that? Just different considerations. And if so, where would you be looking for some of the low-hanging fruit on those exits?
You take the first one, and then I'll do the second too. Sounds good. Okay. In terms of the H2 weighting, the way to look at it is in the first half, maybe 48%, 49% in terms of the weighting of the revenue and the rest in the second half, roughly.
The reason being, look, the GAS investments, we ran out about GBP 20 million this year, but you'll see the benefit of those coming into next year. And then I've said we expect another 5-10 million this year. So the time taken to show those investments will probably be a little bit more in the second half of the year. And that's the way to think of it. It's the investments, it's the time taken, it'll be slightly more H2-weighted.
On the Go.Compare regulatory point, first of all, let me begin by saying that we take consumer duty and treating the consumer with excellence to be one of our highest values. It probably is our highest value in Go.Compare. The board and the Go.Compare board take that unbelievably seriously.
With that said, our understanding of the policy, the committee discussion, it was targeting insurers that were charging exceptionally high rates, and so we don't see that as part of the problem in the market that we cover. We also think that, quite frankly, Go.Compare has been an exceptional value to the consumer during the past year where there were significant increases in premia, and Go.Compare served as a place where people could go to save money, and so it's very much in the service of the consumer, and we will continue to abide by that. On your portfolio optimization point, we use the language that it's a continual process, and we're always looking at it.
And if brands fall out of profitability or get close to falling out of profitability, we will close them, and we will probably do it in batches, similar to what we've done in the past. So I would expect that to be always something that's going on in the business, but I can't point to specific titles or closures that will occur with specific dates.
Yeah, hi. It's Nick Dempsey from Barclays. Just first of all, on the OpenAI announcement, so content companies like Reuters, Informa, Wiley, they've been paid tens of millions of dollars for AI groups to train models on their content. Here we're talking about something that's immaterial. So can you reassure us that you're not underselling yourselves in terms of this relationship?
Second question, beyond Black Friday, which we've heard about, what other indications do you have right now about your growth in digital advertising and e-commerce commissions in the coming months, which is, I guess, the key thing that we need to see to get your guidance, and the third question, just sort of following up on Lara's question about the first half, second half, I guess I'm interested in organic revenue growth. Do you mean that organic revenue growth will be better in the second half than the first half, and if so, could we see a decline in the first half, or are we talking about some growth in the first half, better organic growth in the second half?
I'll do the first two. You can do the H2s again. Okay. OpenAI. Nick, I worked so hard on this. You have no idea.
I chased these guys for a year and a half, and I really wanted us to have a partnership, and I will get to the answer to your question, I promise. It's really important that we have a relationship with this. It's the most important company on earth right now. I mean, it's important that we have a relationship from a traffic perspective, a dialogue so that we're able to give them feedback on products, a close working relationship so that we can make sure that when linking an attribution is done in the product, we have the best opportunity to be featured, and so I said at the half-year, and I said in all of our investor meetings that I expected the financial economics of it to be relatively modest and the traffic and ongoing relationship to be the key and to be the important piece.
With that said, Nick, you have pointed out a few people that got enormous checks, right? However, I would point to the number of people like Time, like others, like Condé Nast, like Hearst, who have not cited a dollar amount. Most of those companies are private, so they don't have the obligation to kind of give a steer on it. And I would point to the fact that most people got no deal. Most people got no deal, right? And so we did the best we could. I don't think we sold ourselves short. I closely involved the board in it because it is sort of an extraordinary and unique transaction. The board was highly supportive of doing it. We have a partner manager now at OpenAI who works closely with us. We didn't have that before. And we are getting some money, even though it's non-material.
So that would be my answer on that. On e-commerce, commission rates have been stable. In fact, commission rates were up slightly. Where we're really challenged and we need to continue to do the work is the UPVs, the unique shoppers, the volume part of the equation coming in. We've seen stabilization of audience. With stabilization of audience, we were able to achieve the 14% growth in the back half of the year. Black Friday was positive, and we think that we will continue to have the audience that we need to achieve the e-commerce revenue that factors into our full-year guidance of the roughly 1% organic growth. Okay, Sharjeel, on the two halves.
Just on digital ads and e-commerce, in terms of the funnel, it's the users, Jon. We were talking about this the other day.
I mean, when you look at the rest of it, it's remained relatively stable in terms of average order value, like I said. So it goes back to the top of the funnel and trying to get more people through it. And that, to a large degree, will depend on consumer confidence, especially in the techs area. In terms of organic growth, look, as I found out in the last 10 weeks, there's a lot of moving parts at Future. And when I look at B2C, you've got digital ads with relatively low visibility looking forward. You've got the magazines print, which is in a secular decline. You can see that progressing. And you've got the e-commerce, which you refer to. But then you've also got Go.Compare, which is going to come up against tough comparators in the first half of the year.
Then you've got B2B as well with the tech market segment under pressure there. I think the best way to look at it is consensus is between 1%-2%, roughly, of organic growth. So we expect organic growth across the whole year. Exactly how it pans out, look, it'll depend on the visibility. It'll depend on Go.Compare. From what I can see at the moment, slight weighting to the second half.
Thanks. Laura from Berenberg. Just firstly, in the remaining GBP 10 million or GBP 5-10 million of the GAS program, can you just detail how is that apportioned across Go.Compare and the B2C side? And then secondly, just in terms of cookies, obviously, Google's decision. Are you seeing any sort of changes in behavior?
And then finally, just on Go.Compare, what are your sort of expectations in terms of revenue growth for that business in FY 2025?
Okay. Let's do the thing where I answer, and then you fill in anything I wouldn't know.
Sounds a good plan.
Okay, good. All right. Okay, the GAS program. So GBP 5-10 million. All I can use is guidance for what we did with the GBP 20 million, which was we came pretty close to hitting the buckets as we outlined when we originally launched the GAS. We ended up putting a little more spend into Go.Compare because why wouldn't you? Spending into a favorable market. The breakout, I imagine, will be pro-rata on the 5 to 10, similar to what we did on the 20. In other words, editorial will continue to be a large focus.
Maybe spend a little more on a proportional basis in U.S. ad sales and U.K. ad sales because, quite frankly, we didn't do as much hiring there as we did. And you can tell from the numbers, 50 editorial heads, 100 heads added, roughly. A bunch of those went into sales and sales support, but not as many into sellers as I would have liked. So I would say if you use the assumption of pro-rata relative to how we spent the 20, you'll be in good shape on that. Cookies. Thanks for bringing it up. No one's talking about it anymore. I mean, basically, where we're at with it is Google said in the blog post where they said they weren't deprecating cookies, that they were going to roll out some change to Chrome that was going to allow people to turn cookies off effectively.
They've been completely silent on the topic since that announcement, however many months ago. We are going with the assumption and continuing to go with the assumption that we will have to adapt to a post-cookie world. So that means all the stuff I talked about in the half-year in terms of first-party data, using the Aperture platform, selling more direct and first-party. We moved two percentage points into more premium forms of inventory out of open auction. So we're ready for it, and we're preparing for it. The challenge is that until it gets turned off, advertisers are slow to move out of cookie-based buying because, quite frankly, everybody loves cookie-based buying. It's just a Google thing that they want to turn it off, basically. We do think that there are advantages to being able to use first-party audience data, and that's why we do the first-party sales.
But we're ready and we're prepared. We just have to wait for this change to happen. Go.Compare expectations. Growth. That's the expectation that I can give you, basically. Coming off of 28% and trying to time a market and figure out how much growth we will have in the next year is remarkably difficult. Single-digit% organic growth feels right, low. Okay. What I will say overall is we expect each of the divisions to participate in organic growth in FY 2025. But to Sharjeel's point, given that we're talking about 1%, it's obviously very low growth numbers that get you to that 1%. What did I leave out?
Not much. Just on the thing, look, the comparative, a lovely problem to have, by the way, when you've got tough comparators. But it'll depend on how the car market looks this year as people go for the renewals.
Do prices increase, decrease, and how many people come back? But going back to the market share, that's what we're concentrating on. All the things that Jon talked about in terms of the quick quote, in terms of Magic Link, in terms of one-time password, the ease of use of the website, that's to try to gain market share regardless of what happens in terms of the car market itself. And then home, number four, we've talked about it quite a bit. So when I look at that, probably it adds out to low single digits is our current view of Go.Compare.
Hi, this is Ollie from Jefferies. Well done on the results. You had a strong exit in 4Q for digital ads. Could you help us understand how much of that is from the U.S. sales force and how much is potentially from some sort of macro uplift?
You emphasized that tech has bottomed out, and I think from looking at ad agencies, you can see that broadly tech is somewhat coming back. On the additional hires that you've made, as a second question, can you help us understand, are these going to be cut at any point, or are these indefinitely staying as part of the group, given that I assume some of them have come from the GBP 20 million-GBP 30 million that you've invested, which you've allocated over two years? Could you just help me understand that? And then you also gave us a good showcase of TechRadar and the investments in the website. I was wondering if you could provide us with any other examples.
I appreciate TechRadar is a large share of your users, but are there any other websites, particularly in the top 10, which you've done something similar with, so we can help understand how the broader portfolio is? Thanks.
Sure. Okay. Let me just take one note. Okay. The perennial question, how much is macro, how much is self-help? The perennial question that I can't answer, that I get asked in every single investor meeting, and I always feel bad when I don't have an answer because I feel kind of silly. Let me give you some more color. The macro has improved in the U.S., and we have always seen the U.S. lead first with the U.K. following. The U.K. goes into bad times first. The U.K. then goes into bad times. The U.S. comes out of bad times, and then the U.K. follows.
So I definitely think that there's a macro benefit that we're having in the U.S. right now. And you can read the same stuff I read about the U.S. economy versus the U.K. economy. I also think the presidential election having that out of the way is particularly helpful just now in the U.S. as well. What I will say on self-help is we do need to take the learnings from the U.S. to the U.K. We do need to do this One Future sale that I've talked about that we did in the U.S. We need to move that here as well, too. It doesn't work right now that we have a Country Life salesperson who sells Country Life in the U.K. That person should be selling luxury.
That person should be selling Cartier and Audemars Piguet to Country Life and Wallpaper* and Horse & Hound and all the luxury properties. That's what we should be doing. And we will do that, and we will get that done. Okay. Onto your next question. The heads stay. The money goes in, the heads stay, and at anniversaries, and we've always been completely clear about that. And we need the heads to be able to maintain that increase in editorial output. Finally, on other examples, I'll give you a cross-site example, which actually is translated with results. We did a project we called Tip of the Spear. I'm not exactly sure what that analogy means, but that's what the team called it. Okay?
What that meant was they picked several categories that were particularly exciting, like wireless headphones, for example, where we felt like we could have good search ranks and improve, and across all the technology properties, they dramatically enhanced in set categories like that, mattresses being another category where they invested significant resources as well because techies are super interested in what mattress is best, apparently, so that was another area. That was a cross-site area choosing particular product verticals, and we have the results now in e-commerce to be able to show that Tip of the Spear worked, and we will roll it out to additional product categories.
Just one thing to add, just on the GBP 25 million- GBP 30 million. Look, it's in our guidance, right? It's in our guidance for FY 2025 in terms of 28%. And then going forward, we've said we'll operate between 28%-30%.
Those costs stay in there. And look, one of the great things, one of the reasons I joined is the compelling business model. If the macro improves in the UK and we keep those heads, the upside goes to the bottom line. So that's how you get to the 28 to 30. But those heads are in, in our guidance.
Good morning. It's Jonathan Barrett from Panmure Liberum. Three questions, if I may. First of all, just on the price comparison market, we've seen Direct Line make a relatively big move in strategy in terms of joining the PC market. I wondered if you can give us your perspective on what the pricing power is of price comparison sites. A lot of people thought the price takers, are you actually going to be the price setters from here?
Does that give you a positive feel for where you're going to go with your pricing power in that market? Second question. Just on the U.S. advertising playbook, two elements to this. First of all, your deployment in the U.S., is that giving you the optimism that you can not just close to U.K. level yields, but actually to U.S. level yields? So another step up from what you're kind of looking at. And then secondly, have you already started deploying the playbook in the U.K.? Because I've noticed some things on your sites which make me think you've already actually started doing that, but I might be wrong. And then thirdly, just on the capital allocation strategy, noticed the delay to the buyback till January, if I've understood that correctly.
Just perhaps give us a little bit of color on why that is, and maybe there's something we should understand on that. And then just also, will you consider increasing the dividend as part of your capital allocation strategy as well? The payout ratio, that is. Thank you.
Number three has your name all over it.
All over it. All over it. I've always been thinking about it.
Okay, good. All right. We are not a straight price taker in insurance comparison. We have the ability to put through inflationary increases and successfully put through inflationary increases every year. It's a competitive space. There are four players. But I do not think it is one-sided. I think it is a negotiation between the providers and Go.Compare on what the take rate is going to be on those transactions. You want to add something to that?
Yeah.
When you say inflation, do you mean premium inflation level or underlying economic?
Underlying economic. It does not have to do. We've gotten asked this question before, which is our take rate. Our take on it is not tied to the premium increase. So when I say that we're putting through inflationary increases, I mean macro, a few% a year. We're able to push through a price increase with the suppliers, basically. On U.S. ads, thank you for noticing. Yes, in the U.K., we're making a big branded content push. Future Creative is cross-border. It does exist, and we have a lead for it in the U.K. and a lead for it in the U.S. So we've pushed that through. The sales force reorganization, to be fair, we need to do that. That one future approach has not yet come to the U.K. Okay, capital allocation.
Yeah.
So the first question was on why is it in January. I wouldn't read anything into that whatsoever. It's just that the markets are quite quiet in December. I think it's better if we just start in January. And the logic is as simple as that. There's nothing to read into that. In terms of the dividend payout, look, I've made it very clear. We'll do a floor of one times. And if we've got excess cash, we'll make the decision with the board, whether that's a buyback or whether that's a progressive dividend. We'll make that a decision at that time.
Thank you. Sorry, just to follow up with you, Jon, if that's okay. On the U.S. playbook, can you close the extra gap from U.K. to? Yields. U.S., U.S. Thanks.
You know, I think a lot about U.S. yield. And the issue is we're probably not pushing yield.
I mean, yields were flat in the U.S. and the U.K. during the period. We're probably not pushing price aggressively in the U.S. because we're trying to win deals right now. We're trying to win new clients. So over time, I think over time, yields should improve in both markets. Not really sure about gaps, so to speak. But that's how I'd answer it.
When I looked back at the U.S. and I looked at where the yield was, and I tried to figure out why the U.S. yield had not increased, even in the premium areas during the period, it was because they're aggressively pricing to be able to win deals and take market share right now, which I think is the right thing to do, which is I put akin to putting rocket fuel in the rocket and not depriving it while you're trying to break through the atmosphere. Yeah.
Okay. Thank you so much, everybody. Really a pleasure, as always.