Third quarter 2021 conference call. Today's call is being recorded. The press release containing the transaction details is available on the Company's website at perion.com. Before we begin, I'd like to read the following Safe Harbor statement. Today's discussion includes forward-looking statements. These statements reflect the Company's current views with respect to future events. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors, including those discussed under the heading Risk Factors and elsewhere in the Company's annual report on Form 20-F. That may cause actual results, performance, or achievements to materially differ from any future results, performance, or achievements anticipated or implied by these forward-looking statements. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances. As in prior quarters, the results reported today will be analyzed both on a GAAP and non-GAAP basis.
While mentioning EBITDA, we'll be referring to Adjusted EBITDA. We have provided a detailed reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to their comparable GAAP measures on Form 6-K, which has been filed and is available on our website as well. Hosting the call today are Doron Gerstel, Perion's Chief Executive Officer, Maoz Sigron, Perion's Chief Financial Officer. I'd like to now turn the call over to Doron Gerstel. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Thank you, Kevin. Thank you everyone for joining our call. We are going to do it via Zoom in order to show better what we're able to achieve this quarter. The theme is that the momentum is definitely continuing. Together with me on the call, Maoz Sigron, our CFO, and let's get started. The theme of this call is the momentum is continuous. Very much Q3 was an all-time record quarter in revenues. We build an innovative technology that allows us to scale. I will very much dive deep into all those growth drivers in a second. First, let's take a step back, and as we are trying to do on every call, in looking on what's happening on the digital ad spend.
The market is growing and growing rapidly. As you basically can see, at this point, the CAGR for the next four years is 14.3%. It's all driven by the fact that more and more dollars is being shifted from traditional channel to digital channel. That's definitely something that is coming in across all channel. I would like to mention as I being asked on every call, is what's happened when we've been in post-COVID. We do believe that when it comes to performance advertising, it's definitely here to stay, and it will grow in a much more rapid way only because more and more consumer being exposed to the possibilities of buying online and buying online, and advertisers are definitely following this trend.
There is a very interesting trend that we've noticed, and that has to do with the type or the format of the digital advertising. In this case, we've seen that the advertiser are shifting towards what we call high-impact formats. I will talk more about it and actually going to show you some of the great high-impact advertising, which has a different level of creativity, a different level of engagement interaction, you know, with the users, with the consumers, which advertising like, and they're able to see way higher return on ad spend. That's definitely a very interesting trend that we noticed. The third quarter of 2021 was an all-time record revenue.
We showed a 45% year-over-year growth, as you're able to see on the left side of the bar between the third quarter of 2020 to the third quarter of 2021. We are providing guidance. We will talk about the guidance, but we'll talk about now the last quarter, the fourth quarter, and 2022. We are expecting for three years between 2020 to 2022 a CAGR of revenue growth of 34%. For this year, 2021 to 2020, we're expecting a 40% year-over-year growth. Where the growth is coming from, what is behind it, and what are the growth drivers? First and foremost, the video and CTV revenue is grew by 245% year-over-year. This is definitely the main growth driver.
When we will mention the acquisition that we did beginning of October, which is the video monetization platform, Vidazoo, I think you'll get the overall picture, how this is a perfect fit with what we're doing. As far as the other growth, there are higher average deal size. That's one of the most important KPIs that we're looking at grew by 32% quarter-over-quarter. We are from a customer retention standpoint, we're enjoying 109% customer retention. From EBITDA standpoint, we are able to leverage our fixed expenses and maintain budget control, as you can see it here.
The Adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter 2021 was $17.6 million reflects 101% year-over-year growth versus the third quarter in 2020. That's on a quarterly basis. On an annual basis, we're talking about $60 million of Adjusted EBITDA for the entire 2021. That reflect 83% year-over-year growth between 2021 to 2020. With the outlook to 2022, we can say that with the $76.5 million, the overall CAGR in these three years, 2020 to 2022, we can see 53% CAGR between those three years. What's behind it?
First and foremost is the implementation that we did of the hub- and- spoke of what we call the Intelligent Hub. I will talk more about the value the Intelligent Hub is bringing at this point, very, very much behind our ability to leverage our costs, that's the Intelligent Hub. Second, the fact that we're able to scale and have a cost leverage, improve the budget control, and enhance the process automation. The amount of engineering dollars that we are investing on automating process allows us to scale our business, but at the same time being more and more profitable. Let's go and dive into some of the growth drivers that I mentioned.
From all the statistics that we're able to get from the different sources, I picked this one, which excites me very much and has to do with the average time spent per day in digital video by device. That's from April 2020, but the numbers have not changed, it's just growing. As far as we've seen just before the call, it's close to two hours that the consumer spends per day on video content. That's the main trigger. The first trigger is for the advertiser, and we like to say they chase the consumer. If the consumer spends more time on video, no matter what screen, they follow in this trend, and they invest more on all kinds of video advertising.
As a result, we are growing our business, and we're growing as you can see, exponentially. Our advertising that has to do with video and CTV from a year-over-year perspective, we almost triple the revenue between the first nine months of 2020 to the first nine months of 2021 to $32.8 million. On a quarterly basis, it was a great quarter for us, where we're able to grow our video and CTV business by 245%, which is definitely a key core of drivers behind this quarter, but one of the most important one for not just Q4 but next year and the year after with the acquisition of Vidazoo, and I will dive into this later on.
I wanna show you these slides and very much take you to what we believe is really inspiring. The point here was how we're able to have minimum clicks. As you can understand, this is all about minimum clicks between watching the ad and then doing the purchase. This is a great example. I hope it will work here. You're able to see the video running on your screen, and then through a QR code, you're able to do the transaction. The interesting part, it's not the QR code that get this ad on your mobile device.
The QR code is able to take your brand's shopping experience, as you can see it here on the screen, from the big screen through QR code direct to the cart, and that's the very interesting technology that we have, allow us to be proud with a 1.48% CTR. From the hundreds that basically saw it, we have one that complete the transaction. That's astonishing results by all means, and taking it from the big screen, CTV advertising, all the way to your cart. The next example we're proud of is the live CTV. As you can imagine, the live CTV is a very challenging one, only because the TV ad insertion is not planned in advance, as you're probably familiar with.
The whole idea, and here, I'm very much using one of the senior leader from DraftKings, who was talking about something exciting and how to spend their dollars on live TVs and integrate it into the game while we don't want to ruin the experience. This is how it goes.
[Presentation]
I think you got the idea, but we're really proud of that it's a 19:1 return on ad spend, which is amazing results, that we're able to combine sophisticated SSAI, Server-Side Ad Insertion, in a live event, and still keep the user very much engaged, not disturbing the experience of a sports event. That's this example. Last but not least, the KPI here was to grow our average deal size by 40%. That's a very important factor. How we were able to take it from close to $80,000 to $103,000 year-over-year. As you can imagine, the expenses of delivering this campaign is the same.
There is a lot of fixed expenses, and while we are increasing the average of insertion order or campaign with us, that gives us a great way of leveraging our costs. This is the example of an HBO that is from the big, big screen, that's the CTV, to a smaller screen, which your iPad to your mobile, it's all being synchronizing. That synchronization allow us to take this spend to a higher level, and as I mentioned, 40%, and that's a growth driver. No doubt about it, that's definitely a growth driver. 7.9% interaction rate, that's an amazing result, and definitely allows them to spend more with us.
When we talk about retention revenue, which is 109%, that's very much one of the reasons that this retention revenue is increased over time. When we talked about video, I need to mention, even though it's happened October 3rd, and this is going to be Q4, is going to be the first quarter that they were with us. So all the numbers that you are seeing on the third quarter we're reporting today, of course, are not including Vidazoo. I want to mention it because first and foremost, I think it's a great fit. I think we checked all the boxes. For those of you who were on our analyst calls at the beginning of the year, when we talked about what we're looking for.
What we're looking for in terms of the acquisition, we did a very successful follow-on, and we were patiently looking for the right fit. I think Vidazoo is the right fit. I think first from the culture standpoint, and the founders there. More importantly, the fact that our video is in the rise, how we able to take it into the next level. Vidazoo, which is the video monetization system, is bring us huge amount of scale, of video supply that working with their publisher. That's very important. The reason I added here the high-i mpact video suite, and by now you, I think you get an understanding what is this high impact. This high impact require tight integration, as you can see it on the screen.
Tight integration between the creative part and the player and the video monetization. This tight integration is something that we cannot, by all means, get into, you know, working with third- party. We reach our limitation. Our technology guys very much require more and more, and the only way doing it is to have a tight integration, customize it into our own needs, and definitely take the high impact video to another level. That's one. It is accretive from day one. It was another box that we checked. I think the structure plays very well to what we shared with the street, and I think it has to do when acquiring an ad-tech company, understanding on one hand the potential, which is a third cash and two- thirds on an earn-out.
In this case, we definitely checked all boxes and I think it's dramatically increased our reach on general video, but more specifically into the CTV market. I just added this slide, I think yesterday or the day before. I think it was happening Friday, and we all experienced what happened in Snap. For those who are not familiar, I very much would like to take you into iOS 14. Probably it will continue and be around us. On the left side, you're able to see this, the screenshots, and I will mark it here. That's a message. That's a message that you are getting from the iOS 14, of course, if you're using iPhone.
From the iPhone operating system that very much asks you if you allow this app to track your activity across other companies, apps, websites, whatever. That's the big change. This is the big change. Now, for those who are not doing it, those who allow, it's fine, but what's not, what's happening to the app itself, that it lose its capability to track what you did on the iPhone. This tracking has one and only one purpose. It has to do with targeting. That's it. If you use it in your targeting capability, your advertising is not that efficient. It's all about the targeting. There is another thing that I will not get into. It has to do with effectiveness of reporting, but let's leave this aside.
I think targeting is definitely the big drama, or let's say lack of target. I must say that we were well prepared in both ways. First of all, that has to do with our exposure. When I was talking about, again and again, about diversify our advertising strategy, I meant diversify and be prepared for the unknown. In a way, we didn't know that this is coming. When we decided about diversification, we talked about that almost 45% of our business is coming from search advertising, which is nothing to do with iOS 14 no matter what. This is. We are fine on half of the business. The second part of the business, which is 57.9%, that has to do with display and advertising, I must say that it's following.
Third of it or 18%, is only on smartphone. All the rest, which is two-thirds, is on desktop. Let's look at only the third, which is on smartphone. Out of it, I must say that 90% is Android. 90% is Android, which leaves only 10% on iPhone or iOS. If you're looking at the entire part, we talk about 2%, 2% of the entire revenue is coming from advertising, which has to do with iPhone. There is definitely very little impact from iOS 14 or this. This was only one side of the coin. I want to take you into the other side of the coin, something that we are working, because it all has to do with one thing. Where this iOS 14 is coming from? It's coming from one thing. It's coming from consumer privacy.
Consumer privacy that has to do with your iOS or operating system, and consumer privacy that has to do with cookies, which is this one mobile and this one was desktop. Which is a great segue for me to introduce what we just announced, and we announced SORT. SORT is a privacy-first, cookieless targeting. Company is working on this AI technology for almost two years, and we are very, very happy to share it with you that we reached a scalable cookieless targeting solution that's in par with or better than third-party cookie-based targeting options. I had to read it word by word that it's coming from the CEO and Co-Founder of Neutronian, who is the body that certified our solution. We went through a certification that is done with a live campaign, and we did a side-by-side.
SORT on one side, cookies on the other side. The beauty was that we were able to achieve a higher return on ad spend, translate into CTR or interaction rate, more than is being done with cookies. This is amazing. This has to do with the great investment, but the great guy that we have on board. We have an elite AI team here that is behind this revolutionary development. Now, what would happen? The advertiser that will choose to use SORT and care about the privacy of their user don't want to- will not compromise on result and will be able even to use this symbol. This symbol is a symbol that will show to their user that this ad unit, in this case is Hans a beer, ad unit is not using cookies.
We believe that one advertiser that care will definitely use this technology more, and consumer that care will not be afraid that someone is being tracked on what they're doing. It comes from both direction. We're expecting the results will be that advertiser will drive more business to us. That's very much what we're doing. More than anything else, I couldn't hold myself but to be proud of what the team is doing. It's, I think, the most challenging slide that I have in my presentation because it's so technical. But at the end of the day, I don't want to go into it, into too much details, but our prediction is so high that it can get into a point.
If you have a travel offer here, we definitely can say who is unlikely to watch the video, who is unlikely to interact. Those are likely to click on site. These are the people that we're able to target. Guess what? Scale later on. This is definitely something that we are proud. We are proud that not just that we're care about advertiser and their challenge, we also care about consumer, which I think a very, very important thing for us as a company as a consumer that able to bring this innovation into the market. As far as search advertising, as we mentioned, our overall search advertising will grow by 14%.
I wanna deep dive into something which you basically say and said, "Okay, how come it's growing?" Well, we're able to see that this is, you know, very much flat, If this is the third quarter here. It's very much flat. This is the average daily revenue that we're getting, and you're able to see that the average searches is going down. How come we're increasing our business? What is more important to pay attention is this. Transactional search intent. The whole world of search is divided into three. We call it informative, directional, and transactional. Only transactional are those transactions that we are getting our rev share and pay our publisher rev share.
What is more important is to see that the amount of transactional search intent out of the entire searches is growing and growing rapidly, and it has to do very much with what I mentioned. That consumer is doing more and more e-commerce transaction. Guess what? They search before they buy. When they search more, they search more for transactional type of intent. Okay. Move on into it. As far as the Intelligent Hub, how those all pieces come together, we added Vidazoo into our chart, into the hub-and-spoke very much model that on one hand we have the set of supply asset, on the other hand, demand asset, on the other hand we have the supply asset.
What is more important is the Intelligent Hub, that everything goes into this hub, and this hub is being evaluated based on three factors. The ability to create value by reduced operational costs, and I mention it because we have common shared assets that we're doing among the other assets- shared services that we're doing among the different assets. This is already showing its fruit right now. When I talked about our ability to leverage our expenses, this is one. Reduce tech because we are closing the loop. More important is how we increase customer value.
Everything that we did in SORT, it has to do with the fact that we are sitting here on a gold mine that able to get their indicator from so many customer that going through our hub, consumer, that providing this very important engagement indicator that allow us to develop this type of AI-driven SORT technology that will improve over time. Our machines are working 24/7 in order to make it just better and better. You're able to see the first fruit for our intelligent Hub, which has to do with increased customer value. With that, I would like to pass it to Maoz for our financial results of the third quarter. Maoz?
Thank you, Doron. If you can release the presentation.
Yeah, hold on for a second. Yeah. Please.
Thank you, Doron. Good morning, everybody. The progress we have made to build a truly innovative and differentiated advertising platform is driving powerful financial results. Over the last 12 months, we have generated nearly $439 million in revenues, $56 million in Adjusted EBITDA, representing 13% EBITDA to revenue, and 33% EBITDA to revenue excluding TAC. As Doron mentioned, at the beginning of October, we closed the acquisition of Vidazoo accretive immediately. Under the terms of the acquisition agreement, Perion acquired all the shares of Vidazoo for $35 million in cash upon closing, with earn-outs of $58.5 million structured as performance that is tied to EBITDA-based metrics. This will be paid in full if Vidazoo generates $32.4 million of EBITDA in aggregate through the end of 2023.
The earn-out will be measured based on periodical and accumulative EBITDA goals till the end of 2023. 5% from the total consideration payment allocated to 2022, 14% allocated to 2023, and 44% allocated to 2024. This transaction is aligned with Perion's M&A model of paying one-third of the consideration upon closing and two-thirds as performance earn-out, including a retention element for the earn-out period. I believe that Vidazoo, with their unique video capabilities, will expand our hub-and-spoke model and will further drive Perion's profitability and growth in the coming years. Turning now to our financial results. During the third quarter of 2021, revenues for Perion totaled a record of $121 million, an increase of 45% from $83.4 million in the third quarter last year.
We achieved this growth while continuing to improve our operating efficiency and profitability. This increase was mainly from 82% growth in our display advertising revenues. The growth in this revenue was primarily due to video and CTV growing by 245%, from $4 million to $14 million in the third quarter this year, representing 20% of the display advertising revenues. Average client size grew by 30% from $78,000 to $102,000 in the third quarter of 2021. The number of clients increased by 12%. Search advertising revenues increased by 14%, mainly as a result of higher number of daily monetizable search queries were delivered to Microsoft Bing and others. Our average daily number of searches was 14.7 million, compared to 12.8 million last year. We added 17 new publishers to our network.
In terms of the mix, display advertising of $69 million represented 57% of the third quarter of 2021 consolidated revenues, with search advertising representing $51.8 million, or 43% of consolidated revenues. Customer acquisition costs in the third quarter of 2021 were at $73.3 million, or 60.7% of revenues. Compared to $49.9 million or 59.8% of revenues in the third quarter of 2020. Our media margin remains stable. The average media margin for the last six quarters was 39%. Operating expenses for the third quarter of 2021 were $33.1 million, or 27% of revenues compared to $27 million or 32% of revenues in the same quarter last year.
With a 5% drop of operating expenses, the revenues has continued to grow and reflects the scalability of the Perion business model. Perion net income for the third quarter of 2021 was a record $10.6 million, or $0.30 per diluted share, compared to net income of $2.1 million or $0.08 per diluted share in the third quarter of 2020. Non-GAAP net income in the third quarter of 2021 was $16.4 million, or $0.40 per diluted share compared to $5.9 million or $0.21 per diluted share in the third quarter of 2020. Adjusted EBITDA increased to $17.6 million for the third quarter of 2021 from $8.7 million in the third quarter of 2020. This represented margins of 15% of revenues or 37% of revenues excluding traffic acquisition costs.
Our continuous efforts to keep media margin level steady and generate incremental revenues with low variable costs is improving Perion's efficiency and profitability. During the quarter, we generated $14.2 million of cash flow from operating activities for the third quarter, compared to $6.6 million last year. As of September 30, 2021, we had unrestricted cash equivalents and short-term bank deposits of $156 million, compared to $60 million as of December 31st, 2020. This concludes my financial overview. I will now turn the call back to Doron for a closing statement.
Closing statement. The slide before last has to do with revised guidance. I must say that the fact that we are able to generate revenue from both sides of the open web, the demand and supply, and the fact that we're able to connect all operational assets, as I mentioned, into a central hub, increase first and foremost our visibility and, increase our sustained business model. In that regard, we have revised our guidance for 2021, from a revenue standpoint of $45 million to $465 million. That reflects a 40% year-over-year growth. That's one. From Adjusted EBITDA standpoint, the midpoint is $60 million, which reflects an 83% year-over-year growth.
Another thing that we should note that EBITDA to revenue, ex- TAC, is 33%, which puts us on, I think, the high end of our peers. From a 2022 guidance standpoint, we improved this guidance as well. We're calling for $590 million as a midpoint, which reflects 20% year-over-year growth. The midpoint of EBITDA is $76.5 million for 2022, which reflects 28% year-over-year growth. EBITDA to revenue, ex- TAC, in 2022 is 34%, which reflect a great way how we're able to scale and leverage our fixed expenses, and we're moving in this direction as well. Last but not least, I would like to end our call with this picture, which is our management team.
Unfortunately, the three executives that are in the U.S. couldn't make it. Dan, Asaf, and Ziv. We had a great time in the Israeli desert, and we are looking forward for the next call. Thanks so much. Operator?
Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question and answer session. You may submit questions on the Zoom platform by using the Q&A or raise your hand icon to the bottom of your screen. If you're joining the phone only, you may press star one on your telephone to join the queue. One moment please, while we poll for questions. Our first question today is coming from Jason Helfstein. His line is now live.
Hey, guys. How are you?
Hi, Jason.
A few questions. I appreciate all of the color on the slides. First I wanna ask about the video format broadly impact on gross margin. Gross margin has been up nicely year-over-year since the second quarter. The mix of video broadly, both CTV and other iCTV display video is all going up. Maybe talk about kind of should we expect gross margins to continue to move up broadly over whatever the next 18, 24 months. Two, maybe talk about if you're seeing inflation in Android pricing versus iOS, as you know, because of the Apple deprecation. Are you seeing that?
Do you have a bigger mix of Android and so that's maybe beneficial to you? Last, are there any capabilities that clients are asking for that you don't have right now, given that you highlighted the big cash balance and we would expect you to continue to be focused on M&A? Thank you.
Very good. Thanks for the question. First and foremost, let's talk about the video margin. I think that the direction that we took as far as, you know, pivoting from the standard video and putting, you know, those creative, innovative type of format, at one point, maybe, narrow our addressable market because we are really looking for, you know, the high end of the advertiser. First and foremost, looking for keep their, you know, see a correlation between the creative and their brand equity. This is one. Second, they are willing to spend, and they spend a very high CPM compared to standard videos, which I must say, leave us a healthy margin in any aspect. That's the direction.
We are planning doing it more and more. I mentioned that we hit the real limitation of what we can do by using a third-party player and a third-party monetization system that we did. This was the main trigger behind the acquisition of Vidazoo. Now I think that the sky is the limit as far as what we can do. Our advertiser is pushing us more and more into this high- impact video and CTV suite. This is the one thing. I forgot your second question.
About the video.
No, that was the video.
That was about Android pricing versus iOS.
If you have a higher mix of Android versus iOS, that should be beneficial to you for-
the pricing.
Right on, by the way. I think that with the limitation on iOS, you see kind of the gold rush, you know, into an Android. The competition there is, you know, more than what it was before. Definitely challenging. We are hoping that how SORT will help us in order to overcome the competition, that's too early to say. Based on, you know, early indicators that we have, we're definitely can come up with this iOS, Android kind of battle stronger than we were before.
The last was just on, are there any capabilities that clients are asking you for that you don't have that we should expect you to focus on going forward or acquire going forward?
Well, we are looking on, you know, a few dimensions, in a way, strengthening very much, you know, our relationship with brands. Nothing is in, let's put it this way, in an LOI stage, but we're definitely looking. We need to digest the acquisition that we just did. Nothing concrete. I must tell you that advertisers, they're not pushing us into any kind of this direction. I think that what we have currently, with the fact that we cover very well, you know, the both sides, the demand side as well as the supply side, I think our main challenge is executing. It's not about adding other things, even though our eyes are open.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Laura Martin. Your line is now live.
Hi there. Can you hear me okay?
Hi, Laura.
Hi. Hey, by the way, great numbers, and thanks for the explanation of the marketplace. I'd like you to step up a level and go back to the Snap and Facebook commentary. Snap is down about 30% since its earnings last Thursday night. They both said that in the fourth quarter they are seeing weakness in labor shortages and supply chain, which is cutting ad budgets for the fourth quarter. Have you seen anything in outside of your premium products, just back in the normal world, have you seen any ad budgets pulling back because of these two items affecting the fourth quarter outlook or early next year?
First of all, as you can imagine, most of the fourth quarter is, it's not unrecognized revenue, but it's in our pocket in terms of insertion order. According to, you know, revenue recognition, we need to deliver it. We not see any cancellation. We just see that there is a furious, you know, competition among those high-end brands. Yeah, there are some issues in supplies. I'm reading The Wall Street Journal and other. We not see any cancellation, any decline, vice versa. I think that they're adding more. In some cases, in some, you know, product, we definitely see that the shopping season started earlier. No slight, you know, decrease on demand. Not at all.
Okay, that's super helpful. Can you put up the guidance slide again, Doron? I just want to focus on the fact that you really over-delivered this year. Yeah, this slide right here. You had very dramatic margin expansion, that Adjusted EBITDA number.
Really, like, doubled your revenue growth.
Next year, you're showing that your EBITDA growth is gonna be the same level.
By the way, I see you're blowing through your $500 million of revenue. I hope you don't go on vacation for too long after you hit that metric. Tell me why we aren't gonna have much more robust EBITDA margin expansion again in 2022, according to your guidance.
First of all, I asked for vacation, and they allow me to go only to a weekend, so we're going to Greece this weekend. That's the only thing that they, as you can imagine, they want more and more. The point here when it comes to, I think, 2022 is the following. I think that what you definitely see is a floor. With all the improvement that we have in terms of visibility and the modeling and diversification and the two- dimensional diversification, the cross-channel on one side of the dimension and the fact that we are able to do business from both sides of the open web is another side of dimension to our diversification. We need to be cautious here. We rather, I think.
On one hand, it's impressive, the $28 million, as you mentioned, but on the other hand, I think we need to be careful, and we always like to under-promise and over-deliver. The other thing is, we just finished a two-day offsite with our Board. They are definitely calling for additional investment that we're doing on our technology. I must say that they are really encouraged by the investment that we did on SORT. We established an A-class AI team, which we are starting to see fruit. They very much would guide us to double down on this technology. It's calling for additional engineering investment that we are doing here and offshore, in Ukraine, mainly in Ukraine.
All in all, the being, you know, a bit cautious and trying to surprise an additional engineering investment is, you know, growth, which you looked at the numbers that you need to apologize for it's another thing. I understand where you're coming from, and let us surprise you.
Okay. My last question has to do with search and the role of search. Search revenue was quite robust, but it does hold down your growth, your overall. It is a headwind to your overall revenue growth.
Can you talk about why, like, strategically, what, you know, how search adds to the overall story or whether-
You know, letting Bing go would really actually hurt the value proposition.
Yeah, absolutely.
At all.
First and foremost, the search has two very important strategic role. First, it's a very stabilized, I think, business. The fact that we're working with Microsoft Bing, and now we added Yahoo into the picture, has very much stabilized it. It's growing. We have a publisher that is working for us for years, and we have a very, very good, stable, you know, type of business. I think that the fact that, as I said, the transactional searches among the entire searches is growing, that's great. This is from the revenue and the EBITDA, I think, contribution standpoint.
The most important part, and this is a very interesting, and I must say that it's growing in such a way that it's going to be a huge factor, is how search, and in this case D2S is display to search. Display is an ad unit that we are very much placed either in our site or site that we operate in, generating search. This is very interesting technology that we developed based on contextual match and other things. So we are having an endless demand that is coming from this direction, you know, through the Microsoft Bing. We are definitely looking to invest more on this segment of the search business. I think that we are happy with the results. Last note.
I think that the Company, two years ago, made quite a decision. The main decision for us was to invest in the right side, the supply side of the open web, which is something that we didn't have before. You can't do all. I mean, we understand that we can't do all. Now, we're able to leverage these assets that are on the supply side in order to drive business that is coming from the search demand that we have on the left side. It will come together. It will grow up, and it's a very nice, steady type of growth of business.
Thank you very much.
You're welcome, Laura.
Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Jeff Martin. Your line is now live.
Hello? Hello?
I'm muting myself and I keep getting muted. Sorry about that. Can you hear me okay?
Yeah, absolutely.
Okay, great. Wanted to ask you a little bit more about SORT. Seems like a very encouraging value proposition. Curious what your go-to-market strategy is there, if you've had any initial feedback from clients, and if you are targeting more the mobile side of the display or if that's across your display business?
Right. Thanks for the question. Oh, hold on for a second. Just a minute. I wanna pull this slide. In the notion of time, I couldn't explain what is a very, first of all, very important factor. The very important factor is the more we are using, not just the SORT, the more that we are analyze, you know, those contextual information, user signal, external signal that we are doing on our network, and I'm referring to both the left side and the right side of what I showed on the hub- and- spoke, the better we are.
Regardless if someone is using SORT or not using SORT, what is really important is for us, those machines are working again and again in order to do one thing, is to increase the prediction. The prediction here of who is going to click on this ad. That's very much the prediction. This is what allows us, first and foremost, to go to market. The challenge was for our engineering team, it says we will never, ever can go to the market in showing results CTR-wise or interaction rate-wise or all that has to do with return on ad spend, which is lower than what they used in cookies. That was the main design factor behind SORT. That's very much it. This is a precondition even before, you know, customer will get it. That's one.
Now, when we're talking with the brand, and we're talking with some, as I said, the really reputable brand, they like one thing because, you know, a purpose is become a key word for them. Part of the purpose, if we're talking, and sorry that I talk, you know, 100,000 ft here, they definitely looking about how is their developing a trustworthy relationship between them and their consumer. This whole digital advertising business, I think got kind of, you know, the wrong image by consumer. As consumer said, yes, you know, they're following us, how come they know that I looked at this site and now they offer me that because they know that I'm going to, as I mentioned, to Greece, or I already returned from Greece, and they are still offering me hotel in Athens.
That creates a wrong perception. Now, this perception does not have to do with the ad network vendor. The user knows one thing. What is the interaction? The interaction is with the brand. It's not about the ad network or the technology and the ad tech that is behind it. The point that I wanna make, what I'm hearing from advertisers is how this is going to improve their perception as honest companies that definitely not tracking this user. I do believe that brands are looking for this type solution. Not to overcome, let's say, the Google Chrome limitation or overcome the iOS 14 or overcome this. No. They very much would like, and because consumers don't care about the ad tech. What they care about is the brand and vice versa.
This whole thing was very much came about by us working with our brands, which some of them are our design partners, and they definitely challenged us. I think that the first call was almost two years ago. We were able to gain more time, by the way, at the beginning of the year, Google postponed, you know, its limitation on Chrome, which was a great thing because we submitted a patent and it was a nightmare to get the certification here. We had to run a live campaign, as I mentioned before. All in all, the trigger is coming from the brands. I think the brands are able to use it to their favor, and I'm glad that we picked this, the glove and were able to demonstrate such a great performance.
Great. Look forward to watching that develop here. Second question, it sounds like you're stepping up your technology investment based on, you know, commentary from the Board.
You know, recent you know, success in your technology spend. Was curious if that's part of why your 2022 guidance for EBITDA margins isn't perhaps a little bit higher.
Yes. Absolutely.
Okay, great. Last question was, can you give us an update on travel-related advertising? I know that was originally a pretty significant part of the advertising segment, and you hadn't expected that to come back to a great degree this year. Curious if you could just give us an update there.
Yeah. Travel is not back to, you know, where they were before. I don't know if you guys are aware, but it's impossible for some countries in Europe to travel to the States yet, unless you are, you know, U.S. citizen. So definitely not back. I think that if I'm using 2019 and compare it to where we are today, I think that you know, we are 20%-25% when it comes to advertising spend to what it was before. I'm glad that despite of it, we are showing, you know, these results, and we are looking forward that this will be behind us.
I know that there are some initial discussion that we have with our travel, you know, companies in that they are trying to be prepared for the summer. A huge amount of investment, and I talk about advertising investment, is being allocated for the next summer under the assumption that the market will open for travelers, and I think it will be a huge boost for the industry at large.
Wonderful. Thanks for your time.
Thank you, Jeff.
Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Eric Martinuzzi. Your line is now live.
Hi. Question regarding the iOS issue again. Just you talked a little bit about Android benefiting at the expense of iOS. Is there any evidence anecdotally, maybe from the Undertone folks as far as campaigns, you know, desktop benefiting versus mobile, Doron?
That's a very good question. You know, as you know, currently mobile is growing way more, I mean, more than desktop as far as being used. I think that you need to look at it. Mobile definitely is getting all the attention. You spend way more on mobile. I think I have it here somewhere. Let me just find. Yeah. Look at this chart on the left when it comes to number of minutes on mobile versus desktop. This is double.
I think that only because of where a consumer spends the time, you can imagine that advertising is spending two times as much in mobile than in desktop. That's fact of the matter. Now another very important factor has to do, of course, with the CTV, which has to do with the big screen. This is definitely a challenge, but more it has to do with this. I think it has to do with the multiple screen. It has to do with the ability to synchronize between the big screen, the desktop, and the mobile. That has to do very much of, you know, on the way to work, at work, at home, you know, kind of way of us to synchronize in a single campaign between, you know, all those channels. Did I answer your question?
The question was really about have you anecdotally seen evidence of a shift to desktop from mobile, and you're saying the answer is no, not really.
No, not really.
Okay. All right. Second question for me. It was just three weeks ago you announced Vidazoo. What are the mechanics of integrating Vidazoo? Obviously, you've bundled them in as far as the guidance go, but behind the scenes, the engineering part of the equation.
First of all, our philosophy when it come to acquiring companies, to leave it alone as much as we can. I mean, I think, after that, I think more than dozen acquisitions that I did in my career, I came into this conclusion that any tight integration is a recipe for failure. At this point, even keep them there, and then try to find out how we're able to developing a synergy. The reason I pull up the Intelligent Hub slide is first and foremost has to do with the revenue growth, not shared resources, nothing. I mean, just about how we able with the fact that we have now on the player, video player and have a great network of publisher that's using Vidazoo, how we're able to scale and sell more.
This is the only thing that we are doing at this point and only thing that interests us. How we're able to drive more synergistic type of revenue, and that's the first phase of our PMI. The second phase, we're going to get into some cost saving because as I mentioned, currently they're not utilizing a lot of the shared resources that we develop on our hub. They have their own, for instance, ad server, et cetera. That will definitely come, but we are doing it in two phases from PMI standpoint.
Gotcha. Okay. Thanks for taking my questions, and congrats on the quarter and the strong outlook.
Thanks.
Thank you. We've reached the end of our question- and- answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to management for any further closing comments.
Hey guys, thank you very much for joining. I enjoyed the call as well as Maoz. See you on next call. Thanks so much. Take care.
Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference and webcast. You may disconnect your line at this time, and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.