Welcome to the stage, Tal Jacobson. Tal was named Perion's new CEO in February of 2023. He transitioned into the CEO role in August of 2023. He joined Perion in 2018 as the General Manager of CodeFuel, transforming Perion's search advertising from a fledgling business unit in decline to a significant driver of Perion's soaring market share and valuation, cementing its strategic relationship with Microsoft and winning Microsoft's Advertising Global Supply Partner of the Year Award. Prior to Perion, Tal was the Chief Revenue Officer at Similarweb, and he held positions as VP of Business Development at McCann Erickson and CEO of video collaboration platform Watchitoo, and he was the Director of Business Development at AOL. So welcome, Tal.
Thank you.
Love to have you here. Let's start with leadership. As you know, we track efficiency, revenue per employee, for all of our companies. You're managing just over 400 employees now. My question is culture. When you think about culture, what is the culture you're trying to convey now at Perion, and how do you measure? What are the metrics you use to figure out whether actually the culture you're trying to convey is working in the ranks?
Right. So first of all, we just announced a company that we bought, Hivestack which got us to, like, 600 employees now. Which became even harder to measure that, right? So you have new employees, new location. How do you measure that? So the culture we're trying to achieve is, you know, every person that only comes for a paycheck shouldn't actually come to Perion. We only look for people that wanna build careers with us that wanna shine, that wanna be entrepreneurs that figure out, "How do I solve an old issue with a new solution?" That usually comes with technology.
So we would always look for people that have, you know, a technical mindset, an innovation mindset, and the ability to not be afraid of, you know, solving big issues with simple solutions. I think that's always the key. You know, when you look, think about all the issues that we had as a company and all the companies I actually been to, most of the bigger issues, have very simple solutions. When you get into a very complicated solution, usually it is not the right solution. So those are the mindset we're looking for, and we're measuring people, every person at Perion is being measurable. Everything is being measurable.
And people that can't shine shouldn't be with us. People that can shine are really feeling that they're growing with us, are really building something out of them.
It almost sounds like you have that old, y ou know, General Electric every year had a forced policy of firing the bottom 10% every year. Do you actually fire people?
Unfortunately, we do.
Okay, well, not unfortunately. It's consistent with what you just said the culture is, so.
Yeah. But yes, we actually do. And, you know, we're trying to be very upfront with our employees about that. If somebody is not really shining, we're gonna tell them, "Listen, maybe this is not the right place for you. Maybe you should find somewhere else, but if you wanna be with us at the elites, you know, commando team, you should shine."
Okay . Future of work, what's your stated work from home policy versus work in office, and what percentage of people are not coming in on required work on office days?
We have three main headquarters. We have Tel Aviv, we have New York, and we have Montreal. And the people that lives around those hubs comes 2x-3x a week.
Okay.
That's, they need to come. They have to come b ecause we see that once they come, i t's more efficient. We're getting more things done. You know, if, if Zoom actually worked for efficiency none of us would meet in person, right? We would stay at home. But there's a reason why all of us are dressing up and getting out of the home, of the house.
I don't know about dressing up.
No, not me.
I'm not sure this is dressing up.
No, n ot me. You know what? I'm Israeli, so for me, this is dressing up.
This is dressed up? Okay, fair enough. That's fair.
Yeah. But, you know, you can all see that this Zoom works very limitedly.
Okay.
At the same time, COVID drove a lot of people out of the cities, so it's very hard to ask for people to drive five hours each way to get to the office. We do have a policy that is work from anywhere. As long as everything is measurable, you know, you can work from the moon, as long as we care as long as you deliver.
As long as it's measurable.
Everything is measurable.
Okay. But they still have to come into the office 2x-3x a week, or no, they don't?
Only the people that lives around the office.
Interesting.
In Israel, everything is small.
Yeah, yeah. Everybody comes in.
Everybody comes in.
Right.
There are no excuses.
Okay.
In New York, actually, like 20 to 30 people are very near the office. Everybody else actually moved very, very far away.
Yeah. Okay. Interesting
We used to have, like, 200 people there. But everybody moved. We kinda asked them, "Okay, so you know what? Forget about Texas. Come back to New York," right?
Okay. Interesting
So it is what it is.
Okay. Let's do goals. So Perion's goals, so sitting here a year from today, what do you, it'll be your first full year as a CEO. Tell me what you want to have accomplished, that you're willing for me to write down. So I'm gonna hold up this book and say, "Okay, Tal, here's what you told me you were gonna accomplish in the 12-month period." What do you want to accomplish between now and we're sitting here a year from now?
Great. So, you know, as I said, we bought Hivestack, which is our DSP, SSP, full stack out-of-home technology. We wanna be able to fully integrate that into the hub.
Okay.
We wanna be able to, y ou know, our teams, the reason I'm here in the city is obviously for this conference, but I also took all our executives into the office th is week and the next week, and they're figuring out: how do we combine more technologies together? How do we promote, promote more synergies together? How do we sell, cross-sell between all our products across the world b ecause we actually bought a company that is, you know, the U.S. part of it is smaller w hile our U.S. part is bigger. So we're gonna, through what we have, we're gonna promote them in the U.S., and they're gonna promote everything we have everywhere else. So that's the main goal. That's one. The second thing is we are looking for another M&A which we wanna complete before the end of this year.
We wanna add more technologies. We wanna add more capabilities, especially in the retail side. So it might be like CTV or attribution or fully retail solutions, but we are working on that, where we have a very big pipeline. So that's another goal for this year.
Yep. Okay, what about in the core business in terms of operating goals, in terms of Microsoft goals? What about in the, like, core business, I would say?
Yeah. So obviously, I think we've discussed this last year, and this has been a very successful year to integrate Microsoft Advertising within all our parts of Perion. So we're working very closely with Xandr. We've added a curated component to our technology, so we can drive more campaigns through Xandr. Netflix and others. That part is growing very nicely. So, yeah.
Okay. so let's stay on the Netflix point. So Netflix was selling ads at, like, $65, thanks to Netflix. Now, they're coming back to into, like, normal ranges of 40.
Yeah.
Still at the high end, but within normal ranges. Does that benefit you in any way because of the Xandr integration? Do you benefit somehow more from Netflix doing more ads or not really?
No. So we spent the last six months building curated pipes toward all the supply that CTV has, right? We can buy Samsung ads, Hulu, HBO, Netflix, Disney, whatever you want.
Right.
Now it all depends on the advertiser. If the advertiser is willing to pay Netflix whatever they want, that's great, but if not, we can sell them HBO, we can sell them Hulu. That we don't care.
Okay.
Our goal is to have happy advertisers that are seeing good results. That's how they're gonna get back to us. That's the goal.
Okay. And with your curated pipes, you can sell anybody's, y ou're indifferent as to whether it's Netflix or somebody else.
Absolutely.
Okay, fine. Okay, great. So let's do search revenue. You come from the search side, from CodeFuel. So let's talk about where we are on Bing. That deal ends in mid-2025, right?
Does it end? It renews.
Oh, okay. That's fair. The current contract terminates in mid-2025, and you expect to renew it. You've already renewed it 5x, 3x ? This would be your 4th renewal, I mean?
This is the 15th year with the relationship.
And they're five-year deals, so y ou've renewed twice?
No, the last deal was four years.
Okay.
The deals before that were three years.
Okay. And you've had 15 years, so you've actually renewed it, like, 6x or something.
Yeah.
Okay, so you would assume. And upon renewals, like in the TV business, a lot of times you get big step-ups on renewals. Does that work in this business, or is it a renewal just basically same terms, but it just rolls forward another three or four years?
Well, last time we've improved our terms. Well, like, we had.
I remember that. I remember you improved your terms.
We added more countries. We added more devices. We added. It was a longer term.
Yep.
You know, we'll see how it goes, this time, but, you know, we're.
Do you think you'll renew it on better terms again, or you would just be happy with the same terms of the four-year deal you're just ending?
Yeah, we'll see. We, we have a pretty good term, so.
Okay. Just wanna keep those. Okay. All right.
Yeah.
And is there any, like, what are the chances?
I want. They're not gonna use that for a negotiation. No, we want better terms.
Okay, yeah. Better terms. I insist. I mean, as you get bigger and you become a more, like, successful partner, don't they want you to sort of have better terms to incent you?
Well, I think we're, for the first time at Perion, we're looking at it as a holistic relationship. Up until now we saw that as a search relationship.
I see.
Now, we're looking at the holistic. So, how can we help you guys to promote, to do better on your retail part with PromoteIQ? How do we help you do better on CTV, on display, on video, right? So, that's how we're approaching it.
I see. Okay, so are you using the search anchor tenant in a way to try to leverage it into. And does that drive revenue upside also?
We actually. Yeah, we grew quite nicely on all the other parts.
But from Microsoft?
Yeah.
So talk to me about risk mitigation in the enterprise. I mean, Microsoft was already your biggest client, let me call it revenue driver.
Yes.
And now we're going to this holistic, which sounds really smart to have a holistic relationship, but at some point, don't you worry about the risk of having such a major client if something happened?
Absolutely. Well, first of all, I think it's a good point. I think on the Xandr part, you know, we are working with them, but we've built the pipe in a way that we can always shift it.
Okay.
The fact that we're working with them doesn't. They don't hold us on that specific segment. A nd yeah, on search, we're working with other search engines, so even though Microsoft is the biggest one, we're trying to diversify there.
Okay.
But we do see Microsoft Advertising as a strategic partner. You know, we're trying to do more things with them. But you're right. At the same time, we are always thinking: how do we, if, God forbid, anything happens we can always switch them, right?
Okay. All right. Yeah, I mean, it's a horrible thing to wake up and have something have happened to Microsoft, and you've lost 30% of your revenue or something.
Yeah.
Okay, well, that's interesting. I do like the idea of upselling. You had great relationships there to sort of and that was one of your big goals when you came in as CEO is to work more closely with other aspects of Microsoft that you didn't really have touch points with. So the Xandr work sounds like it's consistent with that strategy. Okay, so Perion's ad revenues have been growing the fastest in the ad tech industry. Can you talk about Perion's key sources of display ad revenue growth in 2023, and what drives faster growth in 2024 in this part of your business, the display part?
CTV is growing very nicely. Especially live CTV, where we normally don't break that down, but I can tell you that live CTV is pretty good. The retail business, which is it has its very specific component of working with a very large set of data and Generative AI. Those specific solutions can only work with Generative AI, and our, again, the retail part is growing very nicely.
It's called retail. Why is it called retail? 'Cause it's calling on, like, Target or wh at's retail mean?
Retail, retailers have two parts of it. One, how do you drive people to their website? Which is something where we're, you know, we do, but we don't concentrate on. Our goal is to, how do we drive people to their physical store?
I see.
After COVID, we saw that people actually wanna get out of the house, right? They actually wanna spend more time in stores. They wanna spend more money in physical stores. So, our goal is to see how do I get through the entire journey of the user. So in the morning, they can be on social, we'll find them there. On their way, they can be on Spotify. We have now released WAVE, which is a Generative AI audio ad solution. We just bought Hivestack, so we have the entire journey of out of home, programmatic out of home, we can find him on, on his way, you can find him in the parking lot, and we actually have a solution for in-store, within the store screens, right?
Okay.
Retail solutions, you know, mainly on the physical part , that's the sweet spot, and it's growing very nicely. I think that's gonna continue to grow.
Yeah, I think you're the only company in my coverage out of 12 that has this in the physical stores.
Yeah.
Is that U.S. or is that ? Like, what country are we talking about here?
U.S. is big, but, you know, now that we bought Hivestack, Canada is big, Australia is big. Asia, so many different countries in Asia. You know, we've showed amazing campaigns in Hong Kong, Singapore , yeah.
Sort of feels like you're, especially with Hivestack specifically, it's sort of pivoting your focus to non-U.S. Is there a faster growth opportunity offshore than here?
I think, you know, our model was always diversify. I think we thought about diversifying through media channels but now we're thinking about diversify through countries as well.
Okay.
We're saying that some countries, like even search, you know, the U.S., RPM, revenue per mille is higher in the U.S. but it's more fluctuating than Europe. Europe is very stable.
Really? I'm surprised by that.
That's strange, right?
Okay. Yeah.
But every channel has different behaviors in different countries. So when you think about how do I hedge my bets, how do I do a really diversified, solution then countries really play into that.
Okay. Usually, they have lower returns on capital, because if you put all your assets in the U.S., and you're only running a U.S. book, it has the highest returns on capital. Whereas when you go to Singapore, Hong Kong, you're spending a lot more cost for a much smaller market. So usually i nternational diversification brings down return on invested capital, typically. Can you speak to that?
Yeah. So the thing with, you know, technology once you've built it well, it doesn't really matter where you work with it, right?
Okay.
It's the same technology. The Hivestack, DSP, and SSP are already built.
Okay.
Now, to have a reseller in New Zealand there's no cost to it. It's just an added value to the existing. Right.
'Cause they have share.
Does it added value to existing technology?
Okay.
I think when you look at companies like, what, Salesforce or Adobe, you know, the product is always there. Now, you need to figure out how do I make that spread it around as fast as possible? It's not about adding more and more salespeople across the globe.
So the retail product, which you said is growing nicely, where you talked about, you know, showing it off in Singapore and Hong Kong and all these new markets, you're saying that isn't particularly capital-intensive 'cause it's using tech you already own?
Right.
Okay.
I mean, we own the technology that the screen itself runs with that technology. How do you get a screen and make it, you know, add an ability to run the inventory, to have, to get ads from all the DSPs?
Yeah.
We're the operating system of the screen, right?
Yeah.
Now, I mean, we're on most screens in Japan. We're on so many different screens in so many different countries, and it doesn't matter. The technology is still the same technology that we're building in Canada for those screens.
That's where Hivestack is.
Yes.
Is Canada?
Yeah.
Okay. Yeah, it sounds like Hivestack is a pretty big strategic pivot for you towards out-of-home, towards global, towards Montreal, out, you know, which is a new hub for you.
Yeah.
So, big strategic pivot. Okay, good. Let's talk about SORT. So SORT is one of the things that I think Perion has talked a lot about being a competitive advantage because you're a DSP, you're an SSP, you have the search data goes in, the display data, all of which just makes for, let me call it, higher margins or more efficient. Can you talk about one of the things you had talked about. So can you talk about it in your core business, how it sort of accelerates your returns on capital? But also, you thought about trying to sell it to third parties, and are we still trying to do that, or are we, no, we're not trying to do that.
No, we're not.
Okay, so let's update on SORT.
Yeah. So SORT is our way of targeting without cookies, right?
Right.
That's so highly used within our company. I mean, like, over 90% of the campaign that are eligible for SORT are using SORT with us. But we're now working on SORT 2.0, that is gonna be a lot heavier on AI, and stay tuned. We're gonna tell you once it's out.
You brought up Generative AI now 3x .
Yeah.
We need to skip to that question.
Let's do that.
Because nobody else has talked. On my stage, you're my tenth CEO on stage, no one's mentioned Generative AI as proactively as you have. So let's talk about what are you doing with Generative AI? How do you think it affects your cost, in 2024 specifically?
Yeah.
Costs, and how do you think it affects revenue growth? Sounds like you're using it lots of places, and I know you're building it on Microsoft Stack, which is the ChatGPT function, 'cause.
Yeah, on OpenAI.
So, yeah, in OpenAI. Fair enough, that's the large language model. Tell me what you're doing, tell me what you're doing with Generative AI over at Perion.
Right. So let's define, you know, AI in general, right?
Okay.
We've been doing machine learning for years now. I mean, we've actually built Similarweb based on machine learning. We've built most of the logic within Perion on machine learning.
Okay.
Now, the added thing that Generative AI enables us now is on so many different layers, but the one interesting layer that we have now is the product we've released, WAVE, right?
Do it again.
WAVE.
W-A-V-E?
Yeah.
I don't know what this is.
Okay. So about a month ago, we've released a new product called WAVE, that's a Generative AI solution for audio ads. Audio ads. Now, audio ads, digital audio ads, are roughly in 2023, the advertising budgets for those ads were $6.8 billion. It's a huge market, and it's growing.
That's the global number?
That's a U.S. number.
That's a U.S. number, okay.
And it's a big number.
Doesn't sound very big compared to CTV, but okay.
No, that's why it's just more, one more channel.
Okay, fair enough.
Right? We're not a single solution.
Okay.
We're d iversifying.
Diversifying. That's a big word.
Absolutely.
Okay.
How do we work with that, and why do we do that, especially for retail?
Okay.
So when we work with companies like Target or Albertsons or Kroger, we're getting all their data. So you're gonna get all their products, all their, promotions locally, right? You would know at Albertsons in Hoboken, New Jersey, you can find avocados for $0.99 and 100,000 more promotions locally, right?
Okay.
Now, we have a few components. One is, that's gonna write a script for an audio ad, like a radio ad.
So, this is now how we're using Generative AI for audio ads. Gotcha.
Right.
Okay.
So that's gonna write hundreds of thousands of scripts, and then it's gonna read them, and it sounds so human-like, that it's almost creepy how much it's not creepy. Like, you would imagine it would sound like Siri, but it's not. It sounds very human-like.
I heard there's, like, 50 voices from Generative AI now you can choose from.
Yeah, and with that, with specifically with WAVE, you can even choose, do you want it to sound like a radio ad? Do you want it to sound like a comedy movie? You want it to sound, y ou can actually have, if the advertiser has.
Darth Vader. I want the Darth Vader sound.
We should definitely do that. So with the specific advertisers, they have influencers, so we can actually get we can actually get a sample. And now the influencer, I don't know what, I don't know, Schweinsteiger, can record, or our system would record 200,000 ad video ads for avocados.
Audio ads.
Audio ads.
Audio ads, sorry.
It's okay.
Audio ads, right? And then we can distribute that through products like Spotify.
Okay.
Right?
So is this a managed service? So you guys are doing this?
We're doing that.
So, okay.
Yes.
So I didn't understand the step between the avocados are being sold at Kroger. I didn't understand the step between that and suddenly making one of these WAVE ads for audio. I don't get it.
So WAVE is doing all those audio ads automatically and s pread them locally. So the avocado ad, let's say we know avocado ads or avocado would be bought mostly by, I don't know what. I'm making this up, right? Women at the age of 35 to 55, at 7: 00 A.M. To 9:00 A.M . in Hoboken, right?
Okay.
So when we're gonna find somebody with Spotify at those hours at those ages near the store they're gonna get the ad w ithin Spotify.
Okay.
Right?
The reason it's scaled is because the Generative AI, you can serve that ad to 10 different territories, and the price of avocado, the Generative AI inserts the right number for in every one?
Insert the right promotion within the right hours to the right audience locally, right?
Right.
You can measure them. Now, the way we work is, so that's just on audio, right? We have the same mechanics for CTV, right?
Okay.
Somebody at Hoboken, New Jersey, is gonna see at the same time, on their screen, when he's watching Netflix or whatever it is, the same promotion for avocado. But after 10:00 A.M., he's not gonna see them anymore. There's gonna be a promotion for cereals.
Okay.
Right? So how do you manage that scale of data, of creatives, you know, locally, and actually measure them? Now, when you think about it, avocado is one thing, but what about the elections? I mean, you have different messages for different neighborhoods, right?
Yeah.
That also needs to happen with Generative AI. I mean, so many different messages, so many different locations, so many different channels. Y ou can't do that manually.
Yeah.
As opposed to linear TV, you have one commercial, you run nationwide hope for the best, right?
That's not gonna happen anymore. So our technology is we build creatives based on data.
Okay.
We generate them, and then we can spread them out through social, through CTV. You know, out of home, that's a great way to do election campaigns because election campaigns are super local. What's more local than billboards, right? It all goes down to: how do we do things at scale, but that would feel personalized? That would feel very local.
So the political especially in America this year, they're talking about record political spending.
Yeah.
Do you think you'll benefit from the political year this year?
So we have a team that goes after political spend, political budgets, and as a whole.
They must be really bored in the non-election years, these people, but okay.
Yeah , we tend to shift them to other things o therwise, they die. Yeah, but as a whole, you know, we saw a statistic that's we're forecasting $10 billion-$12 billion worth of budget this year.
Yeah, no 17 is the new number here.
Oh, that's it? Okay.
Seventeen.
Even better.
Yeah, it keeps going up. But anyway, specifically on Perion, what might it mean for your top line in 2024?
Yeah, so we didn't break it down that way, but we have a team in D.C. that goes special, specifically after that.
Okay . But it's never been big before, and you're not saying it's gonna be big really this year. You just don't know.
No. It 's fairly new.
Okay. Yeah , no, brand new. Yeah, I mean, digital should be a good fit, but historically, they've used Facebook, and that's pretty much it, I think.
Yeah.
Interactive ads, we haven't heard talk about. Yeah, how am I doing? Interactive ads, you know, is that a focus of yours? I know your predecessors was very focused on interactive CT, especially video ads, and now with the QR code, that was really, i s that something you really care about? Are you pursuing interactive CTV?
So we have a lot of either interactive formats. As I said, you know, our goal is to make advertisers happy and come back with more budgets.
Okay.
We're seeing now that advertisers, for CTV especially, are asking more for live CTV than interactive ads. I mean, if they want interactive ads, we have the best technology for that, but we also have the best technology for live CTV. So it all depends on them.
So, but live TV, you can deliver ads into live TV, but you don't control live TV. Interactive ads were very high-end, very high margin. They were unique to you, so you got a closer client relationship when you did those.
So live CTV is very technologically focused because within a live event, you have no idea when's the best time to cut the event, right?
Okay.
Like a Super Bowl, right? When's the touchdown? I have no idea. We can't know that in advance, right? So there's an AI algorithm that continues to run on with the event, and it knows exactly where to put the commercial without having everybody hates that brand because if you cut in the wrong place.
Or he's about to make a pass, and you cut to a commercial, people are pissed.
Yeah, everybody. That's a brand that nobody's gonna buy anymore.
Yeah.
Right? So there's a lot of technology there.
But I don't really get that, because I assume if CBS is running a game, it figures out where the commercial pod is gonna be, and then somebody delivers the ad into that pod, you know, two minutes or something. So I don't understand how Perion.
Linear TV, that works out that way.
Okay.
On CTV, there are add-on components that we can use to identify the right moment with the right creative. Right?
Okay, then you bid more for that, so y ou win that spot?
It's a premium spot in a way. Yes.
Okay.
It's not very standard stuff.
So you get a higher price?
Yeah.
That's interesting. So real time is becoming more important than interactive ads, is what I hear you saying?
Well, I think it all goes back to the fact that, you know, we saw the entire strike last year with writers. I think content is becoming boring, so people are switching to live events.
Content is becoming boring? Is that what you're saying?
Yeah, well, you know, all shows, you kinda, even if you see a new show, it feels like you already saw it with a different actor, right? With live events, you don't get that feeling.
Okay.
So I think people are switching more into live events. People are switching more into social. It's not like linear TV is going directly just to CTV. People are just switching behavior.
Okay.
So some of the budgets are going to CTV, but some of the budgets are going to social, and we're, you know, we're capitalizing on social as well.
Okay. Okay, great. Questions from the audience. Yes, sir?
So I'm sorry this is a little bit more basic for you, but you have a very low valuation in the marketplace, right?
Right.
So if you were to just sum it up, the top three issues, is it cookies, CTV? Like, well, what do you think weighs on investors' minds, and what's the strategy in place to address?
I don't think it's one thing. I wish it was one thing that investor would say, "You know what? If you would fix this, that would change the entire story." I think investor needs us to fix the story. I think our company, you know, is doing great as a company, but we're having an issue telling that story, explaining that story. There are too many moving parts for people to figure out, "Okay, so each part, what did you guys actually do there?" And it's our job to tell that story in a more coherent way and to give you KPIs that are more easy to digest. I think that's what makes our valuation lower than it should be.
Do you think it's just complexity, that's it? There's no technology issue, there's no cookie deprecation, there's no.
You know, at the end of the day, you look at our numbers, you can see we're taking market share, right? We're growing faster than the market, so there's no technology issue or business model issue or, you know, growing issue. But there is a way of, as analysts, as investors, how do you figure out w hat are the things that would predict our growth, right? And I think it's our job to provide a better way for investors to understand our company and to get the transparency you need into our growth in the upcoming years, and I think that's what got us to this place. So I think we've done everything needed to get to this place, and now we need to do things a bit different.
Not in terms of the company, the company is doing great, we're continuing to grow, but in terms of how do we tell that new story? I mean, we're adding more and more components, right? We're adding out-of-home, we're adding CTV, we're adding retail, we have search, we have WAVE. But, as a company, it makes a lot of sense for us, right? It helps us, you know, get to our numbers and beat them. But for investors, I think every time we add a thing, it's just adding more complexity for investors to now figure out, "Okay, so how do I know that this actually gonna continue to grow," right? I mean, we know, and our forecasting actually works, and you can see it. But I think to your, to your question, w hy aren't we 10x bigger in terms of valuation?
How about 3x bigger?
We're gonna get there. Yeah, well, on the path to be 10x , we're gonna get through three. But I think that's one of the things. I think that's one of the things. I think, the fact that Perion is very well known for investors, but for clients, they usually know our sub-brands, like, you know, Undertone or CodeFuel or Vidazoo. W e need to figure this out. I think we're doing a lot of work now on combining our offering, it's basically the same clients, and really promoting synergies aggressively. So it's gonna create a flywheel within that. So in every new component that we're gonna add, it's gonna push the entire machine faster.
In the meantime, the cash you use for acquisitions, you generate a lot of cash. You know, do we need to buy more components if it's already complex?
Well, it's not, it's not complex to operate, it's complex to explain. So as long as we can operate that and continue to grow, we're gonna continue to do that.
But are there a lot of acquisitions out there for you, or where, I mean, how are you thinking about acquisitions?
Listen, you know, it took us two years to get to Hivestack, and we've interviewed 500 companies, so it's a lot of companies. Hopefully, we're not gonna interview 500 more to get to the next acquisition. But there are a few interesting company out there. We're not gonna buy. Probably gonna buy another company this year, but not more than one. We know, you know, PMI-wise, and how do we integrate them? If we'll buy too many companies, even if all of them are successful, that's gonna be very unsuccessful to integrate them, right? So we're doing that i n a very strict way.
Other questions for Tal? Yes, sir.
Can, yeah, WAVE technology be used on the video side of the equation, where you don't have an actual human being seen, you know, seen speaking, but you could have a voice coming behind whatever the ad is promoting. C an you do that and bring the technology to the video that does it just audio?
Absolutely. No, now, so we've spoken with a company that we thought about, you know, partnering or buying. They're doing something that is very similar to WAVE, but for video. Where you would do a movie with an actor that says whatever. "I can't believe avocado are all so cheap now," or whatever it was. And then through Generative AI, you can change their lips and sound to become, "I can't believe," I don't know, "diapers are so cheap now." And so you can create that. So we've took that technology and went to, you know, agencies and brands and said, "If we would you know, combine those, would you do that?"
And I think we're at the stage where brands are actually fear that AI would consider it creepy. I mean, with, with WAVE for audio, you wouldn't even know that it's Generative AI. It just sounds like a human being. But if you would see the same video over and over again, saying these different things, that would look creepy. So everybody says, " You know what? L et's start with audio. Let's see how it works. Let's see how the audience behave, how do they react, and then we can move." Technology-wise, we can do that today. I think brands would like to see, to get people comfortable with that.
Well, building on that, we had the CEO of DoubleVerify. Their fastest-growing product is brands who are paying them to not have any ad show up next to any content that came from Generative AI. So the DoubleVerify product identifies Generative AI. It doesn't matter how good the content is, brands say, "We won't put our ad anywhere near that."
Right.
To exactly your point, I think brands today are really fearful of content created by Generative AI, even if it's fantastic.
I agree. And I think at the end of the time, at the end of the day, marketing is all about creating an emotional connection between a brand and the customer, and you don't want to mess that up. You don't wanna have a negative emotional response. So, you know, we're in a business of providing tech that can generate positive experience and positive ROI for advertisers. A s long as they need it, we'll provide it.
Okay, I'm gonna call it there. That's our time. Our time is up.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.