Hello everybody, and welcome to the Perion Network first quarter 2003- 2023 earnings conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. The press release detailing the financial results is available on the company's website at perion.com. Before we begin, I'd like to re-read the following safe harbor statement. This 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 and uncertainties and other factors, including those discussed under the heading Risk Factors and elsewhere in the company's annual report on Form 20-F, and may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different, and 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.
The prior quarter's results reported today will be analyzed both on a GAAP and Non-GAAP basis. When I mention EBITDA, we will be referring to adjusted EBITDA. We have provided a detailed reconciliation of Non-GAAP measures to their comparable GAAP measures in our earnings release, which is available on our website and has been filed on Form 6-K. Hosting the call today are Doron Gerstel, Perion's Chief Executive Officer, and Maoz Sigron, Perion's Chief Financial Officer, and Tal Jacobson, General Manager of CodeFuel and Perion's Chief Executive Officer, effective August 1st, 2023. I would now like to turn the call over to Doron Gerstel. Please go ahead.
Hello everyone, welcome. Thanks for joining Perion first quarter of 2023 earning call. Together with me on the call, Maoz Sigron, our CFO, and Tal Jacobson, my successor CEO as of August 1st. It's rare to be excited about being repetitive, this is one of those times. I say that because today is the 12th time in the last three years I have used the same headline describing our financials. Our momentum continues. It's not the 1st time you have heard me state and restate that our unique diversification strategy is what's behind our ability to deliver business results that are sustainable and predictable. Our continuing agility to grow top line and bottom line, no matter the state of macroeconomic conditions, has been demonstrated over the last three years, as you can see from the slides.
Even most recently, where the industry has been challenged by reduction in digital advertising spending. In fact, our strategy of supporting the three main pillars of digital advertising is especially relevant in these times, when advertisers are under pressure and grappling with uncertainty. In fact, just last week, the Federal Reserve described the economy as rocky and bumpy. The unavoidable results of this dynamic environment is that budgets are continually in flux, more dramatically than ever before. Advertisers shift between channels, they shift between awareness campaign and performance campaigns, and they shift between omni-channel objectives. In other words, between online sales and driving foot traffic. Perion is perfectly poised to capture these sudden moves in advertiser spend preference. Proactively, not reactively. We don't need to scramble as the winds shift.
We are prepared whenever and wherever the market moves, because we have the platform and the infrastructure in place to support it. The strategic advantage of being ahead of the market is due to our investment in technology. This allows us to compete, win the game market and gain market share in the most pioneering, cutting-edge ad tech sector where innovation enters. I'll go in more detail when we look at the growth drivers. I also want to point out, before I get to the specific results, there are three pillars provide us with better competitive advantage that make our predictability and sustainability possible. Supporting those pillars provide us with a valuable insight about consumer behavior and advertiser preferences. We are then able to react immediately. Our R&D and product team analyze these insights and bring innovative solutions to market. This ability is our primary core competence.
I want discussion of our specific results and revenue first. We continue to outpace the category with a year-over-year growth of 16%, which is higher than the digital advertising market. I point out that we have robust and healthy growth across all our pillars and sub-pillars. At the same time, our growth has come from both new clients and extended engagement with current ones. For me, this is an essential signal that we're doing the right thing, demonstrating our efficacy with current clients and using it as a lever to raise new ones. Also important to note, as I pointed out earlier, that we are growing in areas that are the most sophisticated from a technology point of view. That includes video and CTV, SORT, our cookie-free innovation, retail media, and search.
I say search, yes, which I might not have said a year ago because of the transformation being created by OpenAI and ChatGPT- 4, which is being driven by Microsoft being our long-term strategic partner. You may remember last quarter when I opened the kimono and talked about how we are using the exploit and explore framework to guide our strategy and execution. This is what has happened with search. More specific, with some of the business opportunities we've seen emerging within search. Thanks to the disruptive possibilities of integrating AI into search, we have a whole new initiative now firmly in the explore quadrant. Next, I'll discuss our EBITDA, which exceeds Q1 of last year by 38%. In other words, almost $0.50 of every dollar of net revenue is profit.
We are particularly proud of this accomplishment, given everything I've talked about in terms of macroeconomic and the rocky and bumpy ride we're on. I am often asked by many of you and at conferences about how we are able to continually generate results which appear to change the laws of gravity and physics. This is especially compelling given that Achilles' heel of many AdTech is their inability to drive the top line and still maintain a high profitability. The answer is that we're able to capture and analyze data signals from all channels and from both sides of the open web into our central hub. We're using advanced AI to develop a bidding system that maximize our unit revenue while reducing our media costs. By doing this, we uniquely combine efficient buying with the ability to meet our customer ROAS, return on ad spend expectations.
At the same time, when advertisers are under extreme ROAS pressure, this is a true competitive advantage for us. I've mentioned this before, it is a paradigm that investors and venture firms have applied to identify the markers of the healthy growth for tech-driven software companies, even though it's not common for evaluating ad-tech companies. We at Perion see ourselves at the forefront of incorporating AI technology in our solution and thus need to be benchmarked with more sophisticated high-tech companies. To restate the formula, you should add your trailing 12-month growth rate in percentage terms to your EBITDA margin. If the result is 40 or more, you're doing great. You'll see how we measure up right here. It's something we look at all time, a fiscal discipline that drive us.
I said before, if you over-index to top line and ignore profitability, you put yourself on a slippery slope that is extremely difficult to correct. I'll move to search advertising now. It has been reliable and significant growth driver for Perion, and it will become even bigger contributor based on recent investment Microsoft has made in ChatGPT. With that in mind, I'd like to quote Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, who said on the recent earnings call last week when talking about Bing and GPT-4. He said, "We're making progress in shared gains. We continue to innovate with the first-of-its-kind AI power features. We see that when people use their new AI feature, their engagement with Bing goes up. We look forward to future where chat become a new way for people to seek information.
This is a generational shift in the largest software category search." This is a truly profound, and it's just the beginning. It means that ad search category that is being mature and faced a slow growth is now one of the most dynamic categories in AdTech. Our first quarter reflect that. Search numbers were boosted by a significant increase of 29% in the number of publishers. They sense the potential and want to be part of it. As a result, average daily traffic increased dramatically by nearly 50% year-over-year and are now close to 30 million monetized search a day on an average basis. We believe that the massive media attention to GPT-4 has driven a material portion of this, and that we'll continue to see growth that exceeds our normative trajectory.
Microsoft Bing is a real competitive advantage now. That cascades immediately to our business. Next, I'd like to provide some context and visibility into our retail media commerce business, as I see it as a very important growth driver behind the company. I'm sure you know that just about every major retailer from Albertsons to CVS to Target has launched their own media network to compete with threats from Amazon and Walmart. What we build at Perion is an AI-driven platform that enables these retailers to maximize the value of their inventory with ad units that identify consumer signals and respond with timely and personalized promotions content. For example, if the weather is lousy and it's good day to cook at home, our intelligent platform delivers ads like that, as you can see it in the screen.
We can personalize at scale and can do it in an omni-channel fashion across all streams, as you can see from the following example. From the moment you wake up until you go to bed, we consolidate multi-data sets, including retailer first-party data, external signal like weather and location, and AI-driven visioning within our ads as a platform solution. While coupling this with our award-winning creative on an omni-channel basis. In other words, synchronizing our messaging according to the consumer journey across display, video, CTV, and digital out-of-home using a dynamic messaging delivery. We deliver 14 times return on ad spend to Albertsons and others, driving results digitally, replacing old-school print circulars.
Even allowing retailers to shut off promotion if it gets to a negative margin. Our retail platform is changing the business dynamics of our clients, shifting from transactional campaigns to always on, thus improving the sustainability and predictability of our business. Our commerce platform has grown by 60% year-over-year in terms of revenue and by 32% in terms of new customer. You can see some of the logos at the bottom of the screen. With a total addressable market of $46 billion in 2023 and virtually little innovation in retail media, you can see why we are so bullish on this innovation. Retail media is one macro trend we are capitalizing on. Privacy is another. Study after study reveals that consumer will choose brand which protect their privacy over brands that don't. In fact, more than 80% of consumer care about their privacy.
That's the power and appeal of Sort. Sort is our cookieless, totally anonymous solution that protects consumer privacy a unique and honorable way, which is why we are attracting brands who want to be associated with the privacy-first principle. Those includes brands that range from Mercedes to the United Nations. In fact, 48 new customer adopted Sort in the first quarter of 2023, and in total, there are 157 customers that are using our privacy-first technology. That's just one reason Sort is exploding. It is also the results and the ROI we deliver. Sort has been verified by third-party researchers to deliver superior results to cookies themselves. That's why existing Sort customers spending are increasing their spend by 93% year-over-year. That's one more critical point to make here. That's the connection.
There is one more critical point to make here, though, and that's the connection between privacy and ESG, environmental, social, and governance. To live up to ESG standards means that you have to protect user privacy. We're seeing investor, legislator, and regulators paying unprecedented attention to this essential right. This is why we believe SORT will continue to be a major contributor to revenue and EBITDA. From that growth driver four, as you can see the numbers right now, 26% year-over-year growth and increase of 63% for the new publisher added to our video platform. Vidazoo is on fire. Our end-to-end platform is meeting large and growing need for publishers who are looking for fast results and lack the internal resources to build a complex, high-maintenance internal system. The platform advantage is what's behind our land and expand sales growth engine.
As proof of that, revenue from retained video platform publisher increased by 71% and average revenue per publisher increased by 22%. Unpack that for you, what our sales team are focused on is getting initial traction. In all this, we have extendable footprint which enable us to prove our capabilities and go forward. Displayed on the slide in our full suite video platform service, each and every one of these components, as you can see at the bottom half of the slide, is independently valuable and collectively powerful. We aren't asking clients to commit everything at once because we are confident of our power of the holistic platform as they learn more and more about it. Conclude, the more they experience us, the more service they consume.
Growth number 5, the one that I think is making the most impact on our business, is our iHub. As you know, our iHub is the key to our differentiation. We spend tens of millions of dollars to build a hub which connects all the signal across our platform. This provide efficiencies which have led to unique business advantage on many levels. Before describing the benefit of the iHub, we must reiterate its core importance. Without having all the pieces of the business connected, we would be managing a very costly, inefficient, fragmented business. On a given day, we capture into iHub daily billions of data requests from various media channels. One example of effectively leveraging this amount of data is creating an AI-driven bidding strategy that optimizes the match between supply and demand to maximize our profit.
At the same time, it assures the highest performance to our customers. Our iHUB open architecture is a foundation that enable us to make acquisitions which are instantly optimized because they plug in into the center of our ecosystem. As ad-tech grows more complex and multidimensional, the value of our iHUB will only become way more meaningful. With that, I will turn it over to Maoz. Maoz?
Yes. Thank you, Doron. Good afternoon, and good morning to those of you joining us from the U.S. I am happy to be here today to present the strong results for the first quarter of 2023. The strength of Perion business has been evident for the last two years, building great momentum on both the top and bottom lines. These strong trends have continued in the first quarter of 2023, even as the market has been impacted by a slowdown in advertising activity driven by macroeconomic challenges. Beyond diversified business model, technology differentiation and innovation-focused approach continue to enable us to navigate our way through market changes. Quarter after quarter, we are increasing revenue while media margin and EBITDA margin are improving dramatically. This is the result of our continuous efforts to improve higher performance and to improve operational efficiency.
Let's look at the main financial achievements for the first quarter. Revenue grew by 16% to $165.2 million. Gross profit grew by 20% to $65.3 million, with 45% margin compared with 43% last year. Adjusted EBITDA grew by 38% to $31.3 million, with 22% margin compared with 18% last year. Net income of $23.8 million increased by 54% year-over-year. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share increased by 36% to $0.60 per share. Let's move to the quarterly results in more detail. The revenue of the first quarter of 2023 was $145.2 million, an increase of 60% year-over-year, reflecting a strong continued three-year CAGR of 30%.
First quarter display advertising revenue increased by 16% year-over-year to $79.9 million, 55% of total revenue. This was driven primarily by the continuous market adoption of our holistic video platform, the increase in SORT, retail media, CTV. Video revenue increased by 26% year-over-year, representing 44% of display advertising revenue compared with 41% in the first quarter of 2022. The number of video platform publisher increased by 63% year-over-year from 46%- 75%. The revenue from retail video platform publisher increased by 71% year-over-year. Average revenue per video platform publisher increased by 22%. Our innovative cookieless targeting SORT solution is being increasingly adopted by the market in light of consumer growing awareness and increasing regulatory pressure on companies to protect consumer privacy.
The number of SORT customer was 167, representing an increase of 142% year-over-year. SORT customer spending increased by 93%, representing 17% of display advertising revenue compared with 7% last year. CTV revenue increased by 12% year-over-year, representing 8% of the total display advertising revenue. Retail media revenue increased by 60% year-over-year, representing 8% of display advertising revenue compared with 6% last year. The number of retail media customer increased by 32% year-over-year. First quarter search advertising revenue increased by 15% year-over-year to $65.3 million, 45% of total revenue. The strength of our search business was driven by a sharp increase last week due to consumer interest in ChatGPT, which continued to rise.
Bing ecosystem is benefiting from that exciting change. The strong increase of 49% in average day searches and the 29% increase in publisher more than offset the 22% decline in RPM rates for this quarter. The first quarter display advertising revenue accounted for 55% of total revenue, with search advertising accounting for 45% of total revenue. Revenue excluding tax was $65.3 million or 45% of revenue compared with 43% of revenue in the first quarter of 2022. Our media margin continued to show year-over-year improvement quarter after quarter. The iHUB we have developed leverage data buying power to control and improve the overall media buying results. This was resulted in better selling and buying power, translating into a continuous improvement in media margin.
We take great pride in our ability to implement efficiency measures and progress in our day-to-day operations. Each and every efficiency measure shows a continuous improvement over the last three years. OPEX last costs accounted for 26% of revenue this quarter compared with 28% in the first quarter of 2022 and 32% in 2021. 6% improvement over the last three years. During the same period, EBITDA FTE has risen from 18,000 in 2021 to 45,000 in 2022 to over 62,000 in 2023. This impressive achievement is a clear demonstration of our ongoing increasing productivity and reflects the execution of our business strategy and the disciplined manner in which we run our operations.
Over the past few years, we have invested in innovation and automation, creating the infrastructure that allows incremental top and bottom line growth on a lower cost basis. We have improved our budget control and are consistently looking for new efficiency initiatives. This show our efficiency and cost control measures, coupled with focused growth in high-margin business, translate into impressive bottom line growth. First quarter EBITDA was $31.3 million, reflecting 38% year-over-year growth. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 22% compared with 18% last year. Adjusted EBITDA to revenue excluding tax increased from 42% in the first quarter of 2022 to 48% in the first quarter of 2023.
On a GAAP basis, first quarter net income was $23.8 million or $0.48 per diluted share, an increase of 54% compared with $15.5 million or $0.33 per diluted share in the first quarter of 2022. Importantly, our net profit include two additional profit sources worth highlighting. First is our strong cash position and disciplined cash management, which helped Perion to generate $3.4 million financial income during the first quarter. Second, we also enjoy a low effective tax rate of around 50% due to our disciplined tax planning. This means that more of our pre-tax income converts to earnings.
On a Non-GAAP basis, first quarter net income was $29.9 million or $0.60 per diluted share, an increase of 44% compared with $20.7 million or $0.44 per diluted share in the first quarter of 2022. First quarter operating cash flow was $17.8 million, compared to $23.6 million in the first quarter of 2022. Operating cash flow was affected by about $8 million customer collection shift from March to April 2023, and the one-time change in working capital needs. As of March 31st, 2023, our cash and cash equivalents, short-term deposits, and marketable securities amounted to $436 million, up over $6 million since the previous quarter.
The $6.7 million increase is primarily a result of $17.8 million in cash from operations, partially offset by $13.3 million cash paid in connection with acquisitions. This concludes my financial overview, and now I will hand over to Doron. Doron, please go ahead.
Thank you, thank you, Moaz. I will wrap up with guidance for the balance of the year. This confidence is based on everything that I shared with you together with Moaz. As I said earlier, the markers of a successful ad company are both the ability to drive revenue growth and profitability. Therefore, we are increasing our guidance as we are expecting another strong performance year, increasing our revenue output to $735 million, which represent 50% year-over-year growth, and increasing our EBITDA guidance to at least $165 million, representing a 17% year-over-year growth. As you see, in an industry where it's easy to pad the results by paying too much for traffic and getting squeezed on margin side, our EBITDA is projected to grow at a greater pace than our revenue.
Our model is built and tuned for revenue and profitability. Since this is my last earning call, allow me to conclude on a personal note. It's been a privilege to lead this company for six years and to work with the most talented team I've ever worked with before. A special thanks to our customers and partners who believe in us, and last but not least, to you, our investor community. It's been an honor to stand before you, to tell our story, and to answer your questions. I couldn't be more excited to turn the baton and the podium over to my friend and colleague, Tal Jacobson. Now, for the last time, I will turn it over to the floor. Operator?
Thank you. We will now be conducting the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two to remove yourself from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. For covering analysts who join us via Zoom, please click the Raise Hand icon. One moment, please, while we poll for your questions. Our first questions come from the line of Laura Martin with Needham & Company. Please proceed with your questions.
Good morning. Spectacular numbers, you guys. Congratulations. Let's start with AI. You guys are in one of the best positions to benefit from AI. Generative AI is what I'm focused on, both in Bing, but I'm interested in what kind of client reception you're getting now because Bing is really going into ChatGPT more aggressively integrating that. Also when you think about your business, the rest of your business outside of search, how do you think about the role of generative AI in your display business? That's my first question.
Thanks, Laura. First and foremost, I think that, you know, our publisher, and this is something that I mentioned, you know, on our call, is really excited about what's going on. It's not being translated, you know, too much, you know, to action with them, but they want to be part. Just to mention, the process of approval of the publisher between us and Microsoft is matter of months. It has to do with going through a very rigid, you know, holding process. The moment that they heard that Microsoft is going to invest heavily around it and they putting their search technology as the first example to use or to utilize their investment, they're coming.
I must say that at this point, without having any evidence or even more than that, how the ChatGPT can help. That's one. From an audience perspective or consumer perspective, it's the same. I think that at this point Bing what they are doing, and we know very well what's going on here, is very much using the ChatGPT behind the scene. It's not yet something which is being translated as much within market share. As they pointed out that every point of market share on search is worth $2 billion for them. What consumer is doing is, you know, it's... First of all it's great PR for Microsoft Bing. They adopting, you know, the search browser. I think we mentioned it on the last call.
At this point they have a 3% market share, and there is a huge, huge runway for them, you know, to take, especially on the amount of investment that they're doing. Having said, from, you know, discussion standpoint between us and Bing, I can tell you, without disclosing much because we are on a very strict NDA, that there is a huge cooperation between the two companies. One of my quote here was from Kaya. I hope I'm able to get it here, but currently, she's running the Microsoft Advertising, and she basically said that Bing is going to be definitely something very attractive for their partners. Now to other part of your question, I think that this is, it's beyond what we're able to imagine what the ChatGPT is going to make.
It's quite a transformation. Quite a transformation. I would say that the search interaction, as we've seen and experienced in, let's say, in the last 20 years, is not going to be the same. We will have a chance to look at it two years from now. It will be completely different interaction, user experience, engagement between consumer and search engine. No doubt about it.
Okay. My other question was on CTV. I was really interested that the CTV revenue grew 12%, but overall video grew 26%, which is quite a slowdown in CTV. Could you actually speak to in more detail why is video revenue growing so much faster than CTV revenue in the first quarter?
Yeah. Hold on for a second. I need to move here and move Okay. where some technology glitch. When it comes to the CTV and especially with the publishing business. Let's distinguish. There is a low-hanging fruit here that has to do with market our video platform. This low-hanging fruit is as described, following this concept of lend and expand, where we are lending with one component and then adding the other. We are very much meeting the need in the marketplace for publisher that is looking to increase substantially, you know, their the ability to monetize their business. That's our main effort at this point in every publisher. I mentioned a very important and a key KPI for us is the retention. Retention dollars. Retention dollars is very high.
Every publisher that we able to take and use our platform, it's the lifetime value of each publisher is huge. From a company standpoint, we make a decision that we very much would like to focus in this area and capture as much as we can more market share. We are gaining market share, and we are very happy with this progress, as I mentioned on that call. From a CTV perspective, that's a very interesting question. Currently the company is looking to maximize its margin, period. I think that we are reaching a point in CTV where prices is being blocked, margin is being blocked. It's become, I would use the word, commodity.
When it comes to the CTV, we are very much focusing online CTV event, which we are able to grow, yes, in a modest way, but the most important for us is to keep the margin. We're probably not impressed by, you know, the large percentage of CTV to, I mean, from a growth perspective, but, what we are doing is very unique at this point, that is giving us, as I mentioned, a great margin.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question is coming to the line of Jason Helfstein with Oppenheimer. Please proceed with your questions.
Hey, thanks. First, Doron, mazel tov, with what's next. It's been a pleasure working with you, and I look forward to keeping the team in line. 2 questions. First on just on the search side, I think one of the questions people are gonna have is why you didn't see a tailwind from kind of improved CPCs out of Bing. I mean, is it while they are getting, you know, meaningfully more usage, it's just, you know, it's not having an impact on broad CPCs? Just some call and, you know, given you didn't really raise, I don't think we're taking up search numbers that much for the year. Are you kind of not assuming that there's a kind of benefit to CPCs at some point this year? That's the first question.
Second, you guys are very successful integrating SSP capabilities, and how it both allowed you to kind of better target ads as well as save fees. Do you think you could kind of bolt on additional SSP capabilities in the current form, or do you also need to bring additional DSP capabilities as well to kind of match both sides? Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah. Can you hear me?
Yeah.
Great. To your first question, when it comes to the, you know, the ChatGPT as a driver, I must tell you that at this point, it's very, very difficult for us to simulate. Our numbers for this year is not taking the ChatGPT, you know, extra, you know, let's say, tailwind into the numbers. Not according to our model. That's definitely something that we believe will impact substantially our business. As I mentioned before, it's really difficult for us to translate it, you know, into tangible model engagement and how it can be translated into a monetization. We are very cautious here, and we're not taking it into the model as I mentioned. That's what we on top. That's the gravy here.
Now as far as the SSP DSP connection, you're right on. Right on. I mean, definitely that's one of the areas where we are investing the most of integrating especially with more SSPs. We are facing the huge demand on one side that needs to be always balanced with the other side. We are very much trying doing it on our own. That's the preference because we are saving quite a, quite a chunk of intermediator that are very expensive to get. What is more important, as you can imagine, that in case that we don't have the supply, we need to get the supply no matter what it will cost, because otherwise we disappoint our customer and we want to keep us with us.
God forbid, we're not able to deliver, they will go somewhere else. This is a very, very important, very strategic for the company, to increase the number of SSPs that we integrated. At the same time, since we have asset on the supply side, for instance, Vidazoo is very much connected to quite different DSPs. That's the beauty of the model. Yes, the priority is our own demand that is coming from Undertone. Guess what? They very much working with others, some of the big ones that are looking to get quality first, second-tier publisher, that are part of the Vidazoo network. It goes both end, on the SSP side and the DSP side.
I was thinking organic. When I was saying acquire, I didn't mean acquire traffic, I meant acquire other companies, given that you guys have a ton of cash and are looking for M&A market. Would you look at buying an FSP? To make it work, you also have to buy a DSP instead of an FSP. Can you buy one side right now given your scale, or do you kinda need to buy both if you're gonna go in that direction?
That's a very good question. To be honest, the preference is always going closer to the customer, and in this case, being more on the demand side, because I think it's more precious, being close to the customer. The preference is doing it direct and not through an agency. That's very much where we are looking at. we are not looking on the, on the SSP side. That's become quite commodity, and I don't think we're able by doing this acquisition to differentiate ourselves, especially with the latest movement, that some of the large DSPs are already, you know, announcing that they can offer an SSP capability and in a way, reduce the cost for their customer. To your question, our preference is on the demand side of the house.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question is coming from the line of Andrew Marok with Raymond James. Andrew, you are free to talk.
Great. Thanks for taking my questions. Doron, best of luck in your next chapter. Two, if I could please, one on search and one on SORT. What can you tell us about the new search publishers that are coming online with the 29% year-over-year growth? Is there any notable concentration, vertical type of publisher, etc? Then on SORT, any progress on the monetization plans? Thank you.
Yeah. There is no, you know, something in common. They're not coming from any kind of vertical. The only thing is that all of them, with no exception, has a very loyal, you know, customer base. Basically the only way for those publisher to be able to, you know, monetize, you know, their effort is through search. That's why they are moving. I suspect that they are moving from other search companies to Bing, except within the Bing. Let me put it this way. This is something that we know for sure. We don't know where they're coming, but you can guess. They would like to add. It's not exclusive relationship. In other words, I suspect that they're working with couple, you know, search providers.
The fact that they added Bing, you know, into the mix is a very important signal in the market, because every search that they provide to you is not the search that they provide to the Bing competitor. It's a very important win for Microsoft Bing on their ability to gain market share. That's very much clear. Now, in terms of SORT, we are making a headway in terms of SORT as a service, not significant yet in terms of revenue. We are defining it as a three-phase approach. The first one is that we're using SORT internally in our owned and operated site, and that was done. We were checking the technology.
I mentioned the importance of latency time, that will not add the latency time once we were a site. The publisher is calling SORT to get verification or to get better targeting. The second is performance. Every test like this require a benchmark with cookies tactics as a benchmark of SORT, and we test this one. First phase, using our own and operator. The second is very much moving outside of our own and operator and working with other. At this point, not hard. Third phase is very much defining what is the business, what is the business model.
I must tell you that once we are now having discussion with external publisher, we tend to believe that the outcome, and that has to do because of the very bad, let's say, financial situation of publisher, that instead of them paying, they will pay for us with an inventory, which is equivalent for $ for us. I mean, it is, it's the same. It's not cash that they need to spend with us, it's equivalent. At the same time, we are able to provide them direct demand, and as a result of it, they're giving us a reduced price of their inventory. In this way it's a win-win situation.
Understood. Thank you.
No worries.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jeff Martin with Roth. Please proceed with your question.
Thanks. Hello, everyone. Good to see you. Doron, wanted to check in with you what you're seeing competitively on the SORT front. you know, you've been in the market with it for over a year now. I would imagine there's a lot of, you know, a lot of competitors out there trying to come up with a similar solution. Curious what you're seeing out there competitively on SORT.
Yeah, right on. I mean, the market is in a very interesting situation where everyone is saying what Google would do. That's the big news at this point. They keep postponing their solution. At this point, I think it is 2024 or even later than that. I truly believe it's not a technology challenge. I think it has to do with a business challenge. I think they passed this point where they simulate the day after, where they will pull the plug of cookies and how this is going to impact their revenue. I think they are trying to find an alternative that will allow them to not get the hit financially.
I can tell you that I'm very skeptical, as far as them finding a solution that will, you know, on one hand protect user privacy, on the other hand, will not impact their revenue. In this case, I think that a lot of companies is, no matter when this is going to happen, they are getting prepared for this day. A lot of homegrown type of solution. Few solution is being built with the notion of market it outside. It's kind of using it as a product. This is SORT is something that we did from the first line of code with the notion of selling it or installing it outside of our domain. Yes, we need to went through a very rigid process, you know, to eat our own dog food.
The product was designed to be used by third party, and it's architecturally being used or consumed as a service rather than internal product. I'm not seeing many like this in the market, so I don't think that the point there is a competition. The question will be what will happen when publisher will be forced to use this type of solution. Currently it's election. Currently it's not something that they are being forced to use because they have an alternative. I think that when this will come, the competition will be far more serious.
Right. My second question relates to your land and expand strategy. It's a pretty significant customer growth in the quarter. Does that suggest you could see, you know, revenue growth acceleration as we progress throughout the year as those customers expand with you?
Definitely. The interesting part here, and Moaz is smiling because they developed a very efficient forecasting system where they're able to see what is the progress of expansion of a given publisher in the course of first year, second year, so on and so on. That gives us a great visibility into our revenue growth. It gives us a very visibility of the lifetime value of a publisher. Of course, we need to sort it by peers of publisher and because the bigger, the more complex one, definitely are going to consume more products, put aside the fact that they're going to pay more because of scale.
This model is one of the main factors behind our ability to increase visibility beyond, you know, the actual insertion order that we're getting from agencies and brands.
Okay, thank you. Good luck in your next venture, Doron.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Eric with Lake Street. Please proceed with your questions.
Yeah. I want to dive in on the video growth within the display rev. You talked about video up, like, I forget what it was, twenty-something% overall.
CTV.
CTV being up 26%, okay. CTV was up only 12%. I would have thought that CTV would have been on a higher growth side of that 26% number.
Yeah. I think I answered this question. I think that Perion is looking for margin. That's the story. Even though you know, $1 of CTV seems to worth more than other $, I think that there is a cost for it. The margin of CTV, and if we don't broad CTV, not any kind of unique vertical, there is a huge price reduction, and that's impact the margin. While we are looking to optimize our margin, we are very much defined an area, a vertical within the CTV market where we are gaining a substantial market share. That's live CTV, mainly on sports event.
This is an area that we specialize with our creative and ability to drive greater engagement than it was before and keep high margin. It was by design, the fact that we're not all over the CTV market. That's very, very easy for any company to do. It's quite difficult to keep the margin when you're doing it.
The Vidazoo success, that, you know, maybe I need a better understanding of Vidazoo. They're more kind of traditional web publisher, not focused CTV or.
Vidazoo business is all over the map. Whatever video is video they're doing. Vidazoo concept is offering their platform, and the platform has many components. The whole idea of this is that a publisher, broadcaster, whatever, they will eventually will move all their technology assets or technology vendors around video to a single platform that has a huge advantage, you know, for them to have a single point or ability to see everything at once. There is a lot of interaction between the component. We are happy that we are able to educate the market towards, and I mention it in a way that it's not done over... We're not coming to a new client and sell the platform.
We sell the platform concept, but we urge to take one, two component in the first phase and then move along. That's very much the strategy, and that apply to all type of screens.
Okay. Thanks for taking my question.
Mm-hmm.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to hand the call back over to Doron Gerstel for any closing comments.
Guys, thank you very much. As I mentioned, honor. We'll see you in the next venture. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Thank you. Thank you. This does conclude today's teleconference. We appreciate your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Enjoy the rest of your day.