Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Taboola fourth quarter 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you have any further questions, please press star then zero.
At this time, I would like to turn the broadcast over to Ms. Jennifer Horsley. Ma'am, you may begin.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Taboola's fourth quarter and full year 2021 earnings conference call. I'm here with Adam Singolda, our Founder and CEO, and Steve Walker, our CFO. We issued our earnings press release yesterday after market, and it is available along with our Q4 shareholder letter in the Investor Section of our website.
Now, I'll quickly cover the Safe Harbor. Certain statements today, including our expectations for future periods, are forward-looking statements. They are not facts and are subject to material risks and uncertainties described in our SEC filings. These statements are based on currently available information, and we undertake no duty to update them, except as required by law. Today's discussion is also subject to the forward-looking statement limitations in the earnings press release. Future events could differ materially and adversely from those anticipated.
During this call, we'll use terms defined in the earnings release and refer to non-GAAP financial measures. For definitions and reconciliations to GAAP, please refer to the non-GAAP tables in the earnings release posted on our website.
With that, I'll turn the call over to Adam.
Thanks, Jen. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our fourth quarter call. I'm excited to say we finished the year with a record Q4 and a record 2021. Taboola is growing fast. Our EBITDA margin is over 30% and we're generating cash. There's a meaningful momentum in the market.
Let me share some of our 2021 numbers. Q4 revenues were $408 million, ex-TAC gross profit, which is what's left for us after we share revenue with our publishers. The main metric we measure as management was $169 million, which represents 54% growth rate over Q4 of 2020 on a reported basis.
This ex-TAC growth rate in Q4 on a pro forma basis, which means if we had owned Connexity in Q4 of 2020, then our Q4 growth rate in 2021 versus 2020 would have been 22%. We also generated adjusted EBITDA of $65 million in Q4 at an adjusted EBITDA margin of 38.6%.
When looking at 2021, we exceeded our full-year guidance, growing ex-TAC gross profit to $519 million, growth rates of 36% over 2020 on a reported basis. With Connexity pro forma, our ex-TAC growth rate in 2021 was 25%. To put this in perspective, when going public in 2021, we guided for 16% ex-TAC growth over 2020. We also delivered strong adjusted EBITDA of $179 million in 2021 at a margin of 34.6%.
As you can see, 2021 was a strong year financially for us, but it was really a milestone year for us in many ways. We went public on June 30, completed our largest acquisition in our history - Connexity - making us a leader in e-commerce, brought new products into the market, and won meaningful partnerships all around the world.
We demonstrated our differentiation, why we win, as well as established our predictability as a business with long-term exclusive publisher partnerships. All of this while delivering beat and raise each quarter. I'm very proud of the team for all of that we've accomplished in 2021 and these results providing us confidence to increase our guidance for 2022. Steve will share more details, but I would like to provide some highlights.
We expect revenues of $1.67 billion, ex-TAC gross profit of $665 million, and adjusted EBITDA of $204 million, each at a midpoint of our guidance. This guidance represents an ex-TAC growth rate of 28% over last year and 16% on a pro forma basis, with 30%-32% adjusted EBITDA margin.
I could not be more excited about our future, and I feel we're exactly where we need to be. There are only 24 hours in a day, and the average person makes north of 30,000 decisions a day. Recommendation engines, like Taboola, are needed to help people make decisions that can impact their lives. What to read, what to listen to, what to buy. Our mission is to power recommendations for the open web anywhere outside of the walled garden.
Over time, we aim to ensure anything and everything will be personalized, powered by Taboola. Think Amazon's people who buy this also buy, but powered by Taboola for content, products and services, and everywhere in the open web outside of the walled garden. The open web is a $64 billion market, and we have differentiated offerings that help us win business fast and profitably.
You've all used us before. If you've ever been on a website or an app that you love, like CNBC or ESPN or BBC or The Independent or El Mundo, Taboola recommends more content from the site you're already on, as well as from elsewhere around the web. People click on Taboola 30 billion times a year. Half of it is to read and watch more editorial content, and the other half is sponsored by advertisers.
Now, more than 15,000 advertisers work with Taboola already to reach users in the open web in the right context when they're reading about something they care about. We reach about 500 million people every day. It's safe to advertise with us, and we're effective.
Following the acquisition of Connexity, we're also a leader in powering e-commerce recommendations, driving more than 1 million monthly transactions. Leading brands, including Walmart, Macy's, Wayfair, Skechers, and eBay, are among some of our key customers.
This is a good time to also update about where we are in Connexity and our integration. We made progress on all three fronts that I talked about in the past. People, there's a lot of excitement and good energy. We're merging our sales and comm system, and it's starting to feel like we're one. My goal here is that soon enough, people who are joining Taboola will not know who came from Taboola or Connexity.
On the advertising front, there's a good momentum in selling Connexity by Taboola sales team, starting in China and soon in the U.S. On the publisher front, we're cross-selling Connexity offering to Taboola publishers in EMEA and APAC, and we're getting good demand for it from all of our partners. You may have seen us highlight Connexity as part of our solution in recent press releases in win announcements, so you already know that the market cares about it.
Taking a step back, over the past year, the open web has begun to transition from its addiction to tracking user data, and it's shifting to contextual targeting. I'm encouraged by where the industry is going. It's safer for users, and contextual advertising is the source of Taboola's strength.
Advertisers can reach users on Taboola based on their reading preferences, what makes them curious, what interests them, what they watched and read, not just what they told social network about themselves. This is the future of our industry, especially in the backdrop of all the changes we're seeing with Apple, Google, and more.
As I reflect on 2021, there are three important things on my mind as it relates to our business. I'll share highlights of each. Our differentiation and how that makes us win, our significant growth opportunities in our $64 billion market, and our strong, predictable financial model.
We win business because we're differentiated in the marketplace. Many companies in the advertising space offer ads to publishers, but the truth is that nobody is looking forward to seeing an ad. Taboola, though, doesn't just offer ads. Publishers working with us gets more than just revenue. Chief editors choose Taboola, product leadership chooses Taboola, audience development teams choose Taboola, and now e-commerce people choose Taboola. Thanks to that, we're able to win long-term exclusive partnerships with some of the most amazing publishers in the world.
This is what comes from having a product-led approach and investing $100 million a year in a unique platform offering that differentiates us. Here are a few of those investments that took place in 2021, and how our clients and partners chose Taboola thanks to them. Advertisers chose Taboola because our technology and AI works. Smart Bid is our AI that helps advertisers succeed with Taboola. Similar to how, if you're buying an ad from Google or Amazon, their technology is optimizing on your behalf. At Taboola, it's called Smart Bid.
In Q3, we announced Smart Bid's newest innovation, Dimensions. It factors in 40 different signals or dimensions, as we call them, at scale to drive strong campaign performance. Most companies who provide advertising solution to publishers rely on programmatic channels to bring dollars, and they try to be less dependent on it. They call it Supply Path Optimization, and it means that they want less companies between them and the advertiser or a client. It means they are not the ones optimizing for the advertisers, and they're not sure if the advertiser will keep buying from them.
With Taboola, on the other hand, we behave a lot more like Google, Amazon, or Meta, where the vast majority of our revenue, about 90% of it, comes from advertisers who work with us directly. Those advertisers use Smart Bid AI to optimize their campaigns. They use our self-service tools, best practices, new ad formats, data to succeed, and we know who they are. We onboard them, we grow their business. It just works.
On the supply side, when you compare Taboola to companies that are mainly demand-oriented and are programmatic, our main advantage is that we don't buy inventory and hope that the inventory we have now will be here tomorrow. We work with publishers exclusively and long-term. That means that as an advertiser working with Taboola, you're one step away from the publisher, and there's consistency in the people you get to reach.
In many ways, Taboola, to the advertiser community, is much more like a consumer company. You can think of us as one big global publisher. We have guaranteed supply and reach half a billion people every single day. All of those dynamics help advertisers succeed with us repeatedly.
We also invested in 2021 in our High Impact placements product, launched to capture new mid-article inventory to drive greater brand and agency growth. Partners like NBC Sports, Future, Reach, Sinclair are choosing us for those reasons, and brands just love it. In further support of our brand and agency work, we cemented in 2021 important relationships with brand protection groups like DoubleVerify, Oracle Moat, and others.
Another significant differentiator for us are editorial products like Newsroom and newly launched Homepage For You. We've been investing in these for the past five years, and it's paying off. AI technology that empowers editors to get unique insights about their decisions. As for last month, with Homepage For You, making homepage as personalized and engaging as world's top social apps.
These new offerings has been showing us that we can drive over 30% increase in click-through rates on the homepage, and that's been adopted already by a leading publisher. Our competitors don't offer products like this, and they miss an opportunity to engage one of the most important audience on the publisher side, the editors. It's been a decision point in Q4 wins like McClatchy, and NDTV has valued it so much they signed a 10-year partnership with us. Ten years.
Another star product in Taboola is Taboola News. Think Apple News, but for Android devices. In 2021, we've signed groundbreaking partnerships with Samsung Brazil, Xiaomi all around the world - two of the largest Android OEM manufacturers in the world - to integrate a feed of news on their devices. Taboola News is gaining scale and now drives an average of more than 400 million monthly engagements on editorial content through mobile devices and OEM partnership. This represents an increase of more than 125% year-over-year.
Last but not least, our leadership in content moderation. We wanna make sure the open web stays safe, and I'm convinced that our processes, policies, and approach are some of the best in our space. We have dedicated moderation team of 50 employees that review every new advertisement. We were first to moderate COVID-19 when it happened to make sure people are safe, and we don't recommend things that can hurt people.
Our policies are public. Anyone can read them. They are local and relevant to the market they're enforced in. And, we interact with local reporters and authorities to constantly learn and improve, and our clients and partners appreciate all of those efforts. Our product-led approach in providing more than just revenue, as well as investing in policies in safe open web, help us win publishers and advertisers.
As I look at the last year, we've had tremendous amount of momentum - winning partnerships like BBC, Hearst, Penske Media, LINE TODAY in Hong Kong, Le Figaro. We've also announced exciting news as we signed a new agreement with Microsoft lasting to July 2024, allowing both Microsoft and Taboola to look for even faster growth as part of a new bit of technology which Microsoft has supported us in the design of.
As I finish my remarks, I wanna spend a few moments on our significant growth opportunities. Think of it in three phases. The first one is how we win within the open web $64 billion core market. The second one is how do we expand to recommend even more things so our platform is more valuable to users, our clients, and our yield goes up. We're making good progress here. E-commerce is already 15% of our business, and brands and agencies is already 15% of our business as well.
Lastly, the third one, how can we bring our partners, clients, and technology to recommend anywhere people spend their time? In our core markets, the open web is still monetized using traditional ads, which provide limited value to users. Nobody opens their browser looking for a great banner. Just never gonna happen. Well, people do actually interact with Google ads or Amazon ads, which do a great job, honestly, to recommend whatever people want.
On Amazon, some of the product recommendations are organic and some are sponsored, but they're all relevant. Taboola's advertising experience are very similar to Amazon or Google in the sense that they offer both editorial recommendation as well as paid advertising. I think a lot of the $64 billion market should look like Amazon, and Taboola, we can power it.
Taboola offers more than just traditional advertising products. We offer users a mix of editorial recommendations bundled with paid recommendations, all natively rendered. When you go to a search in Google, some of the results are organic and some are paid, but they're all related to what you wanna do next. We're not stopping here. Over the next 10-20 years, Taboola will recommend anything and be anywhere. Our aspirations are to be on every connected TV, every mobile device, in every car. Much like how some cars now arrive with Spotify for music in them, cars should be shipped with Taboola inside for local and national news or for podcast recommendations.
We see tremendous opportunities to grow in new ways, to take our contextual signals, our AI, and our data superpower to new places to disrupt the traditional advertising ecosystem and capture a larger share of the $64+ billion open web market. As you think about the future beyond the core, we want to keep diversifying what we recommend, as well as make sure we're integrated anywhere people spend their time. This is the foundation of our recommend anything and recommend anywhere strategy.
Now, before I pass it to Steve, our CFO, let me just say what a good time it is to be in our space and at Taboola. We're kicking off 2022 on the back of a very strong 2021. We're executing, we're energized to keep innovating on the product front, and we're excited to work with incredible partners all over the world. We're growing fast. We generate over 30% EBITDA margin. We generate cash, which allow us to invest in recruiting, in M&A, and other things.
In 2022, we intend to grow over 20% our employee base around the world. We have the liberty to keep innovating and redefine our dreams. Lastly, where you're looking for a respite in the broader market, we're driven by contextual signals which help us navigate well the privacy dynamics. We're among the biggest companies in open web in e-commerce already. On the back of a pandemic, we're all buying more things online, and we'll never go back to how we used to be in 2019. We are already in the future, and Taboola is ready for it.
I will now hand it over to Steve, who will dive into deeper details on our financial performance and guidance. Thank you.
Thanks, Adam, and good morning, everyone. As Adam shared, we had a strong fourth quarter to end 2021. As you'll see in our earnings release, we beat our Q4 guidance on all measures, and as Adam referenced, we're raising 2022. Since we are still relatively newly public, I will remind everyone of how we look at and measure our business.
We're focused on achieving profitable growth. We measure our performance against this goal by looking at two measures. To measure growth, we look at ex-TAC gross profit growth rate. Ex-TAC is what we keep from our revenues after we pay our publisher partners. To measure profitability, we look at our adjusted EBITDA margin. Adjusted EBITDA margin is our adjusted EBITDA divided by our ex-TAC gross profit. Similar to how SaaS businesses have a Rule of 40, where they always want growth rate plus their profit margin to exceed 40%, we want the sum of our ex-TAC growth rate and our adjusted EBITDA margin to exceed 40%.
Now, on to our Q4 and full year 2021 results. Revenue in Q4 was $408 million, ex-TAC gross profit was $169 million, and adjusted EBITDA was $65 million. This represented ex-TAC growth of 54% year-over-year, or 22% on a pro forma basis with Connexity, and a 38.6% ratio of adjusted EBITDA to ex-TAC gross profit, or what we often refer to as adjusted EBITDA margin. All of the measures I highlighted are record levels.
This performance propelled us to full year 2021 revenue of $1.4 billion, ex-TAC gross profit of $519 million, and adjusted EBITDA of $179 million. This represented ex-TAC growth of 36% year-over-year on a reported basis and 25% on a pro forma basis, and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 34.6%. The 25% pro forma growth rate and over 34% margin puts us well above our Rule of 40 company target.
I'll also note that our 25% pro forma growth rate is significantly better than our original 2021 PIPE deck projections, which would have had us growing ex-TAC at around 16% in 2021. The same goes for our adjusted EBITDA margin of 34.6%, which was well above our PIPE deck projection of 28.6%.
As Adam shared, we are seeing continued good progress in the business, winning new customers, growing our existing customer relationships at a good pace, primarily by growing yield, and executing on our recommend anything and recommend anywhere growth initiatives. Of the Q4 gross revenue growth of $56 million, $21 million came from new digital property partners, and $35 million came from growth of our existing digital property partners.
Our Q4 ex-TAC gross profit was $169 million and was up $59 million, or 54% year-over-year. This growth came from three sources, the addition of new digital property partners to our network, growth of our existing digital property partners, and the addition of Connexity to our business. The 54% growth rate also benefited from a soft comparable quarter due to $17 million in guaranteed TAC payments withheld in Q2 and Q3 of 2020 and repaid in Q4 of 2020.
I've mentioned on multiple occasions, looking at our single quarter growth rates is somewhat deceiving in 2021 because of the withholding of the guarantees in Q2 and Q3 of 2020 and subsequent repayment in Q4. To better understand our growth rate, I have consistently pointed to the full year ex-TAC growth, which was 36% reported and 25% on a pro forma basis. For the full year, our ex-TAC net dollar retention for our publishers was extremely strong at 116% for Taboola on a standalone basis.
Looking now at operating expenses, they were up $38 million year-over-year, driven by growth and investments in our business, the inclusion of Connexity, higher depreciation and amortization from intangibles coming from the Connexity acquisition, and expenses related to being a public company. We generated adjusted EBITDA of $65 million in Q4, an increase of $32 million year-over-year.
Margins remained very strong as our adjusted EBITDA margin was 38.6% in Q4, which exceeded guidance. Fourth quarter is our seasonally highest margin quarter given the higher revenues, which is why it's good to also look at the full year from a margin standpoint, where adjusted EBITDA margin was 34.6%, above our long-term target of 30%, and also an increase from 2020, which was 27.8%.
It is worth noting that we had net income of $600,000 in Q4, which compared to net income of $2.8 million in 2020. You can look at the net income to adjusted EBITDA reconciliation to see that the two biggest factors year-over-year that contributed to offsetting the profit growth were higher depreciation and amortization of $15.9 million, driven by the intangibles from the Connexity acquisition, and higher tax expense of $15.4 million in 2021, due primarily to the fact we exhausted certain tax credits.
In terms of cash generation, we have been consistent in saying that we expect our ratio of free cash flow to adjusted EBITDA to be around 60% over any reasonably long period of time. In 2021, we generated $24 million of free cash flow. If you look back at the last 24 months, our free cash flow was $146 million or 51% of our adjusted EBITDA over that period. Excluding M&A costs and one-time costs of going public, that ratio would have been 61%, i n line with our expectations. We continue to expect free cash flow to be approximately 60% of our adjusted EBITDA over any reasonably long period of time.
We ended 2021 with a strong balance sheet position, with a positive net-net cash position. Our cash balance of $319 million was above our debt balance of $285 million. A good position that provides us ample financial flexibility. Following our strong Q4 in 2021, we are raising our expectations for 2022, as highlighted earlier.
I won't go through the Q1 guidance, which we are issuing for the first time, though I will note that Q1 is seasonally the lowest revenue quarter for us. In addition, Q1 2022 is a challenging comparable quarter because ex-TAC gross profit grew 54% year-over-year in Q1 2021, which was an exceptionally strong performance. However, as you can see from our guidance, we still expect strong growth for 2022 on the whole.
I also wanted to provide a rough breakdown for seasonality, given we are still new to some investors and now have Connexity in our results, which will change our seasonality profile. We expect ex-TAC for the year to break down approximately as follows: 20% in Q1, 23% in Q2, 25% in Q3, and 32% in Q4.
Adjusted EBITDA breakdown, we expect to be approximately 16% in Q1, 20% in Q2, 22% in Q3, and 42% in Q4. Note that there is a higher seasonality for adjusted EBITDA given that costs are relatively stable, but revenue and ex-TAC increases considerably in Q4.
For the full year of 2022, we are now projecting ex-TAC gross profit will be $661 million-$669 million, which represents growth of 27%-29% versus 2021, or 15%-17% on a pro forma basis. That is an increase from our previous guidance of $645 million-$665 million. We're expecting 2022 full year adjusted EBITDA to be $195 million-$213 million.
This demonstrates a very healthy adjusted EBITDA margin, meaning adjusted EBITDA divided by ex-TAC gross profit of over 30%. As I stated previously, we expect margin to be closer to our model target of 30% as we ramp up investments in our core business as well as our growth initiatives. We are planning on growing head count 23% over the course of the year, with a heavy emphasis on increasing our R&D capacity.
2022 operating expenses are also proportionately higher than 2021 as we factor in a full year of public company costs and a return to more normal operating expenses post-COVID-19. We are also introducing, beginning with Q1 2022 earnings, a non-GAAP net income reporting metric. We believe this can be helpful in modeling our business as well as for providing comparability to peers. As you can see in our release, we are guiding that 2022 non-GAAP net income will be between $111 million and $129 million. We will be filing with our 20-F annual report historical results for this new measure.
To wrap up, we are focused on continuing to execute and to build on the significant progress we made in 2021. We see tremendous opportunities to grow our core business by bringing on more digital properties and by growing the revenue from our existing partners, both by continuing to grow our yield and by continuing to offer additional products and services. We have a strong foundation for new growth from our recommend anywhere and recommend anything growth strategies. E-commerce now makes up over 15% of our ex-TAC gross profit. Brands and agencies are also over 15%, and Taboola News is gaining scale.
With that, let's open it up for questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question or comment at this time, please press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you question has been answered or you wish to remove yourself from the queue, simply press the pound key. Again, if you have a question or comment at this time, please press star then one on your telephone keypad.
Our first question or comment comes from the line of Justin Patterson from KeyBanc. Your line is open.
Great. Thank you very much. Two, if I can. Adam, you made a lot of progress with Taboola News this past year. What are the next big initiatives to expand reach, and what are the factors you're looking at to determine the right monetization model?
For Steve, good progress with high value segments, about 30% of ex-TAC gross profit growth, or ex-TAC gross profit. As we look toward 2022, how are you ramping up these segments, and how's that contemplated in guidance? Thank you.
Hey, Justin, good morning. Everyone, thanks for the question. Thanks for joining us. We're seeing Taboola News is seeing a lot of good momentum. You've seen some of the announcements last year with Samsung in Brazil and Xiaomi all around the world. We've also-- in my letter, I wrote about our monthly engagement, that it's growing 125% year-over-year. We're seeing consumers interacting with Taboola News in a growing way, which is exciting.
The reason-- by the way, it's important to us, not only because it can be a revenue generator, which I'll speak about in a second, but also because strategically, every time the consumer opens their Samsung and clicks on a piece of content, we open the browser, and we send that person straight to the publisher, which is a different experience than Apple News, which keeps you within the Apple ecosystem.
That means that we're slowly becoming a more significant source of traffic to publishers in the open web, which is very powerful if you compare us to SEO or social traffic. That's something publishers are, you know, perceive as very important in terms of growing their monthly readership. That's why that is not only, you know, financially exciting, but also strategically important for us.
Now, what's interesting is that Taboola News, you know, it's a multi-year startup, so it started within Taboola, but it's starting to be also financially interesting for us. In fact, some of what we're seeing in 2022 of our model is actually including some growth engines, dollars that we're seeing. It's already in the tens of millions of dollars, Taboola News, and I expect this to continue to grow.
The way we generate revenue from Taboola News is in one of two ways. One, at times when you swipe right to see a feed of news, much like, you know, when you have on Twitter or other social networks, that feed incorporates paid advertising from our advertising community. You might see three or four recommendations from news that you like, and then the fifth one will be paid. If you click on that, we generate revenue, and we share that revenue with the OEM. That's one way we generate revenue.
The second one is, every time you click on a piece of content, you land on an article or a video that has Taboola feed on it, which we monetize very well. As you know, that's our core business. So, those two way generate revenue for Taboola, which we share, in this case, with the OEM that is our partner.
In terms of the high-value segments that you asked about. I think, first of all, we're very excited about the progress we've made there. You noted, Justin, that each of those is now over 15% of our ex-TAC, which is great to see. In terms of going forward, we're, you know, the Connexity or the e-commerce portion of our business is over 15% already.
We're excited about where we're going with that. We're seeing good progress in terms of capitalizing on the synergies. That's one area, that you're gonna see that in our forward-looking guidance. We obviously projected about $6 million of synergies from Connexity this year, and we expect to continue to grow those over time. We've said that we think that can be $100 million of ex-TAC in four years. That's the biggest impact that you're gonna see on the e-commerce side.
For brands and agencies, you've seen a lot of announcements from us recently about becoming certified, you know, as a brand safe channel for brands and agencies. I think you'll see more announcements in the near future about partnerships that we're building with agencies and with brands to bring them on. I think where both Connexity e-commerce and the brands and agencies kinda impact our business in terms of our guidance is in terms of growing our existing base.
There are great upsell opportunities with our existing base for High Impact placements, for Homepage For You, which also gives us High Impact placements, and will help us work with brands and agencies. It's an upsell opportunity. You'll see it in that 60% of our growth that we expect to come from growing our existing base.
Like I said, Connexity, you'll also see in terms of, as we ramp up the synergies there, that'll impact our financials as well. I'll also kind of mention one other thing, which is that, we're also excited by Taboola News, our other growth initiative with Taboola Recommending Anywhere. Adam just talked a little bit about that, but I think we're very excited that that's actually, we're seeing it in the financials now. It was part of our beat in Q4, and we're seeing that it's going to become a more material part of our business over time.
Great. Thank you.
Thanks for the questions. Operator, next question.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Boone from JMP Securities. Your line is open.
Hi, guys. Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. Two, please. The first on Dimensions. Can you talk about any early results there that you're seeing from advertisers? And, just how is the conversation going as advertisers are adopting the product?
And then, secondly, going back to Connexity. You know, I think you talked about the sales that are in EMEA and APAC. I believe that there were just two U.S. salespeople that Connexity had in the U.S. Can you just talk about the domestic kinda go-to-market and where you guys are in terms of integrating your own sales force in Connexity's products? Thanks so much.
Yeah. Hey, Andrew. Good morning. Love Smart Bid. Let's talk to that. What we've seen in Q4, if you remember, we announced Dimensions. I know you know it. What was interesting, if you recall quickly as a reminder for everyone, Dimensions basically allowed Smart Bid to bid in a more granular way when it thought that it made sense.
As an example, if before Smart Bid, an entertainment website would not get insurance ads or you know, high intent ads because Smart Bid would think that it doesn't make sense to bid in that environment. Once Dimensions was introduced, Smart Bid would look in a more granular way. Even one article on entertainment website that spoke about insurance suddenly would receive high bids from those types of advertisers.
That was new. What happened is that, and that's the power of AI and deep learning, we started receiving new types of conversions from those environments on a more granular way, and Smart Bid essentially start teaching itself something new, which is again, the beautiful part about AI, and we saw that in Q4.
Essentially, Smart Bid starts collecting new types of conversions that we never got before, and it was able to correlate short-term intent. Smart Bid starts seeing that because of those conversions, people that read about a certain type of things tend to buy something in a short term. It's kind of almost like a semi retargeting, but using what I read. That was something that Smart Bid was teaching itself, which is very powerful.
We start seeing early performance of advertisers that are doing really well. We have some numbers, but we haven't released them yet. We're seeing good results of advertisers that our conversion rates are at a much, you know, better way in terms of CPA and cost per acquisition. That's something that will scale in 2022, I expect. What's interesting is that Smart Bid is teaching itself things based on new type of data that it's collecting, which is really the power of our investment in AI.
Again, we are seeing yield improvement. As you saw, we beat our yield in Q4, and some of that was thanks to Dimensions, and I'm very excited to see how we can scale that learning, of this semi-retargeting using the context of the page, which is especially relevant in a cookie-less world. Smart Bid is teaching itself and preparing itself, I guess, for a cookie-less future.
That's about Smart Bid, and you should stay tuned for a few things. One, a blog post about it. Two, if you can, you should join our Investor Day. Our head of AI is gonna join us onstage. Whether you can be there in person or on Zoom, we're gonna show some of this example. You know, it's really fun because it's almost like if Smart Bid up until now spoke English, now it's teaching itself to speak Spanish using those conversions. It's really cool, and you'll see some examples in the blog post and Investor Day. That was about Smart Bid.
About Connexity, we've started indeed in China, EMEA and APAC, in general, in terms of those synergies. Soon, we intend to get on the advertiser side in terms of the ad sales people you mentioned to start in the U.S. Stay tuned for that. That's coming up soon, and we did start international where we saw an easier way to begin.
Yeah. By the way, on the international piece, we've actually had multiple wins now in China, for instance. That was the synergy that we highlighted last quarter that we didn't actually expect. We've had multiple merchants now sign up for e-commerce services through Connexity in China. We're seeing progress on that.
Thanks, Andrew. Operator, next question.
Thank you, guys.
Thank you. Our next question or comment comes from the line of John Blackledge from Cowen. Your line is open.
Great. Thanks. Two questions. Could you discuss the publisher extensions, like the new Microsoft deal and any other new publishers added in the quarter? Are there any big publisher deals up for renewal this year? On the iOS changes, any shift has been towards Taboola or more open platforms given the recent iOS changes? Thank you.
Yep. Hi. Good morning. Thanks for the question. Microsoft, we're still aiming to, as you saw in our announcement, we're excited about the bidding technology that we're working with Microsoft, in supporting designing that to launch on Microsoft by the end of the quarter, which we're excited about, because we believe that is gonna enable growth avenues for both of us as it relates to sources of inventory we did not get exposed to beforehand.
That is exciting. We have great momentum and partnership with Microsoft, and which, you know, have been our friends since 2015 or so. I'm excited about that, and still on track to launch by the end of the quarter. I'm excited about what's to come on the other side in years to come.
We've extended that relationship to 2024. We have a lot of time to keep working together on growing. That's on that front. Just as a reminder, much like Google did with GDN, you know, as an extension of their network, my expectation is that this will not only be an opportunity with Microsoft, but also we could take that into other sources of inventory that historically we did not tap into. Social networks, display inventory and other things.
We do have, you know, as you know, 90% of our revenue comes from advertisers who work with us direct. We have a huge advantage in the sense that we're not just programmatic, in the sense that, you know, we hope for the best that advertisers will come our way. We control our fate by having advertisers working with us directly, which will, you know, enable us to extend our reach to other social sources of inventory. That's just on the bidder one.
We are seeing in our early signs, I mean, I think, you know, we've updated the amount of advertisers now working with us, that's growing nicely. A lot of that is performance advertisers, which means that they find Taboola to be a successful channel that is repeatedly driving the cost per acquisition they're looking to achieve. Then, with Smart Bid Dimensions, a lot of it is autonomous, so they just need to come to us and upload their creative and their goals, and we do the work for them. We do see early signs of advertisers that succeed with us.
My expectation is that we're just at the beginning of what's to come, you know, in terms of a future that is mainly contextual. Such a good time to be, you know, a contextual company, a company that's not driven by, you know, user ID tracking and all those things. From our perspective, the fact we drive growth based on what people are reading, not based on what they say about themselves, is such a beautiful place to be, and we're excited about it.
We are seeing good signs from advertisers. Smart Bid is working really well. Our yield is beating what we thought it's gonna do in Q4, and you saw that we're raising our guidance for 2022. All of those are good signs.
Thank you.
Thank you. Operator, next question.
Thank you. Our next question or comment comes from the line of Laura Martin from Needham. Your line is open.
Good morning. Can you hear me okay, Adam?
Of course. How are you? Good morning.
Hi. Great numbers. Congratulations.
Thank you.
My first question is on OpenPass. Trade Desk said they're integrating this new product, OpenPass, which is designed to get rid of some of the bad players in the middle of the ad tech ecosystem. Could you remind us how much of your demand, I know you're a two-sided platform, but how much of your demand comes from third parties like Trade Desk and other DSPs? Is this bad for you, this OpenPass, where they're going directly to publishers, or is it good for you somehow? That's my first one.
Okay, let me start with this one. In general, I wrote about that in the letter, I think it's great to see that supply-side companies are talking about Supply Path Optimization, which means that they wanna have more direct relationship with advertisers so that most of the revenue is direct versus programmatic.
Now, we're seeing demand-side companies hoping to work with publishers direct. What we're seeing is that supply-side companies wanna become Taboola, and demand-side companies want to become Taboola. Because Taboola right now - all of our publishers are direct, exclusive, and long-term, and 90% of our revenues - so about 10% is programmatic and third-party companies who buy Taboola in that way, and about 90% is direct, which means they use Smart Bid to optimize on the Taboola network. Which makes us much more like, you know, a Google or an Amazon in the sense that we're almost like a big consumer company, right?
On the one side, we have publishers direct with us, and that's a long-term agreement, so we see people today, we'll see them tomorrow. And on the advertiser side, 90% is direct. So, one, I think these are good dynamics because it shows that other companies appreciate Taboola's current configuration, and, you know, I think driving towards the same future, which is publishers direct, advertisers direct with some programmatic.
In terms of the Trade Desk, they're a friend and a partner. We work with them, work with Google, work with many great demand-side companies, and that mainly is good for us because they can participate in our auction, and it can drive better yield when that happens.
In terms of that specific strategy, I don't think specifically it, at least short term, it affects us because I'm not sure. They haven't disclosed what type of inventory exactly they're gonna go after, so I don't really know what is their strategy. Overall, I think that based on what we now do with the Trade Desk, I think we're more, you know, friends, and it can drive growth for publishers, the way I see it as of now.
Okay, perfect. My second one's on China. I thought it was interesting in your note that when you were talking about Connexity, you said that there's no mention of selling Connexity into Taboola by starting in China and soon in the U.S. I was curious, you now have 15% of your revenue from Connexity. How much of that is sitting in China, and do you feel any qualms about the rising geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China?
Yeah. Right now, a very small percentage of our revenue from Connexity is in China. We're, you know, in the early stages of selling to the Chinese market, to basically the Chinese merchants, as we call the e-commerce advertisers. We've won a few deals, but we're very early, so it's a de minimis part of their revenue today. We do think it can be substantial in the future. I guess in terms of the rising geopolitical kind of challenges, I think, you know, we're obviously gonna watch it closely and make sure that nothing comes up.
I think, as of now, our perception is that China is such an important part of kind of our overall economic system in the U.S. that I don't see, I don't foresee a time when a good Chinese merchant, who happens to sell into the U.S., is gonna be blackballed because of that or because of the tensions. I'm not sure that we see a short-term impact, but we obviously have to watch that closely as we go forward.
Okay. Thanks, guys.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question or comment comes from the line of Jason Helfstein from Oppenheimer. Your line is open.
Hey, thanks. I'm just trying to think about how we all think about a multi-year growth story here. You know, whether it's thinking about, you know, number of advertisers, number of publishers. In the release you talked about new digital revenue partners were $21 million of growth and existing were $35 million. Should we think about, maybe, trying to model like the existing property partners and just thinking about a retention rate? You said it was 110 in the quarter. I don't know it's kind of how you're thinking about for the year, but if that's the right way to kind of do a multi-year model to get to the long-term targets that you guys have discussed.
The second, Steve, will you be providing kind of the historical pro formas with Connexity for all of 2021, so we can think about 2022 quarters organic versus pro forma growth? Thanks.
Yeah. In terms of the multi-year model, I think the way we've spoken about this and the way we think about this is that we expect about 40% of our growth going forward to come from new publishers that we bring on, or new digital property partners, and about 60% to come from growing existing partners. When we model our business internally, the way we do it is we basically look at it as a run rate business where, you know, next quarter equals this quarter, plus new revenue we bring on, plus kind of our NDR from our existing publisher base. That obviously takes into account any sort of churn.
Basically, you know, since we're saying 40% of it comes from new publisher partners and 60% of it comes from the growth of existing, you can kind of back into what those numbers look like. But that's the way we model our business, and that's the way, you know, we think about our business. You bring on new supply, but you also grow your existing supply.
I think the only other factor to factor into that is seasonality, which is obviously something that has changed a bit with acquiring Connexity, which is a more heavily fourth quarter-oriented business than Taboola, although Taboola is also weighted to Q4. That's the only other thing you have to take into account when you model the business, is when you're doing sequential quarters, you have to think in terms of what's the seasonality impact. Generally speaking, that's the way we model the business.
In terms of pro formas, for now, what we will definitely commit to is, each quarter we'll tell you what the pro forma growth rate was. We focus on ex-TAC because Connexity will be reported on and they're gonna be using net revenue or we'll be using net revenue accounting for them. Gross revenue doesn't mean anything for them. We will give you the pro forma growth rates on ex-TAC every quarter, so you can understand how much of the growth, you know, came from Taboola versus Connexity just by looking at the pro forma. We'll provide that.
We will consider doing full pro forma financials quarterly for 2021 at some point. The challenge with it, just to be blunt about it, is they're not audited, and so we have to understand what we're allowed to do, given that they haven't done a full audit on a quarterly basis for them. That's the only challenge there. In the meantime, we'll give you the pro forma growth rate, so you can at least see what's organic and what's from the acquisition in terms of our growth.
Just a follow-up. I think when everyone was thinking through the impacts of IDFA, I think there was a pretty minimal impact on Taboola, and maybe even positive from benefiting from the inflation in Android pricing. Now that Google is committed to doing something comparable but probably more palatable in that they're still gonna allow, you know, some forms of measurement and targeting, but with new rules, just, you know, granted, it is two years away, but just how are you thinking about that and the impact on Taboola?
I can take this one. Overall, I mean, if I look at, you know, Apple blocking cookies and then with IDFA starting from, I think, 2017, our yield was going up specifically for Safari. You know, in Q1, we beat our yield expectation and, you know, we feel comfortable raising our guidance. All of those, you know, decisions and results are based on the fact that 90% of our revenue comes from advertisers who buy from us direct, so they don't use, you know, tracking that is being deprecated and things of that nature. They use our own data and our own AI. That's a large portion of our revenue.
Specifically with Smart Bid Dimensions, we're able to imitate retargeting and things that are sort of intent, lookalikes using what I read, and people like me that read similar things. All of those dynamics are good for us. I think that the more the future is, you know, privacy-driven and context-driven, especially with Connexity, you know, we stand to rise on the back of those dynamics. For me and for us, Google changes are good for the industry, they're good for consumers, and they're good for Taboola.
Thanks, Jason. Operator.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question or comment comes from the line of Stephen Ju from Credit Suisse. Your line is open.
Okay, thank you. So Adam, now that you have spent some more time with Connexity, can you talk about the typical sales cycle there versus, you know, Taboola as you talk to advertisers? You know, typically, how long do you think it'll take for, you know, an average advertiser to test, refine, and get comfortable with Connexity and before you start seeing sort of, you know, major budget shifts going in that direction?
Steve, you've been doing this before, and, but I think you're still one of the few CFOs out there offering a full year outlook. You touched on this for the longer term, but, you know, can you talk about the various inputs that are informing the projection for 2022? Thanks.
Hey, Stephen. Good morning. Thanks for joining. So with regards to Connexity, you know, similar to Taboola, the two sides of the marketplace, when you think about publishers and advertisers. I'll start for the publishers, there is a short-term and long-term way it's pacing. The short term is whatever content already exists on the publisher side, the publisher solution is able to tap into those high intent signals and those articles that have high intent and monetize those quite immediately.
The midterm and long term on the publisher side is how do you expand, and we spoke about that on the Connexity Investor Day, how do you expand the amount of content a publisher may have so that that is relevant to them, so that a bigger portion of their site has high intent and has such higher portion of e-commerce revenue.
If you look at websites like USA Today with reviewed.com, reviewed.com is a whole world of e-commerce content and high intent content, which they worked on for years creating. Same goes for Meredith and Hearst and Condé and other great publishers. That's still a small subset of the universe of publishers.
What I'm seeing is there's short-term gains and with just whatever people already have written that has high intent, and then over time, they're gonna use Connexity publisher solutions and our data to know what to write about that makes sense for them and how to monetize that with us. That's on the publisher side. There's a short-term, long-term.
You know, you have our synergies. All of what I'm saying can be, you know, digested and included into our synergies forecast that you have. On the advertiser side, it is a slow ramp. You know, 2/3 or so of the business is CPC, and those big retailers try for a while to see that it works for them.
I can tell you, at least looking at the past of Connexity, once someone, you know, finds success with Connexity, they tend to stay for a very long time. I think the tenure, the average tenure is over 10 years for those retailers, and they have some of the best ones. It is a slow ramp, and they take their time. They're paying very high CPCs. Once it works, it sticks for, you know, over a decade. We're still new, you know, with this in terms of seeing new sales cycles. That's the dynamics I expect to see based on the past.
Then in terms of your second question, Stephen, about kinda how we project growth and give guidance going forward. I think one of the things that we really love about our business is that it's very predictable, especially relative to other advertising-based businesses. That's because we've got committed supply. We have long-term agreements. Average tenure of our contracts is over three years in terms of on a revenue-weighted basis.
We have committed supply, and then we've got demand that basically scales with us. It's all performance-oriented. As long as we're performing for these advertisers, they continue advertising with us. What that does is it makes our model very predictable. We've, as you mentioned, and kinda related to what we were talking about with Jason just a moment ago, it gives us the ability to forecast our business on a sequential basis as we go forward.
The way to think about our business is as a run rate. Next quarter, again, equals last quarter, plus the new business we'll bring on, plus the change in the existing business. Generally speaking, that's all very predictable. If you look back at our historical sequential quarterly rates, it's actually, you know, you can see that it's fairly consistent. You'd typically expect about a 16% decline in Q1 because of seasonality. You'd expect some slight growth in Q2 and Q3. You expect a big bump in Q4.
Like, if you just look at those historical numbers, it's very predictable, and we feel very comfortable because of that history, being able to predict what our future quarters will look like. What's interesting, by the way, is if you do that math and you look back at historical quarters, there's one quarter historically that really stands out sequentially, and it's Q1 2020.
So Q1 2020, or sorry, Q1 2021 actually had a much lower decline from Q4 2020 than you would expect. It was only down about 4%, which is why it was just a historically very strong quarter and a bit of a tough comparison for us this year. Generally speaking, you know, we feel very good about being able to predict our business because of the fact that we have that history. We understand where the growth comes from, and we've got committed supply and demand that scales with us. It's a very predictable model, and we feel good about being able to project that out.
Thanks, Stephen. Operator, I think we have time for one last question.
Thank you. Our final question or comment comes from the line of Shyam Patil from SIG. Your line is open.
Hi, guys. This is Jared on for Shyam. Thank you for taking the question. One for you just on the seasonality that you touched on a little bit there, as well as provided earlier in the call. As you're looking into the second half acceleration that you're seeing there, this is definitely more material than especially pre-pandemic. Is that change entirely due to Connexity, or are there other tailwinds that you're anticipating as you look out to the second half?
I think if you, as I just mentioned, if you look at our historical quarters, the acceleration, as you're talking about in the second half, is really not an acceleration in the second half. The only change is that Q1 2021 was exceptionally strong. The dip from Q4 2020 to Q1 2021 was only 4%.
Historically, our dip from Q4 to Q1 is around 17%. It's not really an acceleration of growth as you go throughout the year. It's really just an unusual comparison quarter last year. You know, we can share more numbers on that, but that's if you look at the sequential growth rates historically, it's really not an acceleration of growth throughout the year. It's kind of our normal pattern.
There is about a few percentage point changes as to what we've shared. You know, if you listen to my opening remarks, I gave quarterly splits for what we expect this year on ex-TAC quarter by quarter. If you do the math on that, you'll see that those quarterly splits align fairly closely with our historical average with a slight, and by slight, I mean, you know, 5% or 6% shift towards Q4, and that is basically, that's the Connexity effect. Connexity is a more heavily Q4 seasonal business than ours. There's a slight shift there, but mostly the numbers are consistent with our history.
Great. Thanks, Jared. I think this wraps it up. Adam, do you have any closing remarks?
Yeah. Thanks everyone again for joining us, and I hope to see many of you on our Investor Day. You know, I'm really excited about our vision and mission to help people discover things they may like and never knew existed. I'm convinced we have an opportunity to, over time, become a personalization engine used by billions of people and be integrated wherever people spend their time, every phone, every TV, every audio device, every car.
Being a public company only for a few quarters, we had a record quarter, a record 2021. We grew 36% our ex-TAC in 2021 and 25% pro forma. Our EBITDA margins are north of 30%, and it gives me and us confidence to raise our guidance in 2022, which is such a good start for us as a new public company.
I think the world is getting tired from user tracking dynamics. Again, it's a great time to be a company that is driven by contextual signals that are safe for people and works for advertisers. We're exactly where we need to be. I'm looking forward to meeting and engaging with many of you over the next few weeks. Don't forget to tune into our Investor Day on March 29. We're gonna have our management team, clients, partners. It's gonna be awesome. Thanks, everyone.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This concludes the program. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a wonderful day.