Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to J2 Global's Second Quarter 2021 Earnings Call. My name is Paul, and I will be the operator assisting you today. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. On this call will be Vivek Shah, CEO of J2 Global and Scott Turicchi, President and CFO of J2.
I will now turn the call over to Scott Turicchi, President and CFO of J2 Global. Thank you. You may begin.
Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the J2 Global Investor call for Q2 2021. As the operator mentioned, I'm Scott Turighi, President and CFO of J2 Global, And I'm joined today by our CEO, Vivek Shah. A presentation is available for today's call. A copy of the presentation is available at our website.
When you launch in the webcast, there is a button on the viewer on the right hand side, which will allow you to expand the slides. If you have not received a copy of the press release, You may access it through our corporate website atj2global.com. In addition, you will be able to access the webcast from this site. After completing the formal presentation, we will be conducting a Q and A session. The operator will instruct you at that time regarding the procedures for asking a question.
In addition, you may e mail questions at any time to investorj2global.com. Before we begin our prepared remarks, allow me to read the Safe Harbor language. As you know, this call and the webcast include forward looking statements. Such statements may involve risks and uncertainties that would cause actual results to differ materially from anticipated results. Some of those risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to the risk factors that we have disclosed In our various SEC filings, including our 10 ks filings, recent 10 Q filings, various proxy statements and 8 ks filings, as well as additional risk factors that we have included as part of the slideshow for the webcast.
We refer you to discussions in those documents regarding Safe Harbor language as well as forward looking statements. Now, let me turn the call over to Vivek for his opening remarks.
Thank you, Scott, and good morning, everyone. Our 2nd quarter results were amongst the strongest, if not the strongest, in the company's history. We fared far better than peers by growing 2%, making this quarter's results especially gratifying. We're also increasing our guidance for the 2nd time in a year, something we've never done before. We believe J2 is firing on all cylinders as we come closer to the spin off of the consensus business, giving our shareholders direct ownership of 2 separate and compelling companies.
More than half of the 33.5% pro form a revenue growth in the quarter was organic, With the balance coming from the revenue contributions of assets acquired within the last 12 months, mainly RetailMe Knop. The advertising business, which represents about half of the company's revenues, grew over 62%. When excluding RetailMeNot, ad revenues grew over 32%. We believe our main ad categories, which are tech, telco, gaming and entertainment, health and shopping, are well positioned for sustained growth As economies reopen and marketers continue to shift dollars from traditional vehicles to digital, Gaming and entertainment was particularly strong, with meaningful growth from games publishers and streaming platforms contributing to over 40% growth. Health advertising, which continues to benefit from the shift of direct to consumer and direct to provider advertising from traditional to digital continues to be another key growth driver, up nearly 33% in the quarter.
Group M recently raised their forecast for global advertising to 19% for this year, up from 12%, And we believe that we have 3 competitive advantages in the advertising market. First, we largely sell contextual advertising, which is predicated on content adjacencies as opposed to cookie based advertising. 2nd, given the nature of our verticals and decision oriented content, our audiences exhibit great purchase intent, making them Very valuable to marketers. And 3rd, more than half of our advertising revenues are priced based on performance, including cost per click, cost per acquisition and cost per lead, while the portion that is CPM based is Generally held to quantitative performance measures, advertisers continue to seek ROI from their advertising investments, And we believe we're a key performance partner for our clients. On the subscription side, revenues grew over 14 And our recent acquisition of Solutolia only strengthens our position.
In the cloud services Business grew by nearly 9%, with the corporate fax portion growing by over 18%. We just won a contract with 1 of the world's largest clinical lab testing companies building on our strong enterprise The momentum at CloudFAX, soon to be an independent company called Consensus, is very strong. And in a moment, I'll provide on the spin off process. Rounding out the subscription businesses are cybersecurity and Martech. The former grew over 6% in the quarter.
And as I've mentioned in the last two calls, we've been increasing our marketing and product investments which can be run for both profitability and growth. The same can be said for our MarTech business, which grew over 20% in the quarter. The same tailwinds that exist in the advertising business hold for MarTech, especially for its retail heavy customer base. We're also thrilled to have added Moz, a leader in SEO solutions to the MarTech suite. Our adjusted EBITDA margin in the quarter was 40%, which was substantially better than expected and an improvement sequentially.
The strong revenue performance and associated high Flow through drove margins, but we can't help being a bit wistful that we didn't put more investment dollars to work. That's really a statement about the quality of the investment opportunities across the portfolio and a cautionary note to not always expect this kind of margin beat In the future, at the midpoint of our newly revised guidance, we are projecting revenues to grow by over 21%, Adjusted EBITDA to grow by over 18% and adjusted non GAAP EPS to grow by over 23% in 2021. Remember that the second half of twenty twenty was relatively strong for J2, including the acquisition of RetailMeNot in October of last year, Making for a tougher comp, but as our new guidance suggests, we believe we will experience revenue growth of roughly 17% in the second half of twenty twenty one. That's an improvement over last year's second half year over year growth of 10%. Now just a quick update on the spin off.
Since our last earnings call, we have made significant progress across all work We're happy to report that we received a favorable private letter ruling from the IRS relating to certain key aspects The tax free nature of the spin. We've also been engaged in productive dialogue with foreign tax authorities about the tax reorganization that will occur as part of We submitted an initial Form 10 to the SEC on a confidential basis in June
and have
been in active communication with the SEC about filing in recent weeks. Our hope and expectation is that the Form 10 will become public in the near future. Consensus is planning its debt marketing for early September. Our IT team is also reaching an advanced stage in their separation planning. We now have many of the systems and processes in place to ensure that both companies run smoothly post close.
Finally, as the future CEO of Consensus, Scott has done an excellent job of shaping his senior leadership And positioning the organization for success post spin. Overall, we've made tremendous progress and remain Optimistic that we will complete the separation in late Q3. On the acquisitions front, we've deployed north of $100,000,000 in capital Through the 1st 7 months of the year and as a point of reference, we've deployed on average about $400,000,000 per year over the past few years. In addition, as we've seen in the past, many of our larger acquisitions can take place The end of the year, so I'm optimistic about our chances of matching our average spend. I've been asked a great deal about the competition for positions, especially with all of the SPAC activity in the market.
I'd say that we will always lean in to compete for assets Where we are uniquely positioned to unlock value, we consider ourselves highly competitive for the assets we are best suited to buy, which tend to be lower middle market private companies. Historically, 80% of our acquisitions Fall into the $50,000,000 to $500,000,000 enterprise value range. I believe our ability to programmatically acquire smaller assets and integrate them in One of our platforms is one of our key advantages, and those by the way are not really SPAC targets. Most importantly, our acquisition system is focused on the long game, where patience and pragmatism are rewarded. We never allow short term trends to impact our longer term thinking.
Earlier this week, we filed a stipulation of settlement relating to a derivative lawsuit that was filed based on J2's investment in the OCV Venture Fund. While the company believed the investment in OCV was a good capital allocation choice at the time, to that end, the fund is delivering a 20 The distraction it's caused is just not worth it. Therefore, we're pleased to have come to the settlement, which is designed To reduce J2's capital commitment from its original $200,000,000 to no more than $135,000,000 including the cessation of management fees at the end of this year. J2 will retain its indirect interest in the fund's existing portfolio companies, And we're optimistic that we will see a nice return from those. Most importantly, we hope our shareholders feel that we've been responsive to their concerns and feedback.
Before I hand the call back to Scott, let me provide you an update on our ESG efforts. We're very pleased to have welcomed Dara Feldman to the company in a new corporate executive role reporting to me overseeing sustainability and responsibility at the company. Dara has spent much of her career focused on social impact and she's already helped us move forward in some key areas, Including arranging for our 1st company wide greenhouse gas audit, we will be conducting such an audit for 2019, 2020 in 2021. Once the audit is completed at year end, we will be in a position to assess our carbon goals. We will also be publishing an ESG report in Q1 of 2022, which will allow us to align with GRI, SaaS B and TCFD reporting requirements.
The best news is that earlier in the spring, we delivered a number of ESG related disclosures To help the ratings agencies better report on our activities, in our last call, I reviewed the great gains we made with ISS. And now, we've experienced a marked improvement at Sustainalytics, where we went from the 74th to the 9th percentile In the Software and Services Industry Group and from the 24th to 1st percentile In the Internet Software and Services subindustry group, we're glad to see our ratings better reflect our goal of delivering profits and purpose. Finally, we're thrilled to welcome Trace Harris to our Board of Directors. Trace is a 20 year veteran of the media industry, most recently serving as Vivendi's SVP of Strategy, Finance and Business Innovation. She's joined our audit committee and will be a terrific resource for the company.
With that, I'll hand the call back to Scott.
Thanks, Vivek. I will now provide an overview of both our non GAAP and pro form a results for Q2 2021. As we recall from our previous earnings call, we have sold certain ANZ voice assets in August 2020 and UK voice assets In February 2021, we now have our B2B backup assets classified as assets held for sale. As a result, we will present our non GAAP results, which include these operations for the periods owned and our pro form a results, which exclude the contribution from these assets in all comparative periods. As Vivek has highlighted, it was another stellar quarter driven by organic growth Throughout J2's portfolio of businesses, we ended the quarter with approximately $465,000,000 of cash and investments, including $348,000,000 of cash.
Now let's review the summer quarterly financial results on Slide 4. We'll begin with our revenues. It was a record second fiscal quarter of revenues for J2. We had revenue of $429,000,000 in the quarter $418,000,000 of revenue on a pro form a basis, representing approximately 30% and 33.5% growth, Adjusted EBITDA was also a record for 2nd fiscal quarter with $172,000,000 as reported and $167,200,000 on a pro form a basis. The growth in EBITDA was 30% 33%, respectively, consistent with our revenue growth.
Finally, growth in earnings per share was even stronger. In the 2nd quarter, we had $2.41 of non GAAP adjusted EPS And $2.32 of pro form a EPS, a growth of 41% 45%, respectively, from Q2 2020. Turning to slide 5. In Q2, we generated $80,500,000 of free cash flow, representing a 30.6% decline From Q2 2020, I would remind our investors that we had a difficult comparison as usually Q1 is our highest free cash flow producing quarter, But in 2020, Q2 was the highest free cash flow producing quarter. In Q2 2021, we had significant additional tax payments And we also had incremental CapEx versus Q2 2020.
I would also remind those that are new to J2 That our EBITDA to free cash flow conversion is best measured over a rolling 4 quarters and is typically in the mid-60s. On a trailing 12 month basis, our adjusted EBITDA is $694,300,000 and our free cash flow is $429,500,000
Now let's
on a reported GAAP basis and 10.1 percent on a pro form a basis to $164,000,000 Adjusted EBITDA was $81,600,000 as reported and $76,800,000 on a pro form a basis, generating growth of negative 2.3% And 0.7%, respectively. The Digital Media business grew revenue 54.8 percent to 253,800,000 And experienced double digit revenue growth exclusive of We Tell Me Not. Adjusted EBITDA was up more than 77% to 101,200,000 And digital media margins expanded to 39.9 percent increasing by more than 5 percentage points from Q2 2020. Finally, before going to our question and answer session, I would like to turn your attention to our business outlook on Slide 8. Due to the continuing impressive organic Q2 results, we are raising our guidance once again, the first time in the company's history twice in 1 year.
To remind you, at this time, we estimated on a pro form a basis The revenues would be between $1,676,000,000 $1,700,000,000 adjusted EBITDA between $666,000,000 680,000,000 And non GAAP adjusted EPS between $9.27 a share $9.51 per share. For 2021, we now estimate On a pro form a basis, revenues to be between $1,720,000,000
$1,742,000,000
Adjusted EBITDA to be between $695,000,000 $705,000,000 and non GAAP adjusted earnings per share To be between $9.57 per share and $9.73 per share. I would note that the earnings per share include The 3,000,000 shares that we issued earlier this week to settle the 3.25 percent convertible notes. Following our business outlook are various metrics and reconciliation statements for the various non GAAP measures to their nearest GAAP equivalent. I would now ask the operator to rejoin us to instruct you on how to queue for questions.
Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. And the first question is coming from Shyam Patil from SIG. Shyam, your line is live.
Thank you. Hey, guys. Good morning. Congrats on Great results.
I had a couple
of questions. Maybe first one for Vivek and then second one for Scott. Vivek, you kind of talked about this in the call a little bit, but it's I can't remember the last time we've seen This level of outperformance on a consistent basis, could you talk a little bit more about what's driving this? Is it better processes internally that you introduced when you came on board? Is it the macro?
And just kind of how you think about the sustainability of this? And then Scott, just on the outlook, any color you could offer On how to think about digital media and cloud revenue for 3Q and for the year, as well as Just like depreciation, interest and other income and kind of share count for the year as well? Thank you.
Yes, Shyam. So let me start and take your first question. I certainly think that the advertising market has been Really great for us. I think it's a I think that's a overall secular trend where you do have the ongoing shift From advertising from analog to digital platforms and we think that's going to continue for quite some time, but also the categories in which we operate. I mentioned them at the beginning of the call, the tech telco, Gaming and entertainment, health and pharma and shopping are amongst the strongest if not strongest and fastest growing categories within the advertising business.
And I think that the products and services that we have really produce Great ROI and return on ad spend. So I think that combination answers the question as to the strength of the advertising based businesses within the company. And then on the subscription side, as you know, we look for subscription businesses that are adjacent to the verticals in which we operate. And those businesses, which include the connectivity subscription businesses under Ookla, the MarTech businesses and the cybersecurity businesses are doing extremely well. Businesses are doing extremely well.
And then look, I think we've got probably at this point the best Roster of underlying businesses and brands through I think the careful process of acquiring the right businesses And then disposing of the businesses that weren't the right fit for us. And then look, I also think the talent, the talent across the board In the organization, it is doing very well. I also just want to say, it shouldn't go unnoticed that the cloud fax business, The consensus business is on fire. I don't think we've seen results like it. I haven't seen results like this At least in the decade plus that I've been inside of the company.
So a lot of things working well for the company and we believe they will sustain
And so in answer to your question, Shyam, as you know, we don't give quarterly guidance, but I think you can unpack the 6 month guidance in the following manner. And it's probably easiest to deal with the cloud business. As you saw, it grew about 10% pro form a in Q2. We're expecting a similar rate of growth in Q3 and roughly the same in Q4. So if you do that, you can back into the digital media contribution.
In terms of some of the things below the line, I would highlight a few items. Our non GAAP depreciation and amortization Should show some sequential upticks in Q3 and Q4 from Q2's level. I remind people that That non GAAP depreciation and amortization was 16,500,000 in Q2. We're expecting a little under 17,000,000 in Q3 right around 17,000,000 in Q4 and then our interest income and other about 15,500,000, $15,700,000 respectively. What I would also note for everyone to take into account is to make sure you add For the 2 months of this quarter and the 3 months of next quarter, an additional 3,000,000 shares into your share count.
The July share count remains consistent with the count we've had before, which is in the 44.7% range, But then that will jump to 47.7 percent, 47.8 percent for the months of August, September through the balance of the year. Tax rates fairly consistent at the 22 65 range.
Great. Thank you, guys.
Thank you.
Thank you. And the next question is coming from James Breen.
Thanks, James. My line is
in the class.
Thanks for taking the question. Scott, can you just talk about the sequential cash flow? It was really high in the Q1, 115,000,000 down to 80, What are the differences there between the 2? And then there was an impairment charge, dollars 32,000,000 I think impairment charge in the revenue?
Yes. So on the cash flows, one of the downsides of raising your guidance twice in the year and outperformance like this is you got to pay more taxes. And so our estimated tax payments in Q2 were substantially higher than say we would have estimated at the beginning of the year. So we had close to 28,000,000 more in estimated tax payments in Q2 than we did in the year ago quarter and about 23,000,000, 24,000,000 more sequentially from Q1 to Q2. So taxes were a big, big piece of the volatility in cash flows.
It's not, let's say, atypical. We pay more estimated taxes in Q2 versus Q1, but the delta this year was much more extreme given The strong not only current performance, but prospective performance through the balance of the year. As I mentioned, we also had some increased CapEx Year over year of about $7,500,000 to $8,000,000 and then we just had outstanding collections in Q1, really collected all of the receivables, which was somewhat unusual. Normally, some of that would have fallen into Q2. So I think you got to look at the 2 quarters really in combination with each other.
And when you do that, it And then in terms of the write off, there's a couple of write offs I'd like to highlight. So the one you're referring to, which is 25,000,000 net of taxes has to do with a write down of our B2B backup business. As you know, we've been in a process To sell that business based on the indications of interest, it was prudent and necessary that we take the write down of about 25,000,000 That's not included yet that transaction, but based on the indications of interest we've received, that was the necessary thing to do from an accounting standpoint. Separately, one of the assets that we do not control, which is WellTalk, they've informed us that they too have a process going on. Based upon their indications of interest, we took a write down of that asset as well.
Thank you. And the next question is coming from Will Power from Baird. Will, your line is live.
Okay, great. Yes, I want to start actually with Scott and I guess what will be consensus. Just looking at The strength in cloud facts and corporate facts, we just love to drill down and get your perspective as to what you're seeing there and what the key Drivers there are that stronger growth.
Great. And Glad somebody wants to ask about the consensus business. So really the consensus business is hitting on all cylinders. There are 2 major streams of revenue there. As we call the SoHo revenue stream, sometimes historically referred to as the web channel, which is much more diverse than the healthcare And it is really geared to individuals and micro businesses.
And I think you've heard Vivek and I talk in the past that we've accepted that to be a low single digit declining business. But beginning about a year ago, With some management changes and some reorienting of the marketing, that business now is a modest grower. And that occurred again in Q2. I think it was about 1% growth on the SOHO side. As I tell our prospective And since the shareholders, I'm not looking for that to be the growth driver, but I do think there's some opportunities to stabilize that revenue base We have some modest growth out of it.
Part of that will be that it's not contributing materially today, but the introduction of new services bundle with The existing service, the most notable is J Sign, which is a blockchain digital signature that we're in the midst of releasing. On the corporate side, the growth there was 18%. That is being driven almost exclusively through our healthcare activities. As Vivek mentioned, it's a combination of new wins, but it's also the onboarding of customers and their growth in traffic. And so We're very excited about what's happening.
We have the opportunity that we did not last year to participate in HIMSS, which is coming up next week. It's the big Healthcare conference, it will be in Las Vegas. We're actually going to be in what is known as the interoperability showcase And every hour we will be demonstrating how a fax transmission is translated into a direct secure message and then integrate it into an EHR system, most notably Epic. We'll be demonstrating this. We'll have a booth.
We've got participation in 4 interoperability panels and we've got a number of face to face meetings and interviews with the press. So this is what we intended 18 months ago, we rolled out the 1st consensus product. But as you know, right after our Analyst Day in March of 2000, With the pandemic, HIMSS was not just postponed or went virtual, it was actually canceled. So this is a big deal for us coming up this coming week. If any shareholders happen to be in Las Vegas, feel free to reach out to me.
We can arrange special demonstrations and tours of the floor. But this is really what is driving the overall consensus business.
Okay, great. And I guess if I could fit in One more actually on the digital media side too, just given the strength there. Vivek, I know you called out gaming, of course healthcare, been 2 big verticals for you and particularly strong growth. Anything to think about in the second half versus the trends you saw coming out of Q2? I mean, have you seen those trends continue Thus far through the quarter and judging from the full year guidance, it sounds like you have, but any seasonal factors to consider anything else in the second half versus the Strength you've seen thus far?
Yes. No, look, so I think in the second half, remember, and as I mentioned in the call, last year's second half was particularly robust And we also had the benefit of the RetailMeNot acquisition in late October. So the comp gets More difficult and obviously in Q2, while we had a very strong Q2 last year growing 2% in relative terms, right, where I think most in our Industries and our peer set saw significant declines in their revenues making their Q2 comps this year a tad easier than ours. I wouldn't extrapolate that growth rate per se to the second half, but as I said, we're looking overall at a 17% growth rate In the second half of twenty twenty one. So we think the trends continue.
We think these are long term trends. And again, I think that I just go back to the overall and you almost have to go category by category, which I won't do today. But when you look at a category like pharma or you look at a category like shopping, each has a set of reasons as to why You're seeing an acceleration of the shift from traditional to digital solutions. So I think that's going to continue for the foreseeable future. I think we've got really nice tailwinds in a bunch of these different places.
I mean, I think the big question How robust will the Q4 holiday shopping season be? That's obviously an unknown. That's a big open question. And obviously, depending on where that lands, I think will be a driver of our ultimate result. As you know, that is a meaningful portion of the business.
And as you also know, seasonally, Q4 is our strongest quarter. So we're optimistic. All the signs we're seeing in the marketplace and from our clients are strong. The net revenue retention we're seeing is really amazing. And so all signs are positive.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Thank you. And the next question is coming from Saket Kalia from Barclays. Saket, your line is live.
Okay, great. Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions here, and I'll echo my congrats on the quarter. Thank you. Zach, maybe for you, I think you touched on this a little bit in your prepared remarks, but Do you kind of have that split of advertising revenue between performance and display?
Yes. Yes, it's about 55% of the advertising is in the performance category. And just to Make sure everyone's aware of when we say performance, that really is a function of how it's priced. So if it's priced on a cost per click, Cost per acquisition or commission basis or cost per lead, that fits into the performance category. If it is priced On a CPM, meaning cost per 1,000 ads served or on cost per unique visitor reached, So more of a reach metric that would fall into what we have generally called our display NVIDIA.
Got it. Got it. So 55, 45 is what the split sounds like, which is great.
Maybe logistically
maybe this is a Scott question. So logistically, Scott, When is consensus no longer going to be consolidated with J2 results? I guess I was maybe expecting it to be Quarter, but the guide, of course, is for total RemainCo. I want to make sure I understood the timing in terms of when consensus sort of Kind of is sort of out of J2 results and we could start to look at kind of Remainco versus Spinco separately.
So the answer to your question is consensus remains consolidated until the moment of distribution. Now, right now we have a range of dates that's anywhere from mid to late September, meaning that consensus We consolidated for the majority, if not substantially all of Q3 depending on the exact date of spin. The reason we can't be more specific As Vivek mentioned in his opening comments, we're still awaiting final sign off from the SEC and then we're preparing our materials So the consensus can go to market post Labor Day to raise debt. Under the timeframe that we believe is realistic, Both of those things will happen such that probably mid to 3rd week of September, we would be able to consummate the separation, which means that consensus would be part of J2's consolidated results for 2.5 or 2.75 months. And then at that point, consensus has its own separate standalone financials and Remainco would be ex consensus.
We discussed You know how and when it makes sense to provide RemainCo and SpinCo guidance. I think as we get closer and we can better define the date of the spin, then we can come back to the market and say, this is what the 2 companies will look like for the balance of the year.
Okay, got it. That's very clear. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. And the next question is coming from James Fish from Piper Sandler. James, your line is live.
Hey, guys. Nice quarter.
Wanted to first start on the cloud services side. It was the lowest churn rate, I had to go back to 2Q 'fifteen, I believe. What's the push and takes here and why churn was so low? Is that really the impact of the divestitures playing through, the strength of the corporate fast part or Non VID, maybe I'll just leave it there.
Yes. So first part is the divestiture. Since The divestiture has not happened yet in terms of B2B backup, is not a factor in the cancel rate. So the B2B backup is a component of that 2% cancel rate. We've seen strength across the board.
It is the case that, as I mentioned, Our consensus is a big driver of the overall cancel rate. Consensus has been strong in both its customer acquisition, but also its customer retention. So that is a big influence, but it's not exclusive. We've seen strength in the VIPER product as well as our MarTech products. Now in terms of sustainability, I'm always a little nervous to talk about sustainability of a metric when it's at or near an all time low, Because I look at these generally trading in ranges and so I would say that within a 25 basis point range is probably fair.
I think that if the economy remains generally stable, that should be a fair expectation.
That's helpful. And if I can sneak in one more on the Media side, is there a change in mix going on really or advertisers really looking more at, I'll say, niche And vertical specific sites rather than the broader search sites because that monetization rate was just off the charts and even better than most of your Q4s where that rate is really strong.
No, it's a great point. I just wanted to Jim, if I could, just on the cancel rate piece, I'd add one piece too, which is As businesses like consensus, the Cloud Fax business start to see the enterprise portion becoming a larger ratio, The revenue retention or the cancel rates just really extraordinary. So I think there's a positive mix that goes on there as well. Just in terms of your advertising question, look, I think there is vertical strength. So as I said, the verticals we're in are The fastest growing verticals within the Internet advertising world.
I do think there is also A fair amount of migration from non performing to performing media, which we fit into because and while I've Pointed out that 55% of the advertising business is performance priced. I should have pointed out that the 45% that isn't is measured as if it is. So there is all return on invested on advertising spend across everything we do. So I think performance matters more. And then the last thing I will say is that there's been a lot of discussion in the industry about the shift away from interest based ad targeting And back to more contextually relevant and premium environments and that obviously is what we deal in as well.
So I think all three of those have contributed to the gains that we've seen in the advertising business. And again, I think they're all long term trends.
Helpful. Good luck for the spin guys. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. And the next question is coming from Jon Tanwanteng from CJS Securities. John, your line is live.
Hey, good morning, guys. Really fantastic quarter and it's nice to see that The whole cookie and tracking and privacy piece is playing out finally. My first question, Vivek, just I want to go back to your margin commentary For Q2, how that was probably not sustainable as we go forward. Q3 is usually a better quarter than Q2. I know it's fairly close, but Just help me think of what investments you might be making in Q3 that might make the EBITDA margin less or how should we think about it as we go forward?
Yes. Look, it's a great question. We're really trying to put money to work on the marketing side within cybersecurity and Martech. As we've talked about in the past, these businesses really ought to be growthier, and we have run them For margin, and while we're not ever going to move away from our margin focus, I mean, you all understand how we operate businesses at J2, It doesn't make sense for us not to invest in marketing to accelerate longer term growth. So you're going So that's an element of it.
And then the other element on the digital media side is obviously the advertising business has And so given the mix of that revenue on the Digital Media side, the flow through was very high. I don't want to always rely on that. And as the revenue growth rates will compress a little bit as the comps get stronger in the second half, I think we have to keep that And then I do think there's some amount of costs that have not reentered the system. We don't have much Travel going on and that type of expense, that probably does come back into the company at some point in the second half. So those are sort of the puts and takes on it.
But look, I think the important point in all of this and what we've demonstrated really over the last 4 or 5 quarters is that there's a fair amount of Internally generated growth opportunities that we ought to feed and finding that balance between feeding and investing those against the sort of the near term profitability along with our acquisition program and balancing all of those pieces.
Okay, great. Thanks Vivek. And one for Scott. Just did CloudFacts outperform your expectations in the quarter? It sounds like it did.
And if so, does that change the outlook for consensus compared to what you were talking about when you announced the spin? Did the comps just get much harder in the second half or are you in line with what you thought you were going to do? Just a little more color on how you're thinking about that.
Well, the comps do get a little bit harder because as you know in Q2 of 2020, we had a fall off in Medical procedures that were elective because of COVID and activity decline and we saw, I think you'll recall a year ago we talked about it, A couple of $1,000,000 of headwind in usage from our healthcare accounts that obviously has not only bounced back, So we saw that rebounding beginning in the May, June timeframe of last year. Having said that, I think the business does remain very strong. And I think that if you're talking about the 2% kind of growth that we Reference back in April, when we discussed the spin for the first time, no, we're, I think confidently now of the opinion, This is a mid single digit grower, over time tracking to a high, if not double digit grower. But I think in the near to intermediate term, Mid single digits for consensus is the expectation and that would be an organic growth.
Great. Thank you very much and congrats again.
Thank you.
Thank you. And there were other questions in queue. I would like to hand the call back to Scott Turicchi for any closing remarks.
Great. Thank you very much, Paul. We appreciate you all joining us today for our Q2 earnings call. As I mentioned during the call, consensus will be at the INN's conference coming up Beginning Monday of this week in Las Vegas, we also do have one conference we're participating in virtually On August 11th for those that have signed up, it's 1 on 1 only. We will then be providing additional information over the coming weeks In terms of the exact timing of the spin, what you should be looking for is the flipping of our Form 10 to a public document and then at that point, the declaration date, the record date and then ultimately the distribution date.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This does conclude today's conference. You may disconnect your phone lines at this time and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.