Tremor International Q1 2022 IR Newsletter
Hello Everyone,
Welcome to the second edition of our Quarterly IR newsletter, highlighting recent news we have announced and news stories in which we have been featured, events at which we participated, awards and recognition we received, and product updates from Q1 2022 as well as upcoming events we plan on attending.
Q1 2022 was an important quarter for Tremor International and was highlighted by record Q4 and full year 2021 earnings results, as well as the initiation of a $75 million share repurchase program, announced on February 24th.
For both Q4 and full year 2021, Tremor experienced strong customer adoption of its differentiated data-powered end-to-end advertising technology platform, robust growth in Connected TV (“CTV”) and Video, strong adoption of our self-service and programmatic offerings and generated full year growth and profitability which, we believe, reflected amongst the best across ad tech.
Some key highlights included:
- Record Contribution ex-TAC (net revenues) Generated for Both Q4 and Full Year 2021
- Q4 2021 Contribution ex-TAC was $88.6 million, reflecting organic year-over-year growth of +20% compared to Q4 2020 while full year 2021 Contribution ex-TAC was $302.0 million, reflecting organic year-over-year growth of +64% compared to full year 2020
- Record Q4 and Full Year 2021 Profitability Achieved
- Q4 2021 adjusted EBITDA of $54.0 million reflected year-over-year growth of +38% compared to Q4 2020 while full year 2021 adjusted EBITDA of $161.2 million reflected year-over-year growth of +166% compared to full year 2020
- Achieved a 61% adjusted EBITDA margin in Q4 2021 and a 53% adjusted EBITDA margin for full year 2021 (both as a percentage of Contribution ex-TAC)
- Initiated $75 Million Share Repurchase Program Which Commenced March 1, 2022 to Return Value to Shareholders and Capitalize on Valuation Opportunity
- Continued Strength Within CTV and Video
- Q4 2021 CTV spend on our platform of $62.5 million reflected year-over-year growth of 47% compared to Q4 2020 while full year 2021 CTV spend on our platform of $201.0 million reflected year-over-year growth of +108% compared to full year 2020
- For full year 2021, CTV represented 27% of our Contribution ex-TAC while Video, including CTV, represented 80% of our Contribution ex-TAC
- Significant Liquidity, Free Cash Flow Conversion and Healthy Balance Sheet
- Ended 2021 with $367.7 million net cash
- Achieved 98% free cash flow conversion for both Q4 and full year 2021
- Strong Customer Net Retention Rate for Full Year 2021 (150.3%)
Additionally, we were extremely pleased to have VIDAA, a smart TV operating system preinstalled on, and integrated into, a number of premium global OEMs including Hisense and Toshiba, select Unruly as its strategic Sell Side Platform (“SSP”). VIDAA will also integrate Unruly’s CTV ad server, Spearad, to enable greater efficiency and control over their CTV ad delivery with granular ad pod controls and targeting. This selection extends upon Tremor International’s previously announced exclusive global automatic content recognition (ACR) data partnership with VIDAA from October 2021. We believe our data and media partnership with VIDAA positions Tremor International well with an aggressively growing global partner for years to come.
We also successfully launched a new visual and verbal identity for the Tremor International brand in January which was designed to succinctly capture Tremor International’s core values: Innovative, Committed, Collaborative and Authentic, with No Ego. As our company continues to grow and our global footprint expands, we felt it was imperative that we unite under a cohesive umbrella that encapsulates our collective mission and vision, while enabling our sub-brands — including Tremor Video and Unruly — to stand alone with their unique personas. Please feel free to read more about this launch Here.
Furthermore, we also believe our recent marketing efforts have been benefitting Tremor as the Company is increasingly being featured in media and industry conversations and publications, and we're proud to showcase that recognition to you later in this newsletter through various interviews we participated in, media coverage we generated, and awards and recognition we received.
Additionally, we continued to engage proactively with the investment community and during the first quarter launched our inaugural quarterly IR newsletter, participated in a fireside chat and investor meetings at Needham’s 24th annual growth conference and conducted numerous investor meetings and NDRs with our IR and banking partners. We look forward to expanding upon this momentum and continuing to engage with, and communicate our story to, both current and prospective investors in the US and internationally.
We believe our recent accomplishments well-position Tremor International for continued growth and success for the remainder of the year and beyond. We believe our end-to-end technology and business platform, highlighted by our CTV, Data and Video expertise, benefits customers as it provides simplicity, robust data for enhanced targeting, insulation against privacy changes, and is supportive of the industry trend towards supply path optimization. We also believe this platform is beneficial for Tremor International and its investors due to the levels of profitability and cash generation we are able to achieve as a result of our highly efficient and scaled end-to-end operating model.
We believe we have a tremendous opportunity to continue capitalizing on industry tailwinds such as a continued shift to programmatic, a rapidly growing US and international digital advertising, Video and CTV market, and increased political spend anticipated across ad tech in the back half of the year attributable to the US Mid Term election cycle.
Finally, we look forward to Tremor-specific catalysts over the back half of the year, such as the expectation of our ACR data partnership with VIDAA becoming effective as well as the expectation to begin monetizing our Spearad acquisition which has recently been fully integrated into our Unruly SSP. We believe our exclusive global ACR data partnership with VIDAA and completed integration of our CTV ad server, Spearad, will provide powerful growth drivers for Tremor International over the coming years both internationally and in the US. Our healthy balance sheet, profitability, cash generating capabilities and liquidity also position Tremor International well for future potential acquisitions and partnerships while remaining able to continue adding value to shareholders through our recently announced $75 million share repurchase program.
We hope you find this to be helpful and, as always, if you have any questions, any feedback, or if you’re interested in connecting with the investor relations team or management, please reach out to ir@tremorinternational.com. Please also feel free to sign up for email alerts regarding important Tremor International news, filings, or upcoming events Here.
This newsletter can also be accessed on our investor relations website at https://investors.tremorinternational.com.
Thank you!
Tremor International Investor Relations
Tremor International Reports Record Results for Fourth Quarter and Full-Year Ended December 31, 2021
Read More
VIDAA Selects Unruly’s SSP and Ad Server for CTV and Native Display
Read More
Tremor International Increases TV Data Reach To 44 Million US Households
Read More
Tremor International Annual Report (Form 20-F)
Read More
Comscore and Tremor International Partner to Deliver Expanded Programmatic CTV Audience Engagement
Read More
Tremor International’s Chief Product Officer, Karim Rayes, Looks To The Past and Predicts a Bright Future
Read More
Welcome to The New Tremor International (Interview About New Tremor International Brand Launch with Chief Marketing Officer Emily Barfuss and Chief People Officer Jackie Orris)
Read More
Introducing Spearad
Read More
Smarter TV: Data-Driven Strategies Designed to Spark Success in 2022 & Beyond (Q&A With Jessica La Rosa, VP of Partnerships & Data)
Read More
UNpicking Digital Advertising with Unruly: Episode Two; Winning in the Attention Economy
Listen Here
UNpicking Digital Advertising with Unruly: Episode One; The Importance of Sustainable Media
Listen Here
April 26th - AdWeek Convergent TV Summit East
April 26th – D3CON (Sponsoring)
April 27th - MediaPost Brand Insider Summit: QSR
April 27th - PHM HealthFront 2022 (Sponsoring)
May 4th - Digiday Programmatic Summit (Sponsoring)
May 15th - MediaPost Brand Insider Summit: CPG (Sponsoring)
May 16th - Cannes in Cairns (Queensland) (Sponsoring)
May 16th – Advertising Week Europe (Sponsoring)
May 24th - AdExchanger Programmatic IO
May 24th - Programmatic Pioneer Summit (Sponsoring)
May 24th - MediaTel: Connected TV World Summit (Sponsoring)
May 31st - Ad Week Asia (Sponsoring)
June 20th – Cannes
June 29th - AdTrader Conference (Sponsoring)
CTV Unified Auction
We now support Unified Auction capabilities for CTV/OTT publishers enabled through our Spearad ad server. Publishers can run a price-based auction with multiple SSPs (including Unruly) simultaneously. This creates more competition for their inventory and gives advertisers greater access to CTV supply. Publishers have flexible controls to configure bidders to meet publisher/partner needs, and advanced ad break controls (aka ad pods) to maximize revenue opportunities and deliver a quality TV-like experience for advertisers and consumers. We are currently in beta with these capabilities with publishers.
Unruly SSP & Spearad Consolidated User Interface (UI)
On April 4th, we released our updated and consolidated publisher UIs. This represents another milestone in our integration of the Spearad ad server into our end-to-end platform as a product offering under the Unruly brand. Our deal publishers will have streamlined access to an expanded set of self-service capabilities including Unified Auction, Ad Break / Ad Pod controls, and campaign management for direct and programmatic revenue. They will also benefit from improved ease-of-use through more intuitive navigation and improved workflow.
TV Intelligence Refresh
We recently enhanced our TV Intelligence solution, which provides marketers with access to representative TV viewing audiences at scale for targeting and measurement. Leveraging a blend of high reach linear data from 18 cable operators and coupled with the precision of cross-screen panel ACR data, TV Intelligence provides a highly competitive way to reach TV audiences using data from 44MM US households, without bias. Marketers will benefit from this increased scale and the expanded data sources add new levels of targeting precision and measurement.
1st Ad Slot Targeting
As consumers continue to shift their attention from Linear TV to CTV, our 1st Ad Slot Targeting offering allows advertisers to position their ads adjacent to relevant programming within CTV environments to ensure prominent ad placement, maximize brand recognition and increase ROI. Through a custom technical setup between Unruly and Publica, we are able to ensure programmatic ad delivery within the first ad slot across our footprint of direct CTV publishers.
Comscore Predictive Audiences
We have partnered with Comscore to activate Predictive Audiences which allows our advertisers to reach a variety of behavioral audiences across CTV, web and app without relying on cookies or other user identifiers. With access to over 800+ segments such as TV Viewership, OTT / Gaming, Personas, Location, B2B, Life stages, Retail & Commerce advertisers can easily target their desired audiences to align with specific campaign needs.
Content-Level Targeting Enhancements
We have enhanced our Content-level Targeting solution to now include Comscore’s TV Genre segments to increase scale against our 16+ supported genres (e.g., Action, Comedy, Sports) across digital screens. Our packages are now derived from a blend of Unruly direct publisher data and third-party sources, and addresses the need for more privacy-conscious, granular targeting solutions. These audiences can be activated flexibly across any buying model.
DSP Platform Updates
In Q1’22 we made several DSP platform enhancements including:
- Video Asset Creation Workflow - We have redesigned the Video Asset Creation Workflow to simplify the video upload process. All assets can now be created directly within placement set-up for both video assets and third-party tags to mirror our Display and Audio workflows.
- Creative Asset API – The new Creative Asset API streamlines the creative upload process and allows our advertisers to upload creative directly to their Account’s Asset List without logging into the DSP. From there, they can easily assign uploaded assets to their placements, and they can also retrieve a list of their creatives within the DSP to ensure everything is assigned properly and running as planned, leaving little room for error.
- Control Bidding - Our new Control Bidding feature helps advertisers determine the effectiveness of their ad and the likelihood of conversion among their targeted audience. Advertisers can set aside campaign impressions to create a control group of customers who are not shown creative messaging, but targeting and other campaign settings remain the same. Upon campaign completion, advertisers can then compare success metrics between the control and exposed groups to determine the effectiveness of their creative messaging.
SSP Platform Updates
In Q1’22, in addition to the UI updates, we also expanded our content-level targeting capabilities for publishers through inclusion of the ‘language’ attribute. Now, along with Genre and Content Rating, publishers passing data in the bidstream describing content language for CTV and OLV traffic can include and/or exclude normalized values on CTRL deals on a self-service basis. We currently support English, French, and Spanish normalized content language attributes
Tremor International On Aggregating More TV Data And Continuing The ‘End-To-End' Platform Trend
AdExchanger Article Featuring Tremor International VP of Partnerships and Data, Jessica La Rosa
An Intelligent Approach To Video Advertising
Double Verify Partner Spotlight on Tremor Video
Want Simpler CTV? Ask Your Platform
AdExchanger Article Featuring Tremor International Chief Product Officer Karim Rayes
How brands are leveraging the power of ACR data on the open web
Digiday Article Featuring Unruly Chief Revenue Officer Steve Sottile
The CTV/OTT Advertising Industry: What Lies Ahead in 2022
WARC Article Featuring Unruly’s Lee Smith
VIDAA Selects Unruly’s SSP & Ad Server for CTV & Native Display
- ExchangeWire - VIDAA Selects Unruly's SSP & Ad Server for CTV & Native Display
- MarTech Series - VIDAA Selects Unruly's SSP and Ad Server for CTV and Native Display
- Yahoo Finance - VIDAA Selects Unruly's SSP and Ad Server for CTV and Native Display
Tremor International Reports Record Results For Fourth Quarter and Full-Year Ended December 31, 2021
- The Times – Link
- Daily Mail – Link
- ShareCast – Link
- Dow Jones Newswires – Link
- Proactive – Link
- Seeking Alpha – Link
This Quarterly Newsletter contains forward-looking statements, including forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the United Stated Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the United States Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Forward-looking statements are identified by words such as “anticipates,” “believes,” “expects,” “intends,” “may,” “can,” “will,” “estimates,” and other similar expressions. However, these words are not the only way Tremor identifies forward-looking statements. All statements contained in this Quarterly Newsletter that do not relate to matters of historical fact should be considered forward-looking statements, including without limitation statements regarding the potential benefits associated with our product releases and enhancements, the VIDAA partnership, the Spearad acquisition, the growth of video and CTV, benefits of any of Tremor’s other commercial partnerships and any other statements related to its future financial results. These statements are neither promises nor guarantees but involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that may cause Tremor's actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from its expectations expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, the following: negative global economic conditions, potential negative developments in the COVID-19 pandemic and how those developments may adversely impact Tremor’s business, customers and the markets in which Tremor competes, changes in industry trends, other negative developments in Tremor's business or unfavorable legislative or regulatory developments. Tremor cautions you not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. For a more detailed discussion of these factors, and other factors that could cause actual results to vary materially, interested parties should review the risk factors listed in Tremor’s Annual Report on Form 20-F, which was filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (www.sec.gov) on March 15, 2022. Any forward-looking statements made by Tremor in this Quarterly Newsletter speak only as of the date of this newsletter, and Tremor does not intend to update these forward-looking statements after the date of this newsletter, except as required by law.
Tremor and Unruly, and the Tremor and Unruly logo are trademarks of Tremor International Ltd. in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word “partner” or “partnership” in this press release does not mean a legal partner or legal partnership.