Applovin Corp (APP) 2022 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Welcome, everyone, to AppLovin's earnings call for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2022. I'm Ryan Gee, Head of Investor Relations. And joining me today to discuss our results are Adam Foroughi, our Co-Founder, CEO and Chairperson; and Herald Chen, our President and CFO.

歡迎大家參加 AppLovin 截至 2022 年 12 月 31 日的第四季度和年度財報電話會議。我是投資者關係主管 Ryan Gee。今天和我一起討論我們的成果的是我們的聯合創始人、首席執行官兼主席 Adam Foroughi； Herald Chen，我們的總裁兼首席財務官。

Please note, our SEC filings as well as our shareholder letter discussing our fourth quarter performance are available at investors applovin.com. During today's call, we may be making forward-looking statements regarding future events, market expectations or future financial performance of the company and the strategic review of our apps portfolio. These statements are based on our current assumptions and beliefs, and we assume no obligation to update them, except as required by law. Actual results may differ materially from the results predicted. We encourage you to review the risk factors in our most recently filed Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended December 30, 2022, and in our upcoming Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2022. We will also be discussing non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP financial measures are not intended to be a substitute for, or superior to, our GAAP results. Please be sure to review the reconciliations of our GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures in our shareholder letter.

請注意，我們提交給美國證券交易委員會的文件以及討論我們第四季度業績的股東信函可在投資者 applovin.com 上找到。在今天的電話會議中，我們可能會就公司的未來事件、市場預期或未來財務業績以及我們應用程序組合的戰略審查做出前瞻性陳述。這些陳述基於我們當前的假設和信念，除法律要求外，我們不承擔更新它們的義務。實際結果可能與預測結果存在重大差異。我們鼓勵您查看我們最近提交的截至 2022 年 12 月 30 日的財政季度的 10-Q 表格和即將發布的截至 2022 年 12 月 31 日的年度的 10-K 表格中的風險因素。我們還將討論非-GAAP 財務措施。這些非 GAAP 財務指標無意替代或優於我們的 GAAP 結果。請務必在我們的股東信中查看我們的 GAAP 和非 GAAP 財務措施的對賬。

This conference call is being recorded, and a replay will be available on our IR website shortly. I'd now like to turn it over to Adam for some opening remarks, and then we'll open it up for Q&A. Please go ahead, Adam.

此電話會議正在錄製中，重播將很快在我們的 IR 網站上提供。我現在想把它交給 Adam 做一些開場白，然後我們將打開它進行問答。請繼續，亞當。

Thanks, Ryan. Thanks for joining us today. Recently, I was reflecting on our first 1.5 years as a public company. Some things are certainly much different from when we were private. A lot more people are fixated on quarterly results than our long-term plan. Every day, there's a scoreboard or a stock price, and of course, we hold these earnings calls every quarter. We did not do that when we were private. But the most important things have not changed one bit.

謝謝，瑞安。感謝您今天加入我們。最近，我在回顧我們作為一家上市公司的頭 1.5 年。有些事情肯定與我們私下時有很大不同。與我們的長期計劃相比，更多的人關注季度業績。每天都有記分牌或股票價格，當然，我們每個季度都會舉行這些收益電話會議。當我們私有時，我們沒有這樣做。但最重要的一點都沒有改變。

First and foremost, the most important thing we've got here is our team and culture. Our key team continues to work very closely together to deliver on our products and our vision, and we continue to add great talent to our team while maintaining our entrepreneurial and lean culture. And second is our motivation. We're all still incredibly hungry today and working harder than ever before because the opportunities we see in front of us are bigger than anything we've ever seen in the past.

首先，我們在這裡擁有的最重要的東西是我們的團隊和文化。我們的主要團隊繼續緊密合作，以實現我們的產品和我們的願景，我們繼續為我們的團隊增添優秀人才，同時保持我們的企業家精神和精益文化。其次是我們的動力。今天我們都非常飢餓，並且比以往任何時候都更加努力地工作，因為我們看到擺在我們面前的機會比我們過去看到的任何東西都大。

The other thing that hasn't changed is the need for relevant advertising. Relevant advertising funds free digital content. As we talk about the economic slowdown and we talk about the IDFA and privacy headwinds, we sometimes lose sight of the fact that relevant advertising helps consumers discover content, and it helps the publisher monetize the content that they've developed that they're giving away for free. If any part of this equation breaks down, you're going to end up having less usage and consumption and less investment into great content, and it's just going to be a tremendous loss for consumers and businesses. Because of that, we know that our industry is going to be resilient.

另一件沒有改變的事情是對相關廣告的需求。相關廣告資金免費數字內容。當我們談論經濟放緩以及 IDFA 和隱私逆風時，我們有時會忽視這樣一個事實，即相關廣告可以幫助消費者發現內容，並且可以幫助發布商將他們開發的內容貨幣化免費離開。如果這個等式的任何部分出現問題，您最終將減少使用和消費，減少對優質內容的投資，這對消費者和企業來說將是巨大的損失。正因為如此，我們知道我們的行業將具有彈性。

So what are the business opportunities that we hear are most focused on today? Number one, over the last several years since we released AXON, the advancements in AI technologies have been incredible. Well, now we're working on AXON 2. We're going to use some of these new technologies for release some point in 2023. We believe this new platform and upgrade to our core technology will make an immense impact on our business and for our business partners.

那麼，今天我們聽到的最受關注的商業機會是什麼？第一，自從我們發布 AXON 以來的過去幾年裡，人工智能技術的進步令人難以置信。嗯，現在我們正在研究 AXON 2。我們將使用其中一些新技術在 2023 年的某個時候發布。我們相信這個新平台和對我們核心技術的升級將對我們的業務和我們的商業夥伴。

Second, we're really excited about the Connected TV space. We're actively extending our marketing solutions today to the Connected TV device. This category of advertising is bigger than the one we operate in today, and it's much faster growing. We believe this is going to become a big part of our Software Platform in the coming years and a very fast-growing one.

其次，我們對聯網電視領域感到非常興奮。今天，我們正在積極將我們的營銷解決方案擴展到聯網電視設備。這一類廣告比我們今天經營的廣告規模更大，而且增長速度更快。我們相信這將在未來幾年成為我們軟件平台的重要組成部分，並且是一個快速增長的平台。

And third, we continue to invest in innovative products to help carriers and OEMs better monetize their users. We all know that handset device sales have slowed down as mobile market is saturated, and these constituents need better products to be able to monetize their audience with. And we're going to deliver those products.

第三，我們繼續投資於創新產品，以幫助運營商和原始設備製造商更好地從用戶中獲利。我們都知道，隨著移動市場的飽和，手機設備的銷售已經放緩，而這些組成部分需要更好的產品才能通過他們的受眾獲利。我們將交付這些產品。

As we've gone public a little over 1.5 years ago, we continue to operate the same way we did private because we know that works. We were incredibly successful for a decade before we went public, focusing on building long-term products and technologies that are innovative, that when we release them into the market and have success with, we can create immense value gains for our business, our shareholders and our customers.

由於我們在 1.5 多年前公開上市，因此我們繼續以與私有化相同的方式運營，因為我們知道這行得通。在我們上市之前的十年裡，我們取得了令人難以置信的成功，專注於構建創新的長期產品和技術，當我們將它們投放市場並取得成功時，我們可以為我們的業務、我們的股東創造巨大的價值收益和我們的客戶。

With that, I'm going to hand it off to Herald.

有了這個，我要把它交給先驅報。

Thanks, Adam. In our last two shareholder letters, we talked about a theme of stability, which is a very nice thing to have in this current market environment. In particular, we have stability with a fantastic team, and we have stability with our business model and financial profile. That affords us the resources and time to invest wisely in our existing and leading products, new initiatives as well as invest for the future.

謝謝，亞當。在我們最近的兩封股東信中，我們談到了穩定的主題，在當前的市場環境下，這是一件非常好的事情。特別是，我們擁有一支出色的團隊，我們的商業模式和財務狀況也很穩定。這為我們提供了資源和時間來明智地投資於我們現有的和領先的產品、新計劃以及為未來投資。

There's a couple of other themes that we wanted to touch on today as well, two of them being simplification and focus, both internally and externally. Internally, we are focused on what we can control and spend a lot of time ensuring that our best resources are allocated to our best returning projects. An example of that has been our effort to optimize our apps portfolio, which is nearing completion. We spent the last 6 months working on headcount reductions, reformatting, earn-outs, focused on the sale and spin and closure of underperforming assets. And that's really allowed us now to get to a position where we've increased the cash flow, and management time is now focused on delivering value with our remaining portfolio.

我們今天還想談談其他幾個主題，其中兩個是內部和外部的簡化和集中。在內部，我們專注於我們可以控制的事情，並花費大量時間確保我們最好的資源分配給我們最好的回報項目。這方面的一個例子是我們努力優化我們的應用程序組合，該工作已接近完成。在過去的 6 個月裡，我們致力於裁員、重組、盈利，重點是出售、分拆和關閉表現不佳的資產。這真的讓我們現在能夠達到增加現金流的位置，而管理時間現在專注於通過我們剩餘的投資組合創造價值。

We're pleased to say we have 11 remaining studios and publishing partners that we're excited to invest to grow and ultimately maximize the value of that portfolio going forward. One note you'll see in the shareholder letter in our financials that we did is that we did take a $128 million net loss charge for the divestiture and closure of these assets, including $100 million in the fourth quarter. Another area where we're simplifying and focusing is on the initiatives we have in hand. As Adam mentioned, we've got some amazing projects underway that we're super optimistic about. And that means the bar for our M&A program has gone up. We're certainly still in the market for assets that are attractive to us, but they would need to be highly synergistic, strategic and a great valuation. So the bar is high for M&A.

我們很高興地宣布，我們還有 11 家工作室和發行合作夥伴，我們很高興投資這些工作室和發行合作夥伴，以發展並最終實現該投資組合未來價值的最大化。您會在我們財務報表的股東信中看到的一個說明是，我們確實為剝離和關閉這些資產收取了 1.28 億美元的淨虧損費用，其中包括第四季度的 1 億美元。我們正在簡化和關注的另一個領域是我們手頭的計劃。正如 Adam 提到的，我們正在進行一些令人驚嘆的項目，我們對此非常樂觀。這意味著我們併購計劃的門檻提高了。我們當然仍在市場上尋找對我們有吸引力的資產，但它們需要具有高度協同性、戰略性和高估值。因此，併購的門檻很高。

And lastly, we remain focused on what we've always been focused on when we were private or public, and that's making decisions for the long term. So that while we will still -- we will give the first quarterly guidance 1 quarter out, we're very much focused on the long term and won't manage to near-term targets.

最後，我們仍然專注於我們在私營或上市時一直關注的事情，那就是做出長期決策。因此，雖然我們仍然會 - 我們將在 1 個季度發布第一個季度指導，但我們非常關注長期目標，不會設法實現近期目標。

Turning to the financials quickly, and I won't reiterate all the facts and data that's in the shareholder letter, but I will highlight a few key things. First of all, the fourth quarter came in at the high end, both on the top line and bottom line for where we guided to in the third quarter for the fourth quarter. Included in that was Software Platform performance, which grew 24% year-over-year. For the entire year '22, we came in at $2.8 billion of revenue and generated over $1 billion of EBITDA, and that equates to a 38% margin. Then for the first quarter of this coming year, we're guiding to essentially the quarter being flat to the fourth quarter in total revenue as well as total EBITDA.

快速轉向財務，我不會重申股東信中的所有事實和數據，但我會強調一些關鍵事項。首先，第四季度處於高端，無論是我們在第三季度指導的第四季度的頂線還是底線。其中包括軟件平台性能，同比增長 24%。在 22 年全年，我們的收入為 28 億美元，EBITDA 超過 10 億美元，這相當於 38% 的利潤率。然後，對於明年第一季度，我們的指導基本上是該季度的總收入和總 EBITDA 與第四季度持平。

One note for the next quarter is we are going to change and simplify some of our KPIs that we're reporting, in particular with regard to the Software Platform side of the equation. We believe several of the metrics that we have been offering are a bit confusing and really are not indicative or helpful to understanding our business. That's because the Software Platform apps, applications and solutions have become much broader, the size of the customers are different as well. So having a singular metric like SPEC and revenue per SPEC aren't terribly helpful. So we'll be taking away those 2 metrics as well as the TSTV metric going forward.

下個季度的一個注意事項是，我們將更改和簡化我們正在報告的一些 KPI，特別是在等式的軟件平台方面。我們認為，我們一直提供的一些指標有點令人困惑，實際上對理解我們的業務沒有指示意義或幫助。這是因為軟件平台應用程序、應用程序和解決方案變得更加廣泛，客戶規模也不同。因此，擁有像 SPEC 這樣的單一指標和每個 SPEC 的收入並不是很有幫助。因此，我們將取消這 2 個指標以及未來的 TSTV 指標。

What we do want to focus you though are on the metrics that are meaningful. And our biggest business in Software Platform is the AppDiscovery business plus ALX. And there's a metric that we've been reporting historically, and we'll report going forward that we do think is important. And that's around our revenue per install and the number of installs. And we will continue to report those metrics going forward.

不過，我們確實想讓您關注的是有意義的指標。我們在軟件平台方面最大的業務是 AppDiscovery 業務加上 ALX。有一個我們一直在報告的指標，我們會報告我們認為很重要的指標。這與我們每次安裝的收入和安裝次數有關。我們將繼續報告這些指標。

In '22 over '21, that metric increased 46% in terms of revenue per install for ALX and AppDiscovery and increase in terms of the number of installs by 24%. So we would guide you to make sure you're focused on those metrics going forward. And of course, we will continue to evaluate one of the best metrics to describe our business going forward as other components of our software business grow over time.

在 '22 over '21，該指標在 ALX 和 AppDiscovery 的每次安裝收入方面增加了 46%，在安裝數量方面增加了 24%。因此，我們將指導您確保您專注於未來的這些指標。當然，隨著我們軟件業務的其他組成部分隨著時間的推移而增長，我們將繼續評估描述我們未來業務的最佳指標之一。

In terms of the overall financial performance of our business, we are glad that we had $1 billion of EBITDA, and we have now over $1 billion of cash. We are very focused on free cash flow as well. And you'll see in our shareholder letter, we've added a new table where we've given you the $8 trillion quarters of free cash flow performance. We had $260 million of EBITDA in the fourth quarter and $132 million of free cash flow. Our definition of free cash flow is the free cash flow from operations, less CapEx and less finance leases. So we think that's a great indicator of not just EBITDA, but actual free cash flow to the bottom line which we're proud of.

就我們業務的整體財務業績而言，我們很高興我們有 10 億美元的 EBITDA，而且我們現在擁有超過 10 億美元的現金。我們也非常關注自由現金流。你會在我們的股東信中看到，我們添加了一個新表格，其中我們為你提供了 8 萬億美元的季度自由現金流表現。我們在第四季度的 EBITDA 為 2.6 億美元，自由現金流為 1.32 億美元。我們對自由現金流的定義是運營產生的自由現金流減去資本支出和融資租賃。因此，我們認為這不僅是 EBITDA 的一個很好的指標，而且是我們引以為豪的底線的實際自由現金流量。

Our financial position allows us to have this resiliency in our business where we can invest in what we wanted to grow as well as find new investments going forward, and that can range from M&A where there's a high bar, but also share buybacks. In terms of share buybacks, as you can see, in '22, we invested over $340 million against our $750 million authorized buyback. But in the fourth quarter, we did not buy back any shares as we are continuing to assess our capital allocation policy as well as increase the amount of cash in the quarter so that we ended the year with over $1 billion of cash. We think we're well positioned today and going forward, given the financial wherewithal for our business to invest in our -- in the initiatives we are excited about as well as consider other investments, including share repurchases going forward.

我們的財務狀況使我們能夠在我們的業務中擁有這種彈性，我們可以投資於我們想要增長的東西以及尋找未來的新投資，範圍可以從具有高門檻的併購到股票回購。在股票回購方面，正如你所看到的，在 22 年，我們在 7.5 億美元的授權回購中投資了超過 3.4 億美元。但在第四季度，我們沒有回購任何股票，因為我們將繼續評估我們的資本分配政策並增加本季度的現金數量，以便我們在年底擁有超過 10 億美元的現金。我們認為我們今天和未來都處於有利地位，因為我們的業務有足夠的資金來投資我們 - 我們感到興奮的舉措以及考慮其他投資，包括未來的股票回購。

So in summary, we're very glad to have the stability that we have in our business as well as the financial wherewithal that we have. We think we've got an amazing team focused on the right things, and we're optimistic about the future ahead.

因此，總而言之，我們很高興擁有我們業務中的穩定性以及我們擁有的財務資源。我們認為我們擁有一支專注於正確事情的出色團隊，我們對未來充滿樂觀。

And with that, I'll turn it over to Ryan for Q&A.

有了這個，我會把它交給 Ryan 進行問答。

Yes. Thank you, Herald. So we'll now begin the question-and-answer portion of the call. (Operator Instructions). Our first question will come from Vasily Karasyov from Cannonball Research.

是的。謝謝你，先驅報。因此，我們現在將開始通話的問答部分。 （操作員說明）。我們的第一個問題將來自 Cannonball Research 的 Vasily Karasyov。

Adam, in your prepared remarks, you mentioned that Connected TV is one of the growth areas. So I think investors and analysts at this point understand Connected TV pretty well, they understand what you do. Can you help us connect how exactly you're going to address that market and what function you're hoping to perform there and what kind of revenue opportunities you see maybe in simple terms? I would appreciate it.

亞當，在你準備好的發言中，你提到聯網電視是增長領域之一。所以我認為此時的投資者和分析師非常了解聯網電視，他們了解您的工作。您能否幫助我們了解您將如何準確地應對該市場、您希望在那裡執行什麼功能以及您可能看到什麼樣的收入機會？我會很感激。

Yes, for sure. I'll speak to just the product side. We're a performance marketing business at its core. And what we've done really well in mobile over the last decade is enable advertisers to buy advertising, full-screen video ad, high definition and measure all the performance of everything that happens after the fact and be able to buy effectively as arbitrage marketers. The Connected TV device is really exciting for us because it's a television device, full screen, living room, tons of consumption per day. It's Connected to the Internet. But today, we're not seeing that much performance advertising happening at large scale on that platform, especially when it comes to mobile app developers.

是肯定的。我只談產品方面。我們的核心是績效營銷業務。過去十年我們在移動領域做得非常好的是讓廣告商能夠購買廣告、全屏視頻廣告、高清和衡量事後發生的一切的所有性能，並且能夠作為套利營銷商有效地購買.聯網電視設備對我們來說真的很令人興奮，因為它是一個電視設備，全屏，客廳，每天都有大量的消費。它已連接到 Internet。但是今天，我們並沒有看到在該平台上大規模投放大量效果廣告，尤其是在涉及移動應用程序開發人員時。

In the last couple of years, we invested in an attribution company that's one of the leaders in trying to bring attribution to Connected TV device. We invested in Wurl, which has -- effectively, we've talked about a CDN for streamers for very high-profile media companies to bring their content to fast channels. Then we've also got our core performance platform that, we think, is the leader in mobile marketing. And we're going to take that and use Wurl to bring it to market in Connected TV, and we think it can become a big opportunity. As far as revenue and numbers, this is still really early days here. We believe it will become a substantial and growing part of our Software Platform over years, but we're not ready to talk numbers at this point.

在過去的幾年裡，我們投資了一家歸因公司，該公司是嘗試將歸因引入聯網電視設備的領導者之一。我們投資了 Wurl，實際上，我們已經討論過為非常知名的媒體公司提供流媒體的 CDN，以便將他們的內容帶到快速頻道。然後我們還有我們的核心性能平台，我們認為它是移動營銷領域的領導者。我們將利用它並使用 Wurl 將其推向聯網電視市場，我們認為它可以成為一個巨大的機會。就收入和數字而言，這還處於早期階段。我們相信，多年來它將成為我們軟件平台的一個重要且不斷增長的部分，但我們目前還沒有準備好談論數字。

So essentially, will you be acting as a DSP in programmatic CTV (inaudible) but with performance advertising. Is that the right way to think about it?

因此，從本質上講，您是否會在程序化 CTV（聽不清）中充當 DSP，但會進行效果廣告。這是正確的思考方式嗎？

I'd think about it as full stack. So the same way in mobile, we're an SSP and a DSP. Wurl, today, has a very well-performing SSP business. We, AppLovin, our biggest business is our DSP. We'll couple those pieces and have a full stack offering for Connected TV partners.

我認為它是完整的堆棧。所以在移動領域也是如此，我們是 SSP 和 DSP。如今，Wurl 的 SSP 業務表現非常出色。我們，AppLovin，我們最大的業務是我們的 DSP。我們會將這些部分結合起來，為聯網電視合作夥伴提供完整的堆棧產品。

Next, we'll go to Ralph Schackart with William Blair.

接下來，我們將與 William Blair 一起去 Ralph Schackart。

Adam, in the prepared remarks, you talked about the upgrade that's coming in sometime in 2023 for AXON 2. And I think you said it could have a significant or immense impact. Maybe just a little bit more color about that? Will that be something that will phase in over time? Will it be more sort of abrupt in nature, meaning you potentially have a bigger impact in the near term? Would just love a little bit more color on that, please?

亞當，在準備好的發言中，你談到了 AXON 2 將於 2023 年某個時候進行的升級。我認為你說過它可能會產生重大或巨大的影響。也許只是多了一點顏色？這會隨著時間的推移逐步出現嗎？它會不會更突然一些，這意味著你可能在短期內產生更大的影響？只是喜歡在上面多一點顏色，好嗎？

Yes. I mean, look, we released AXON 1, I guess, is a little over -- it was around 3 years ago. We started working on it 4 years ago. Business grew a ton since we did that. I think we 10x-ed over the period of time from AXON 1 to today. It did build over time. I mean, that's how these technologies work. In the period of time since we built that first technology, obviously, we all know there's been huge advancements in AI technologies. And we're working on bringing those to our core platform. The rollout and potential growth from it is just building more efficiency into our system, which will benefit our advertisers. They should be able to hit their goals at larger scale, creating more growth for them and in the category and obviously will benefit us. We don't yet know if it's going to be a step function and continue to build over time, but we do believe that will be how it will look.

是的。我的意思是，看，我們發布的 AXON 1，我想，已經有點結束了——那是大約 3 年前的事了。我們在 4 年前就開始研究它。自從我們這樣做以來，業務增長了很多。我認為我們在從 AXON 1 到今天的這段時間裡增長了 10 倍。它確實隨著時間的推移而建立。我的意思是，這就是這些技術的工作原理。自從我們建立第一項技術以來，很明顯，我們都知道人工智能技術取得了巨大進步。我們正在努力將它們引入我們的核心平台。它的推出和潛在的增長只是在我們的系統中提高效率，這將使我們的廣告商受益。他們應該能夠更大規模地實現他們的目標，為他們和這個類別創造更多的增長，這顯然將使我們受益。我們還不知道它是否會成為一個階躍函數並隨著時間的推移繼續構建，但我們相信它會是這樣的。

Great. And just one more on the macro, if I could, please. In the letter, you talked about Q4 being soft but stable with Q3, and then Q1 being relatively stable. Maybe just kind of talk about the linearity there. Has it been, I guess, sort of stable over that period? Is it improving? Just any more color you could add on the macro, that would be great.

偉大的。如果可以的話，請再講一個關於宏觀的。你在信中談到Q4軟而穩定，Q3，然後Q1相對穩定。也許只是談論那裡的線性度。我想，在那段時間裡它是否有點穩定？它在改善嗎？您可以在宏上添加更多顏色，那就太好了。

So in our business, what is directly tied to our revenue, the biggest part of our revenue, is performance marketing. And in particular, the largest part of our segment is game advertisers. Game advertisers or performance marketers, they're buying on some sort of return curve. They have an LTV to CAC model that works in today's market. That's a lot more conservative than it was 1.5 years ago when interest rates were near 0.

所以在我們的業務中，與我們的收入直接相關的是績效營銷，我們收入的最大部分。特別是，我們細分市場中最大的部分是遊戲廣告商。遊戲廣告商或績效營銷商，他們是根據某種回報曲線購買的。他們擁有適用於當今市場的 LTV 到 CAC 模型。這比 1.5 年前利率接近 0 時要保守得多。

As cost of capital went up last year, advertisers got conservative in performance because you just can't afford as long a payback as before. But those values were reset with an expectation of interest rates getting to sort of today's levels. And that was done a couple of quarters ago. So what we've seen in our business might be disconnected from what we talk about in the macro economy as a whole. But in the performance marketing sector, the advertisers got conservative, but they're not getting any more conservative because we're not seeing material changes in the economy today versus a couple of quarters ago. And so we've seen a lot of stability in our business and continue to do so.

隨著去年資金成本的上升，廣告商在業績方面變得保守，因為你無法像以前那樣長期支付回報。但隨著利率達到今天水平的預期，這些價值被重新設定。這是幾個季度前完成的。因此，我們在業務中看到的可能與我們在整體宏觀經濟中談論的內容脫節。但在績效營銷領域，廣告商變得保守了，但他們並沒有變得更加保守，因為我們沒有看到今天的經濟與幾個季度前相比發生重大變化。因此，我們已經看到我們的業務非常穩定，並將繼續這樣做。

Well, next go to David Karnovsky with JPMorgan.

好吧，接下來去摩根大通的 David Karnovsky。

Adam, I guess the logical question after that last comment would be kind of what breaks developers out of that conservative mentality? Is that kind of macro based? And then a separate question, Herald, just regarding your apps portfolio, any update on what you think is the right margin for that to run at going forward? And as you listed the sale of assets in the future as a possibility, I'm curious to know if you had any expressions of interest from strategic or financial buyers at any point?

亞當，我想在最後一條評論之後的合乎邏輯的問題是，是什麼讓開發人員擺脫了那種保守的心態？那種基於宏的？然後是一個單獨的問題，先驅報，關於您的應用程序組合，關於您認為在未來運行的正確利潤率的任何更新？當您將未來出售資產列為一種可能性時，我很想知道您是否曾在任何時候從戰略或金融買家那裡表達過任何興趣？

Yes. So on the first question, the reality is performance marketing advertisers have an approach. They have an LTV to CAC, and they have their own products. So if their products improve, they can spend more. If interest rates go down, they can spend more. But what's more in our control and what's going to drive this for our business and our partners are our efficiency gains in our core technologies. And that's what I'm talking about with AXON 2.

是的。所以關於第一個問題，現實是效果營銷廣告商有一個方法。他們有 LTV 到 CAC，他們有自己的產品。因此，如果他們的產品有所改進，他們就可以花更多的錢。如果利率下降，他們可以花更多的錢。但是，我們更能控制的，以及將為我們的業務和我們的合作夥伴推動這一點的是我們在核心技術方面的效率提升。這就是我所說的 AXON 2。

We all know that these core technologies, these AI-based implementations of technology are continuing to evolve. As they get more efficient, what ends up happening is advertisers have the same goal, but you can drive them more scale. They start growing their business. They're reinvesting more and more into it. It's all arbitrage marketing on the front end. And on the back end, the algorithm continues to perform better as the technologies evolve over time. That's a trend we've seen over the last decade. It's accelerating now, and it's something that we're very excited about as we look out into our business into the future.

我們都知道這些核心技術，這些基於人工智能的技術實現正在不斷發展。隨著他們變得更有效率，最終發生的是廣告商有相同的目標，但你可以推動他們擴大規模。他們開始發展業務。他們越來越多地對其進行再投資。都是前端的套利營銷。在後端，隨著技術的不斷發展，算法會繼續表現得更好。這是我們在過去十年中看到的趨勢。它現在正在加速，這是我們展望未來業務時非常興奮的事情。

David, thanks for the question. So on the apps side, as we mentioned, we've been in the process of optimizing that portfolio. We do think in the first half of this coming year or this year, that we'll start to (inaudible) in terms of the trough of revenue. And the margin has gone up, as you've noted.

大衛，謝謝你的提問。因此，在應用程序方面，正如我們提到的，我們一直在優化該產品組合。我們確實認為在今年上半年或今年，我們將開始（聽不清）收入低谷。正如您所指出的，利潤率上升了。

I'd say from there then, it really depends on our opportunity to grow the assets. So we're excited that of the 11 studios, I think all of them have opportunities for growth. Many of them have some new games that they're thinking about launching this year. And so if we have a hit, we'll invest in dollars there, and we'll bring down the margin. Right now, we're obviously in the very high teens. And that could back to the low teens, something in that range if we're investing in new games. It really depends on how robust that return is on those dollars. So I'd say expect the revenue side to still come down a bit in the near term, but eventually, we'll reach a steady state and then think about how to grow the business from there. But I would say longer run rate is probably a mid-teens type of margin for that business.

從那時起，我會說，這真的取決於我們增加資產的機會。所以我們很高興在這 11 家工作室中，我認為它們都有增長的機會。他們中的許多人都考慮在今年推出一些新遊戲。因此，如果我們成功了，我們將在那裡投資美元，並降低利潤率。現在，我們顯然處於非常高的十幾歲。如果我們投資新遊戲，那可能會回到十幾歲的低位，在這個範圍內。這實際上取決於這些美元的回報有多強勁。所以我想說，預計收入方面在短期內仍會有所下降，但最終，我們將達到穩定狀態，然後考慮如何從那裡發展業務。但我想說，長期運行率可能是該業務的十幾歲左右的利潤率。

And just on the M&A side, look, we would take an offer if it was the right price for these assets. But as we said, we've now winded it down to these 11 studios that we really like. We're excited to work with them. The market is obviously difficult given cost of capital out there. And so we're going to manage these things as if we own them forever. And if people do show up at the right price, we'll look to optimize the portfolio, as we said we would along the way.

就併購方面而言，如果這些資產的價格合適，我們會接受報價。但正如我們所說，我們現在已經將其歸結為我們真正喜歡的這 11 個工作室。我們很高興與他們合作。考慮到那裡的資金成本，市場顯然很困難。因此，我們將管理這些東西，就好像我們永遠擁有它們一樣。如果人們確實以合適的價格出現，我們將尋求優化投資組合，正如我們所說的那樣。

Yes. The only thing I have to add, too, is we've removed the distraction of weaker-performing studios. We're now really proud of the studios that we have. The leaders of these studios are exceptional talent. They've got great teams underneath them. The pipelines are really strong at these studios. We do look at this business unit now is something that we're excited about going forward.

是的。我唯一要補充的是，我們已經消除了表現較差工作室的干擾。我們現在為我們擁有的工作室感到非常自豪。這些工作室的領導者都是非凡的人才。他們手下有很棒的團隊。這些工作室的管道非常強大。我們現在確實看到這個業務部門是我們對未來感到興奮的事情。

We'll next go to Clark Lampen with BTIG.

接下來，我們將與 BTIG 一起前往 Clark Lampen。

I had a question maybe first on competitive dynamics across maybe both the sort of gaming but also broader ad market in light of, I guess, more recently sort of peer mergers, but also some of your peers talking about making progress closing the targeting gap relative to sort of pre-IDFA levels. Has that had an impact? Or has that showed up in sort of developer conversations. And then maybe a follow-up on the AXON update. Are you in a beta stage right now where there are clients actually sort of testing this product for you? Or could we use the baseball analogy to maybe think about how close we are or what sort of progress you maybe have made, I guess, against the formal launch versus last quarter?

我有一個問題可能首先是關於競爭動態，可能是遊戲類型，也可能是更廣泛的廣告市場，我想，最近的同行合併，而且你們的一些同行也在談論在縮小目標差距方面取得進展對 pre-IDFA 級別進行排序。那有影響嗎？或者這是否出現在開發人員對話中。然後可能是 AXON 更新的後續行動。您現在是否處於測試階段，客戶實際上正在為您測試該產品？或者我們可以使用棒球類比來思考我們有多接近，或者你可能取得了什麼樣的進展，我猜，相對於上個季度的正式發布？

Thanks, Clark. I'll start with the second one first. We're not ready to talk about timing. We do expect it to go full scale in '23. And obviously, we always have love products to come to market at large scale faster. This product is super complex. We're really excited about the prospects. It does take time to develop, and we first started talking about it a few quarters ago. What we -- all we can tell you today is, we think, it's going to make an impact in '23. And it's also not a rollout to customers. It's effectively taking the old engine and upgrading it. So it will impact the whole business at once when it does go to full scale.

謝謝，克拉克。我先從第二個開始。我們還沒準備好談論時機。我們確實希望它在 23 年全面發展。顯然，我們總是有喜歡的產品可以更快地大規模上市。這個產品超級複雜。我們對前景感到非常興奮。開發確實需要時間，我們幾個季度前就開始討論它。我們——我們今天能告訴你的是，我們認為，它將在 23 年產生影響。而且它也不是向客戶推出的。它有效地利用了舊引擎並對其進行了升級。因此，當它全面發展時，它會立即影響整個業務。

On the first question, competition in the ecosystem with M&A or ad algorithms improving. We've been in an advertising sector for 12 years now. I've been doing this for nearly 20 years. Advertising is immensely competitive. There's a lot of players that are trying to get ad dollars from advertisers and trying to build algorithms to help those advertisers market themselves. There's never been a shortage of competition. Now what we do know about our sector is that if algorithms improve, if targeting can get back to pre-IDFA levels, the category was growing almost double digits every single year consistently for a decade. The IDFA change impaired that growth prospect. So all of us marketing companies are really in the business of improving our algorithms.

關於第一個問題，隨著併購或廣告算法的改善，生態系統中的競爭。我們從事廣告行業已有 12 年了。我這樣做已經將近 20 年了。廣告競爭非常激烈。有很多玩家正試圖從廣告商那裡獲得廣告收入，並試圖構建算法來幫助這些廣告商推銷自己。從來不缺少競爭。現在我們對我們的行業所知道的是，如果算法得到改進，如果目標可以恢復到 IDFA 之前的水平，那麼該類別在十年內每年都以幾乎兩位數的速度持續增長。 IDFA 的變化削弱了這種增長前景。因此，我們所有的營銷公司都真正致力於改進我們的算法。

And when together, the category gets to a point where it was before, the category itself will get back to growth. We sit at a leadership point in the category with a market-leading monetization solution and a market-leading growth platform with AppDiscovery. So we'll stand to benefit greatly if that does happen in the marketplace.

當這一類別一起達到以前的水平時，該類別本身將恢復增長。我們憑藉市場領先的貨幣化解決方案和市場領先的 AppDiscovery 增長平台，在該類別中處於領先地位。因此，如果市場確實發生這種情況，我們將受益匪淺。

We'll next go to Bernie McTernan with Needham.

接下來我們將與 Needham 一起去 Bernie McTernan。

Great. Just 2 for me. First, just the broad question Adam had. Any thoughts on DOJ suing Google what that means for AppLovin? And then for Herald, anything special about the $1 billion in cash? Just wanted to follow up on the comments and no buyback in the quarter, if that kind of $1 billion cash balance is what a minimum you want to maintain on the balance sheet?

偉大的。對我來說只有2個。首先，只是 Adam 提出的寬泛問題。關於司法部起訴谷歌的任何想法，這對 AppLovin 意味著什麼？那麼對於先驅報來說，這 10 億美元現金有什麼特別之處嗎？只是想跟進評論並且本季度沒有回購，如果那種 10 億美元的現金餘額是您想要在資產負債表上維持的最低限度？

Well, look, all we can do is speak about our experience with Google. We're a large cloud customer. They launched their bidding solution onto our platform. I think it was our first large-scale external implementation of bidding. They obviously help monetize -- publish our inventory with better advertisements than any company we've ever seen before. So with us, we're great partners, and we look forward to expanding that partnership into the future.

好吧，看，我們所能做的就是談談我們在谷歌的經歷。我們是一個大的雲客戶。他們在我們的平台上推出了他們的投標解決方案。我認為這是我們第一次大規模對外實施招標。他們顯然有助於貨幣化——用比我們以前見過的任何公司都更好的廣告來發布我們的庫存。因此，與我們一起，我們是很好的合作夥伴，我們期待著將這種夥伴關係擴展到未來。

Yes. Thanks for the question. With regard to the $1 billion and the buyback, there's nothing magical about $1 billion. This is just a lot of money, and we're glad to have it on our balance sheet. But the reality is we're bullish on our business, as we talked about. We need to be patient. We think we're going to be stable for the short term here. And so we want to be careful with the cash balance and think about our capital allocation.

是的。謝謝你的問題。關於 10 億美元和回購，10 億美元沒有什麼神奇之處。這只是一大筆錢，我們很高興將其記在資產負債表上。但現實是，正如我們所說，我們看好我們的業務。我們需要有耐心。我們認為我們將在短期內保持穩定。因此，我們要小心現金餘額並考慮我們的資本配置。

And then the fourth quarter as well as the third quarter, we had different projects going on. The market was changing, the financial market was also, the cost of capital was changing. But we feel really good where we are today. We think having over $1 billion of capital on the balance sheet does help. We are generating a lot of free cash flow as we highlighted. We think that will continue in the first quarter. And we are investing in all the projects internally as we can. So we will, again, as we always do with our Board, think carefully about capital allocation, and we still think our stock is a great place to put money to work.

然後是第四季度和第三季度，我們正在進行不同的項目。市場在變，金融市場也在變，資金成本也在變。但我們今天的處境感覺非常好。我們認為資產負債表上擁有超過 10 億美元的資本確實有幫助。正如我們強調的那樣，我們正在產生大量的自由現金流。我們認為這將在第一季度繼續。我們正在盡我們所能在內部投資所有項目。因此，我們將再次像我們對董事會所做的那樣，仔細考慮資本分配，我們仍然認為我們的股票是投資的好地方。

I'll next go to Matt Cost with Morgan Stanley.

接下來我將與摩根士丹利一起去馬特科斯特。

There's a perception based on some of those third-party data out there about in-app purchase behavior at the level of the mobile games market that maybe things are bottoming out exiting '22 into '23. I guess you're pretty well positioned to assess, both from your view into the market and from your own games whether or not that might be true. But maybe more importantly, whether or not the rate of change of consumer spending is bottoming out, when that does ultimately turn, like we've been through a year to really weak spending? When it turns around, is that something you expect to flow through to the in-app advertising market pretty quickly? Or is there likely to be more of a lag there? And then I have a follow-up.

基於其中一些關於移動遊戲市場應用內購買行為的第三方數據，人們認為從 22 世紀到 23 年，事情可能正在觸底反彈。我猜你已經準備好從你對市場的看法和你自己的遊戲來評估這是否是真的。但也許更重要的是，消費者支出的變化率是否正在觸底，何時最終會轉變，就像我們已經經歷了一年真正疲軟的支出一樣？當它轉變時，您是否希望它很快流入應用內廣告市場？或者那裡可能會有更多的滯後？然後我有一個後續行動。

So we think what drove the growth in in-app purchasing over the last decade had a lot more to do with the marketing technologies and targeting than it did with the economy. Consumers need to discover content that they love to be able to go spend in it. And the IDFA change really handicapped the category, and it happened abruptly. Now it's been 1.5 years, technologies are starting to adapt. We just saw this in some other earnings reports. You've seen the stability in our earnings reports. All of us marketing companies are working on improving our algorithms to be built around what today's era of privacy allows you to do.

因此，我們認為在過去十年推動應用內購買增長的因素更多地與營銷技術和定位有關，而不是與經濟有關。消費者需要發現他們喜歡的內容才能在其中消費。而 IDFA 的變化確實阻礙了這個類別，而且它發生得很突然。現在已經 1.5 年了，技術開始適應。我們剛剛在其他一些收益報告中看到了這一點。您已經在我們的收益報告中看到了穩定性。我們所有的營銷公司都在努力改進我們的算法，以圍繞當今隱私時代允許您做的事情進行構建。

It takes time to do that. The game developers themselves also are working to create content that's different than what they would have built 1.5 years ago. Whale hunting, which is an industry term, but marketing to go buy whales for games they can monetize consumers at immense levels is just not something that's possible anymore in today's identity-free universe. And so game developers have had to go figure out how to make more casual games. That's also a cycle.

這樣做需要時間。遊戲開發者自己也在努力創造與 1.5 年前不同的內容。捕鯨，這是一個行業術語，但在當今無身份的世界中，通過營銷去購買鯨魚來製作遊戲，它們可以從消費者身上大量獲利，這已經不再可能了。因此，遊戲開發者不得不想辦法製作更多的休閒遊戲。這也是一個循環。

The other thing that isn't widely known is that a lot of the number -- the top grossing games in the in-app purchasing category come from developed in China. When these Chinese development teams have been highly inefficient in a zero-COVID state, and that's just reversed out. So you're going to get back to more efficiency.

另一件不廣為人知的事情是，很多數字——應用內購買類別中最暢銷的遊戲都來自中國。當這些中國開發團隊在零 COVID 狀態下效率非常低下時，情況就發生了逆轉。所以你會恢復到更高的效率。

So we think there's a lot of reasons why we're seeing stability. And we think there's also growth that will come in the future. We don't know exactly when, as the marketing platforms improve and as the game developers adapt to this new era.

所以我們認為我們看到穩定性有很多原因。我們認為未來還會有增長。我們不知道確切的時間，隨著營銷平台的改進和遊戲開發者適應這個新時代。

Great. And then using the new disclosure, if I read it correctly, I think that pricing grew at almost double the rate of volume in the quarter. So I'm just wondering, is that sort of a recovery off of a period of lower auction and bid density? Is that the way you should think of what happened in the quarter? And then are you expecting pricing to be a stronger driver than volume over the course of the coming quarter and year as things hopefully recover?

偉大的。然後使用新的披露，如果我沒看錯的話，我認為定價的增長幾乎是本季度銷量的兩倍。所以我只是想知道，這種情況是不是在拍賣和投標密度較低的時期之後出現的複蘇？你應該這樣看待本季度發生的事情嗎？然後，隨著情況有望復蘇，您是否預計在未來一個季度和一年中，定價將成為比銷量更強大的驅動力？

Yes. Thanks, Matt. Just one correction for you. It wasn't the quarterly metrics there. It's actually the annual metrics from '22 over '21, was the -- I guess, the revenue per install was twice the rate of the actual installs. And that really has to do a lot with the efficacy of AXON and then the increase in the volume, both from our network side as well as our ability to bring on more publishers. So it was really the combination of the two of them. And those are metrics that we did report in our public financials historically, and we'll continue to talk about those going forward.

是的。謝謝，馬特。只為您更正一次。這不是那裡的季度指標。它實際上是 22 年超過 21 年的年度指標，我猜，每次安裝的收入是實際安裝率的兩倍。這確實與 AXON 的功效以及數量的增加有很大關係，無論是從我們的網絡方面，還是我們吸引更多出版商的能力。所以真的是他們兩個的結合體。這些是我們歷史上在公共財務報告中報告的指標，我們將繼續討論這些指標。

We'll take the next question from Franco Granda with D.A. Davidson.

我們將與 D.A. 一起接受 Franco Granda 的下一個問題。戴維森。

Two for me today. So entering last year, you had talked about the expectation to have $10 billion transacted through your platform. Last quarter, you obviously stopped talking about it due to macro, but what was the actual number for '22? And then what was the number exiting -- the run rate number exiting the fourth quarter? And then for the second question, what is the magnitude of investments for the AXON 2 upgrade?

今天給我兩個。所以進入去年，你曾談到期望通過你的平台進行 100 億美元的交易。上個季度，由於宏觀因素，你顯然不再談論它，但 22 年的實際數字是多少？然後退出的數字是多少——第四季度退出的運行率數字是多少？那麼第二個問題，AXON 2升級的投入有多大？

So I think the first question, you're talking about our MAX monetization platform, how many dollars are flowing through it. We're not disclosing exact. The MAX platform, though, has a ton of reach in the industry. We actually recently asked our team to pull top apps in both app stores to see how much usage of our platform there was versus the rest of the market. And about 2/3 of those apps, top downloaded apps, are monetizing using your MAX solution. So in terms of usage, there's been exactly what we expected with that platform, market-leading.

所以我認為第一個問題，你在談論我們的 MAX 貨幣化平台，有多少美元流經它。我們沒有透露確切的信息。不過，MAX 平台在業界具有廣泛的影響力。事實上，我們最近要求我們的團隊在兩個應用程序商店中拉出頂級應用程序，以了解我們平台與其他市場相比有多少使用率。這些應用程序中約有 2/3 的下載量最高的應用程序正在使用您的 MAX 解決方案獲利。因此，就使用而言，正是我們對該平台的預期，市場領先。

What's changed versus the beginning of last year and today -- or end of the year are CPMs, in particular from brands. As the economy became more difficult throughout the year, the dollars and the density in the ad auction, which is monetized by many companies more than us, has decayed. So that would be what threw us off of our projection. But the daily active users and the trends to MAX usage are exactly where we thought they'd be. They're performing very well.

與去年年初和今天（或年底）相比發生變化的是每千次展示費用，尤其是來自品牌的每千次展示費用。隨著全年經濟變得更加困難，廣告拍賣中的美元和密度已經衰減，許多公司比我們更多地從中獲利。所以這就是讓我們脫離預期的原因。但每日活躍用戶和 MAX 使用趨勢正是我們所認為的。他們的表現非常好。

On the magnitude of the AXON investment, that's all built into our P&L. Our R&D investments, in line with what I mentioned on my talk track around our culture, are always going to be lean. We've got a core group of talent on our engineering team, and we're adding really exceptional people to that team. But we're adding them in the tens, not hundreds or thousands, so you don't see a dramatic R&D expense line in our business. Yet we do invest heavily into new products that can make a big impact.

關於 AXON 投資的規模，這都已納入我們的損益表。我們的研發投資，與我在關於我們文化的談話中提到的一致，總是會保持精益。我們的工程團隊中有一群核心人才，我們正在為該團隊增加真正傑出的人才。但是我們以數十個而不是數百個或數千個的形式添加它們，因此您不會在我們的業務中看到戲劇性的研發費用線。然而，我們確實對可以產生重大影響的新產品進行了大量投資。

We'll next go to Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs.

接下來我們將與高盛一起去埃里克謝里丹。

Maybe 2, if I can. One sort of bigger picture question that maybe is a little bit outside the box. Obviously, you talked earlier in the call about Connected TV. How do you think about taking the data engine you've built? And I know, obviously, the central dynamic is still around mobile gaming. But how do you think about taking the data engine and the platform and thinking about a wider array of canvases and possibly a wider array of SKU and industry verticals from the advertiser side, either through your own organic efforts and maybe through partnership around the broader advertising landscape, that would be number one.

也許 2，如果可以的話。一種可能有點跳出框框的大局問題。顯然，您之前在電話會議中談到了聯網電視。您如何考慮採用您構建的數據引擎？而且我知道，很明顯，核心動力仍然圍繞著手機遊戲。但是，您如何考慮採用數據引擎和平台，並從廣告商方面考慮更廣泛的畫布範圍，以及可能更廣泛的 SKU 和垂直行業，要么通過您自己的有機努力，要么通過圍繞更廣泛的廣告的合作夥伴關係風景，那將是第一。

And you talked a lot on the call about how we've gotten sort of back to a level of stability, but probably not full return from a demand perspective on the advertising side. Is the way to frame up the element of how much of your margin structure is somewhat held back or depressed by a lack of return to sort of pre-IDFA or pre-pandemic normalization levels? And in which case, a full recovery could possibly be an extra layer of tailwind to the incremental margin structure?

你在電話中談了很多關於我們如何恢復到穩定水平的問題，但從廣告方面的需求角度來看可能還沒有完全恢復。由於無法恢復到 IDFA 前或大流行前的正常化水平，您的保證金結構有多少受到阻礙或抑制？在哪種情況下，全面復甦可能會為增量利潤率結構帶來額外的順風？

Thanks, Eric. I'll answer the first one. Herald will take the second. On the first one, to answer the question simply, we're super excited about the potential to extend our marketing engine and the algorithms to other platforms. So CTV, obviously, being the first. And there's nothing that restricts us to the games category. Games is obviously the largest part of our AppDiscovery solution. But really the limitation, so far, has been that our advertisements almost always show up in the games. And if you're doing a contextual and behavioral advertisement, that signal is very strong to match up a game advertiser and a game publisher.

謝謝，埃里克。我會回答第一個。先驅將採取第二個。第一個，簡單地回答這個問題，我們對將我們的營銷引擎和算法擴展到其他平台的潛力感到非常興奮。所以 CTV 顯然是第一個。沒有什麼能限制我們進入遊戲類別。遊戲顯然是我們 AppDiscovery 解決方案的最大部分。但到目前為止，真正的限制是我們的廣告幾乎總是出現在遊戲中。如果你正在做一個上下文和行為廣告，那麼這個信號非常強烈，可以匹配遊戲廣告商和遊戲發行商。

While Connected TV offers a completely different landscape for us, we believe what's missing from that platform is performance marketing, and we can do that well. But our engine, our data is not limited to just gaming. So we think the Connected TV screen is going to allow us not only to extend game advertising to that television device, but also to bring other advertising for other companies.

雖然聯網電視為我們提供了完全不同的前景，但我們相信該平台缺少的是績效營銷，而我們可以做得很好。但是我們的引擎，我們的數據不僅限於遊戲。因此，我們認為聯網電視屏幕將使我們不僅可以將游戲廣告擴展到該電視設備，還可以為其他公司帶來其他廣告。

Wurl, for instance, works very closely with a lot of high-profile streaming businesses. And advertising on a performance basis for those is a huge initiative and big opportunity. And we think as we talk about our Connected TV business in a couple of years, we're going to be talking about a wide breadth of advertiser types.

例如，Wurl 與許多備受矚目的流媒體業務密切合作。對於那些以績效為基礎的廣告是一項巨大的舉措和巨大的機會。我們認為，當我們在幾年後談論我們的聯網電視業務時，我們將談論廣泛的廣告商類型。

The margin side for our business, we're at a steady state and stable as we talked about. But we are excited by the fact that if we can lift, for example, our biggest business, in particular, on the AppDiscovery side with an AXON 2.0 implementation at some point, those are very high-margin dollars to flow through the bottom line, and that would be a pretty meaningful increase in EBITDA for the segment and EBITDA for the overall business.

我們業務的利潤率方面，我們處於穩定狀態，正如我們所說的那樣穩定。但我們感到興奮的是，如果我們能夠提升，例如，我們最大的業務，特別是在某個時候通過 AXON 2.0 實施的 AppDiscovery 方面，這些都是非常高利潤的美元，可以通過底線流動，這對於該部門的 EBITDA 和整個業務的 EBITDA 來說都是非常有意義的增長。

What does offset that is there is infrastructure costs that do increase, but obviously at a much slower rate potentially. And then we do have an incremental headcount that we're hiring. As Adam said, more in the 10s and 20s, not hundreds, to go after some of these new initiatives that are pretty big, whether it be CTV or endeavor into a business called Array, which is focused on the OEM carrier space. So that could bring down margins to some degree. But we're comfortable with the margins we run out today, and we think it's more incremental on the upside, in particular, for our biggest business to the extent we can get that to grow.

抵消的是基礎設施成本確實增加了，但顯然速度可能要慢得多。然後我們確實有我們正在招聘的增量員工。正如 Adam 所說，更多的是 10 年代和 20 年代，而不是數百人，去追求這些相當大的新舉措，無論是 CTV 還是努力進入名為 Array 的業務，該業務專注於 OEM 運營商領域。因此，這可能會在一定程度上降低利潤率。但我們對今天用完的利潤率感到滿意，我們認為它在上行方面更具增量，特別是對於我們最大的業務而言，我們可以讓它增長。

We'll next go to Omar Dessouky with Bank of America.

接下來我們將與美國銀行一起去 Omar Dessouky。

One of the large hyper-casual publishers that reported earlier this week appeared to be implying that they would be reducing advertising spend. And I was wondering, number one, how consequential is the hyper-casual market to your ad platform? And number two, are you seeing that as a kind of trend in the fourth quarter and potentially going forward? And then I have a follow-up on hyper-casual.

本週早些時候報導的大型超休閒遊戲發行商之一似乎暗示他們將減少廣告支出。我想知道，第一，超休閒市場對你們的廣告平台有多重要？第二，你是否認為這是第四季度的一種趨勢並且可能會繼續發展？然後我有一個關於超休閒的後續行動。

Yes. So we've got a lot of density of advertisers. No single category makes up a huge part of our business. And as you saw in our numbers in Q4, our numbers were really stable. And in Q1, we're guiding to similar numbers to Q4, both for top line and bottom line, implying that our software business is really healthy right now. So yes, certain categories, especially those that are dependent on ads, might perform worse. On the flip side, when you have a super-dense auction and you work with tons of advertisers across a lot of different genres and you've got a good targeting engine that doesn't create exposure for you in your business.

是的。所以我們有很多廣告商。沒有一個類別占我們業務的很大一部分。正如您在第四季度的數據中看到的那樣，我們的數據非常穩定。在第一季度，我們指導與第四季度相似的數字，無論是收入還是利潤，這意味著我們的軟件業務目前非常健康。所以是的，某些類別，尤其是那些依賴廣告的類別，可能表現更差。另一方面，當您進行超級密集的拍賣並且與大量不同類型的廣告商合作時，您擁有一個不會在您的業務中為您創造曝光率的良好定位引擎。

Great. And then the follow-up question is that, according to industry experts, Google has begun sending rejection notices for ad exposures and formats that are not compliant with its new Better Ads Experiences policy. This policy disallows interruptive interstitial ads among other practices. And I was wondering whether this is something the industry is over already? Or is it something that -- is the solution to this problem within AppLovin's technology stack? Or is it at the kind of studio level? And again, is it affecting -- have you seen any of the effects of this policy on hyper-casual?

偉大的。接下來的問題是，根據行業專家的說法，谷歌已經開始針對不符合其新的“更好的廣告體驗”政策的廣告曝光和格式發送拒絕通知。該政策禁止干擾性的插頁式廣告以及其他做法。我想知道這個行業是否已經結束了？還是 AppLovin 的技術堆棧中這個問題的解決方案？或者它是那種工作室級別的？再一次，它是否影響——你看到這個政策對超休閒的任何影響了嗎？

Yes. We actually don't expect any effects from the policy. We didn't see any early on. We don't expect any going forward because the best apps, the ones with a lot of users, they don't tend to show ads out of place. The policy itself was explicitly written to prevent a publisher from showing an ad when a user expected something else.

是的。實際上，我們預計該政策不會產生任何影響。我們沒有看到任何早期。我們預計不會有任何進展，因為最好的應用程序，那些擁有大量用戶的應用程序，它們不會顯示不合適的廣告。該政策本身是明確編寫的，以防止發布商在用戶期望其他內容時展示廣告。

So for example, you go click a Play the Game button and you get a pop up ad. That's disruptive, and Google doesn't want that. Well, the highest quality publishers and the ones that are at scale that we work with or know personally, our bigger customers, they can never run ads like that because users usually churn out of those games. So it's certainly a policy to clean up the app store. But the Google Play app store has millions of apps in it. The ones that are large-scale apps never engage in those types of practices.

因此，例如，您點擊“玩遊戲”按鈕，您會看到一個彈出廣告。這是破壞性的，谷歌不希望這樣。好吧，最高質量的發行商和我們合作或認識的規模較大的發行商，我們的大客戶，他們永遠無法投放這樣的廣告，因為用戶通常會流失這些遊戲。所以清理應用商店當然是一項政策。但是 Google Play 應用商店中有數百萬個應用程序。那些大型應用程序從不參與這些類型的實踐。

We'll next go to Stephen Ju with Credit Suisse.

接下來我們將與瑞士信貸一起去 Stephen Ju。

So I guess you spent a lot of time talking about potentially expanded opportunities. And I think in the past, we've talked about the advertising opportunity outside the games vertical. I get that this is probably a tough market to go after new business. But I was wondering if you can comment on where you may be seeing greater traction because I would love to see the games as a percentage of ad revenue deindex over time and other performance-oriented budgets starting to flow into AppLovin.

所以我猜你花了很多時間談論潛在的擴展機會。我認為過去我們討論過遊戲垂直領域之外的廣告機會。我知道這可能是一個很難開展新業務的市場。但我想知道你是否可以評論一下你可能會看到更大吸引力的地方，因為我希望看到遊戲在廣告收入中所佔的百分比隨著時間的推移和其他以績效為導向的預算開始流入 AppLovin。

Yes. Thanks, Stephen. We're looking at expansion there on the Connected TV screen and also with the carrier OEM product. Both of these are advertisements into placement without context. But when you're showing an advertisement in a game app, it's really hard to suggest that you could go, especially as the world goes to more contextual with some data in order to drive relevant advertisement but with more of a contextual signal, it's really hard to suggest that it's a good strategy to go outside the gaming sector in that publisher set. We do believe that these other categories of advertising will become very big businesses for us over time. And we also have a gateway into that category with that Adjust team and all of the nongaming advertisers they work with. If you recall, when we first did that transaction, we talked about the majority of their 4,000-plus customers are nongaming customers. And these are the types of customers that are really excited about our Connected TV offering.

是的。謝謝，斯蒂芬。我們正在考慮在聯網電視屏幕以及運營商 OEM 產品上進行擴展。這兩個都是在沒有上下文的情況下投放廣告。但是當你在遊戲應用程序中展示廣告時，真的很難建議你可以去，尤其是當世界變得更加與某些數據相關以驅動相關廣告但更多的是上下文信號時，它真的很難說走出該發行商群體的遊戲領域是個好策略。我們確實相信，隨著時間的推移，這些其他類別的廣告將成為我們非常大的業務。我們還與 Adjust 團隊以及與他們合作的所有非遊戲廣告商一起進入該類別。如果您還記得，當我們第一次進行該交易時，我們談到他們 4,000 多名客戶中的大多數是非博彩客戶。這些類型的客戶對我們的聯網電視產品非常感興趣。

We'll take our next question from Martin Yang with Oppenheimer.

我們將與 Oppenheimer 一起接受 Martin Yang 的下一個問題。

So my first question is on new games release environment. You talked about potential growth opportunity from the 11 studios where there are new games. Can you maybe comment on how does new game release environment change over time versus pre-pandemic or pre-IDFA? And is there any signals that give you confidence that those new games can test well and then release on the market as you expected?

所以我的第一個問題是關於新遊戲發布環境。你談到了 11 個有新遊戲的工作室的潛在增長機會。您能否評論一下新遊戲發布環境與大流行前或 IDFA 前相比如何隨時間變化？是否有任何信號讓您相信這些新遊戲可以順利測試並按您的預期投放市場？

Well, look, with the changes in marketing, the bar has gone way up for new games. Traditionally, you can create iterations of working concepts in the market. Now developers have to be a lot more innovative to get a new game to grow. And our studios have made the same shift. The ones that we've retained have really strong development teams and are working on games. The ones that are in soft launch will get tested longer now. We'll make sure that the data looks strong before we release it to market, that it will be something that we're confident in. And the ones that are developing are no longer developing the way they would have 1.5 years ago. They're developing in a new format.

好吧，看，隨著市場營銷的變化，新遊戲的門檻已經提高了。傳統上，您可以在市場上創建工作概念的迭代。現在，開發人員必須更具創新性才能讓新遊戲發展壯大。我們的工作室也做出了同樣的轉變。我們保留的那些擁有非常強大的開發團隊並且正在開發遊戲。軟啟動的那些現在將接受更長時間的測試。在我們將數據發佈到市場之前，我們將確保數據看起來很強大，這將是我們有信心的事情。並且正在開發的數據不再像 1.5 年前那樣發展。他們正在以一種新的形式發展。

And we think this is where the whole market is going to go is you're going to take longer-term bets that are more innovative. There might be less likelihood of success to new games, so you don't expect 1 out of every 2 games to hit, maybe it's 1 out of every 4 or 5. But by creating innovative new concepts, it can expand the market over time. And so that's where we're investing, and we think we have the teams to do that well.

我們認為這就是整個市場的發展方向，你將進行更具創新性的長期投資。新遊戲成功的可能性較小，因此您不會期望每 2 場比賽中有 1 場成功，可能是每 4 或 5 場比賽中有 1 場成功。但是通過創造創新的新概念，它可以隨著時間的推移擴大市場.這就是我們正在投資的地方，我們認為我們有團隊可以做得很好。

Got it. A follow-up question on games is, can you maybe comment broadly on what genres do you see a higher success rate in this market? And what type of business model within the games? Is it hybrid in-game purchase plus advertising? Advertising only? or in-game purchase?

知道了。關於遊戲的後續問題是，您能否廣泛評論一下您認為在這個市場上哪些類型的成功率更高？遊戲中的商業模式是什麼類型？它是遊戲內購買加廣告的混合體嗎？只是廣告？還是遊戲內購買？

Yes, we think it's those...

是的，我們認為是那些...

All those vectors.

所有這些向量。

We think it's a requirement now for developers to make hybrid, just as you said. If you can't go and market to the whales, well, you've got to monetize the whole audience. And traditionally, the IAP category, 95% of the users were unmonetized, 5% were whales. They funded this $100 billion and growing space. Now you can't go find those users as successfully as before. So you've got to monetize the 95% to subsidize the cost of acquiring the 5%. And that's actually really good for us in our MAX business and our AppDiscovery business because it brings more inventory online, and we're starting to see some of those trends.

正如您所說，我們認為現在要求開發人員進行混合。如果你不能去向鯨魚推銷，那麼，你必須從全體觀眾中獲利。傳統上，IAP 類別中，95% 的用戶未獲利，5% 是鯨魚。他們資助了這個 1000 億美元和不斷增長的空間。現在您無法像以前那樣成功地找到那些用戶。所以你必須將 95% 的人貨幣化，以補貼獲得 5% 的人的成本。這實際上對我們的 MAX 業務和 AppDiscovery 業務非常有利，因為它帶來了更多在線庫存，我們開始看到其中的一些趨勢。

We'll take our last question from Mark Zgutowicz with Benchmark.

我們將接受來自 Benchmark 的 Mark Zgutowicz 的最後一個問題。

If we look at your Software Platform clients and the revenue for that client over the last 4 quarters, it's consistently been down sequentially. And I'm just wondering what is the sort of the driver of that trend line? And sort of why that is not, I guess, consequential to your results going forward anymore?

如果我們查看過去 4 個季度您的軟件平台客戶和該客戶的收入，它一直在連續下降。我只是想知道這條趨勢線的驅動力是什麼？我想，為什麼這不再對你的結果產生影響了？

Sorry, Mark, I'm not sure which metrics you're referring to. Our SPEC metric went up from Q3 to Q4 from 532 accounts to 566 accounts. So the trend...

抱歉，馬克，我不確定你指的是哪個指標。我們的 SPEC 指標從第 3 季度上升到第 4 季度，從 532 個賬戶增加到 566 個賬戶。所以趨勢...

I'm looking at just quarter-over-quarter growth, just declining sequentially over the last quarters for both of those...

我只關注季度環比增長，只是在過去幾個季度連續下降……

You're talking about pricing, right? It's just the composition is hugely different than it was before because we've added on Wurl, we've added on Adjust, we added on ALX, MoPub. So the composition has changed so much that those metrics aren't very comparable anymore to the past, and they're not very predictive of the business going forward, and that's why we decided this quarter to remove them.

你說的是定價，對吧？只是構圖與以前有很大不同，因為我們添加了 Wurl，添加了 Adjust，添加了 ALX，MoPub。因此，構成發生了很大變化，以至於這些指標與過去不再具有可比性，而且它們不能很好地預測未來的業務，這就是我們決定在本季度刪除它們的原因。

Okay. What about just the Software Platform Enterprise Client itself, that number? How important is growth in that number going forward in terms of your Software Platform revenue?

好的。 Software Platform Enterprise Client 本身又如何呢？就您的軟件平台收入而言，該數字的增長有多重要？

Yes. Again, Mark, that number has gone up, and the actual average revenue per software client has remained steady around $1.9 million. And also the net dollar retention went up over 160%. But this is exactly the reason why we're going to remove these metrics from our reporting because they're not indicative nor give you a better sense for how the software business is performing, which is obviously flat, essentially flat from Q3 to Q4. But as Adam said, we're excited and optimistic about the platform. We think the market is reasonably stable. We're investing a lot to improve our market-leading tools in the category. So as we're able to launch new capabilities and hopefully, the market returns to growth, we should be in a good spot for both top line and bottom line growth in that segment.

是的。馬克，這個數字再次上升，每個軟件客戶的實際平均收入穩定在 190 萬美元左右。淨美元保留率也上升了 160% 以上。但這正是我們要從報告中刪除這些指標的原因，因為它們不是指示性的，也不能讓您更好地了解軟件業務的表現，這顯然是持平的，從第三季度到第四季度基本持平。但正如亞當所說，我們對該平台感到興奮和樂觀。我們認為市場相當穩定。我們投入了大量資金來改進我們在該類別中的市場領先工具。因此，當我們能夠推出新功能並希望市場恢復增長時，我們應該在該細分市場的收入和利潤增長方面處於有利地位。

And that does conclude the question-and-answer session for this quarter. We thank you all for joining us today. Have a good afternoon.

這確實結束了本季度的問答環節。感謝大家今天加入我們。祝你下午好。