Snap Inc (SNAP) 2023 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Snap Inc.'s First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) I would now like to turn the call over to David Ometer, Head of Investor Relations.

大家下午好，歡迎來到 Snap Inc. 的 2023 年第一季度收益電話會議。 （操作員說明）我現在想把電話轉給投資者關係主管 David Ometer。

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Snap's First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. With us today are Evan Spiegel, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder; Jerry Hunter, Chief Operating Officer; and Derek Andersen, Chief Financial Officer. Please refer to our Investor Relations website at investor.snap.com to find today's press release, slides, investor letter and investor presentation.

謝謝，大家下午好。歡迎來到 Snap 2023 年第一季度收益電話會議。今天和我們在一起的是首席執行官兼聯合創始人 Evan Spiegel；首席運營官 Jerry Hunter；和首席財務官 Derek Andersen。請訪問我們的投資者關係網站 investor.snap.com 以查找今天的新聞稿、幻燈片、投資者信函和投資者介紹。

This conference call includes forward-looking statements, which are based on our assumptions as of today. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed in these forward-looking statements, and we make no obligation to update our disclosures. For more information about factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements, please refer to the press release we issued today as well as risks described in our most recent Form 10-K, particularly in the section titled Risk Factors.

本次電話會議包含前瞻性陳述，這些陳述基於我們截至今日的假設。實際結果可能與這些前瞻性陳述中表達的結果存在重大差異，我們沒有義務更新我們的披露。有關可能導致實際結果與前瞻性陳述存在重大差異的因素的更多信息，請參閱我們今天發布的新聞稿以及我們最新的 10-K 表格中描述的風險，特別是標題為“風險因素”的部分。

Today's call will include both GAAP and non-GAAP measures. Reconciliations between the two can be found in today's press release. Please note that when we discuss all of our expense figures, they will exclude stock-based compensation and related payroll taxes as well as depreciation and amortization and non-recurring charges. Please refer to our filings with the SEC to understand how we calculate any of the metrics discussed on today's call.

今天的電話會議將包括 GAAP 和非 GAAP 措施。可以在今天的新聞稿中找到兩者之間的和解。請注意，當我們討論所有費用數據時，它們將不包括基於股票的補償和相關工資稅以及折舊和攤銷以及非經常性費用。請參閱我們提交給美國證券交易委員會的文件，了解我們如何計算今天電話會議上討論的任何指標。

With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Evan.

有了這個，我想把電話轉給埃文。

Hi, everyone, and thank you all for joining us. We began the year with an intense focus on growing our community, accelerating our revenue growth and leading in augmented reality. Our community continues to grow, reaching 383 million daily active users in Q1. And we are working to deepen engagement with our content platform while building innovative new features and services.

大家好，感謝大家加入我們。今年伊始，我們高度重視發展我們的社區、加速我們的收入增長並在增強現實領域處於領先地位。我們的社區繼續發展，第一季度日活躍用戶達到 3.83 億。我們正在努力加深與我們的內容平台的互動，同時構建創新的新功能和服務。

Our focus on visual communication between friends and family has distinguished our platform from other Internet platforms. And in Q1, we built on this core offering with the introduction of My AI, our new AI-powered chatbot. At our annual Snap Partner Summit, we made My AI available to Snapchatters around the world and launched a range of new features, including the ability to add My AI to a conversation with friends, offer place recommendations from the Snap Map and suggest more relevant AR Lenses. We are excited about the opportunities we see for more innovation, especially as we look across our application at how AI can further enhance the Snapchatter experience.

我們專注於朋友和家人之間的視覺交流，這使我們的平台有別於其他互聯網平台。在第一季度，我們在這一核心產品的基礎上推出了 My AI，這是我們新的人工智能聊天機器人。在我們一年一度的 Snap 合作夥伴峰會上，我們向世界各地的 Snapchatter 提供了 My AI，並推出了一系列新功能，包括將 My AI 添加到與朋友的對話中、提供來自 Snap 地圖的地點推薦以及建議更相關的 AR鏡片。我們對看到的更多創新機會感到興奮，尤其是當我們審視我們的應用程序以了解 AI 如何進一步增強 Snapchatter 體驗時。

We are working to accelerate our revenue growth, and we are using this opportunity to make significant improvements to our advertising platform to help drive increased return on investment for our advertising partners. We generated revenue of $989 million in Q1, a decrease of 7% year-over-year, which was within the forecast range we shared entering the quarter. As expected, demand in Q1 was disrupted by the changes we made to our ad platform to drive more click-through conversions. While these changes are disruptive in the short term, we are optimistic that our ad platform improvements are laying the foundation for future growth. We believe that delivering stronger return on ad spend for our advertising partners will enable us to increase our share of wallet over time in this highly competitive environment.

我們正在努力加速我們的收入增長，我們正在利用這個機會對我們的廣告平台進行重大改進，以幫助提高我們的廣告合作夥伴的投資回報率。我們在第一季度創造了 9.89 億美元的收入，同比下降 7%，這在我們進入本季度時分享的預測範圍內。正如預期的那樣，第一季度的需求因我們為推動更多點擊轉化而對廣告平台所做的更改而中斷。雖然這些變化在短期內具有破壞性，但我們樂觀地認為我們的廣告平台改進正在為未來的增長奠定基礎。我們相信，為我們的廣告合作夥伴提供更高的廣告支出回報將使我們能夠在這個競爭激烈的環境中隨著時間的推移增加我們的錢包份額。

We made progress diversifying our revenue through Snapchat+, our subscription service that offers exclusive experimental and pre-release features, which now has more than 3 million subscribers. We are excited about the launch of AR Enterprise Services with our first SaaS offering called Shopping Suite, which helps retailers use our augmented reality platform to drive sales and reduce returns on their own applications and websites. Diversifying our revenue growth is an important strategic initiative, and we believe our leadership in AR technology provides a strong foundation to build enterprise services and deliver a more holistic solution for businesses who are already using our AR technology for advertising.

我們通過 Snapchat+ 實現了收入多元化，這是我們的訂閱服務，提供獨家實驗和預發布功能，目前擁有超過 300 萬訂閱者。我們很高興推出 AR Enterprise Services 以及我們的第一個名為 Shopping Suite 的 SaaS 產品，它可以幫助零售商使用我們的增強現實平台來推動銷售並減少他們自己的應用程序和網站的退貨。多元化我們的收入增長是一項重要的戰略舉措，我們相信我們在 AR 技術方面的領先地位為構建企業服務和為已經使用我們的 AR 技術進行廣告的企業提供更全面的解決方案提供了堅實的基礎。

Despite the challenging operating environment this quarter, we continued to make progress on our path to sustainable profitability by achieving adjusted EBITDA of $1 million and generating $103 million of free cash flow in Q1. As we entered Q2, we reflect on the progress we have made in transforming our business to succeed in an operating environment that has been shaped by platform policy changes, a more challenging macroeconomic environment and an intensely competitive landscape.

儘管本季度經營環境充滿挑戰，但我們在第一季度實現了 100 萬美元的調整後 EBITDA 並產生了 1.03 億美元的自由現金流，從而在實現可持續盈利的道路上繼續取得進展。當我們進入第二季度時，我們反思了我們在業務轉型方面取得的進展，以便在平台政策變化、更具挑戰性的宏觀經濟環境和激烈的競爭格局所塑造的運營環境中取得成功。

We began this transition with the reprioritization of our business last summer to focus on growing our community and deepening engagement, diversifying and accelerating our revenue growth and leading in augmented reality. As a part of the reprioritization, we took decisive action to reduce our cost structure, and we are pleased to share that we achieved the cost reduction targets we set in Q3 of last year.

去年夏天，我們通過重新調整業務優先級開始了這一轉變，以專注於發展我們的社區和深化參與，實現多元化並加速我們的收入增長，並在增強現實領域處於領先地位。作為調整優先級的一部分，我們採取了果斷行動來降低成本結構，我們很高興地與大家分享，我們實現了去年第三季度設定的成本降低目標。

With our new COO structure, which unified our engineering, sales and product teams, we have brought in 3 regional presidents across the Americas, EMEA and APAC, with Ronan Harris leading EMEA, Ajit Mohan leading APAC, and our newest hire, Rob Wilk, leading the Americas. We have also brought in several new engineering and product leaders to accelerate progress with our advertising platform.

我們新的首席運營官結構統一了我們的工程、銷售和產品團隊，我們在美洲、歐洲、中東和非洲和亞太地區聘請了 3 位區域總裁，其中 Ronan Harris 領導歐洲、中東和非洲地區，Ajit Mohan 領導亞太地區，而我們的新員工 Rob Wilk，引領美洲。我們還引進了幾位新的工程和產品負責人，以加快我們廣告平台的進展。

As this structure has improved coordination and prioritization across each of these teams, we have identified clear opportunities to further invest in our business. For example, we've uncovered opportunities to make targeted investments in ML infrastructure to improve our recommendation systems for content and ads, and we have identified areas for incremental go-to-market investments that we believe will help us to accelerate revenue growth.

由於這種結構改善了每個團隊之間的協調和優先級，我們已經確定了進一步投資我們業務的明確機會。例如，我們發現了對 ML 基礎設施進行有針對性的投資以改進我們的內容和廣告推薦系統的機會，並且我們已經確定了增量上市投資的領域，我們相信這將有助於我們加速收入增長。

Given the progress we have made with our ad platform, the experienced leadership team we have built, the work we have done to reprioritize our cost structure and the strength of our balance sheet, we believe that we are now well positioned to responsibly invest in the acceleration of our top line revenue. While there is still a lot of work to be done, we believe that our large and growing community, track record of innovation, and the changes we have made to drive focus will enable us to make the right investments for our business and realize the long-term growth opportunity we see ahead.

鑑於我們在廣告平台上取得的進展、我們建立的經驗豐富的領導團隊、我們為重新調整成本結構所做的工作以及我們資產負債表的實力，我們相信我們現在已經準備好負責任地投資於加速我們的收入。雖然還有很多工作要做，但我們相信，我們龐大且不斷發展的社區、創新記錄以及我們為推動專注所做的改變將使我們能夠為我們的業務做出正確的投資，並實現長期發展-我們看到未來的長期增長機會。

Thank you. And with that, we will begin our Q&A session.

謝謝。然後，我們將開始我們的問答環節。

(Operator Instructions) The first question is from the line of Mark Shmulik with Bernstein.

（操作員說明）第一個問題來自 Mark Shmulik 與 Bernstein 的對話。

This is [Jenny] on behalf of Mark Shmulik. Two questions, if we may. Firstly, the investment you've made to build out DR was always going to hurt revenue in the short run. How confident are you that the benefit is still there, and when do you expect to see it? And what markers should we be looking out for? And then secondly, we heard from a peer just how much short-form video listed time spent overall. Any color that you could share on how Spotlight and Creator stories is contributing to total time spent?

我是 [Jenny]，代表 Mark Shmulik。兩個問題，如果可以的話。首先，您為構建 DR 所做的投資在短期內總是會損害收入。您對收益仍然存在的信心有多大，您預計什麼時候可以看到？我們應該注意哪些標記？其次，我們從一位同行那裡了解到，短視頻列表總共花費了多少時間。關於 Spotlight 和 Creator 故事對總花費時間的貢獻，您可以分享任何顏色嗎？

Thanks for the question. Just taking a step back, we've done a lot of work over the last 9 months to improve our advertising business. Of course starting with the organizational changes we made, appointing Jerry as our Chief Operating Officer and hiring 3 new leaders across each of our regions. We've also hired a ton of strong leaders across monetization engineering and revenue product as well. And so it's been really great to bring that experience into the organization. And obviously, bringing all these leaders together, reporting to Jerry has really helped everyone get aligned on our strategy. So we've been making a lot of progress improving the platform.

謝謝你的問題。退一步說，在過去的 9 個月裡，我們做了很多工作來改善我們的廣告業務。當然，從我們進行的組織變革開始，任命 Jerry 為我們的首席運營官，並在我們每個地區聘請了 3 名新領導。我們還在貨幣化工程和收入產品方面聘請了大量強大的領導者。因此，將這種經驗帶入組織真的很棒。顯然，將所有這些領導者聚集在一起，向 Jerry 報告確實幫助每個人就我們的戰略達成一致。因此，我們在改進平台方面取得了很大進展。

A lot of the early work was really focused on signal recovery, using privacy safe integrations like CAPI, for example, which we've discussed at length previously. We've also done a lot of work to improve the post-click experience with ads, which has made it easier for Snapchatters to convert on platform and really help close the gap between the first party and third party metrics reporting, which is really important for advertiser trust. And then in the quarter, we also rolled out a new 7/0 Pixel Purchase offering for advertisers who want to bid against that objective.

很多早期的工作實際上都集中在信號恢復上，例如使用我們之前詳細討論過的 CAPI 等隱私安全集成。我們還做了很多工作來改善廣告的點擊後體驗，這使 Snapchatter 更容易在平台上進行轉換，並真正幫助縮小第一方和第三方指標報告之間的差距，這非常重要為了廣告商的信任。然後在本季度，我們還為想要競標該目標的廣告商推出了新的 7/0 Pixel Purchase 產品。

But the biggest change overall that we made in the quarter that was the most disruptive was really the transition to click-based ad interactions across our different advertising formats and then the retraining of our models against those clicks. So prior to these changes, ad interactions across the different content formats like Spotlight and Stories were different, which made it a lot more confusing for our community to interact with ads on Snapchat. So for example, in Stories, people use a horizontal swipe to move to the next story and then a vertical slide to open the ad. But on Spotlight, people use a vertical swipe to navigate to the next piece of content and then a tap to open the ad. And so now with these changes across Stories and Spotlight, we have click-based interactions with ads, which has moved us a lot closer to unifying our overall content experience. And then of course, we have been retraining our models against these new ad interactions.

但我們在本季度做出的最具破壞性的最大總體變化實際上是在我們不同的廣告格式中過渡到基於點擊的廣告交互，然後針對這些點擊重新訓練我們的模型。因此，在這些變化之前，跨不同內容格式（如 Spotlight 和故事）的廣告互動是不同的，這讓我們的社區在與 Snapchat 上的廣告互動時更加困惑。例如，在故事中，人們使用水平滑動移動到下一個故事，然後垂直滑動打開廣告。但在 Spotlight 上，人們使用垂直滑動導航到下一段內容，然後點擊打開廣告。因此，現在隨著 Stories 和 Spotlight 的這些變化，我們與廣告進行了基於點擊的交互，這使我們更接近於統一我們的整體內容體驗。當然，我們一直在針對這些新的廣告互動重新訓練我們的模型。

So there are some early green shoots like the growing number of active advertisers, which leads to more advertiser diversity and higher retention of advertisers, which is an important input to long-term growth. But I think maybe more importantly, all of these changes have laid the groundwork for us to invest more in running bigger models with more data, and of course accelerating the rate of experimentation on our ad platform, which is super important and why we're ramping up our investment in cloud infrastructure to improve our ranking system.

所以有一些早期的萌芽，比如活躍廣告商數量的增加，這會導致廣告商的多樣性和廣告商的保留率更高，這是長期增長的重要投入。但我認為也許更重要的是，所有這些變化都為我們奠定了基礎，讓我們可以投入更多資金來運行更大的模型和更多的數據，當然還可以加快我們廣告平台上的實驗速度，這非常重要，也是我們為什麼加大對雲基礎設施的投資，以改善我們的排名系統。

I think your second question was on Spotlight time spent. We're super excited about the progress we're making. With Spotlight, we're now reaching 350 million monthly active users on Spotlight. Time spent is up 170% year-over-year. So that's a really exciting growth area for our business.

我想你的第二個問題是關於 Spotlight 花費的時間。我們對正在取得的進展感到非常興奮。借助 Spotlight，我們現在在 Spotlight 上的每月活躍用戶達到 3.5 億。花費的時間同比增長 170%。所以這對我們的業務來說是一個非常令人興奮的增長領域。

Our next question is from Rich Greenfield with LightShed Partners.

我們的下一個問題來自 Rich Greenfield 和 LightShed Partners。

I got a couple. I guess, given the infrastructure and creator investments that feel pretty vital to reversing the pressure you've seen on engagement in advertising, I guess the question is sort of why aren't you scaling back your AR investments? You talked about offsite partnerships, and I saw last week things like AR Coke machines or vending machines. Like why not scale back AR investments until you're in a better financial position?

我有一對。我想，考慮到基礎設施和創作者投資對於扭轉您在廣告參與方面所看到的壓力非常重要，我想問題是您為什麼不縮減 AR 投資？你談到異地合作夥伴關係，上週我看到了 AR 可樂機或自動售貨機等東西。比如為什麼不縮減 AR 投資，直到你的財務狀況更好？

Obviously, it feels like Meta's got the luxury of sort of walking and chewing gum when I look at like their Metaverse investment. I'm not sure you have that luxury. So how do you think about how do you balance sort of what you need to reaccelerate your core business versus sort of investing in the future? And then two, I guess just a big picture question, Evan, of just obviously you've got what now is going to be another quarter of revenue declines, at least based on your internal forecast in Q2. What gives you confidence that you can return to robust growth? Because I think obviously the big challenge here is investor confidence in you and the team.

顯然，當我看到他們對 Metaverse 的投資時，感覺 Meta 就像是一種散步和嚼口香糖的奢侈。我不確定你有那麼奢侈。那麼，您如何看待重新加速核心業務所需的資源與未來的投資之間的平衡？然後兩個，我想這只是一個大問題，埃文，很明顯你現在已經有了另一個季度的收入下降，至少根據你在第二季度的內部預測。是什麼讓您有信心恢復強勁增長？因為我認為這裡最大的挑戰顯然是投資者對你和團隊的信心。

Rich, it's Derek speaking. I'm going to start here, and then I'm going to kick it to Evan at the end to expand a little bit. I think taking a step back on the cost structure, as we discussed at our recent Investor Day, we remain committed to balancing our investments and our growth over time and to the generation of adjusted EBITDA profitability and free cash flow over time as well. As part of that commitment, we took a significant action in Q3 of last year and over the course of the last 2 quarters to reprioritize our cost structure significantly. And we set a goal to remove $500 million from our cash cost structure in order to create a path to adjusted EBITDA profitability and positive free cash flow, even at reduced rates of growth. And as we noted in our letter, we actually exceeded the $500 million goal. In Q1 of this year, we realized $533 million in cash cost structure reductions. And that effort cleared the path for us to deliver adjusted EBITDA profitability and more than $100 million in free cash flow in Q1, despite the 7% decline in revenue year-over-year.

Rich，我是 Derek。我將從這裡開始，然後我將在最後把它踢給 Evan 以擴展一點。我認為在成本結構上退後一步，正如我們在最近的投資者日討論的那樣，我們仍然致力於平衡我們的投資和我們隨著時間的推移的增長，以及隨著時間的推移產生調整後的 EBITDA 盈利能力和自由現金流。作為該承諾的一部分，我們在去年第三季度和過去兩個季度採取了重大行動，以顯著重新調整我們的成本結構。我們設定了一個目標，即從我們的現金成本結構中減少 5 億美元，以便為調整後的 EBITDA 盈利能力和正的自由現金流創造一條途徑，即使在增長率下降的情況下也是如此。正如我們在信中指出的那樣，我們實際上超過了 5 億美元的目標。今年第一季度，我們實現了 5.33 億美元的現金成本結構削減。儘管收入同比下降 7%，但這一努力為我們在第一季度實現調整後的 EBITDA 盈利能力和超過 1 億美元的自由現金流掃清了道路。

So while we're pleased to achieve those outcomes amid such a difficult quarter for our top line, we believe that the best path to delivering sustained profitability and free cash flow generation over time lies in accelerating our top line growth and better capturing our ARPU opportunity. So for example, the investments we're making in ML infrastructure to support our ad platform, the ML investments to deepen monetizable content engagement, and the investments to develop My AI as a new input to understanding user interest and intent are all laser focused on helping accelerate the top line. Similarly, the investments we're making in the Creator Stories program, which you noted, while much smaller in scale, are deepening monetizable engagement. And we've been pleased to see this drive really significant growth in impression inventory over the last 2 quarters.

因此，儘管我們很高興在收入如此艱難的一個季度取得這些成果，但我們認為，隨著時間的推移，實現持續盈利和自由現金流產生的最佳途徑在於加速我們的收入增長並更好地抓住我們的 ARPU 機會.因此，例如，我們為支持我們的廣告平台而對 ML 基礎設施進行的投資，為深化可貨幣化內容參與度而進行的 ML 投資，以及為開發 My AI 作為理解用戶興趣和意圖的新輸入的投資，都集中在幫助加速頂線。同樣，我們在創作者故事計劃中所做的投資，儘管規模小得多，但正在加深可貨幣化的參與度。我們很高興看到這推動了過去兩個季度印像庫存的顯著增長。

So you're correct. These investments are collectively expected to put downward pressure on gross margins and adjusted EBITDA profitability in the near term, but we believe these investments will be substantially accretive over time and a critical input to sustained free cash flow generation and growth from there over time. In other words, our internal forecast for Q2 is not intended to mark a shift in our financial discipline, and instead, is part of what we see as the path to resuming growth and generation of sustained free cash flow.

所以你是對的。預計這些投資將在短期內對毛利率和調整後的 EBITDA 盈利能力造成下行壓力，但我們相信，隨著時間的推移，這些投資將大幅增加，並成為持續產生自由現金流和隨時間增長的關鍵投入。換句話說，我們對第二季度的內部預測並不是為了標誌著我們財務紀律的轉變，而是我們認為恢復增長和產生持續自由現金流的途徑的一部分。

And then in terms of prioritizing our investments to manage our cost structure, I think we really are fortunate that we made significant reductions already over the last 6 months, and then the work that we've done over a longer period of time to build a strong balance sheet such that we can make these investments in the very near term to drive growth in a responsible way.

然後在確定我們的投資優先級以管理我們的成本結構方面，我認為我們真的很幸運，我們在過去 6 個月內已經大幅削減開支，然後我們在更長的時間內為建立一個強勁的資產負債表，使我們可以在短期內進行這些投資，以負責任的方式推動增長。

I think the last thing before I turn it over to Evan is just simply that we're going to measure the performance of these investments carefully. And they're only going to persist in our cost structure to the extent that they're productive over any reasonable time frame.

我想在我把它交給埃文之前的最後一件事就是我們要仔細衡量這些投資的表現。而且他們只會在我們的成本結構中堅持到他們在任何合理的時間框架內富有成效的程度。

Thanks, Rich, for the question. I think as we look at our longer-term opportunity, the thing that really energizes us is just the strength of our community and their engagement. We now reach over 750 million monthly active users. And then we continue to innovate at a really rapid pace, I think most recently with My AI, which is I think a really compelling extension to the messaging experience that people have on Snapchat. I think more tactically speaking, if you look at the influx of really strong leaders that we now have on the ad side and the ad platform improvements that we're making, that gives us a lot of confidence in our ability to accelerate revenue growth. And that's why we have the confidence to make the investments that Derek mentioned, which I think are going to be really important to moving quickly here. So I think just looking more broadly at the community and their engagement, we've never been more excited about our opportunity to really serve our community and, of course, realize the long-term potential of our business.

謝謝，Rich，提出這個問題。我認為，當我們著眼於我們的長期機會時，真正讓我們充滿活力的是我們社區的力量和他們的參與。我們現在每月有超過 7.5 億活躍用戶。然後我們繼續以非常快的速度進行創新，我認為最近是通過 My AI，我認為這是對人們在 Snapchat 上的消息傳遞體驗的一個非常引人注目的擴展。我認為從戰術上講，如果你看看我們現在在廣告方面湧入的真正強大的領導者以及我們正在進行的廣告平台改進，這讓我們對加速收入增長的能力充滿信心。這就是為什麼我們有信心進行 Derek 提到的投資，我認為這對於在這裡快速行動非常重要。所以我認為只要更廣泛地看待社區和他們的參與，我們對真正為社區服務的機會感到從未如此興奮，當然，也實現了我們業務的長期潛力。

The next question is from Michael Morris with Guggenheim.

下一個問題來自古根海姆的邁克爾·莫里斯。

I had a couple questions on AI. I guess first, I'd be interested if you can share any early takes from the My AI distribution. I realize it's only been a week or so since it was rolled out more broadly, but would be curious what you've seen from your user base as it pertains to the engagement with the product. And then second, just maybe to expand on what was asked previously, but the broader question of the role of AI and the different functions at the company, driving engagement, helping advertisers with creative. Can you share more details on kind of the time frame to having that kind of functionality available and maybe how you view competition with some of the larger players in the space that are clearly working very hard on this to keep engagement on their own platforms.

我有幾個關於人工智能的問題。我想首先，如果您能分享 My AI 發行版的任何早期成果，我會很感興趣。我意識到自從它更廣泛地推出以來只有一周左右的時間，但我想知道您從用戶群中看到了什麼，因為它與產品的參與有關。其次，也許只是為了擴展之前提出的問題，但更廣泛的問題是人工智能的作用和公司的不同職能，推動參與，幫助廣告商發揮創意。您能否分享更多有關提供此類功能的時間框架的詳細信息，以及您如何看待與該領域一些較大的參與者的競爭，這些參與者顯然正在努力工作以保持在自己平台上的參與度。

Yes, of course. So maybe I'll just talk a little bit about the way that we use AI across several core pieces of our business. So I think the 3 sort of major areas are, of course, messaging, augmented reality and then content/ads. And so for a very long time, we've used AI in our ranking system for content and ads. That's really been the core driver of engagement growth for us. And we're going to continue to invest there, including with new and bigger models. And of course, I think we have a lot of the inputs we need to succeed there in terms of Spotlight submissions, for example, and of course the audience and the growth we have in time spent in Spotlight, which allows us to explore a lot more content for ranking. So I think we're going to continue our momentum on the content and ad side.

是的當然。所以也許我會談談我們在幾個核心業務中使用 AI 的方式。所以我認為 3 類主要領域當然是消息傳遞、增強現實，然後是內容/廣告。因此，很長一段時間以來，我們一直在我們的內容和廣告排名系統中使用人工智能。這確實是我們參與度增長的核心驅動力。我們將繼續在那裡投資，包括新的和更大的模型。當然，我認為我們在 Spotlight 提交方面有很多我們需要的投入，例如，當然還有觀眾和我們在 Spotlight 上花費的時間的增長，這使我們能夠探索很多更多排名內容。所以我認為我們將繼續在內容和廣告方面保持勢頭。

In augmented reality, we've seen AI play a really important role in new lens experiences, for example. Our ML-driven lenses have driven a lot of engagement for Snap. And then as we look at the longer-term future of augmented reality, we think that the intersection of AR and AI is going to really provide a much more compelling user interface for things like Spectacles into the future. So that's a big research area for us.

例如，在增強現實中，我們已經看到人工智能在新的鏡頭體驗中發揮了非常重要的作用。我們的 ML 驅動鏡頭為 Snap 帶來了很多參與度。然後，當我們展望增強現實的長期未來時，我們認為 AR 和 AI 的交集將真正為未來的 Spectacles 等事物提供更具吸引力的用戶界面。所以這對我們來說是一個很大的研究領域。

And then on the messaging side, we're really excited about conversational AI because it really plays to our strengths as a messaging platform. And we're finding that in addition to talking to friends and family all day long on Snapchat, people really enjoy communicating with My AI.

然後在消息傳遞方面，我們對對話式 AI 感到非常興奮，因為它確實發揮了我們作為消息傳遞平台的優勢。我們發現，除了整天在 Snapchat 上與朋友和家人聊天外，人們真的很喜歡與 My AI 交流。

So don't have any specific stats to share with you just yet, but we've been managing the rollout really carefully to make sure that the experience is fast, despite some of the capacity constraints we're bumping up against. But we're being thoughtful and deliberate with the rollout. We're really excited to get it out to our entire community. And we're really pleased with the engagement so far.

因此，目前還沒有任何具體的統計數據可以與您分享，但我們一直在非常謹慎地管理部署，以確保體驗是快速的，儘管我們遇到了一些容量限制。但我們正在考慮和深思熟慮地推出。我們真的很高興能將它推廣到我們的整個社區。到目前為止，我們對參與度非常滿意。

Next question is from Lloyd Walmsley with UBS.

下一個問題來自瑞銀集團的 Lloyd Walmsley。

Two, if I can. First, just like what inning are you guys in in kind of rolling out the DR shift to last click in terms of just educating advertisers, training the models? And kind of how do you rank the importance of getting that right to drive the faster growth? And then second one, I wanted to follow up on that last question on My AI. Like how much do you see this providing you guys with more signal for advertising versus simply driving more engagement? Like is that a meaningful opportunity for you guys? Anything you can share on early data from that and how you can kind of leverage that for monetization?

兩個，如果可以的話。首先，就像你們在哪一局將 DR 轉變為最後一次點擊，就教育廣告商、訓練模型而言？您如何看待正確推動更快增長的重要性？然後是第二個，我想跟進關於 My AI 的最後一個問題。比如你認為這為你們提供了更多的廣告信號，而不是僅僅推動更多的參與？這對你們來說是一個有意義的機會嗎？您可以分享關於早期數據的任何內容，以及您如何利用這些數據進行貨幣化？

Lloyd, thanks for that question. This is Jerry. I'll take that first question, and I'll hand it over to Evan for the second. For where we are on the DR changes, I mean, we went through a pretty major evolution on the platform. And as we mentioned in the letter, we're making progress across the 3 areas: investing in observability and measurement; improving the engagement and the quality of the conversions; and increasing that volume of high-quality engagements and conversions. We think that the big model and UI changes that we made are behind us, but we're still working through some impacts and making some steady progress. We're also going to always be shipping improvements to the platform, but we expect that these future changes are going to be more incremental and less disruptive.

勞埃德，謝謝你提出這個問題。這是傑瑞。我先回答第一個問題，第二個問題交給 Evan。對於我們在 DR 變化上的位置，我的意思是，我們在平台上經歷了相當大的演變。正如我們在信中提到的，我們正在三個領域取得進展：投資於可觀察性和衡量；提高參與度和轉化質量；並增加高質量的參與和轉化量。我們認為我們所做的大型模型和 UI 更改已經過去，但我們仍在努力克服一些影響並取得一些穩步進展。我們也將始終對平台進行改進，但我們預計這些未來的變化將更加漸進且破壞性更少。

On the importance of educating advertisers versus training the models, it's really both. What we've learned from these larger advertisers that we've worked with through this transition is that many are actually finding success now. We worked with them to get to a place where they were finding positive ROI. And then there's a few that we're still working with to get through the change to get them to positive ROI.

關於教育廣告商與培訓模型的重要性，實際上兩者兼而有之。我們從與我們合作過的這些更大的廣告商那裡了解到，許多廣告商現在實際上已經取得了成功。我們與他們合作，讓他們找到了積極的投資回報率。然後我們仍在與一些人合作，以完成變革，使他們獲得積極的投資回報率。

In terms of My AI, our primary focus right now is really on the community experience and trying to drive a lot of value for folks who are using My AI. Of course, the intent signal we get can be used to improve relevance of content or AR experiences, and that's definitely something we're working hard on. My AI can recommend places now and of course recommend lenses. We're really excited to see folks' engagement there. We are doing some early experimentation around monetization, including things like sponsored links, and I think the team will have more to share at our upcoming NewFronts presentation.

就 My AI 而言，我們現在的主要重點實際上是社區體驗，並試圖為使用 My AI 的人們帶來很多價值。當然，我們獲得的意圖信號可用於提高內容或 AR 體驗的相關性，這絕對是我們正在努力的方向。我的人工智能現在可以推薦地點，當然也可以推薦鏡頭。我們真的很高興看到人們在那裡的參與。我們正在圍繞貨幣化進行一些早期實驗，包括贊助商鏈接之類的東西，我認為團隊將在即將到來的 NewFronts 演示中分享更多內容。

The next question is from Doug Anmuth with JPMorgan.

下一個問題來自摩根大通的 Doug Anmuth。

This is [Katie] on for Doug. I just wanted to dive deeper into some of the monthly revenue cadence. I believe you called out that March was up 21% month-over-month. So I'm just curious if you're seeing real uptick in demand through the course of the quarter. Or is that more a function of easier comps with lapping potentially Russia and Ukraine a year ago? And then just curious if you're seeing any of that improvement continue into April so far.

這是 [Katie] 替 Doug 做的。我只是想更深入地了解一些月度收入節奏。我相信你說過 3 月份環比增長了 21%。所以我很好奇你是否看到整個季度的需求真正上升。還是一年前更容易與潛在的俄羅斯和烏克蘭打交道？然後很好奇，到目前為止，您是否看到這種改善一直持續到 4 月。

It's Derek speaking. I'll take that one. And I think maybe it makes sense to step back and just talk about the journey for Q1 and then what we're seeing into our internal forecast for Q2. On the macro side, while the macro environment appears to have stabilized, it's stabilized at a much weaker level compared to where we were, for example, a year ago. We continue to be impacted by the platform policy changes in a tough competitive environment as well. In Q1 specifically, as we shared in our letter, the changes we made to our ad platform were disruptive. And while some advertisers have already recovered to prior levels, and while some new advertisers are finding success under these changes, there are a small number of our top advertisers that have not recovered. And this continues to be a headwind to demand as we start making our way into Q2. So while we're pleased with the progress we're seeing from many of our advertisers, they are, in many cases, growing off a smaller base. And it will take time for this more diverse base of smaller advertisers to drive the overall top line.

是德里克在說話。我會拿那個。而且我認為退後一步，只談論第一季度的旅程以及我們對第二季度的內部預測所看到的內容也許是有意義的。在宏觀方面，雖然宏觀環境似乎已經穩定，但與一年前相比，它穩定在一個弱得多的水平上。在激烈的競爭環境中，我們繼續受到平台政策變化的影響。特別是在第一季度，正如我們在信中分享的那樣，我們對廣告平台所做的更改具有破壞性。雖然一些廣告商已經恢復到以前的水平，而一些新的廣告商在這些變化下取得了成功，但我們的少數頂級廣告商還沒有恢復。隨著我們開始進入第二季度，這仍然是需求的逆風。因此，儘管我們對許多廣告商取得的進步感到滿意，但在許多情況下，他們的成長基數較小。更多樣化的小型廣告商群體需要時間來推動整體營收。

In addition, we were concerned as we entered Q2 that there are some advertisers who rely on lift studies that are -- provide measurement signals on a delayed basis. And then this could cause disruption in their spending in Q2 as they experience the initial impact of the changes we made in Q1 on a more delayed basis. Our internal forecast for Q2, therefore, reflects these challenges as well as the investments we're making to accelerate our progress towards improving our ad platform.

此外，當我們進入第二季度時，我們擔心有些廣告商依賴提升研究——延遲提供測量信號。然後這可能會導致他們在第二季度的支出中斷，因為他們在更延遲的基礎上體驗到我們在第一季度所做的更改的初步影響。因此，我們對第二季度的內部預測反映了這些挑戰以及我們為加快改進廣告平台的進展所做的投資。

Importantly, we are seeing sequential progress in the business. As we noted in the letter, month-over-month growth in March, for example, was 21%. And this was roughly in line with the seasonality month-over-month that we saw in 2021 and was well ahead of what we observed in 2022, although I know 2022 was impacted by the onset of the war in Ukraine.

重要的是，我們看到了業務的連續進展。正如我們在信中指出的那樣，例如，3 月份的月環比增長率為 21%。這與我們在 2021 年看到的逐月季節性大致一致，並且遠遠領先於我們在 2022 年觀察到的情況，儘管我知道 2022 年受到了烏克蘭戰爭爆發的影響。

In addition, our internal forecast calls for, at the midpoint, 5% quarter-over-quarter growth, which is further demonstration of our expectation that we'll see more sequential progress for the business as we navigate the changes. So hopefully that gives you a little bit of an understanding of the topography of what we saw in Q1 and how we expect that to transition into the new quarter.

此外，我們的內部預測要求在中點實現 5% 的環比增長，這進一步證明了我們的預期，即隨著我們應對變化，我們將看到業務取得更多連續進展。因此，希望這能讓您對我們在第一季度看到的地形以及我們期望如何過渡到新季度有所了解。

The next question is from the line of Michael Nathanson with MoffettNathanson.

下一個問題來自 Michael Nathanson 和 MoffettNathanson 的對話。

Two for you, Derek. One is, you've done a really nice job driving gross margin in the past few years. As you've laid out in the letter, there's a couple stackers and may make it tough this year. Can you give me a sense of where you think gross margins bottom out in the near term, just to dimension it for us? And then you just mentioned in that last answer about some small number of advertisers who have not yet returned to prior spending levels. What's causing that issue, and what alleviates that headwind to improve that situation?

兩個給你，德里克。一是，在過去的幾年裡，你在推動毛利率方面做得非常好。正如你在信中所說，有幾個堆垛機，今年可能會很艱難。你能告訴我你認為毛利率在短期內觸底的地方嗎，只是為了給我們衡量一下？然後你剛剛在最後一個答案中提到了一些尚未恢復到之前支出水平的廣告商。是什麼導致了這個問題，是什麼減輕了改善這種情況的逆風？

Sure. So starting on the gross margins, I think one of the things that's challenging here, obviously, is that especially over any long period of time, gross margins are going to be impacted significantly by the top line revenue growth rate, and in particular, top line revenue growth rate relative to our investments in infrastructure and so on. So I would say it starts with expectations around revenue on the top line. What we try to do here, though, is give you an understanding of where we are investing on the cost of revenue side and some magnitude to help you model out and sensitize where gross margins might head.

當然。因此，從毛利率開始，我認為這裡面臨的挑戰之一顯然是，尤其是在任何很長一段時間內，毛利率將受到收入增長率的顯著影響，尤其是收入增長率線收入增長率相對於我們在基礎設施等方面的投資。所以我想說這始於對收入的預期。不過，我們在這裡嘗試做的是讓您了解我們在收入成本方面的投資位置以及一定程度的投資，以幫助您建模並了解毛利率可能走向的方向。

So specifically, one really big component, the largest component of cost of revenue is infrastructure cost per DAU. We shared in the letter that we expected sequentially that's likely to rise $0.08 to $0.12 off of the $0.59 base that we saw in the quarter. And that's really reflective of the significant investments we're looking at for ML infrastructure. The largest portion of that is designed specifically to drive optimization and performance of the ad platform. A smaller minority share of that, but still significant is investments in ML to drive depth of engagement on the content platform, and of course, that drives directly into monetizable content and top line as well. And then a smaller minority portion is the investment in My AI, which again, is directly attributable to contributing to the top line in the form of better understanding of user interest and intent.

因此，具體來說，一個非常大的組成部分，收入成本的最大組成部分是每個 DAU 的基礎設施成本。我們在信中分享了我們預計的順序可能會從我們在本季度看到的 0.59 美元基數上漲 0.08 美元至 0.12 美元。這確實反映了我們正在為 ML 基礎設施尋找的重大投資。其中最大的一部分專門用於推動廣告平台的優化和性能。其中一小部分，但仍然很重要的是對 ML 的投資，以推動內容平台上的深度參與，當然，這也直接推動了可貨幣化的內容和收入。然後一小部分是對 My AI 的投資，這再次直接歸因於以更好地理解用戶興趣和意圖的形式為收入做出貢獻。

So I think in terms of other aspects of what's happening in cost of revenue and gross margins, over the last 2 quarters, we've taken an annualized $84 million out of fixed content costs. That's a little over $20 million a quarter. And we saw that benefit come on over the course of Q4 and then into Q1. And so that's been offsetting the cost of the Creator rev share program over the last couple of quarters. As we start to lap those fixed cost investments -- reduction, sorry, in the back half of this year, and hopefully continue to see great success with that Creator story program, that will put a little bit of new pressure on those margins in the back half of the year, assuming continued success there. But importantly, that program is rev share based and therefore scales with monetization. So, hopefully that gives you a little bit of a sense of what's happening with gross margins and an ability to sort of think about how that will move with revenue over time.

因此，我認為就收入成本和毛利率的其他方面而言，在過去兩個季度中，我們從固定內容成本中扣除了 8400 萬美元的年化費用。那是每季度略高於 2000 萬美元。我們看到這種好處在第四季度開始出現，然後進入第一季度。因此，這一直在抵消過去幾個季度 Creator 收益共享計劃的成本。隨著我們開始減少這些固定成本投資——抱歉，在今年下半年減少，並希望繼續看到創作者故事計劃取得巨大成功，這將給這些利潤率帶來一些新的壓力回到今年的一半，假設在那裡繼續取得成功。但重要的是，該計劃是基於收入份額的，因此隨著貨幣化而擴展。因此，希望這能讓您對毛利率的變化有所了解，並能夠思考隨著時間的推移，毛利率將如何隨著收入的變化而變化。

And then I think in terms of what we're seeing on top advertisers over the quarter, we've got advertisers who performed exceptionally well under the prior paradigm. As Jerry laid out earlier, we made a number of changes to the ad platform. And folks who are particularly sophisticated prior to those are going to take time to recover and become equally sophisticated under the new ad unit design and interaction design as well as tweaking their models to perform in a new environment. And that's not something that's going to happen quickly. But we're working hard with those partners to help them with signal and modeling and development and performance. And all of the investments that we're pouring into our ML infrastructure, again, are intended to contribute to that recovery. So, hopefully that gives you a sense for how that's evolving.

然後我認為就我們在本季度看到的頂級廣告商而言，我們有廣告商在先前的範例下表現非常出色。正如 Jerry 之前所說，我們對廣告平台進行了一些更改。在這些之前特別老練的人將需要時間來恢復，並在新的廣告單元設計和交互設計下變得同樣老練，並調整他們的模型以在新環境中執行。這不會很快發生。但我們正在與這些合作夥伴一起努力幫助他們進行信號和建模以及開發和性能。我們在 ML 基礎設施中投入的所有投資，再次旨在為這種複蘇做出貢獻。所以，希望這能讓你了解它是如何演變的。

Our last question comes from Tom Champion with Piper Sandler.

我們的最後一個問題來自 Tom Champion 和 Piper Sandler。

Derek, curious if you could just talk about your advertising verticals and the pockets of strength and where it's weaker and how you're working with clients to build kind of relevant tools by vertical.

德里克，很好奇你是否可以談談你的廣告垂直領域和優勢所在，以及它的弱點，以及你如何與客戶合作，通過垂直領域構建某種相關工具。

Sure. I think, actually, I might ask Jerry to step in on that one. I mean, we've seen a continuation of strength in some of the same verticals we've been talking about for a few quarters. But he can probably talk a little bit more about some of the work that we're doing to support specific verticals under the new ad changes.

當然。我想，實際上，我可能會請 Jerry 介入。我的意思是，我們已經看到幾個季度以來我們一直在談論的一些垂直領域的實力持續增強。但他可能會多談談我們在新的廣告變化下為支持特定垂直行業所做的一些工作。

I mean, yes, largely, we're working with advertisers on CAPI and making sure that we're collecting information and signals. We're also orienting both the sales force as well as our product team that actually works with customers to work directly with these customers and build tooling that helps them find the performance that they're looking for. And so we're doing these customer by customer. And we've seen some positive -- some very positive signals from some of these customers where we've gotten them to get to a stronger ROAS post changes. We also have a bunch of other customers we're working with directly to improve their ROAS.

我的意思是，是的，在很大程度上，我們正在與 CAPI 上的廣告商合作，並確保我們正在收集信息和信號。我們還引導銷售人員以及實際與客戶合作的產品團隊直接與這些客戶合作，並構建工具來幫助他們找到他們正在尋找的性能。所以我們正在逐個客戶地做這些客戶。我們已經看到了一些積極的——來自其中一些客戶的一些非常積極的信號，我們已經讓他們在更改後獲得更強大的 ROAS。我們還有許多其他客戶正在與我們直接合作以提高他們的 ROAS。

This concludes our question-and-answer session as well as Snap Inc.'s First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. Thank you for attending today's session. You may now disconnect.

我們的問答環節以及 Snap Inc. 的 2023 年第一季度收益電話會議到此結束。感謝您參加今天的會議。您現在可以斷開連接。