Doug Valenti
Chief Executive Officer
Yes, Zach. Thank you for the question. In terms of traffic trends, only positive. We have seen no negative trends or let me say this. We have seen only net positive trends in the traffic, and we expect that that would continue to be the case. I think we have a record amount of volume with, say, Google on that platform. On and mostly the most of the searches now, as you know, involve AI-based answers and searches. It's only created more opportunity for us to get deeper and have more places to run our campaigns. So short answer, net positive and it's strongly net positive. You can see it in our performance trends. You can see it in our forecast. And we're seeing it in the data. So fears there would be unfounded. In terms of the overall AI landscape, which is obviously and apparently, on everybody's mind right now, that, you know, there seem to be if step back, there are kinda two big concerns. One is the AI bubble. And the other is the AI disruption or disintermediation. I think we can all agree that the bubble concerns don't really apply to us given, you know, where we're now trading relative to our strong performance and scale. And so we've traded down with the sector. Broadly defined. With respect to fears of disruption and disintermediation of existing business models, that's pretty clearly overblown across and it's been pretty indiscriminate. Of course, as it's kinda pulled in software, SaaS, information services, performance marketing, and all of those things. And it's not surprising it's been overblown and indiscriminate. It's kinda what happens early in these big risk cycles, you know, interpreted as risk cycles. But pretty clearly overblown. And don't take my word for it, obviously. I mean, Jensen Wong, who knows more about AI than any of us will ever know, is quoted, as you know, in the past couple of days talking about it and saying it's just illogical. It doesn't make sense. AI is much more likely to enhance or utilize the value-add business models and tools, software, and otherwise out there than it is to replace them. And the CEO of Google just said basically the same thing yesterday, certainly, that would be our view from the trenches as we actually do this stuff day to day. And I would add, historically, most of the value of these big technology disruptions eventually accrues to the incumbents after the big platform and infrastructure companies are built, which is a phase, of course, we're going through now. So that's exactly what we're also seeing. On the ground in the trenches applying and competing and working these businesses day to day. And as I think I've indicated before, we have a lot. We've always had a lot of AI going on in our core marketplace algorithm function. Since 2008, that's been our core technology. And we've only added to that, of course, and we have activities across the business and applications of AI. So we certainly see ourselves as that's gonna be an example of that. Now the fears of people being disintermediated, disruptive aren't completely unfounded. And if they're to accept their businesses, that rely on commodity data or commerce and commodity products, or that are doing simple aggregation, simple manipulation, or simple intermediation of those areas. Commodity data, commodity products, then they are certainly at risk from AI. But that is not what most successful software companies broadly define or certainly not what QuinStreet is or does. We at QuinStreet have literally billions of dollars of proprietary data. We have spent billions of dollars generating that data through media campaigns that are extraordinarily complex with permutations into the billions. When you combine all the variables. We have proprietary integrations and access to data and that to that data that allows to continuously generate more of it, refresh it, and build on it. And we have proprietary technologies, including AI since 2008, as I mentioned. That we utilize to optimize that data for the benefits of our consumers, and of our marketing clients. And we also do that in a regulatory compliant and brand compliant way. Which are highly, highly complex. So clearly, what we do is uniquely complex. It's not commodity. It is value-add. It's proprietary. And, clearly, we've been successful. We're good at it because if you look at our age and our size and our profitability, by definition, we're quite successful at it. So we see as AI comes. We see rather than the negatives and the disruption, what we see is a field of, you know, more, better, higher capabilities that is net additive in a very, very meaningful way. To our business and to our company. We do not view it as a big threat. And in terms of disintermediation, by the way, if our business model could have been disintermediated, there are some big players that already exist with massive capabilities that have done that a long time ago. Question we always ask, we have always asked because we take our moats quite seriously. Is if someone were to try to disintermediate with tech AI or otherwise, how would they do it? Who would be able to do it? And how would they make money? And we just don't we can't and, again, we do this to our so we, as an executive team and with a product engineering team, ask this question all the time. And the answers are you know, nigh on impossible. Extraordinarily difficult. First of all, who would have the incentive because they gotta be able to make money? How would they get access to or replicate the data which again, would take enormous amounts of time and money? It's not something you could just turn AI on, expect that the data's gonna come. How would they access the data? Because, again, they can't get access to the proprietary integrations because the clients among others, don't won't give it to them. And how would they make money? The money comes from the marketers. This remediation would include not just a district meeting, say, at QuinStreet, it would really mean disintermediating the client brands. Which represent hundreds of billions of dollars of value and tens of billions of dollars of annual spend. So the money is in the marketing. Which means the money is not in the disintermediation. So we see again, we don't see the risk that others see. We take it seriously. We look for it. We test against it. We ask ourselves. We question others in the industry. No. Nobody, by way, has been able to counter any of what I just said. But we see more opportunity not less going forward. And it clearly and hopefully that's reflected in our performance you know, recently. And in the past and in our you know, in the forecast that we've given. So probably a longer you signed up for, but I think in this environment, something that is worthy of that.