Earnings Labs

The Trade Desk, Inc. (TTD)

Q4 2018 Earnings Call· Fri, Feb 22, 2019

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to The Trade Desk's Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 2018 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host Chris Toth, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Chris Toth

Analyst

Thank you, operator. Hello and good afternoon. Welcome to The Trade Desk fourth quarter and fiscal year 2018 earnings conference call. On the call today from our Hong Kong office is Founder and CEO, Jeff Green; and from our Headquarters in Ventura is Chief Financial Officer, Paul Ross. A copy of our earnings press release can be found on our website at thetradedesk.com in the Investor Relations section. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that except for historical information, the matters that we'll be describing will be forward-looking statements, which are dependent upon certain risks and uncertainties. I encourage you to refer to the risk factors reference in our press release and included in our most recent SEC filings. In addition to reporting our GAAP financial results, we present supplemental non-GAAP financial data. A reconciliation of the GAAP to non-GAAP measures can be found on our earnings press release. We believe that providing non-GAAP measures, combined with our GAAP results, provides a more meaningful representation regarding the Company's operational performance. Lastly, I would like to highlight the following upcoming Investor Relations events. We are holding an Analyst Day on Wednesday, March 6, 2019 in New York. This event will be webcast and available on our Investor Relations website. And then on Tuesday, March 12, we will be attending the Susquehanna Technology conference in New York. I will now turn the call over to founder and CEO, Jeff Green. Jeff?

Jeffrey Green

Analyst · Susquehanna. Please proceed with your question

Thanks, Chris. I'm excited to be taking this call from Hong Kong. For me it's exciting to be talking about the future of our business in Asia, which is economically the fastest growing region of the world. Back in October 2017 at our Investor Day, we stayed in that in the years ahead of highly probable that we would see accelerating growth. It happened much sooner than we thought. I'm excited to announce that our revenue growth accelerated to 55% in 2018 from 52% in 2017, it was a huge year for The Trade Desk. Spend on our platforms or past $2.35 billion, revenue was a record $477 million. This growth is more than twice the 22% growth of the entire programmatic advertising industry in 2018 according Magna Global. We've achieved over 2x the growth of the industry for over five years in a row now. Q4 was also an outstanding quarter to cap off an amazing year. Revenue new for the quarter was a record $160 million, up 56% from Q4 2017. That 56% revenue growth also represents revenue acceleration. In Q3 2018 we grew 50% and look in a year back in Q4 2017 we grew 42%. Based on our performance 2018 was clearly a foundational year for The Trade Desk. But that foundation is not just in the numbers. We also had a series of achievements and accomplishments that laid groundwork for our future growth that are worth spending time on now. First, we launched the biggest product in our history at the end of June. While we call the Next Wave included an enhanced user experience, artificial intelligence technology as well as a forecasting engine that helps every planner and media. Also 2018 was the year when Connected TV became a month tab and the media…

Paul Ross

Analyst · use of Youssef Squali with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed with your question

Thanks Jeff, and good afternoon everyone. For the full-year 2018 revenue growth accelerated to 55% year-over-year compared with the 52% growth rate we saw in 2017. The revenue growth acceleration resulted from large global brands moving additional spend onto our platform, significant amounts of new business and adoption of video, which includes both mobile video and CTV. Adjusted EBITDA increased 67% year-over-year and an income increased to 74% from a year ago to a record $88 million. We achieved this while continuing to heavily invest in areas critical to our future growth, such as launching our Next Wave family of products, adding engineering talent, and expanding our global reach. We continued to gain market share. We ended the year with over $2.35 billion in spend on our platform, up from approximately $1.55 billion a year ago. For more than five years in a row, we have grown more than 2x the RTB programmatic industry according to Magna Global. Outside the U.S., spend growth was incredibly strong at nearly 70% year-over-year, exiting 2018 14% of total platform spend was outside of North America. From a channel perspective, in 2018 mobile spend was the primary driver of our growth increasing 77% year-over-year. For the first time, total mobile spend on our platform, which includes video in app and web ended the year at over $1 billion. As Jeff highlighted, CTV grew more than 9x year-over-year, audio grew more than 230% year-over-year, and mobile video grew more than 130% year-over-year. Turning to our financials. Revenue for the fourth quarter of 2018 was $160.5 million, up 56% year-over-year. This growth reflects growth in spend by existing customers as well as the addition of new customers. Approximately 90% of our fourth quarter gross spend came from existing customers who have been on our platform for…

Jeffrey Green

Analyst · Susquehanna. Please proceed with your question

In closing, let me reiterate that we are thrilled to see revenue growth acceleration in Q4 and for the full-year 2018. We're even more bullish on our future then we were a year-ago. Our objectivity is more valuable to advertisers than ever. The opportunities in areas such as CTV and China are massive. Our investments are paying off and when we see surprises it typically or to the upside. We believe The Trade Desk is in best positioned to realize continued growth for the rest of the year, next year and beyond. That concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, let's open it up for questions.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. At this time, we will be conducting a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Shyam Patil with Susquehanna. Please proceed with your question.

Shyam Patil

Analyst · Susquehanna. Please proceed with your question

Hey guys, congrats on the blowout 2018 and outlook. I had a couple of questions. The first one just on the 2019 guide. Jeff, can you just talk a little bit more about how you approach the outlook just the puts and takes and whether you followed a similar approach to previous years? And then the second question, I think you alluded to this Jeff in your prepared remarks, but it looks like YouTube is facing another backlash related to brand safety. I remember in 2017 pretty early on you guys started to benefit as advertisers shifted spend over to Trade Desk. Just what are your thoughts on, on what's going on right now? Thank you.

Jeffrey Green

Analyst · Susquehanna. Please proceed with your question

Awesome. Well, so a couple inputs that are unique going into 2019 and to years in the past, the first is the CTV search that we saw in 2018, as we've just highlighted, 6x increase in inventory last year and even more impressive than 9x increase in spend last year. I think I tend to accelerating on a freeway where when you start on the on ramp, you're going to be close to zero miles per hour, but you're going to accelerate as fast as you can and that acceleration happen much faster than we expected it to and 2018 proved to be the most foundational year for Connected TV that will probably ever have. So with that foundation well in place, we feel like we're in a phenomenal position for 2018. I don't expect it to grow at the same rate just because we've already gotten so much land grabbing in Connected TV. So we've established the foundation and we're going to build on top of it. So Connected TV foundation is one of the biggest sort of new drivers that we had to take into account into our 2019 guide and plan. But also the fact that 84 of Ad Age's top 200 advertisers increased their spend by over 50% in 2018. That means that we're a little over a third of those that increased by over 50%. So I think there's huge opportunity with the other two thirds for us to go increase. Then of course, our work is not done with that 84. We had that amazing gift in 2018, Google removing their ID, and a little bit of change away from Facebook as well, until we had to account for all of those as we're going into 2019. The thing I'll just add on what…

Shyam Patil

Analyst · Susquehanna. Please proceed with your question

Got it.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from line of Aaron Kessler with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Aaron Kessler

Analyst · Aaron Kessler with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question

Great. Congrats guys. A couple questions. One for - two for Jeff and one for Paul quickly. Made for Jeff, thoughts on maybe just walled gardens when you think maybe they start to open up. And then second in terms of kind of the linear TV, you mentioned kind of $230 billion that could still needs to shift over to the part that doesn't go to Connected TV may kind of the modern form like the rock who's et cetera. What do you think the path is for that to show it to make more programmatically available. Obviously AT&T acquired app nexus along that path, but what's deployed it's updated and kind of timing of one, some of that inventory becomes available? Thanks.

Jeffrey Green

Analyst · Aaron Kessler with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question

Aaron, you mind repeating the second part of your question? I just lost it. The top of that as I scribble notes.

Aaron Kessler

Analyst · Aaron Kessler with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question

Yes. Just thought the one that kind of linear TV at $230 billion starts to become more programmatically available for the part that doesn't shift. The platforms are more to the Internet platforms?

Jeffrey Green

Analyst · Aaron Kessler with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question

Okay, great. So in terms of the walled gardens and when budget we'll move over. So I personally believe that long-term, there are no walled gardens, because of the fact that you want to welcome as much demand as you can. And if you're a small walled garden, then it's really hard for you to say the advertisers, you have to log into another platform and you have to ignore your recent and frequency across other channels. You have to buy in my silo and then I'll provide you with reporting. If you're small, you don't have the leverage to say that and you're going to struggle. And I think some of the smaller social networks have lived that if you're big, you've got a different problem, which is that you've got a surplus of inventory and you've got way more supply than you have demand. And so it's economically irrational to not welcome more demand. So in either case, I believe long-term, it's economically rational for them to open it up and welcome, incremental demand, which is what we represent and all those patients. Who moves over first and when that happened I think is mostly dictated by a pain or front of the market and that sort of need for the incremental demand. So I expect actually the smaller ones to go first. And so if you're a smaller social network or a smaller TV network or the things like that that are trying to take to source demand on their own, those are the ones that will open up first. And, we see things opening up all the time. You could have argued like audio was a walled garden two years ago or three years ago and now it's nearly all programmatic. So that phenomenon of it…

Aaron Kessler

Analyst · Aaron Kessler with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question

Got it. Great. And this may quickly for Paul, just any more colors on the expense growth kind of buy line item kind of gross margins as well as might be expensive or is that we should think about for 2019?

Jeffrey Green

Analyst · Aaron Kessler with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question

Yes. Hey, Aaron. It's pretty much all of the usual suspects. We're growing out our account teams around the world. Obviously you heard about how fast we're growing internationally. Of course that's baseline domestic growth in the U.S. of course and CTV layered on top of that. Our engineers now that next wave has been launched, they're working on next-generation technology as well. So you should see the increase in expenses, pretty much throughout platform ops, sales and marketing as well as the tech and dev.

Aaron Kessler

Analyst · Aaron Kessler with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question

Okay, great. Thank you.

Jeffrey Green

Analyst · Aaron Kessler with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question

Thank you, Aaron.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Vasily Karasyov with Cannonball Research. Please proceed with your question.

Vasily Karasyov

Analyst · Vasily Karasyov with Cannonball Research. Please proceed with your question

Thank you. Jeff, I have a question about the announcement and that Hulu made about the private marketplace that they set up, therefore the programmatic with trade there, AVOD inventory and I think The Trade Desk is a part of that. So can you probably tell us a little more detail and what are the implications of this you think, given that Hulu is such a massive source of AVOD inventory, I think they did 1.5 billion last year and it's all almost all sold directly?

Jeffrey Green

Analyst · Vasily Karasyov with Cannonball Research. Please proceed with your question

You bet. So I think who represents one of the most interesting companies in all of Connected TV. I've referenced them before as what I call a tea leaf company. If you watch them carefully, you can see which way the market is going. I think they tend to be, thought leaders. I think they were a really key piece in the Tug of War that ended in their acquisition last year. So I think there are a very important company to watch if you're interested in the trends in Connected TV and things progressing. Part of the reason why it's so interesting is because if you go to your [indiscernible] or you go to your apple TV and you'd look at where people spend all their time on which channels, you'll see, at least in the United States, you'll see Netflix and Amazon near the top. And then Hulu is often number three. And a few years ago, Hulu was doing what - he would expect to joint venture from a number of traditional television networks to do, which is trying to sell it all directly themselves. But because, and this is, this continues to be or be our thesis because consumers are tapped out in the sense that they're, most of them are still paying for table. Most of them also have Netflix. Most of them also have Amazon having another subscription to get rid of the ads. It's just too expensive. So the vast majority of them ask for apps. On those where they asked for ads, Hulu actually makes more money than those who pay to get rid of the app because of the higher CPMs that come with programmatic in particular. And the thing that's come from programmatic for them is that as they have searched in growth and their growth has been unbelievable, their direct sales force hasn't been able to sell all of it on their own. And so they've learned more and more on programmatic as they've grown and it's been awesome to work with them and to buy inventory from them. And I expect to continue to be one of their most important partners, one of their biggest partners as they continued to see growth. I too am excited by that 1.5 billion, but, I believe we've only scratched the surface there and I think as Hulu has sort of best demonstrated that ad funded model for Connected TV, I think you're going to see probably 100s of companies followed the model that they've created, which is, you can pay to get rid of the ads or you can see the ad. And I think ballpark, 80% of them actually asked for the ads given just the economics. So I think that trend will continue and I'm super excited about the, marketplace that they've created I think will represent a significant amount of demand for them.

Vasily Karasyov

Analyst · Vasily Karasyov with Cannonball Research. Please proceed with your question

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Mark Mahaney with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question?

Mark Mahaney

Analyst · Mark Mahaney with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question

Okay, great. Two questions please. Jeff on this, we're been particularly focused on the Next Wave and the impact it can have on your client base. I know this was a major R&D initiative for you, substantial amount of your budget, et cetera in a long period of time that went and went into this. And I see this one data point you have in your script about how it's a loud, your clients to essentially see a 20% reduction and CPMs. So that that sounds great, it sounds like that therefore it could be improving their ROI. Is it clear already that it's leading to greater spend per your existing clients? Your retention rate hasn't, it's always been super high so it's kind of hard to see what the impact is there. But I assume that what's happening is that people are getting better ROIs. They're getting more confidence in running programmatic campaigns and therefore they're allocating more of their budgets to you. Is there any way you could quantify that? And secondly, I know you've spent an enormous amount of time now in Hong Kong. My guess is that your Cantonese is pretty good. Could you talk about when that market itself that China, the Hong Kong, China market could actually become material to The Trade Desk? Thanks a lot.

Jeffrey Green

Analyst · Mark Mahaney with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question

Awesome. You bet. Some of the team here in Hong Kong were up very early or laughing when you asked about my Cantonese, because it's horrible. But I am working a little bit on my mandarin, I love being here. Let me start by first talking about Next Wave. So I look at it as - yes, we have had 95% plus client retention for over 20 quarters in a row. So you're absolutely right, but that's not where you're going to see the strength of our Next Wave products. To me, a couple ways to quantify it, first is, how quickly the people adopted. So we went to them and said, you have to have a new user experience and there's a whole bunch of new features. You can either keep the old one or you can use the new one and the new one does have AI functionality that will save you money. And the fact that in such a short time, I'm an Apple user, who hasn't updated their operating system since the last one. So just because I don't want to spend the hour, but the fact that our customers have taken double-digit number of hours to learn the new platform and that 71% of them have adopted the Next Wave products. That to me is a commentary on exactly what we were after, which is - it's hard for us to improve client retention much, but it isn't hard for us to add to what we've talked about all the time, which is consumer surplus. So in other words, if we're giving them more value for the same dollar, then we create more and more retention. This is something that I think the company Amazon has done such an amazing job and something that we…

Mark Mahaney

Analyst · Mark Mahaney with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question

Okay. Thanks a lot Jeff.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of use of Youssef Squali with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed with your question.

Youssef Squali

Analyst · use of Youssef Squali with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed with your question

Okay. Thank you very much. Just a couple of questions, first maybe just a follow-up to Mark's question around China. I think on the Q3 call, Jeff, you talks about how China should start yield in some real spending 2019? Just was wondering about the pace of adoption and what are the kind of gating factors there, because you obviously have the inventory, just how quickly can you ramp that up. In other words also, how much of it is already baked into your 2019 guidance, maybe none of it? And then Paul, maybe you can help us understand the margin compression that you're looking at for 2019 over 2018. I think there is a 400 basis point compression. There is the assumption there that all of that will be coming from incremental spend on things like China, API development, distribution on Connected TV, et Cetera. Just trying to figure out if there is any reason why the core margin would deviate or if anything wouldn't improve considering that now next gen has already been developed and you're not spending as much money necessarily on the newer initiatives? Thank you.

Jeffrey Green

Analyst · use of Youssef Squali with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed with your question

Thank you for the question. So we didn't - I don't know that we ever said that this year would be material in terms of spend for China, but we did say that we would start to get - we started getting dollar flowing through it. So that was a real spent.

Youssef Squali

Analyst · use of Youssef Squali with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed with your question

I think that was real spend, I think that was…

Jeffrey Green

Analyst · use of Youssef Squali with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed with your question

Yes. That's exactly right. So I don't want it to be misinterpreted as being a material in the sense that it's moving the needle on our P&L. What I mean is we're going to go out of Beta and set of just putting ad campaign through. We're going to have real campaign going through it. Let me just explain a little bit about our strategy in China and why I think we're in such a strong position. Especially because we're doing something different than what I think most U.S. headquartered companies do when they go into China. Because most of those have historically gone in and said, I want to win Chinese consumers to my brand. And that's really hard to do if you're American Uber and there's a great Chinese alternative in DD. So but if you said you bring something new to the table, that's where the game is very different. And what we're doing is we're going to the biggest plans in the world and saying and of course with our agency. So going shoulder to shoulder with our agency saying, how can we help you solve the spent gap? Because if you're a high end fashion brand, it's not uncommon to see 60% of your purchases are done in China and 30% of your ad spend to be in China. And if you're a CPG, you also have a delta, but you just have a smaller one. So 12% and 6% or whatever. So we're trying to help solve that gap. And the way that you solve that is we go to the brands and say, let us help you put your first party data to work. And then we go to Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent and say, we're going to bring you incremental span. We're…

Youssef Squali

Analyst · use of Youssef Squali with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed with your question

Okay.

Paul Ross

Analyst · use of Youssef Squali with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed with your question

Yep. This is Paul. In regards to your margin question, so just remember that when we overperform on the topline and the vast majority of that drops down into adjusted EBITDA, and when we guided, last year we took a very similar approach. We guided to 29%. We came in at 33%, because we overperformed. We're guidance similarly, this year. We're guiding to 29%. We plan to invest heavily. And if there's over performance on the topline, you may see something similar happen with EBITDA above and beyond the 29%.

Youssef Squali

Analyst · use of Youssef Squali with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed with your question

Thank you, Jeff.

Jeffrey Green

Analyst · use of Youssef Squali with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed with your question

Sounds good. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Mark Zgutowicz with Rosenblatt Securities. Please proceed with your question?

Mark Zgutowicz

Analyst · Mark Zgutowicz with Rosenblatt Securities. Please proceed with your question

Thanks so much, Jeff. Congrats again, a really impressive results. Just to follow-up on a couple of questions as time mainland, China. I guess the question for me is just in terms of the data access there and, so what do you need from the BAT to provide you the same level of transparency in the measurement that's required from advertisers here in the states. And obviously importantly, do you think you'll, you'll ultimately get that from the BAT.

Jeffrey Green

Analyst · Mark Zgutowicz with Rosenblatt Securities. Please proceed with your question

Yes. So companies like Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent have had a benefit of learning from Google and Facebook in particular and the way that they've monetized that? And I think we done an amazing job of learning from them and they think about siloing their data, so that they never run the risk of it going out with also the request for us to help advertisers bring their data to the table. So there's actually clearer lines with Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent as there is with Google, Amazon and Facebook, which actually makes it much easier to have conversations about activating data, because on a given impression, either it's going to be monetized using their data on behalf of an advertiser or it's going to be monetized using the advertiser's data or third-party data through a company like that. And it's going to be either or just because you have to work harder to silo that data. But the same way that we are providing an anonymized ID to the world test that help us all have a common currency. In the world of mobile, that's way less important because of the way IDs work in mobile, where there is an anonymized device ID that get shared and because 70% or 80% of the monetization in those companies, and that's just because of the way consumers interact with Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent in China and just also the use and prevalence or ubiquity of mobile devices in China, almost all of it's over a mobile device. So we're going to get that ID on nearly every impression and then we'll either use our data or get some insight from third-party companies, but those will be a little more silos than they are in the other markets that we do business in. But it makes it clearer. So your question of, will we get out adequate levels of transparency? Will we have the ability to measure in the same way that we do in the rest of the world? The answer is yes. And in a lot of ways it will happen from the very beginning. I don't think we're going to have the same debates and an evolution that we did in the rest of the world. There's not that much controversy or questions about us, because they've learned from other markets as well as they're very clear on the way segment data so that they don't take unnecessary risks and that's going to help the market grow faster.

Mark Zgutowicz

Analyst · Mark Zgutowicz with Rosenblatt Securities. Please proceed with your question

Okay. That's helpful. And just to follow-on to that. So what's the gap in terms of you seeing sure that more material revenue from China? What will get us there, because obviously those three players control the vast majority of spend there, so just if you could sort of close that gap, it would be helpful?

Jeffrey Green

Analyst · Mark Zgutowicz with Rosenblatt Securities. Please proceed with your question

Yes. So part of the reason why I say it's going to take years for us to do that is because one, we have to rebuild our entire infrastructure there just because you have to be on the other side with Chinese firewall in order to transact in the milliseconds that we do everything on the rest of the world. So we've rebuilt our infrastructure and the Internet is routed in just slightly different way in China, which we've spent years already building around. So our investments to date had mostly solved that problem, but there is still some work to do. But then, we're in the business of building trust and as you point out, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent have a greater percentage of the market and Amazon, Facebook and Google do in the U.S., sort of their counterparts in the U.S. So it's really important for us to win trust and to prove that it's incremental. And so we're working hard to develop, crawl, walk, run situations with each of them. They're slightly different in each case. There are of course other big up incoming players that we're also talking to in China to develop close relationships. But we just want to be super clear about what the crawl is and do what we say and then go to the next step, and we could easily leapfrog our outside in strategy, for instance, and try to do something either inside or inside out, which is really what Facebook does in China. And while I do think at some point we'll do that in terms of inside out, which would be much easier for us and outside in. We think a huge opportunity is to help the world's biggest brands close that gap in China. And they need somebody from the outside to take their data in. And that's where I think we have more trust than any company in the world. So it's really about establishing trust and activating data and then also explaining to the brand how we take their data into China and then keep it safe. All of those things are just - there's a lot of moving parts to that. And it's going to take time and we're not going to throw away our opportunity by being short-term focus. So we'll continue to do what we've done, which is essentially include no numbers from China itself and until we've gotten out of that crawl phase and we have some visibility because we're happy to be patient.

Paul Ross

Analyst · Mark Zgutowicz with Rosenblatt Securities. Please proceed with your question

Thanks a lot, Mark.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Tom White with DA Davidson. Please proceed with your question.

Thomas White

Analyst · Tom White with DA Davidson. Please proceed with your question

Great. Thanks for taking my question. Jeff, you made a comment earlier about high CPMs for Connected TV inventory and we've heard some grumbling from some advertisers about that. Just curious whether you think that that's having any impact on advertiser demand? Could it be growing faster? CPMs came in a little bit and also, does it impact your pricing or kind of your fee structure for this inventory type? Is there any pressure maybe on your take rate because advertisers have to pay so much, pay up so much in terms of the pricing of the inventory.

Jeffrey Green

Analyst · Tom White with DA Davidson. Please proceed with your question

I love this question. Thank you. So I think there are two primary reasons why there's high CPMs and Connected TVs, one of them will last forever, and the other one is a short-term phenomenon. There's higher CPMs in CTV because it's better, because using data is better than sort of the spray and pray that traditional TV represented where you buy in bulk and you buy using really rudimentary data and there's not really any targeting or customization for individual households or user. So the fact that you can now layer on data and only show your ad to people that's relevant. I mean, just think of how many TV commercials you've seen for products you'll never buy. That way should and will go out of television and that does make CPMs go higher. And as a consumer, I'm so glad that that's happening because that's the only way that we can continue to get the premium content that all of us enjoyed, because the companies are just spending so much money to produce, what I think is currently like the golden age of television content. It's just amazing that we're all benefiting from the sort of land grab that companies like Netflix have instigated. But the second part of that is a short-term phenomenon, which will make CPMs come down a little bit, which is scarcity. So if your - some of those brands that we've just highlighted have moved spend away from YouTube in the last week. If your Hasbro or your epic games or Disney or McDonald's and you're trying to reach a more targeted audience or especially reach the next generation where people, 25 and younger who are developing brand affinity or millennials who are finally getting some strong buying power, spending power. But if…

Paul Ross

Analyst · Tom White with DA Davidson. Please proceed with your question

Thank Tom.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Mark Kelley with Nomura. Please proceed with your question.

Mark Kelley

Analyst · Mark Kelley with Nomura. Please proceed with your question

Great. Thanks very much. My question is a follow-up to the last one. Just thinking about scarcity of CTV inventory. We'd love to get your thoughts on the C3 limitations in terms of the kinds of media that media owners actually want to put in either on addressable TV, Connected TV, the limitations whereby, the end buyer, the advertiser has to show the same, ad unit basically to everyone watching whatever the program is to maintain that C3 rating. I guess I would love to get your view there. Does that have to change for Connected TV to really take off or am I not thinking about that the right way?

Jeffrey Green

Analyst · Mark Kelley with Nomura. Please proceed with your question

So I'm not convinced that C3is going to have any long-term effect. I think it a little bit of a speed bump. And then the reason why just the macro is really driven by that quid pro quo of the Internet, which is you see as an exchange for otherwise free content. That cost of content going up. And in general I think the big network, the traditional TV Company. So whether that Disney or Comcast and the NBC is in boxes and CVS may be see that the world. I think they'd look at Netflix and say we were 3, 4 5, 7 years behind and we've got to get a direct relationship with consumers and go as fast as we can and get as much demand as we possibly can. And they're racing to do that. I don't think p three is the long pole or the bottleneck and that's why maybe it's not even a speed bump just because we'll solve that in the same, at the same pace that we move over the content, make that on demand. But I think that that problem is going to solve it up as more and more content comes online and they find ways to get advertisers to get consumers to adopt their, their direct, whatever direct methodology they use to get content in front of consumers directly.

Mark Kelley

Analyst · Mark Kelley with Nomura. Please proceed with your question

So that the currency basically just needs to change. It's kind of the bottom line.

Jeffrey Green

Analyst · Mark Kelley with Nomura. Please proceed with your question

Yes. And the thing about the currency that is the most of measurement in traditional TV is not very good when compared to digital, just because we have so much more data. Like most of the TV has been bought and sold based on channel data where you just, put board and make phone calls and say, what'd you walk last week? And then you extrapolate that methodology isn't what powers the Internet. And even the companies is to do that have created a better methodologies for online. So I actually think that the measurement companies are the ones that have to change here at just because the Internet provide something that is so much better as it relates to data and measurement for television that they're the ones that are going to have to change.

Mark Kelley

Analyst · Mark Kelley with Nomura. Please proceed with your question

Great. Thanks Jeff.

Operator

Operator

Our final question comes from the line of Brian Schwartz with Oppenheimer. Please proceed with your question.

Brian Schwartz

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Please proceed with your question

Yes, thank you very much and congratulations on a great finish to the year. One question for Paul and one for Jeff. Paul, I was just wondering how material of an op left do you think they Connected TV segment can be for the business this year? Is there any way to pencil out some math or percentages on that? And then Jeff, I want to ask you on the international front, you talked about the acceleration in any changes behind that international acceleration? Is it just the maturation of the market or is it competitor challenges or is it more in your go to market efforts and with international? I do understand that it's still subscale and it's grown very fast right now. But looking longer-term, is there any reason that the international business won't have the same margin profile as the domestic business? Thanks.

Jeffrey Green

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Please proceed with your question

Paul you want to refer.

Paul Ross

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Please proceed with your question

Sure. So on the CTV market size question. I'd probably defer that to Jeff to talk about that in just a second. But in terms of investments in CTV, We're continuing to invest materially for that market. Jeff, do, you would have handled the rest.

Jeffrey Green

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Please proceed with your question

Yes. So on the question about the materiality of CTV, so we don't break it out yet and it's all because of we have never broken out of channel and we think that the core of our value prop is to offer everything. So in other words, we want people to come by their display there. We want them to buy their Connected TV. We want them to buy their audio. We want them to buy their native ads. And most of our clients use all of those. And a huge part of our value prop is to talk about reaching frequency across all of them. So while CTV is the most exciting channel that we've ever seen, probably ever, we'll see. I don't know that it would help any of us to break that out in terms of showing the trends of our overall business. And it also becomes very difficult for us to count in the sense of like premium content on mobile video. We've often had this challenge of like is mobile, video mobile, is it video, do we counted in both? And we are constantly trying to explain the way that we measure. So anyway, the short-term, not any claims to break that out. As it relates to international and all of our spend outside of the United States, as you pointed out, it's growing much faster than the U.S. is that a byproduct of us having different go-to-market. And do we expect that to continue. So first I think there's a gap, which is if you look at our revenue, 86% of it comes from the U.S., but if you look at the global advertising pie, only about a third of global advertising spend is done in the United States, two-thirds or more. It happens…

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of our question-and-answer session, as well as today's conference call. We thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

Jeffrey Green

Analyst · Susquehanna. Please proceed with your question

Thank you.