Attached files
UNITED STATES
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Washington, D.C. 20549
__________________
FORM 10-K
__________________
(Mark One)
x ANNUAL REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934
For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2014
OR
o TRANSITION REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934
For the transition period from _____________ to _____________
Commission File Number: 001-36384
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THE RUBICON PROJECT, INC.
(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)
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Delaware | 20-8881738 | |
(State or other jurisdiction of Incorporation or organization) | (I.R.S. Employer Identification No.) | |
12181 Bluff Creek Drive, 4th Floor | ||
Los Angeles, CA 90094 | ||
(Address of principal executive offices, including zip code) | ||
Registrant’s telephone number, including area code: | ||
(310) 207-0272 | ||
Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act: | ||
Title of each class | Name of each exchange on which registered | |
Common Stock, $0.00001 par value | New York Stock Exchange | |
Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act: | ||
None | ||
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Indicate by check mark if the registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act. Yes ¨ No x
Indicate by check mark if the registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Exchange Act. Yes ¨ No x
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days. Yes x No ¨
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically and posted on its corporate Web site, if any, every Interactive Data File required to be submitted and posted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§232.405 if this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit and post such files). Yes x No ¨
Indicate by check mark if disclosure of delinquent filers pursuant to Item 405 of Regulation S-K (§229.405 of this chapter) is not contained herein, and will not be contained, to the best of the registrant's knowledge, in definitive proxy or information statements incorporated by reference in Part III of this Form 10-K or any amendment to this Form 10-K. ¨
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer or a smaller reporting company. See definition of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer” and “smaller reporting company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.
Large accelerated filer ¨ | Accelerated filer ¨ | |
Non-accelerated filer x (Do not check if a smaller reporting company) | Smaller reporting company ¨ | |
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act). o Yes x No
As of June 30, 2014, the aggregate market value of shares held by non-affiliates of the registrant (based on the closing sales price of such shares on the New York Stock Exchange on June 30, 2014) was approximately $211.7 million.
Indicate the number of shares outstanding of each of the issuer’s classes of common stock, as of the latest practicable date.
Class | Outstanding as of February 27, 2015 | |
Common Stock, $0.00001 par value | 37,750,998 | |
DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE
Portions of the registrant's Proxy Statement for the 2015 Annual Meeting of Stockholders are incorporated herein by reference in Part III of this Annual Report on Form 10-K to the extent stated herein. Such proxy statement will be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission within 120 days of the registrant's fiscal year ended December 31, 2014.
THE RUBICON PROJECT, INC.
FORM 10-K
FOR THE FISCAL YEAR ENDED DECEMBER 31, 2014
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page No. | ||
Special Note About Forward-Looking Statements | ||
Part I | ||
Item 1. | Business | |
Item 1A. | Risk Factors | |
Item 1B. | Unresolved Staff Comments | |
Item 2. | Properties | |
Item 3. | Legal Proceedings | |
Item 4. | Mine Safety Disclosures | |
Part II | ||
Item 5. | Market for Registrant's Common Equity, Related Stockholder Matters and Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities | |
Item 6. | Selected Financial Data | |
Item 7. | Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations | |
Item 7A. | Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk | |
Item 8. | Financial Statements and Supplementary Data | |
Item 9. | Changes in and Disagreements with Accountants on Accounting and Financial Disclosure | |
Item 9A. | Controls and Procedures | |
Item 9B. | Other Information | |
Part III | ||
Item 10. | Directors, Executive Officers and Corporate Governance | |
Item 11. | Executive Compensation | |
Item 12. | Security Ownership of Certain Beneficial Owners and Management and Related Stockholder Matters | |
Item 13. | Certain Relationships and Related Transactions, and Director Independence | |
Item 14. | Principal Accounting Fees and Services | |
Part IV | ||
Item 15. | Exhibits and Financial Statement Schedules | |
Signatures | ||
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SPECIAL NOTE ABOUT FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS
This Annual Report on Form 10-K contains forward-looking statements, including statements based upon or relating to our expectations, assumptions, estimates, and projections. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terms such as “may,” “might,” “will,” “objective,” “intend,” “should,” “could,” “can,” “would,” “expect,” “believe,” “design,” “anticipate,” “estimate,” “predict,” “potential,” “plan” or the negative of these terms, and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements may include, but are not limited to, statements concerning our anticipated performance, including revenue, margin, cash flow, balance sheet, and profit expectations; development of our technology; introduction of new offerings; scope and duration of client relationships; business mix; sales growth; client utilization of our offerings; market conditions and opportunities; and operational measures including managed revenue, paid impressions, average CPM, and take rate; and factors that could affect these and other aspects of our business. These statements are not guarantees of future performance; they reflect our current views with respect to future events and are based on assumptions and estimates and subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from expectations or results projected or implied by forward-looking statements. These risks include, but are not limited to:
• | our ability to grow rapidly and to manage our growth effectively; |
• | our ability to develop innovative new technologies and remain a market leader; |
• | our ability to attract and retain buyers and sellers and increase our business with them; |
• | the freedom of buyers and sellers to direct their spending and inventory to competing sources of inventory and demand; |
• | our ability to use our solution to purchase and sell higher value advertising and to expand the use of our solution by buyers and sellers utilizing evolving digital media platforms; |
• | our ability to introduce new solutions and bring them to market in a timely manner; |
• | uncertainty of our estimates and expectations associated with new offerings, including private marketplace, mobile, bidding, and solutions; |
• | our ability to maintain a supply of advertising inventory from sellers; |
• | our limited operating history and history of losses; |
• | our ability to continue to expand into new geographic markets; |
• | the effects of increased competition in our market and our ability to compete effectively and to maintain our pricing and take rate; |
• | potential adverse effects of malicious activity such as fraudulent inventory and malware; |
• | the effects of seasonal trends on our results of operations; |
• | costs associated with defending intellectual property infringement and other claims; |
• | our ability to attract and retain qualified employees and key personnel; |
• | our ability to consummate future acquisitions of or investments in complementary companies or technologies; |
• | our ability to comply with, and the effect on our business of, evolving legal standards and regulations, particularly concerning data protection and consumer privacy; and |
• | our ability to develop and maintain our corporate infrastructure, including our finance and information technology systems and controls. |
We discuss many of these risks in Item 1A of this Annual Report on Form 10-K in greater detail under the heading “Risk Factors” and in other filings we make from time to time with the SEC. Also, these forward-looking statements represent our estimates and assumptions only as of the date of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Unless required by federal securities laws, we assume no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements, or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from those anticipated, to reflect circumstances or events that occur after the statements are made. Without limiting the foregoing, we generally give guidance only in connection with quarterly and annual earnings announcements, without interim updates, and we may appear at industry conferences or make other public statements without disclosing material nonpublic information in our possession. Given these uncertainties, investors should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements.
Investors should read this Annual Report on Form 10-K and the documents that we reference in this report and have filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission completely and with the understanding that our actual future results may be materially different from what we expect. We qualify all of our forward-looking statements by these cautionary statements.
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PART I
Item 1. Business Overview
We are a technology company on a mission to automate the buying and selling of advertising. Our Advertising Automation Cloud is a highly scalable platform that provides leading user reach and a marketplace for the real time trading of digital advertising between buyers and sellers. Through the speed and big data analytics of our algorithm-based solution, we have transformed the cumbersome, complex process of direct buying and selling of digital advertising into a seamless automated process that optimizes results for both buyers and sellers. Buyers of digital advertising use our platform to reach approximately 600 million Internet users globally on some of the world’s leading sellers’ websites and applications. Sellers of digital advertising use our platform to maximize revenue from advertising, decrease costs and protect their brands and user experience, while accessing a global market of buyers representing top advertiser brands around the world. We believe the benefits we provide to both buyers and sellers, and the time and effort spent by both buyers and sellers to integrate with our platform and associated applications give us a critical position in the digital advertising ecosystem. The Company is a Delaware corporation established in 2007. The Company is headquartered in Los Angeles, California.
Our Advertising Automation Cloud features applications for digital advertising sellers, including websites, mobile applications and other digital media properties, to sell their advertising inventory; applications for buyers, including advertisers, agencies, agency trading desks, or ATDs, demand side platforms, or DSPs, and ad networks, to buy advertising inventory; and a marketplace over which such transactions are executed. Together, these features power and optimize a comprehensive, transparent, and independent advertising marketplace that brings buyers and sellers together and facilitates intelligent decision-making and automated transaction execution for the advertising inventory we manage on our platform. Our Advertising Automation Cloud incorporates proprietary machine-learning algorithms, sophisticated data processing, high-volume storage, detailed analytics capabilities, and a distributed infrastructure. We analyze billions of data points in real time to enable our solution to make approximately 300 data-driven decisions per transaction in milliseconds, and to execute up to 3.5 million peak queries per second, and 5 trillion bid requests per month. Since 2012, we have processed approximately 100 trillion bid requests. We believe we help increase the volume and effectiveness of advertising, increasing revenue for sellers and improving return on advertising investment for buyers.
We have direct relationships built on technical integration with our sellers, including over 50% of the U.S. comScore 100, which is a list of the top U.S. digital sellers by user reach. We believe that our direct relationships and integrations with sellers differentiate us from many other participants in the advertising ecosystem, and make us a vital participant in the digital advertising industry. Our integration of sellers into our platform gives sellers the ability to monetize a full variety and volume of inventory. At the same time, buyers leverage our platform to manage their advertising spending, simplify order management and campaign tracking, obtain actionable insights into audiences for their advertising and access impression-level purchasing from hundreds of sellers. We believe buyers need our platform because of our powerful solution and our direct relationships and integrations with some of the world’s largest sellers. Our solution is constantly self-optimizing based on our ability to analyze and learn from vast volumes of data. The additional data we obtain from the volume of transactions on our platform help make our machine-learning algorithms more intelligent, leading to higher quality matching between buyers and sellers, better return on investment for buyers and higher revenue for sellers. As a result of that high-quality matching, we attract even more sellers, which in turn attracts more buyers and vice versa. We believe this self-reinforcing dynamic creates a strong platform for growth.
In 2014, we expanded our orders automation technology and expanded our capabilities in the automated guaranteed market with the acquisition of two companies, iSocket, Inc., or iSocket, and Shiny Inc, or Shiny. The addition of iSocket and Shiny provides additional solutions to automate the buying and selling of direct-sold, guaranteed deals, which according to eMarketer, is a market that is forecasted to surpass $8 billion in the U.S. alone by 2016. When combined with our existing orders technology, these acquisitions further extend our leadership position, and have helped us create a fully integrated solution for automating, streamlining, and managing the processes of direct buying and selling of guaranteed and non-guaranteed advertising.
For the year ended December 31, 2014 our revenue was $125.3 million, a 49% increase over the same period in 2013. We recorded a net loss of $18.7 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $19.1 million for the year ended December 31, 2014, compared with a net loss of $9.2 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $11.2 million for the year ended December 31, 2013. In 2013, our revenue was $83.8 million, a 47% increase over 2012. We recorded a net loss of $2.4 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $9.2 million in 2012. For information on how we compute Adjusted EBITDA, and a reconciliation of Adjusted EBITDA to net loss on the basis of accounting principles generally accepted in the United States, or GAAP, please refer to Item 6 “Selected Financial Data.”
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Advertising spending transacted on our platform has grown significantly. Managed revenue is an operational measure that represents this advertising spending. Managed revenue would represent our revenue if we were to record our revenue on a gross basis instead of a net basis. Managed revenue does not represent revenue reported on a GAAP basis. We review managed revenue for internal management purposes to assess market share and scale and to compare our performance to others in our industry that report revenue on a gross basis. Our managed revenue was $667.8 million in 2014, which represents a 38% increase over managed revenue of $485.1 million in 2013, and a 97% increase over managed revenue of $338.9 million in 2012.
Our net loss and Adjusted EBITDA will be impacted by the rate at which our revenue increases, seasonality, amount and the timing of our investments in our operations.
Substantially all of our revenue is U.S. revenue, determined based on the location of our legal entity that is a party to the relevant transaction.
Our Industry
Shift Towards Digital Advertising
The advertising industry is in the midst of a decades-long shift from advertising in analog and print media, such as newspapers, magazines, broadcast radio and television, to digital advertising. Content is increasingly delivered to users over the Internet, mobile networks and digital television, creating an opportunity for buyers to target audiences more accurately and deliver more relevant advertising in real time on multiple screens. Buyers are able to utilize various technologies to analyze data relating to return on investment, demographics, user behavior, and other attributes that enable them to create and deliver targeted advertisements to users that help achieve specific advertising goals. As a result, digital advertising has the potential to drive return on advertising investment significantly higher than print, broadcast radio and television. Technological advances are also enabling sellers to sell their inventory on an impression-by-impression basis, as well as in bulk, making it easier for sellers to better optimize and expand the monetization of their inventory.
Development of a Complex Digital Advertising Ecosystem Comprising a Large Number of Buyers, Sellers and Other Participants
In the early stages of the digital advertising market, buyers and sellers of inventory transacted directly with one another or through a small number of intermediaries. As Internet usage increased and the scale of sellers and data expanded, it became increasingly difficult for buyers to effectively target users and for sellers to effectively monetize their inventory. To address these challenges, buyers and sellers of inventory have come to rely on an ecosystem of multiple technology and service providers, described below.
Buyers: At one end of the ecosystem, spending begins with advertisers, who execute digital advertising campaigns directly or through various intermediaries, including:
• | Advertisers: Companies marketing their brands, products and services through advertising campaigns. |
• | Agencies: Advertising holding companies and their owned agencies that plan and execute advertising campaigns for their commercial clients. |
Agency trading desks, or ATDs: Typically, agencies plan and execute media purchases by interacting with DSPs through their own in-house ATDs. Advertising agencies often centralize their digital advertising expertise into an ATD in order to better optimize advertiser campaigns and digital media purchases.
• | Demand side platforms, or DSPs: There are many DSPs in the digital advertising industry and they generally use real-time bidding, or RTB, to purchase advertising inventory from sellers on an automated, impression-by-impression basis. DSPs may earn revenue through arbitrage, like ad networks, or they may charge fees for their services. |
• | Ad networks: There are hundreds of ad networks that seek to optimize campaigns to achieve advertiser and agency goals. Ad networks may arbitrage by purchasing advertising inventory from sellers and then selling it to advertisers at higher prices. Ad networks may be broad and cover more than one industry or cover various niche areas, such as a specific industry like retail. |
Sellers: At the other end of the ecosystem, sellers create websites and applications that contain viewable space for advertisements, or impressions, that can be delivered to users as they visit and navigate through websites, channels and applications across different platforms, such as desktop, mobile devices, satellite, cable, smart TV, or set-top boxes. These impressions can be sold to buyers, either in advance via manual or automated direct sales efforts, or in real time on an impression-by-impression basis via a third party through the digital advertising ecosystem.
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Other Sell-Side Participants: Sellers may use additional sell-side representatives in connecting with buyers:
• | Supply side platforms, or SSPs: Sellers often sell their advertising inventory through a third party SSP, which is a platform that helps sellers offer and optimize their advertising inventory in real time. |
• | Ad servers: Sellers use ad servers to display advertisements received from buyers and to track the delivery of advertisements to users. Typically these platforms can easily integrate with SSPs and act as the last link in the chain between buyers and Internet users. |
Marketplace: Buyers and sellers may sometimes come together through a marketplace, which matches and presents available impressions to buyers. Once the impression has been matched, the marketplace enables the advertisement to be served and may manage the financial aspects of the transaction. Marketplaces can enable increased liquidity and transparency in transactions between buyers and sellers.
Costs, Inefficiencies and Lack of Transparency Inherent in Existing Ecosystem
This ecosystem of various buyers, sellers and other intermediaries has helped buyers access digital media, but it has fallen short of truly enabling them to take advantage of the potential of digital advertising and has led to a system that is highly complex and inefficient. We believe, based on industry research, that due to the complex ecosystem of multiple players that has developed to accommodate both buyers and sellers, as little as $0.40 of every dollar spent by an advertiser may ultimately be realized by the seller.
Complicated and Manual Workflow for Direct Buying and Selling of Digital Advertising
Despite significant technological advances made with respect to delivery of digital advertising, the process of planning and executing a digital advertising campaign directly remains cumbersome. Before an advertisement can be delivered to a seller, an advertiser and its agency typically undergo a highly manual, multi-step and complicated order process. The internal workflow of selling inventory is similarly complex for sellers. These manual and complicated workflows for a typical digital display order process lead to inefficiencies, wasted dollars for sellers and missed opportunities for buyers to reach users. The typical order process involves close to a dozen manual steps to match an advertiser with a seller. According to NextMark, it can cost a buyer up to $40,000 and 480 man-hours to plan and execute a $500,000 advertising campaign.
Due to the size and complexity of the advertising ecosystem and purchasing process, manual processes can no longer effectively optimize or manage digital advertising. In addition, both buyers and sellers are demanding more transparency, better controls and more relevant insights from their advertising purchases and sales. This has created a need to automate the digital advertising industry and to simplify the process of buying and selling advertising.
Digital Advertising is Complex and Challenging to Automate
A number of factors make digital advertising complex and challenging to automate:
• | Perishable Inventory. An Internet user’s visit to a website or application creates a unique opportunity to reach the user by inserting advertisements into one or more of the impressions designed into the website or application. In order to generate revenue for a seller these impressions must be filled before the page content loads. The inventory of available impressions is highly perishable due to the fact that each impression must be valued, auctioned, successfully purchased, and the advertisement must be delivered in the split second between the time a user types in a web-address or is redirected to a website or application and the time the page is loaded. Buyers and sellers need a solution that can analyze and execute on their objectives in an automated fashion at virtually instantaneous speed, or real time. |
• | Complex Impression-Level Matching. Sellers aim to sell impressions to maximize revenue, while enhancing the users’ experience and preserving the sellers’ brand. Buyers wish to purchase impression-level inventory to maximize targeting of specific audiences and return on investment for their advertising spending. As a result of this dynamic, there is a need for a technology solution that can match buyer and seller objectives at a large scale to optimize the delivery of advertising on an impression-by-impression basis. |
• | Large Multi-Variate Datasets. Trillions of data points relating to browsing behavior, geographic information, user preferences, engagement with an advertisement, and effectiveness of an advertisement are created as users visit sellers’ websites and applications. Each piece of data represents a valuable piece of information that can facilitate and improve current and subsequent targeting and monetization of impressions. However, the volume of data available is so large that it is difficult for buyers and sellers to effectively manage the information flow to extract maximum value from the data. As a result, buyers and sellers need a solution capable of analyzing, processing, and interpreting large amounts of data and executing buy and sell orders informed by such data, all in real time. |
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• | Fragmented Buyer and Seller Base. In the digital advertising industry, there is an enormous variety of buyers, as well as an enormous number of sellers who have a wide variety of advertising inventory available for sale. Historically, this fragmentation has been disadvantageous for sellers, because they could not efficiently transact with many buyers to maximize revenue due to manual inefficiencies. The fragmentation of the seller base makes it very difficult for buyers to make large volume buys safely and securely to meet their investment objectives. This enormous variety of buyers and sellers has created a need for a solution that is capable of seamlessly connecting a highly fragmented global buyer and seller base. |
• | Brand Security and User Experience Concerns. Buyers are concerned about being associated with content they consider inappropriate, competitive, or inconsistent with their advertising themes. Sellers want to prevent advertisements that are inappropriate, competitively sensitive or otherwise do not comport with their brand image from appearing on their websites or applications. As sellers try to make their inventory available to a wider group of buyers, and buyers extend their reach in pursuit of target audiences, the importance of brand security increases for both buyers and sellers. Both buyers and sellers need a solution that is capable of following specified rules to maintain brand integrity and deliver relevant advertisements that create a positive user experience, while efficiently executing a large volume of transactions. |
• | Large and Highly Unpredictable Traffic Volumes. The scale of user traffic and the dollar value of digital advertisements is difficult to manage efficiently. A large seller may have tens of millions of users per month, creating hundreds of millions of monthly impressions. The volume of traffic for any given seller is extremely difficult to predict. Popular stories, as an example, create spikes in traffic on news websites for a period of time. As a result, sellers need a platform that can effectively respond to and monetize inventory during unpredictable spikes in volumes. |
• | Lack of Standardized Ad Formats and Data. An available advertising impression can vary based on a number of factors, such as seller, ad format, screen size, pricing mechanism, content type, and audience demographic. It is challenging for buyers to efficiently evaluate and bid on trillions of impressions that are based on hundreds of ad formats in the context of millions of highly customized data fields. As a result, buyers and sellers require a platform that can, on a real time basis, match a large variety of available advertising impressions with those potential buyers. |
Rubicon Project: Our Advertising Automation Cloud Enables the Digital Advertising Marketplace
Rubicon Project, Inc., or Rubicon Project, was founded to address the challenges associated with the digital advertising ecosystem and to enable a marketplace where buyers and sellers can transact in an efficient and transparent manner. To achieve this, we have created our Advertising Automation Cloud.
Our Advertising Automation Cloud is a technology platform that creates and powers a marketplace for buyers and sellers to readily buy and sell advertising. Our solution provides a critical connection between buyers and sellers and allows large numbers of buyers and sellers to transact on an automated basis. Buyers can direct their spending towards the impressions that are of most value to them based on demographics, pricing, timing, and other targeting objectives. Sellers can optimize the amount of revenue per impression, while adhering to their own specific rules around advertising that is permissible on their websites and applications. Our platform enables the real time exchange of high volumes of information in a transparent marketplace that in turn enables sellers to match buyers’ advertising campaigns with their available advertising inventory.
Sellers have a broad spectrum of advertising inventory available for sale, ranging from premium inventory located on their homepages, to secondary placements, which are generally located on pages deeper within their websites or applications. Sellers may also have different versions of their websites and applications optimized for a variety of devices, from computers to tablets to smartphones, which also increases the variety of advertising inventory available for sale. As referenced in the illustration below, our Advertising Automation Cloud optimizes the sale and purchase of advertising across a full spectrum of inventory for all types of buyers and sellers and across many devices.
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Our solution enables buyers and sellers to transact through our comprehensive automation offerings:
Orders: Guaranteed—automates one-to-one guaranteed inventory purchases between buyers and sellers.
Orders: Non-Guaranteed—automates one-to-one non-guaranteed orders arranged directly between specific buyers and sellers on the platform.
Real Time Bidding—enables the sale and purchase of inventory on an impression-by-impression basis. Buyers are able to leverage our platform to select individual impressions that meet their targeting criteria and sellers are able to leverage our platform to auction their inventory on an impression-by-impression basis to optimize revenue.
Static Bidding—enables buyers to provide static or pre-set bids, to buy targeted inventory in bulk, while providing additional monetization for sellers of their lower value inventory that they may not otherwise be able to sell.
Our solution integrates RTB, static bid and orders offerings into a unified auction across all types of buyers, while matching available impressions with advertisements based upon various criteria. In a typical RTB transaction, the following steps occur within milliseconds :
• | A user visits a website or application, creating an available impression from the seller’s inventory. |
• | Our algorithms profile the impression, including the location of the website or application, advertisement size, advertising placement, browser and operating system, and additional data points such as user location and preferences. |
• | Using the impression profile and historical bidding activity, we send bid requests for participation in the auction to selected bidders most likely to respond. |
• | Simultaneously, the Advertising Automation Cloud reviews static bids currently in the system to determine which bids are eligible and match the available impression. |
• | Bid responses are received from bidders interested in purchasing the impression, including information on price, buyer, and type of advertisement. |
• | All advertisements are reviewed by our Advertising Automation Cloud for quality, security, conformity to seller requirements and conflicts with seller restrictions, to determine if they are eligible to win the impression. |
• | Eligible bids are then checked against rules set by sellers to ensure they meet the applicable criteria. |
• | Once all validations have been executed, remaining bids are compared and generally the highest qualifying bidder wins the impression. |
• | The winning advertisement is served into the impression and delivered to the user |
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By accommodating all types of digital advertising inventory, our solution provides greater coverage of a seller’s websites and applications and attracts all types of buyers, thereby giving buyers the ability to fulfill their audience needs in a more cost-effective manner and optimizing the price at which sellers’ inventory is sold. In addition, our orders integrations further our access to premium inventory not historically available to us, because it was sold through manual efforts.
Big Data Analytics and Machine-Learning Algorithms
A core aspect of our value proposition is our big data and machine-learning platform that is able to discover unique insights from our massive data repositories containing proprietary information on trillions of bid requests and served advertisements. Our systems collect and analyze non-personally identifiable information such as pricing of advertisements, historical clearing prices, bid responses, what types of ads are allowed on a particular website, which sellers’ websites a buyer prefers, what ad formats are available to be served, advertisement size and location, where a user is located, which users a buyer wants to target, how many ads the user has seen, browser or device information, and sellers’ proprietary data about users. We have developed proprietary machine-learning algorithms that analyze billions of these data points to enable our solution to make approximately 300 real time data-driven decisions per transaction and to execute approximately 5 trillion bid requests per month.
Dual Network Effects Drive an Efficient and Self-Optimizing Marketplace
We bring value to both buyers and sellers through the dual network effects created by our solution—large volumes of data lead to better matching, which attracts more buyers and sellers, leading to more data. We have one of the largest digital advertising data repositories in the world, which puts us in a unique position to develop differentiated insights to help both buyers and sellers. Our solution is constantly self-optimizing based on our ability to analyze and learn from vast volumes of data. As our Advertising Automation Cloud processes more volume on our automated platform in the form of bid requests, user visits, events and transactions, we accumulate more data. This additional data helps make our machine-learning algorithms more intelligent and this leads to higher-quality matching between buyers and sellers, leading to better return on investment for buyers and higher revenue for sellers. As a result of that high-quality matching, we attract even more sellers, which in turn attracts more buyers and vice versa. We believe this self-reinforcing dynamic creates a strong platform for growth.
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Critical Position in Digital Advertising Ecosystem
Our Advertising Automation Cloud and the applications we provide for buyers and sellers are a critical element of the digital advertising ecosystem. We have direct relationships and integrations with sellers of inventory. In order to maximize the monetization of their advertising inventory through our platform, sellers integrate with our seller applications, train their teams to use our platform for planning and executing campaigns, and automate their workflow to leverage our platform. We believe that there are few market participants that are directly integrated with sellers in a way that allows sellers to make a full range and volume of their advertising inventory readily available in the marketplace. Sellers use our platform to access actionable insights from the data we have amassed and to consolidate and compile payments and billing. The selling, planning, training integration, and optimization period for each seller requires an investment of time and effort. Once integrated, we believe sellers would experience high switching costs to move large volumes of their inventory to a new platform, likely lost monetization while new algorithms relearn data characteristics, and may require multiple platforms to replace our comprehensive solution. At the same time, buyers leverage our platform to manage their advertising spending, simplify order management and campaign tracking, attain actionable insights, and get access to impression level purchasing from hundreds of sellers. We believe that buyers need our platform to take advantage of our direct relationships and integrations with some of the world’s largest sellers. The benefits we provide to both buyers and sellers, and the time and effort spent by both buyers and sellers to integrate with our applications, give Rubicon Project a critical position in the digital advertising ecosystem. As a result, we have historically been successful in growing our seller base.
Platform Applications
To enhance the value our Advertising Automation Cloud brings to the marketplace, we offer a number of applications to address the critical needs of buyers and sellers:
Applications for Sellers. We have direct relationships and integrations with the sellers on our platform. Our user interface offers key time savings features and granular reporting and analytics capabilities that help sellers optimize the use of our platform to fit their needs. Our solution includes applications to help them increase their digital advertising revenue, reduce costs, protect their brands and user experience, and reach more buyers efficiently to increase digital advertising revenue by monetizing their full variety and volume of inventory.
Sellers realize the following benefits from our platform:
• | Maximized Revenue for a Broad Range of Digital Advertising Inventory Without Volume or Geographic Constraints. We provide applications that help a seller monetize a broad base of advertising inventory with virtually no constraints on the type or volume of inventory that can be sold or the number or location of potential buyers. While offering to take a wide variety and volume of inventory, we are also able to process it effectively, both from a speed perspective and from a price optimization standpoint. |
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• | Automated Sales with Leading Buyers Via RTB, Static Bidding, and Orders. Through our solution, sellers gain instant access to the world’s largest automated digital advertising buyers, including approximately 400 DSPs and ad networks. Our platform offers sellers significant flexibility by enabling them to sell their advertising inventory in an automated fashion on an impression-by-impression basis, such as with RTB, in bulk, or in orders pursuant to arrangements directly between the seller and the buyer. |
• | Integrated Solution for Digital Advertising Needs. We provide sellers with a single web-based interface which serves as their central location to manage, analyze and maximize digital advertising spending from hundreds of different buyers via orders, RTB or static bidding. This centralized view allows sellers to cost-effectively optimize monetization, control workflow, run analytics, and perform other critical functions. Our solution provides monetization for most inventory placements (orders, RTB, and static bidding), advertising units (video, native, and display), and platforms (desktop and mobile). |
• | Significantly Streamlined Sales, Operations, and Finance Workflow. Our platform streamlines the management of digital advertisement sales by aggregating demand and providing a suite of software applications that automate the process of making inventory available for sale. Our expansive marketplace allows sellers to connect quickly and efficiently with tens of thousands of brands. Additionally, we provide a web interface that transforms time consuming and manual order entry and processing, across orders, RTB, or static bidding, into an automated process. |
• | Security for Brand and User Experience. Our platform is designed to ensure that advertisements shown on a seller website or application conform to the seller’s guidelines, which specify what advertisers, type of product, or type of advertisement may not be shown on the seller’s website or application. Our systems scan all advertisements to verify, in real time, that each advertisement is appropriate for the seller and conforms to our platform-wide advertising quality requirements. |
• | Advanced Reporting and Analytics and Actionable Insights. We have developed a robust set of reporting features that sellers can access and use to analyze the vast array of data we collect for them. We provide sellers with actionable insight in order to leverage that data. Using our analytics, sellers can readily gather impression data, yield optimization data, brand security data and pricing data needed to manage their digital business effectively. |
• | Consolidated Payments and Transparent Tracking and Billing System. We provide consolidated billing and collection for sellers who would otherwise be required to dedicate additional resources to cost-effectively manage financial relationships with a large base of buyers. |
Applications for Buyers. Buyers leverage our applications to access a large audience and to purchase advertising inventory based on their key demographic, economic, and timing criteria. These applications help streamline a buyer’s purchasing operations, increase the efficiency of its spending and the effectiveness of its advertising campaigns. Buyers can execute highly automated campaigns and take advantage of unique targeting data and optimization technology that is provided by our platform. Buyers are also able to use unified reporting and analytics through our buyer-user interface that has been designed to specifically address buyer preferences.
Buyers realize the following benefits from our platform:
• | Direct Access to a Global Audience and Hundreds of Premium Sellers. By leveraging our platform, buyers can reach approximately 600 million Internet users globally, including over 50% of the U.S. comScore 100 sellers. Furthermore, unlike many organizations in the digital advertising industry, we have direct relationships with sellers and can enable buyers to circumvent a multistep, expensive, and inefficient process to connect to the seller. |
• | Flexible Access to Inventory. Our platform allows buyers to purchase advertising inventory in their preferred manner, whether by RTB, static bidding, or orders. Our solution also has the flexibility to allow buyers to integrate their purchases on our platform through their existing buying technologies or to buy directly through our platform. |
• | Optimized Return on Investment by Consolidating Spending on One Platform. By concentrating more of their spending on our platform, buyers can construct a larger data set specific to our platform, which results in superior targeting and more effective campaigns over time. They also benefit from our machine-learning algorithms, which are constantly analyzing their data in order to improve the effectiveness of their campaigns. Our solution provides access to most inventory placements (orders, RTB, and static bidding), advertising units (video, native, and display), and platforms (desktop and mobile). |
• | Simplified Order Management and Campaign Tracking. By eliminating most manual steps, our applications enable buyers to efficiently manage their digital campaigns and significantly reduce the time it would otherwise take to effectively execute their digital advertising programs. |
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• | Transparency and Control Over Advertising Spending. Our platform is designed to be transparent and let buyers know and control where their dollars are being spent. Buyers can easily navigate through our interface to choose the list of sellers they want to purchase inventory from and see an indicative price range that they should expect to pay. |
• | Brand Security. Our suite of brand-security technologies and premium seller base ensure buyers that their advertisements will appear in an environment they have pre-approved. |
• | Inventory Quality. We provide systems and processes to detect and minimize questionable inventory, such as non-human traffic. |
Our Market Opportunity
We believe that important trends greatly enhance our market opportunity, namely the shift in advertising spending to digital advertising, the move towards automation, and the convergence of media across multiple channels.
Rapid Growth in Digital Advertising Spending
While media consumption and time spent by consumers have shifted relatively quickly from television, broadcast radio, and print to Internet, digital television, and mobile devices, the shift in advertising spending from analog and print to digital has lagged to date. This is consistent with historical patterns, in which audience adoption of new platforms has preceded the migration of advertiser spending, with that gap decreasing over time. The rapid growth in digital media consumption has driven growth in digital advertising spending, which is growing at a significantly faster rate than advertising spending on analog and print media. Furthermore, we believe that there will be continued expansion of digital advertising as advertising spending “catches up” to time spent on the Internet and mobile devices. According to the PwC Entertainment and Media Global Outlook: 2014-2018, display, mobile and video digital advertising are forecasted to grow from approximately $62 billion in 2014 to $100 billion in 2018, a 13% compounded annual growth rate, while television advertising is forecasted to grow from approximately $174 billion in 2014 to $215 billion in 2018, a 5% compounded annual growth rate. The continued growth in overall advertisement spending, and the shift in that spending to digital media to keep up with the migration of consumers, yield significant additional opportunities to monetize Internet and mobile traffic.
Increasing Demand for Automation and Real Time Purchase and Sale of Advertising
According to Magna Global (September 2014), the global RTB market will grow from $9.2 billion in 2014 to $28.9 billion by 2018, a compounded annual growth rate of 33%. RTB is just one aspect of advertising automation; other forms of advertising transactions, such as orders and static bids, can also benefit significantly from automation.
Trend Towards Automation of Analog and Print Advertising Markets
Over time, we also expect analog and print advertising markets to automate, and we view our long-term mission, and opportunity, as the automation of the buying and selling of all advertising. We believe buyers want to be able to reach users across multiple channels and to have a platform that can unify their advertising spending. Consumption patterns for television are changing, with viewers migrating to digital platforms and using multiple devices to view video programming. According to comScore, television viewership is increasingly moving to the Internet, with 45% of 18-34 year olds watching television via the Internet, along with 29% of 35-54 year olds and 17% of the 55+ age group (comScore, "The US Total Video Report," Oct 14, 2014). At the same time, as more content is being delivered to users digitally, television and Internet content are beginning to converge, blurring the historical distinctions between analog and print media and digital media, and requiring buyers to consider their advertising strategies over multiple media. We believe these trends give us the opportunity to automate a portion of the larger advertising market.
The need for automation of advertising will grow as complexity increases and as digital media continues to converge with analog and print media. While the market we serve today is the digital advertising market, we expect to be able to leverage our unique marketplace and technology to ultimately automate all of these markets and enhance the experience of buyers and sellers across the entire advertising ecosystem.
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Competitive Strengths
We believe the following key strengths differentiate us from our competitors and strategically position us within the digital advertising marketplace:
• | Technology Platform with Differentiated Scalability and Real-Time Processing Speed. Our real-time Advertising Automation Cloud serves buyers and sellers by providing optimal execution of media trades. We have designed and deployed our proprietary high-volume transaction processing hardware, called Rubicube, and a distributed networking infrastructure, which we believe enable us to offer one of the fastest and most scalable digital advertising technology platforms in the industry. We estimate our cloud currently executes up to 3.5 million peak queries per second and approximately 18 billion transactions per week. The speed of our platform provides buyers and sellers with reduced latency, limited loss of perishable inventory, better matching, and increased efficacy of advertisements, which perform better the faster they are delivered. The scale of our platform supports the volume, diversity, and complexity of buyers’ bids on sellers’ advertising inventory, thereby increasing market liquidity and access, and achieving optimal pricing using our machine-learning algorithms. |
• | Highly Evolved Machine-Learning Algorithms that Leverage Big Data. We have developed proprietary highly sophisticated machine-learning algorithms that optimize pricing and sellers’ monetization of their inventory. These algorithms analyze billions of data points, enabling our solution to make 300 real-time data-driven decisions per transaction and process trillions of bid requests per month. Our big data also allows buyers to deploy sophisticated targeting options to maximize the impact of their advertising spending. |
• | Dual Network Effects. As we process more volume on our automated platform in the form of bid requests, events and transactions, we accumulate more data, such as pricing, geographic and preference information, data on how best to optimize yield for sellers, and more. This additional data helps make our machine-learning algorithms more intelligent and this leads to more effective matching between buyers and sellers. As a result, more buyers and sellers are attracted to our platform, from which we get more data, which further reinforces the network effect and thereby increases market liquidity, which benefits both buyers and sellers. |
• | Direct Relationships and Integrations with High-Quality Sellers. Our Advertising Automation Cloud builds on our direct relationships and integrations with our seller base. We integrate our technology into their systems and have a direct financial relationship with them. Our teams also interact with sellers on an almost daily basis. This is a major distinction, as illustrated by our comScore reach, relative to many digital advertising companies who rely on our platform or third parties to access sellers and do not have direct relationships. We believe that these direct relationships and integrations make us a critical participant in the digital advertising ecosystem, and make our solution one that would be difficult and time consuming for sellers to replicate, resulting in low seller attrition. Our direct seller relationships also provide us with an existing sales channel through which to expand the functionality offered by our applications to include additional services, such as our solutions for automated orders and mobile applications. |
• | Leading User Reach and Significant Scale. Our reach of approximately 600 million Internet users globally enables us to provide buyers with the ability to execute their largest campaigns and easily reach their target audiences. The scale of our solution is evidenced by the amount of advertising spending transacted on our platform, as demonstrated by our managed revenue, which was $667.8 million for the year ended December 31, 2014. |
• | Comprehensive Solution Covering All Types of Inventory and Demand. We believe there are few participants in our market that are directly integrated with sellers in a way that allows them to make a full range and volume of advertising inventory readily available in the marketplace. We enable sellers to offer their inventory through several types of transactions, including RTB, static bidding, and orders. The availability of this wide range and volume of inventory, together with the multiple ways of purchasing, attracts a similarly wide variety of buyers, providing us access to not only buyers in the $9 billion global RTB market, but also to the entire $62 billion display, mobile, and video market. We believe we are well positioned to provide our solution to buyers and sellers as new platforms, such as satellite, cable, smart TV, and set-top boxes, become available for the automation of advertising. |
• | Scalable Business Model. As we bring buyers and sellers onto our platform, they transact in an automated fashion without additional sales and marketing efforts from us. This allows us to grow the managed revenue on our platform without a proportional increase in our sales and marketing expenses. |
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• | Brand Security. We believe we are able to uniquely incorporate brand security for both buyers and sellers in a manner that allows them to buy and sell inventory safely despite the challenges presented by the volume of content and dynamic nature of digital advertising. Buyers and sellers are concerned about being associated with content they view as inappropriate, competitive or inconsistent with their advertising themes. As sellers try to make their inventory available to a wider group of buyers, and buyers extend their reach in pursuit of target audiences, the importance of brand security and the effort necessary to screen buyers and inventory for brand appropriateness increases. Our platform has the business rules, scalability and speed necessary to ensure that we are able to provide a customizable brand-safe environment for both buyers and sellers. |
• | Independence. Some industry participants have incentives to isolate their viewers and deploy specialized technology for their audiences, making buyers dependent on them to reach the users of their particular websites, applications, devices, or other hardware. In addition, those participants have their own owned and operated properties to which they have an incentive to give preferred treatment, which can lead to sub-optimal pricing and access for others in the market. We believe our independent market position enables us to better serve buyers and sellers because we are not burdened with any structural conflicts. |
• | Orders. Our work flow capabilities and automation of premium inventory enable sales teams to exponentially increase their productivity by using data and workflow applications to process more sales of inventory at optimal prices. Workflow capabilities enable buyers and sellers to communicate directly and use shared data to execute campaigns. These capabilities support sales functions rather than replacing them, enhancing their adoption without friction. A significant amount of television advertising is purchased and sold on a guaranteed basis; therefore, we believe that our guaranteed orders capabilities will help position us to automate the purchase and sale of television advertising. |
Growth Strategies
The core elements of our growth strategy include:
• | Growing Our Business with Existing Buyers and Attracting New Buyers to Our Platform. We believe we can attract a greater portion of buyers’ spending by continued improvement of our matching and pricing algorithms as well as enhanced features, functionality, and service of our solution. We see an opportunity with existing buyers to offer them additional inventory to make buying more efficient on our platform. We plan to invest in our sales organization to drive increased spending by existing buyers on our platform and to attract new buyers to our platform. |
• | Increasing Penetration of Existing Sellers and Attracting New Sellers. We see an opportunity to increase the share of seller inventory that we currently monetize by enhancing our cloud and applications, offering additional applications, and increasing our relationships with buyers and sellers that engage in orders relationships through our solution. In addition, we expect to benefit generally from the growing adoption of automation for sales of advertising inventory. We also see an opportunity to form relationships with new sellers for which our platform offers the best solution for monetizing their digital advertising inventory. |
• | Enhancing Our Leadership Position by Investing in Innovation and Expansion. We intend to build upon our current technology and extend our market leadership through innovation. Our investments will focus on improving our machine-learning algorithms, expanding further into mobile and video, data analytics, audience extension, API integration, building additional features to extend further into order management, building self-service capabilities for buyers and sellers, and enhancing and expanding our current server infrastructure. |
• | Building Our Orders Business. A significant portion of premium inventory is purchased and sold on a guaranteed basis. We believe that some sellers will continue to rely on their own sales forces for sales of premium inventory, but will benefit from automation to better price, match and place campaigns, and to automate manual operations such as ad trafficking, quality assurance, and billing and collections. We have invested in workflow capabilities and automation of premium inventory transactions to enable sales teams to increase their productivity and process more sales of inventory at optimal prices. Workflow capabilities enable buyers and sellers to communicate directly and use shared data to execute campaigns. These capabilities support sales functions rather than replacing them, enhancing their adoption without friction. We plan to build upon these investments to capitalize upon the growth we anticipate in the market for automation of direct transactions. In addition, we believe that our guaranteed orders capabilities will help to position us to automate the purchase and sale of television advertising. |
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• | Expanding Our Buyer Offerings. The various buyers in the market, including brand advertisers, agencies, ATDs, ad networks and DSPs, utilize a variety of inventory placements to purchase inventory. Our offering covers all primary forms of digital inventory placement, giving us the ability to serve all buyers. We intend to expand our relationships across all buyer types and inventory placements. We plan to utilize our offerings that facilitate the direct processing of transactions between buyers and sellers to increase our participation in the direct purchase of premium inventory by agencies and their advertisers through our orders business. |
• | Accelerating Our Global Expansion and Entering New Markets. We currently operate globally from our offices in nine countries. We believe we can extend our marketplace platform through international expansion to help automate and improve advertising for buyers and sellers globally. We recently initiated operations in Japan and we intend to grow our market share in our existing international markets. We also plan to expand our operations in Asia and Latin America. |
• | Bringing Automation to Additional Media. Historically, our solution has focused on display advertising. We believe, however, that television and other analog and print media will eventually converge with existing digital platforms, creating opportunities for us to expand our solution beyond digital media to analog and print media, such as television, radio, and magazines. We intend to extend our solution to track this convergence and support increasingly complex volumes of advertisements spanning multiple media. Our combined offering of inventory placements and ad units may be packaged for multiple distribution platforms, including mobile, desktop and television (satellite, cable, smart TV, and set-top box). We intend to accelerate our expansion in mobile for both mobile web and applications and to build the foundation to automate television advertising. In addition to platform expansion, we intend to extend beyond our current capabilities for display, native, and video to other forms of advertising units as they may arise. |
Buyers Using Our Solution
Buyers purchase digital advertising inventory in the marketplace powered by our Advertising Automation Cloud. Buyers include DSPs, ad networks and ATDs, which act as representatives of advertising agencies and advertisers that direct advertising spending. Recently, we have introduced our buyer-focused offerings that allow buyers to buy inventory directly using our solution and reach sellers directly through our marketplace. These applications include important workflow functionality, essential for managing spend and effectively reaching sellers on an automated basis. Collectively, these buyers have purchased advertising for tens of thousands of unique brands on our platform. Because our buyer base consists of a broad range of DSPs, ad networks, and ATDs, we do not expect significant increases or decreases in the overall number of buyers using our solution, but we expect the average spending per buyer to increase over time as buyers continue to increase their use of our solution. Average managed revenue per buyer on our platform has grown considerably over our history, as depicted below:
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We attract a wide variety of buyers in part because our solution allows buyers to execute purchases in a variety of ways, including RTB, static bidding, and orders. RTB is the fastest growing area of our business. Managed revenue attributable to RTB grew 71% from 2013 to 2014.
Sellers Using Our Solution
We have direct relationships and integrations with sellers in over 40 countries. In the United States, we have relationships with over 50% of the comScore 100. We consider organizations within the same corporate structure as one seller. We are continuing to build on our international reach, including through recent establishment of operating presence and buyer and seller relationships in Latin America and Asia.
Our Technology
To support our solution, we have developed a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet that run our proprietary software, including analytics and decision-making algorithms, and store, manage, and process rules set by buyers and sellers and data about demographics, economics, timing, and preferences. We have specially engineered a high-volume transaction processing hardware, called the Rubicube, that provides significant scale and is programmed for high-frequency, low-latency trading. This infrastructure is supported by a real-time data pipeline, a system that quickly moves volumes of data generated by our business into reporting systems that allow usage both internally and by buyers and sellers, and a 24-hour Network Operations Center, which provides failure protection by monitoring and rerouting traffic in the event of equipment failure or network performance issues between buyers and our marketplace.
We estimate that our Advertising Automation Cloud currently executes up to 3.5 million peak queries per second and averages approximately 18 billion transactions per week, and since 2012, we have transacted approximately 100 trillion bid requests. It utilizes over 35,000 central processing units, which read and execute our program instructions. In addition, our Advertising Automation Cloud supports 300 gigabytes of data transfer per second and stores more than 3.6 petabytes of data, backed by our globally distributed infrastructure hosted at data centers in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. We lease data center capacity on market standard terms pursuant to leases expiring between February 2015 and December 2017. We believe that having a distributed infrastructure is useful to reduce latency. We regularly change and add data center capacity to support growth and to find the best pricing and locations for our business. We are not dependent on any single provider of data center capacity and we believe that, if we require additional data center capacity, or if a contract with a data center terminates unexpectedly, we will be able to obtain additional capacity on commercially reasonable terms and within a relatively short time period.
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Our infrastructure provides buyers and sellers with reduced latency, while the scale of the infrastructure supports the volume, diversity, and complexity of buyers’ bids on sellers’ advertising inventory, which increases market liquidity and achieves optimal pricing using our machine-learning algorithms. Our platform’s architecture allows for additional scale through enhancements and additions to the infrastructure, which enables us to better evolve and adapt to the demands of buyers and sellers and remain competitive in the marketplace.
Our proprietary data-driven machine-learning algorithms enable our solution to make decisions that maximize revenue for sellers and improve return on investment for buyers. These algorithms combine and analyze multiple types of data and enable our systems to execute over 45 million decisions per second, all in time to allow transactions to be executed in milliseconds.
Decisions processed through these algorithms relate to the following types of data:
• | Pricing Metadata—We provide information on historical pricing, bids, buyer type and buyers to determine auction winners between RTB and static bidding. This data includes approximately 5 trillion bid requests per month, 3.5 million peak bids per second and data from tens of thousands of brands and all major DSPs, ad networks and ATDs; |
• | Audience Data—We reach approximately 600 million Internet users globally on a monthly basis. We have direct relationships with over 50% of the top 100 U.S. sellers as ranked by comScore in terms of reach. This reach provides us with a large volume of data about users and audiences, such as pricing of advertisements, historical clearing prices, bid responses, what types of ads are allowed on a particular website, which sellers’ websites a buyer prefers, what ad formats are available to be served, advertisement size and location, where a user is located, what users a buyer wants to target, how many ads the user has seen, browser or device information, and sellers’ proprietary data about users. |
Auction and security algorithms use matchmaking algorithms with both historical and real time data to drive automated decision-making processes.
Pricing algorithms perform the following functions, among many others:
• | Impression Profiling—Determines key data related to the impression, such as demographic data, geographic data and historical data to send to potential bidders and collect for reporting and analysis by buyers and sellers. |
• | Algorithmic Pricing—Adjusts pricing for impressions based on historical bidding activity and valuation signals to increase marketplace liquidity. |
• | Rules Management—Ensures adherence to seller rules that set minimum prices for advertising inventory, determine which buyers are eligible to purchase advertising, identify buyers and categories of advertisements that are not allowed on a seller’s website, application or other digital media property, and specify security and other criteria. |
Proprietary protection technologies we have developed include:
• | Helix—Captures and catalogs the thousands of advertising creatives (the graphics used for the advertisement) that flow through our systems every day, which our quality team reviews using our advertising quality management applications. |
• | Protective Screening—Helps protect sellers and users from malware (software that can infect computers with malicious software), checks each advertisement delivered through our solution for the presence of any malicious or questionable activity or characteristics, stops unsanctioned advertisements, and reduces recurrence. |
• | AdCheq—Provides reviews of advertisements, creating multiple reviews of each. These creatives are categorized and associated with buyers and industries so that our systems can automatically enforce each seller’s specific advertisement quality policies. |
• | Brand Security Dashboard—Provides visibility into quality-related activity, showing how different buyers behave relating to advertisement quality, details on the level of malware threats, and data leakage reporting (shows questionable activity related to third parties gathering data on their inventory). |
• | Traffic Quality Monitoring—Monitoring of traffic to minimize the incidence of non-human traffic or other inappropriate traffic. |
• | Vantage—An extension for Web browsers that lets sellers monitor ads served in context on their sites, providing insight, diagnostic applications, and ad-quality controls. |
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• | Creative Approval API—A programmatic interface that sellers can use to retrieve a comprehensive set of individual advertising creatives that have bid or served on their sites, and instruct our delivery systems to approve or reject those creatives for future impressions. |
Bid efficiency algorithms provide bid prediction (which buyers are most likely to bid on a given impression) and throttling (the volume of bid requests a given buyer can process), to optimize infrastructure load and execute transactions in the most timely manner possible by only sending bid requests to those buyers of advertising inventory who can handle the volume and are likely to respond.
Technology and Development
Innovation is key to our success. We have developed a research and development center designed for innovation for which we continue to invest. In addition, our core technology and development team is responsible for the design, development, maintenance, and operation of our platform. Our technology and development process emphasizes frequent, iterative, and incremental development cycles, and we typically release improvements and new features weekly. Within the technology and development team, we have several highly aligned, independent sub-teams that focus on particular features of our platform. Each of these sub-teams includes engineers, quality assurance specialists, and product developers responsible for the initial and ongoing development of each sub-team’s feature. In addition, the technology and development team includes our technical operations sub-team, which is responsible for the performance and capacity of our platform. While our sub-teams operate independently, the combined work is coordinated by our project management team, which manages dependencies and optimizes the schedule of the entire team towards common goals.
Technology and development expenses are included in both cost of revenue and technology and development on our consolidated statement of operations. These combined expenses were $43.5 million, $34.0 million and $25.5 million for the years ended December 31, 2014, 2013 and 2012, respectively. We believe that continued investment in our platform, including its technologies and functionalities, is critical to our success and long-term growth. We therefore expect technology and development expenses to increase as we continue to invest in technology infrastructure to support an increased volume of advertising spending on our platform and international expansion, as well as to expand our engineering and technology teams to maintain and support our technology and development efforts. We also intend to invest in new and enhanced technologies and functionalities to enhance our platform and further automate our business processes with the goal of enhancing our future profitability.
Sales and Marketing
We sell our solution to buyers and sellers through our global direct sales team, which operates from various locations around the world. This team leverages its market knowledge and expertise to demonstrate the benefits to buyers and sellers of advertising automation and our solution. We deploy a professional services team with each seller integration to ensure that a seller extracts the most value from our solution. We are focused on managing our brand, increasing market awareness, and generating new advertising campaigns. To do so, we often present at industry conferences, create custom events, and invest in public relations. In addition, our marketing team advertises online, in print, and in other forms of media, creates case studies, sponsors research, authors whitepapers, publishes marketing collateral, generates blog posts and undertakes customer research studies.
Our Competition
Our industry is highly competitive and fragmented. We compete for buyer spending against many digital media companies, including Google. We compete for advertising inventory with SSPs and advertising exchanges, also including Google. As we introduce new offerings, as our existing offerings evolve, or as other companies introduce new products and services, we may be subject to additional competition.
We compete for advertising spending and seller inventory made available on our platform. Our product must remain competitive in terms of scope, ease of use, scalability, speed, brand security, customer service, and other technological features that assist buyers in increasing the return on their advertising investment. We compete for digital advertising inventory based on our ability to maximize the value of sellers’ inventory, provide the greatest array of product components covering their various inventory types, and increase fill rates. While our industry is evolving rapidly and becoming increasingly competitive, we believe that our solution enables us to compete favorably on the factors described above.
Our Team and Culture
Our management team consists of founders of ad serving and paid search companies, as well as RTB pioneers, and our team draws from a broad spectrum of experience, including data science, artificial intelligence, machine-learning algorithms, auctions, infrastructure, and software development.
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We focus heavily upon developing and maintaining a company culture that supports our goals, and we manage our culture like a product, with a dedicated product manager, budget, measurement, and roadmap. We have a goal of building and growing a truly unique company, focused on the automation of advertising and solving problems through innovation, both internally and for buyers and sellers, to help deliver value. We strive to make our company an exciting place to work, not just a “job.” We have a culture committee whose members rotate every quarter and include representation from across the company, both by function and geography, to ensure a comprehensive perspective. We reward team and individual excellence and constantly strive to build a stronger, more innovative team and a consistent culture across all our locations.
As of December 31, 2014, we had 470 employees, of whom 382 are in the United States.
Our Intellectual Property
Our proprietary technologies are an important component of our success, and we rely upon trade secret, trademark, copyright, and patent laws in the United States and abroad to establish and protect our intellectual property and protect our proprietary technologies.
We have four active U.S. patents, as described below. Additionally, we have seven pending non-provisional applications in the United States and two pending non-U.S. applications. None of these patents has been litigated and we are not licensing any of the patents. Their importance to our business is uncertain and there are no guarantees that any of the patents will serve as protection for our technology or market in the United States or any other country in which an application has been filed. U.S. Patent No. 8,554,683, titled Content Security for Real-Time Bidding, was filed January 7, 2011, issued October 8, 2013, and expires on June 18, 2028. U.S. Patent No. 8,472,728, titled System and Method for Identifying and Characterizing Content within Electronic Files Using Example Sets, was filed October 30, 2009, issued June 25, 2013, and expires on June 7, 2031. U.S. Patent No. 8,473,346, titled Ad Network Optimization System and Method Thereof, was filed September 1, 2009, issued June 25, 2013, and expires on February 12, 2031. U.S. Patent No. 8,831,987, titled Managing Bids in a Real-Time Auction for Advertisements, was filed on April 20, 2011, issued September 9, 2014, and expires December 18, 2027.
We register certain domain names, trademarks and service marks in the United States and in certain locations outside the United States. We also rely upon common law protection for certain trademarks. We generally enter into confidentiality and invention assignment agreements with our employees and contractors, and confidentiality agreements with parties with whom we conduct business, in order to limit access to, and disclosure and use of, our proprietary information. We also use measures designed to control access to our technology and proprietary information. We view our trade secrets and know-how as a significant component of our intellectual property assets, which we believe differentiate us from our competitors.
Any impairment of our intellectual property rights, or any unauthorized disclosure or use of our intellectual property or technology, could harm our business, our ability to compete and our operating results.
Regulation
Interest-based advertising, or the use of data to draw inferences about a user’s interests and deliver relevant advertising to that user, has come under increasing scrutiny by legislative, regulatory, and self-regulatory bodies in the United States and abroad that focus on consumer protection or data privacy. In particular, this scrutiny has focused on the use of cookies and other technology to collect or aggregate information about Internet users’ online browsing activity. Because we, and our customers, rely upon large volumes of such data collected primarily through cookies, it is essential that we monitor developments in this area domestically and globally, and engage in responsible privacy practices, including providing consumers with notice of the types of data we collect and how we use that data to provide our services.
We provide this notice through our privacy policy, which can be found on our website at http://www.rubiconproject.com/privacy. As stated in our privacy policy, we do not collect information, such as name, address, or phone number, that can be used directly to identify a real person, and we take steps not to collect and store such personally identifiable information from any source. Instead, we rely on non-personally identifiable information about Internet users and do not attempt to associate this data with other data that can be used to identify real people. However, the definition of personally identifiable information, or personal data varies by country, and continues to evolve in ways that may require us to adapt our practices to avoid violating laws or regulations related to the collection, storage, and use of consumer data. For example, some European countries may consider IP addresses or unique device identifiers to be personal data subject to heightened legal and regulatory requirements. As a result, our technology platform and business practices must be assessed regularly in each country in which we do business.
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There are also a number of specific laws and regulations governing the collection and use of certain types of consumer data relevant to our business. For example, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, imposes restrictions on the collection and use of data about users of child-directed websites. To comply with COPPA, we have taken various steps to implement a system that: (i) flags seller-identified child-directed sites to buyers, (ii) limits advertisers’ ability to serve interest-based advertisements, (iii) helps limit the types of information that our advertisers have access to when placing advertisements on child-directed sites, and (iv) limits the data that we collect and use on such child-directed sites.
Additionally, our compliance with our privacy policy and our general consumer privacy practices are also subject to review by the Federal Trade Commission, which may bring enforcement actions to challenge allegedly unfair and deceptive trade practices, including the violation of privacy policies and representations therein. Certain State Attorneys General may also bring enforcement actions based on comparable State laws. Outside of the United States, our privacy and data practices are subject to regulation by data protection authorities and other regulators in the countries in which we do business.
Beyond laws and regulations, we are also members of self-regulatory bodies that impose additional requirements related to the collection, use, and disclosure of consumer data, including the Internet Advertising Bureau, or IAB, the Digital Advertising Alliance, the Network Advertising Initiative, and the Europe Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance. Under the requirements of these self-regulatory bodies, in addition to other compliance obligations, we provide consumers with notice via our privacy policy about our use of cookies and other technologies to collect consumer data, and of our collection and use of consumer data to deliver interest-based advertisements. We also allow consumers to opt-out from the use of data we collect for purposes of interest-based advertising through a mechanism on our website, linked through our privacy policy.
Business Seasonality
Our managed revenue, revenue, cash flow from operations, operating results and other key operating and financial measures may vary from quarter to quarter due to the seasonal nature of buyer spending. For example, many buyers devote a disproportionate amount of their advertising budgets to the fourth quarter of the calendar year to coincide with increased holiday purchasing. We expect our revenue, cash flow, operating results and other key operating and financial measures to fluctuate based on seasonal factors from period to period and expect these measures to be higher in the fourth quarters than in prior quarters.
Available Information
The Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and amendments to reports filed pursuant to Sections 13(a) and 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, or the Exchange Act, are filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, or the SEC. The Company is subject to the informational requirements of the Exchange Act and files or furnishes reports, proxy statements and other information with the SEC. Such reports and other information filed by the Company with the SEC are available free of charge on the Company’s website at investor.rubiconproject.com as soon as reasonably practicable after such materials are filed with or furnished to the SEC. The public may read and copy any materials filed by the Company with the SEC at the SEC’s Public Reference Room at 100 F Street, NE, Washington, DC 20549. The public may obtain information on the operation of the Public Reference Room by calling the SEC at 1-800-SEC-0330. The SEC maintains an Internet site that contains reports, proxy and information statements and other information regarding issuers that file electronically with the SEC at www.sec.gov. The contents of these websites are not incorporated into this Annual Report on Form 10-K or into any other report or document we file with the SEC, and any references to the URLs for these websites are intended to be inactive textual references only.
Item 1A. Risk Factors
Investing in our common stock involves a high degree of risk, including but not limited to the risks described below, each of which may be relevant to decisions regarding an investment in or ownership of our stock. The occurrence of any of these risks could have a significant adverse effect on our reputation, business, financial condition, results of operations, growth and ability to accomplish our strategic objectives and could cause the trading price of our common stock to decline. You should carefully consider the risks set forth below and the other information contained in this report, including our consolidated financial statements and related notes and Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations, before investing in our common stock. However, this report cannot anticipate and fully address all possible risks of investing in our common stock, and the risks of investing in our common stock may change over time, new risks may emerge, and different risks may be more prominent at different times. Accordingly, you are advised to consider additional sources of information and exercise your own judgment in addition to the information we provide. We have organized the description of these risks into groupings in an effort to enhance readability, but many of the risks interrelate or could be grouped or ordered in other ways, so no special significance should be attributed to the groupings or order below.
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Risks Relating to Our Business, Growth Prospects and Operating Results
We must grow rapidly to remain a market leader and to accomplish our strategic objectives. If we fail to grow, or fail to manage our growth effectively, the value of our company may decline.
The advertising technology market is dynamic, and our success depends upon the continued adoption of advertising automation and our ability to develop innovative new technologies and solutions for the evolving needs of sellers of advertising, including websites, applications and other digital media property owners, and buyers of advertising. We also need to grow significantly and expand the scope of our offering in order to develop the market reach and scale necessary to compete effectively with large competitors. This growth depends to a significant degree upon the quality of our strategic vision and planning. The advertising market is evolving rapidly, and if we make strategic errors, there is a significant risk that we will lose our competitive position and be unable to recover and achieve our objectives. Our ability to grow requires access to, and prudent deployment of, capital for hiring, expansion of physical infrastructure to run our solution, acquisition of companies or technologies, and development and integration of supporting sales, marketing, finance, administrative, and managerial infrastructure. Further, the rapid growth we are pursuing will itself strain the organization and our ability to continue that growth and to maintain the quality of our operations. If we are not able to innovate and grow successfully, the value of the company may be adversely affected.
In order to meet our growth objectives, we will need to rely upon our ability to innovate, the continued adoption of our solution by buyers and sellers for higher value advertising inventory, the extension of the reach of our solution into evolving digital media, continued growth into new geographic markets, and the implementation of new offerings.
Historically, the real-time auction of lower value display advertising has been the largest portion of the business transacted through our solution. While we expect that market to continue to be attractive for us, we believe growth opportunities in other areas of digital advertising are important. Our growth plans depend upon our ability to innovate, attract buyers and sellers to our solution for purposes of buying and selling higher value inventory, expand the scope of our solution and its use by buyers and sellers utilizing other digital media platforms and advertising units, such as mobile and video. Our growth plans also depend on our ability to further increase our business in new international markets, and effectively drive increasing automation in the advertising industry through implementation of new offerings, such as private marketplace. In order to innovate successfully, we must hire, train, motivate and retain talented engineers in a competitive recruiting environment, and we must deploy them based on the development priorities we establish in light of our view of the future of our industry. Mobile, video, and other emerging digital platforms require different technology and business expertise than display advertising, and also present other challenges that may be difficult for us to overcome, including inventory quality issues. Many of our competitors in these emerging platforms have a significant head start in terms of technology and buyer or seller relationships. Our business model may not translate well into higher-value advertising due to market resistance or other factors, and we may not be able to innovate quickly or successfully enough to compete effectively on new platforms, or to adapt our solution and infrastructure to international markets. New offerings may not correctly anticipate market demand, may not address demand as effectively as competing offerings, and may not deliver the results we expect.
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Our technology development efforts may be inefficient or ineffective, which may impair our ability to attract buyers and sellers.
Our future success will depend in part upon our ability to enhance our existing solution, to develop and introduce competing new solutions in a timely manner with features and pricing that meet changing client and market requirements, and to persuade buyers and sellers to adopt our new solutions. New elements of our offering must compete with established competitors and may require significant investment in development and marketing to achieve parity, and buyers and sellers may not be ready to adopt new solutions we acquire or develop. We schedule and prioritize these development efforts according to a variety of factors, including our perceptions of market trends, client requirements, and resource availability. We face intense competition in the marketplace and are confronted by rapidly changing technology, evolving industry standards and consumer needs, and the frequent introduction of new solutions by our competitors that we must adapt and respond to. Our solution is complex and requires a significant investment of time and resources to develop, test, introduce into use, and enhance. These activities can take longer than we expect. We may encounter unanticipated difficulties that require us to re-direct or scale-back our efforts and we may need to modify our plans in response to changes in buyer and seller requirements, market demands, resource availability, regulatory requirements or other factors. If development of our solution becomes significantly more expensive due to changes in regulatory requirements or industry practices, or other factors, we may find ourselves at a disadvantage to larger competitors with more resources to devote to development. These factors place significant demands upon our engineering organization, require complex planning and decision making, and can result in acceleration of some initiatives and delay of others. If we do not manage our development efforts efficiently and effectively, we may fail to produce, or timely produce, solutions that respond appropriately to the needs of buyers and sellers, and competitors may develop offerings that more successfully anticipate market evolution and address market expectations. If our solution is not responsive and competitive, buyers and sellers can be expected to shift their business to competing solutions. Buyers and sellers may also resist adopting our new solutions for various reasons, including reluctance to disrupt existing relationships and business practices or to invest in necessary technological integration or preference for competitors’ offerings or self-developed capabilities.
We must scale our technology infrastructure to support our growth and transaction volumes. If we fail to do so, we may lose buyers, sellers and revenue from transactions.
When a user visits a website or uses an application where our auctions technology is integrated, our technology must process a transaction for that seller and conduct an auction, often among hundreds of buyers and tens of thousands of advertiser brands, within milliseconds. Our technology must scale to process all of the advertising impressions from the collection of all of the visitors of all of the websites and applications offered on our platform combined. Additionally, for each individual advertising impression, our technology must be able to send bid requests to appropriate and available buyers on our platform. It must perform these transactions end-to-end at speeds often faster than the page or application loads for the user. In short, our technology needs to process the combined volume of every website and application and all of the buyers’ bidding technologies, which evolve over time, at speeds that are often faster than their capabilities. The addition of new services, support of evolving advertising formats, and overall growth also place increasing demands upon our technology infrastructure. We must be able to continue to increase the capacity of our platform in order to support substantial increases in the number of buyers and sellers, to support an increasing variety of advertising formats and platforms and to maintain a stable service infrastructure and reliable service delivery, all to support the network effect of our solution. If we are unable to effectively increase the scale of our platform to support and manage a substantial increase in the number of transactions, as well as a substantial increase in the amount of data we process, on a cost effective basis, while also maintaining a high level of performance, the quality of our services could decline and our reputation and business could be seriously harmed. In addition, if we are not able to continue processing these transactions at fast enough speeds or if we are unable to support emerging advertising formats or services preferred by buyers, we may be unable to obtain new buyers or sellers, we may lose existing buyers or sellers or we could lose revenue from failure to process auction transactions in a timely manner, any of which could cause our revenue to decline. We expect to continue to invest in our platform in order to meet increasing demand. Such investment may negatively affect our profitability and results of operations.
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Our belief that there is significant and growing demand for private marketplace and automated guaranteed solutions may be inaccurate, and we may not realize a return from our investments in that area.
We believe there is significant and growing demand for private marketplace and automated guaranteed solutions, and we have made significant investments to meet that demand through internal development efforts and through acquisitions. We believe our technology will be embraced by the market and contribute in a meaningful way to our revenue growth. However, the market for these solutions is new and unproven and, as such, may not grow as we expect or at all, or it could have slow adoption rates. It is our expectation that private marketplaces and automated guaranteed solutions may involve lower fees, which may not be offset by anticipated higher CPMs. Even if the market for these solutions develops as we anticipate, buyers and sellers might not embrace our offerings to the degree we expect due to various factors. For example, we may not be successful in building out these offerings consistent with our vision, or competitive offerings may be offered at lower prices or be perceived as having better features and functionality. Even if the market for these solutions develops as we anticipate, and our buyers and sellers embrace our offerings, the positive effect of our private marketplace and automated guaranteed offerings on our results of operations may be negated by other adverse developments or by similar offerings from our competitors.
We have invested heavily in the mobile platform, which poses additional risks that did not affect our legacy display business. If mobile connected devices or any other devices, their operating systems, Internet browsers or content distribution channels, including those controlled by our competitors, develop in ways that make it difficult for advertisements to be delivered to their users, our ability to grow our business will be impaired.
We have invested heavily in the mobile platform and are relying upon that business to help fuel our continued growth. Because the mobile platform uses different methods of recording payable transactions, different data capture techniques, different buyer budgets, may require us to enter emerging markets in which we have less experience, including China, and involves development challenges imposed by differing technological requirements and standards, there can be no assurance that we will be successful in developing this market. Moreover, buyers’ desire to spend advertising money to reach consumers via the mobile platform may be less or evolve more slowly than expected. Our mobile investment has been focused on real-time bidding of mobile impressions, and that market may not grow as we expect. Our mobile revenue growth is largely dependent on the success of our new Exchange API technology, and there can be no assurance that this technology will work as anticipated, without costly bugs or errors.
Our success in the mobile channel depends upon the ability of our technology solution to provide advertising for most mobile connected devices, as well as the major operating systems or Internet browsers that run on them and the thousands of applications that are downloaded onto them. The design of mobile devices and operating systems or Internet browsers is controlled by third parties with whom we generally do not have any formal relationships. These parties frequently introduce new devices, and from time to time they may introduce new operating systems or Internet browsers or modify existing ones in ways that may significantly affect our business. Network carriers may also impact the ability to access specified content on mobile devices. If our solution is unable to work on these devices, operating systems or Internet browsers, either because of technological constraints or because a maker of these devices or developer of these operating systems or Internet browsers wished to impair our ability to provide advertisements on them or our ability to fulfill advertising inventory from developers whose applications are distributed through their controlled channels, our ability to generate revenue through the mobile platform could be significantly harmed.
Fee pressure may result in a reduction in spending on our platform or a reduction in the fees we are able to charge on our platform, which could have a material adverse effect on our business and reduce our take rate.
Our proprietary auction algorithms include a buyer fee for use of our technology, and we have typically charged buyers a variable price for real-time bidding impressions without specifying the amount or method of determination of the fee that is included in the price. We also charge fees to sellers for use of our technology, typically as a percentage of the cost of media. As is normal in most industries and companies, the introduction of new offerings requires different pricing rates or structures. Projecting a market’s acceptance of a new price or structure is imperfect and we may price too high or too low, both of which may carry adverse consequences. Although we believe our pricing is competitive, we experience requests for fee revisions from time to time or greater levels of pricing specificity. Sellers and potential sellers may also seek fee revisions. If large buyers or sellers, or large numbers of small buyers or sellers are able to compel us to charge lower fees, or provide fee concessions or refunds, we may not be able to maintain appropriate volumes of inventory supply and demand without agreeing to these concessions. In addition, the fees we charge are likely to change in response to evolution in the market, customer demands, market opportunities, new products, or competitive pressure. If we cannot maintain and grow our revenue and profitability through volume increases that compensate for any price reductions, or if we are forced to make significant fee concessions or refunds, or if buyers reduce spending with us due to fee disputes or pricing issues, our revenue, take rate, the value of our business, and the price of our stock could be adversely affected.
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We have a history of losses and may not achieve and sustain profitability in the future.
We incurred net losses of $18.7 million, $9.2 million, and $2.4 million during the years ended December 31, 2014, 2013, and 2012, respectively. As of December 31, 2014, we had an accumulated deficit of $80.7 million. We may not be able to sustain the revenue growth we have experienced in recent periods, and revenue may decrease, due to competitive pressures, maturation of our business or other factors. Our expenses have increased with our revenue growth, primarily due to substantial investments in our business. Our historical revenue growth should not be considered as indicative of our future performance. We expect our expenses to continue to increase substantially in the foreseeable future as we continue to expand our business, including by hiring engineering, sales, marketing and related support employees in existing and new territories, investing in our technology and developing additional digital media platforms, such as mobile and video. Accordingly, we may not be able to achieve or sustain profitability in the future. If our revenue growth declines or our expenses exceed expectations, our financial performance will be adversely affected.
Our limited operating history makes it difficult to evaluate our business and prospects and may increase the risks associated with an investment in our common stock.
We were incorporated in 2007 and consequently have only a limited operating history upon which our business and future prospects may be evaluated. We may not be able to sustain the rate of growth we have achieved to date, or even maintain our current revenue levels. We have encountered and will continue to encounter risks and difficulties frequently experienced by growing companies in rapidly evolving industries, including challenges related to recruiting; allocating and making effective use of our limited resources; achieving market acceptance of our existing and future solutions; competing against companies with greater financial and technical resources; integrating, motivating, and retaining qualified employees; developing relationships with buyers and sellers; developing new solutions; integrating new technologies or companies we acquire; and establishing and maintaining our corporate infrastructure, including internal controls relating to our financial and information technology systems. We must improve our current operational infrastructure and technology to support significant growth and to respond to the evolution of our market and competitors’ developments. Our business prospects depend in large part on our ability to:
• | build and maintain our reputation for innovation and solutions that meet the evolving needs of buyers and sellers; |
• | distinguish ourselves from the wide variety of solutions available in our industry; |
• | maintain and expand our relationships with buyers and sellers; |
• | respond to evolving industry standards and government regulations that impact our business, particularly in the areas of data collection and consumer privacy; |
• | prevent or otherwise mitigate failures or breaches of security or privacy; |
• | attract, hire, integrate and retain qualified employees; |
• | effectively execute upon our international expansion plans; |
• | evaluate new acquisition targets, and successfully integrate acquired companies’ business and technologies; |
• | maintain our cloud-based technology solution continuously without interruption 24 hours a day, seven days a week; and |
• | anticipate and respond to varying product life cycles, regularly enhance our existing advertising solutions and introduce new advertising solutions on a timely basis. |
There is no assurance that we will meet these and other challenges, and failure to meet one or more of these objectives or otherwise adequately address the risks and difficulties that we face will have an adverse effect on our business and may result in revenue loss and inability to sustain profitability or achieve further growth.
Our operating results may fluctuate significantly depending upon various factors, which could make our future operating results difficult to predict and cause our operating results to fall below analysts’ and investors’ expectations.
Our operating results may be difficult to predict, particularly because we generally do not have long-term contracts with buyers or sellers. We have from time to time experienced significant variations in revenue and operating results from period to period. Our operating results may continue to fluctuate and be difficult to predict due to a number of factors, including:
• | seasonality in demand for digital advertising; |
• | changes in pricing of advertising inventory or pricing for our solution and our competitors’ offerings, including potential reductions in our pricing and overall “take rate” as a result of competitive pressure, changes in supply, improvements in technology and extension of automation to higher-value inventory, uncertainty regarding rate of adoption, changes in the allocation of demand spend by buyers, changes in revenue mix, auction dynamics, pricing discussions or negotiations with clients and potential clients, and other factors; |
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• | diversification of our revenue mix to include new services, some of which may have lower pricing than our historic lower-value inventory business or may cannibalize existing business; |
• | the addition or loss of buyers or sellers; |
• | changes in the advertising strategies or budgets or financial condition of advertisers; |
• | the performance of our technology and the cost, timeliness and results of our technology innovation efforts; |
• | advertising technology and digital media industry conditions and the overall demand for advertising, or changes and uncertainty in the regulatory environment for us or buyers or sellers, including with respect to privacy regulation; |
• | the introduction of new technologies or service offerings by our competitors and market acceptance of such technologies or services; |
• | our level of expenses, including investment required to support our technology development, scale our technology infrastructure and business expansion efforts, including acquisitions, hiring and capital expenditures, or expenses related to litigation; |
• | the impact of changes in our stock price on valuation of stock-based compensation, warrants or other instruments that are marked to market; |
• | the effect of our efforts to maintain the quality of transactions on our platform, including the blocking of non-human inventory and traffic, which could cause a reduction in our revenue if there are fewer transactions consummated through our platform even though the overall quality of the transactions may have improved; |
• | the effectiveness of our financial and information technology infrastructure and controls; and |
• | changes in accounting policies and principles and the significant judgments and estimates made by management in the application of these policies and principles. |
Because significant portions of our expenses are relatively fixed, variation in our quarterly revenue could cause significant variations in operating results and resulting stock price volatility from quarter to quarter. Our business has evolved significantly since our founding, and we expect the business to continue to evolve rapidly. In the event of pricing pressures and to minimize adverse effects on revenue, we must increase our scale and add more high-value inventory, which requires ongoing investment that can have an adverse effect at the expense of earnings and might ultimately be unsuccessful. Period-to-period comparisons of our historical results of operations are not necessarily meaningful, and historical operating results may not be indicative of future performance. If our revenue or operating results fall below the expectations of investors or securities analysts, or below any guidance we may provide to the market, the price of our common stock could decline substantially.
Our revenue and operating results are highly dependent on the overall demand for advertising. Factors that affect the amount of advertising spending, such as economic downturns, particularly in the fourth quarter of our fiscal year, can make it difficult to predict our revenue and could adversely affect our business.
Our business depends on the overall demand for advertising and on the economic health of our current and prospective sellers and buyers. If advertisers reduce their overall advertising spending, our revenue and results of operations are directly affected. Many advertisers devote a disproportionate amount of their advertising budgets to the fourth quarter of the calendar year to coincide with increased holiday purchasing, and buyers may spend more in the fourth quarter for budget reasons. As a result, any events that reduce the amount of advertising spending during the fourth quarter, or reduce the amount of inventory available to buyers during that period, could have a disproportionate adverse effect on our revenue and operating results for that fiscal year. Economic downturns or instability in political or market conditions generally may cause current or new advertisers to reduce their advertising budgets. Reductions in inventory due to loss of sellers would make our solution less robust and attractive to buyers. Adverse economic conditions and general uncertainty about economic recovery are likely to affect our business prospects. In particular, uncertainty regarding economic conditions in the United States and other countries may cause general business conditions in the United States and elsewhere to deteriorate or become volatile, which could cause buyers to delay, decrease or cancel purchases, exposing us to reduced demand for our solution, and increased credit risk on buyer orders. Moreover, any changes in the favorable tax treatment of advertising expenses and the deductibility thereof would likely cause a reduction in advertising demand. In addition, concerns over the sovereign debt situation in certain countries in the European Union as well as continued geopolitical turmoil in many parts of the world have and may continue to put pressure on global economic conditions, which could lead to reduced spending on advertising.
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Seasonal fluctuations in digital advertising activity, which may historically have been less apparent due to our historical revenue growth, could adversely affect our cash flows and operating results.
Our managed revenue, revenue, cash flow from operations, operating results and other key operating and financial measures may vary from quarter to quarter due to the seasonal nature of advertiser spending. For example, many advertisers devote a disproportionate amount of their advertising budgets to the fourth quarter of the calendar year to coincide with increased holiday purchasing. Moreover, advertising inventory in the fourth quarter may be more expensive due to increased demand for advertising inventory. Seasonal fluctuations historically have been less apparent due to our historical revenue growth, but if our growth rate declines or seasonal spending becomes more pronounced, seasonality could result in material fluctuations of our revenue, cash flow, operating results and other key operating and financial measures from period to period.
Our corporate culture has contributed to our success, and if we cannot successfully maintain our culture as we assimilate new employees, we could lose the innovation, creativity and teamwork fostered by our culture.
We are undergoing rapid growth, including in our employee headcount. As of December 31, 2014, we had 470 employees. A significant portion of our management team joined us in 2013. We expect that significant additional hiring will be necessary to support our strategic plans, including increased hiring in other countries. We have in the past added significant numbers of employees through acquisitions, and we may continue to do so. This rapid influx of large numbers of people from different business backgrounds may make it difficult for us to maintain our corporate culture. We believe our culture has contributed significantly to our ability to attract and retain talent, to acquire companies and to innovate and grow successfully. If our culture is negatively affected, our ability to support our growth and innovation may diminish.
Risks Related to the Advertising Technology Industry, Market and Competition
The digital advertising market is relatively new, dependent on growth in various digital advertising channels, and vulnerable to adverse public perceptions and increased regulatory responses. If this market develops more slowly or differently than we expect, or if issues encountered by other participants or the industry generally are imputed to or affect us, our business, growth prospects and financial condition would be adversely affected.
The digital advertising market is relatively new and our solution may not achieve or sustain high levels of demand and market acceptance. While display advertising has been used successfully for many years, marketing via new digital advertising channels, such as mobile and social media and digital video advertising, is not as well established. The future growth of our business could be constrained by the level of acceptance and expansion of emerging digital advertising channels, as well as the continued use and growth of existing channels, such as digital display advertising, in which our capabilities are more established. In addition, as we push for the expansion and adoption of increased automation in the advertising industry, it will be important for the success of any such expansion for personnel at buyers and sellers to adopt our solution in lieu of their traditional methods of order placement. It is difficult to predict adoption rates, demand for our solution, the future growth rate and size of the digital advertising solutions market or the entry of competitive solutions.
Further, the digital advertising industry is complex, and evolving, and there are relatively few publicly traded companies operating in the business. Consequently, the digital advertising industry may not be as widely followed or understood in the financial markets as more mature industries. Problems experienced by one industry participant (even private companies) or issues affecting a part of the business have the potential to have adverse effects on other participants in the industry or even the entire industry. Emerging understanding of how the digital advertising industry operates has spurred privacy concerns and misgivings about exploitation of consumer information and prompted regulatory responses that limit operational flexibility and impose compliance costs upon industry participants. As a general matter the digital advertising business is relatively new and digital advertising companies and their specific product and service offerings are not well understood. The markets may not fully appreciate our particular place in the industry and our strengths and differentiating factors, which could have an adverse impact on the trading price of our shares.
Any expansion of the market for digital advertising solutions depends on a number of factors, including social and regulatory acceptance, the growth of the digital advertising market, the growth of social, mobile and video as advertising channels, and the actual or perceived technological viability, quality, cost, performance and value associated with emerging digital advertising solutions. If demand for digital display advertising and adoption of automation does not continue to grow, or if digital advertising solutions or advertising automation do not achieve widespread adoption, or there is a reduction in demand for digital advertising caused by weakening economic conditions, decreases in corporate spending, quality, viewability, malware issues or other issues associated with buyers, advertising channels or inventory, negative perceptions of digital advertising, additional regulatory requirements, or other factors, or if we fail to develop or acquire capabilities to meet the evolving business and regulatory requirements and needs of buyers and sellers of multi-channel advertising, our competitive position will be weakened and our revenue and results of operations could be harmed.
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We operate in an intensely competitive market that includes companies that have greater financial, technical and marketing resources than we do.
We face intense competition in the marketplace. We are confronted by rapidly changing technology, evolving user needs and the frequent introduction by our competitors of new and enhanced solutions. We compete for advertising spending against competitors, that, in some cases, are also buyers on our platform. We also compete for supply of advertising inventory against a variety of competitors. Some of our existing and potential competitors are better established, benefit from greater name recognition, may have offerings and technology that we do not have or that are more evolved and established than ours, and have significantly more financial, technical, sales, and marketing resources than we do. In addition, some competitors, particularly those with a more diversified revenue base and a broader offering, may have greater flexibility than we do to compete aggressively on the basis of price and other contract terms, or to compete with us by including in their product offerings services that we may not provide. Some competitors are able or willing to agree to contract terms that expose them to risks that might be more appropriately allocated to buyers or sellers of advertising (including inventory risk and the risk of having to pay sellers for unsold advertising impressions), and in order to compete effectively we might need to accommodate risks that could be difficult to manage or insure against. Some buyers that use our solution, and some potential buyers, have their own relationships with sellers and can directly connect advertisers with sellers. Our business may suffer to the extent that buyers and sellers purchase and sell advertising inventory directly from one another or through intermediaries other than us. In addition, as a result of solutions introduced by us or our competitors in the rapidly evolving and fluid advertising market, our marketplace will experience disruptions and changes in business models, which may result in our loss of buyers or sellers. Our innovation efforts may lead us to introduce new solutions that compete with our existing solutions. New or stronger competitors may emerge through acquisitions and industry consolidation or through development of disruptive technologies. Strong and evolving competition could lead to a loss of our market share or compel us to reduce our prices and could make it more difficult to grow our business profitably.
There has been consolidation in the advertising technology industry, and we anticipate continued consolidation increasing the capabilities and competitive posture of larger companies, particularly those who are already dominant in various ways, and enabling new or stronger competitors to emerge. As technology continues to improve and market factors continue to compel investment by others in the business, market saturation may change the competitive landscape in favor of larger competitors with greater scale and broader offerings, including those that can afford to spend more than us to grow more quickly and strengthen their competitive position through innovation, development and acquisitions. In order to compete effectively, we may need to expand the scope of our operations more quickly than would be feasible through our own internal efforts. However, because some capabilities may reside only in a small number of companies, our ability to accomplish necessary expansion through acquisitions may be limited because available companies may not wish to be acquired or may be acquired by larger competitors with the resources to outbid us, or we may need to pay substantial premiums to acquire those businesses. Our ability to make strategic acquisitions could also be hampered if the value of our stock, which we might seek to use as acquisition currency, is trading at prices below what we believe is our inherent value or is viewed negatively by an acquisition target. Accordingly, the amount of dilution that we incur may be impacted by our stock price.
Many buyers and sellers are large consolidated organizations that may need to acquire other companies in order to grow. Smaller buyers and sellers may need to consolidate in order to compete effectively. There is a finite number of large buyers and sellers in our target markets, and any consolidation of buyers or sellers may give the resulting enterprises greater bargaining power or result in the loss of buyers and sellers that use our platform, and thus reduce our potential base of buyers and sellers, each of which would lead to erosion of our revenue.
Our business depends on our ability to collect and use data to deliver advertisements, and to disclose data relating to the performance of advertisements. Any limitation imposed on our collection, use or disclosure of this data could significantly diminish the value of our solution and cause us to lose sellers, buyers and revenue.
When advertisements are placed through our solution, we are able to collect non-personal information about the placement of the advertisement and the interaction of the device user with the advertisement, such as whether the user visited a landing page. We are also able to collect information about pricing of advertisements, historical clearing prices, bid responses, what types of advertisements are allowed on a particular website, which websites a buyer prefers, what ad formats are available to be served, advertisement size and location, where a user is located, how many advertisements the user has seen, browser or device information and sellers’ proprietary data about users. As we collect and aggregate this data provided by trillions of advertising impressions, we analyze it in order to facilitate optimization of the pricing, placement and scheduling of advertisements purchased by buyers across the advertising inventory provided by sellers.
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Sellers, buyers, or Internet users might decide not to allow us to collect some or all of the data we collect or might limit our use of it. For example, a seller might not agree to provide us with data generated by interactions with the content on its applications, a buyer might not agree to allow us to analyze bid responses, or device users might not consent to share their information about device usage. Any limitation on our ability to collect data about user behavior and interaction with content could make it more difficult for us to deliver effective solutions that meet the needs of sellers and buyers. This, in turn, could hurt our revenue and impair our business.
Although our contracts with sellers generally permit us to aggregate data from advertising placements, sellers in the future may prohibit the collection or use of this data or request that we discontinue using data obtained from their transactions that has already been aggregated with other data. It would be difficult, if not impossible, and costly to comply with these requests. Interruptions, failures or defects in our data collection, mining, analysis and storage systems, as well as privacy concerns and regulatory obligations regarding the collection, use and processing of data, could also limit our ability to aggregate and analyze the data from transactions effected through our solution. Restrictions or limitations on our use of data could reduce the utility and value of our solution, resulting in loss of volume and reduced pricing.
If the use of “third-party cookies” is restricted or otherwise subject to unfavorable regulation, our performance may decline and we may lose buyers and revenue.
We primarily use “cookies,” or small text files, to gather data to enable our solution to be more effective. Cookies that we place are generally regarded as “third-party cookies” because they are placed on individual browsers when Internet users visit a website owned by a seller, advertiser or other first party that has given us permission to place cookies. These cookies are placed through an Internet browser on an Internet user’s computer and correspond with a data set that we keep on our servers. Our cookies record non-personal information, such as when an Internet user views or clicks on an advertisement, where a user is located, how many advertisements the user has seen and browser or device information. We may also receive information from cookies placed by buyers or other parties who give us permission to use their cookies. We use data from cookies to help buyers decide whether to bid on, and how to price, an opportunity to place an advertisement in a certain location, at a given time, in front of a particular Internet user. Without cookie data, transactions occurring through our solution would be executed with less insight into activity that has taken place through an Internet user’s browser, reducing the ability of buyers to make accurate decisions about which inventory to purchase for an advertiser’s campaign. This could make placement of advertising through our solution less valuable, with commensurate reduction in pricing. In addition to cookies, we sometimes place pixels on seller websites to track data regarding users’ visits to such websites. We may use such information internally to optimize our services, and may provide such data, or analysis based on such data, to buyers or sellers as part of our services. If sellers restrict our ability to place such pixels on their websites or limit information that may be shared with buyers, or if the use of such tracking mechanisms is restricted by laws in the future, it may diminish the value of our services.
In addition, in the European Union, or EU, Directive 2009/136/EC, commonly referred to as the “Cookie Directive,” directs EU member states to ensure that storing or accessing information on an Internet user’s computer, such as through a cookie, is allowed only if the Internet user has given his or her consent. Because we lack a direct relationship with Internet users, we rely on our sellers, both practically and contractually, to obtain such consent. Additionally, some member states have adopted and implemented, and may continue to adopt and implement, legislation that negatively impacts the use of cookies for digital advertising. Some of these member states, such as the Netherlands, have also considered requiring prior express user consent, as opposed to merely implied consent, to permit the placement and use of cookies. If member states require prior express consent, our ability to deliver advertisements on certain websites or to certain users may be impaired.
Limitations on the use or effectiveness of cookies, whether imposed by regulation or otherwise, may impact the performance of our solution. We may be required to, or otherwise may determine that it is advisable to, develop or obtain additional applications and technologies to compensate for the lack of cookie data, which may require substantial investment on our part. However, we may not be able to develop or implement additional applications that compensate for the lack of cookie data. Moreover, even if we are able to do so, such additional applications may be subject to further regulation, time consuming to develop or costly to obtain, and less effective than our current use of cookies.
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Prominent sellers have announced plans to replace cookies with alternative mechanisms, and if cookies are discontinued in favor of proprietary tracking mechanisms, our costs to develop alternatives could increase, our ability to optimize advertisements may suffer, and we may be placed at a competitive disadvantage to others that utilize proprietary user tracking mechanisms.
Google and Microsoft have announced intentions to discontinue the use and deployment of cookies, and to develop alternative methods and mechanisms for tracking web users. There are also reports that other prominent web sellers, such as Amazon, Facebook, and Apple, are also developing alternative web tracking technologies to displace the use of cookies. These alternative mechanisms have not been described in technical detail, and have not been announced with any specific stated time line. It is possible that these companies may rely on proprietary algorithms or statistical methods to track web users without the deployment of cookies, or may utilize log-in credentials entered by users into other web properties owned by these companies, such as their digital email services, to track web usage without deploying third-party cookies. Alternatively, such companies may build alternative and potentially proprietary user tracking methods into their widely-used web browsers.
If cookies are effectively replaced by proprietary alternatives, any continued attempt by us to use cookie-based methods may face negative consumer sentiment and otherwise place us at a competitive disadvantage. If cookies are replaced, in whole or in part, by proprietary alternatives, we would need to develop alternative proprietary tracking methodologies, which would require substantial investment from us, or which may not be commercially feasible given our relatively small size and the fact that development of such technologies may require technical skills that differ from our core engineering competencies. If we find that the development of alternative tracking methodologies is not feasible, we may be effectively obligated to license proprietary tracking mechanisms and data from companies that have developed them, which also compete with us as advertising networks, and we may only be able to obtain such licenses on economically and operationally unfavorable terms. If such proprietary web-tracking standards are owned by companies that compete with us, they may be unwilling to make such technology available to us. Further, if such proprietary web tracking standards are owned by sellers or browser operators that have access to user information by virtue of their popular consumer-oriented websites or browsers and have the technology designed for use in conjunction with the types of user information collected from their websites, we may still be at a competitive disadvantage even if we license their technology.
If cookies are effectively replaced by tracking technologies that are adopted as open industry-wide standards rather than proprietary standards, we may still incur substantial costs to replace cookie-based tracking mechanisms with these new tracking technologies. This may impose substantial re-engineering implementation costs, and may also diminish the quality or value of our services to buyers, if such new web-tracking technologies do not provide us with the quality or timeliness of the tracking data that we currently generate from cookies.
If the use of “third-party cookies” or digital advertising generally is rejected by Internet users, our performance may decline and we may lose buyers and revenue.
Cookies may easily be deleted or blocked by Internet users. All of the most commonly used Internet browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari) allow Internet users to modify their browser settings to prevent first party or third-party cookies from being accepted by their browsers. Most browsers also now support temporary privacy modes that allow the user to suspend, with a single click, the placement of new cookies or reading or updates of existing cookies. Internet users can also delete cookies from their computers at any time. Some Internet users also download free or paid “ad blocking” software that prevents third-party cookies from being stored on a user’s computer. If more Internet users adopt these ad blocking settings, utilize privacy modes when browsing seller websites, or delete their cookies more frequently than they currently do, our business could be harmed. In addition, the Safari browser blocks third-party cookies by default. Many applications and other devices allow users to avoid receiving advertisements by paying for subscriptions or other downloads. The browser developer Mozilla, which publishes Firefox, has previously announced an intention to block third-party cookies by default in a future iteration of the Firefox browser, and other browsers may do the same. Mobile devices based upon the Android operating system use cookies only in their web browser applications, so that cookies do not track Android users while they are using other applications on the device. As a consequence, fewer of our cookies or sellers’ cookies may be set in browsers or accessible in mobile devices, which adversely affects our business.
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“Do Not Track” options in web browsers, “Limit Ad Tracking” options on mobile devices, as well as emerging government disclosure obligations and other potential regulations, could negatively impact our business by limiting our access to the anonymous user data that informs the advertising campaigns transacted through our solution, and as a result may degrade our performance for our buyers or sellers.
Current versions of the most widely used web browsers, such as Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari, allow users to send “Do Not Track” signals, to indicate that they do not wish to have their web usage tracked. However, there is currently no definition of “tracking” and no standards regarding how to respond to a “Do Not Track” preference that are accepted or standardized in the industry. The World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C, chartered a “Tracking Protection Working Group” in 2011 to convene a multi-stakeholder group of academics, thought leaders, companies, industry groups and consumer advocacy organizations to create a voluntary “Do Not Track” standard for the web. The W3C is continuing to work on a policy specification that will provide guidance as to how websites and buyers should respond to a “Do Not Track” signal, but it is unclear exactly what that specification will advise, and to what extent that specification will be accepted by legislators and regulators worldwide.
Even absent an industry standard, various government authorities have indicated an intent to implement some type of “Do Not Track” standard. For example, the Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, has previously stated that it will pursue a legislative solution if the industry does not agree to a standard. Similarly, the European Commission, which proposes legislation to the European Parliament, has suggested that it intends to consider “Do Not Track” legislation in the absence of an industry standard. Some proposed “Do Not Track” standards, including the current draft specifications being considered by the W3C, impose limits or requirements that apply to data gathering and use by third parties like us, but not to first parties. Laws or regulations could take a similar approach. Any such standard, law, or regulation could place us at a competitive disadvantage to first-party data owners such as large website operators, many of whom own or are developing or acquiring capabilities that compete with our solutions.
Effective January 1, 2014, amendments to the California Online Privacy Protection Act of 2003, California Business and Professional Code § 22575 et seq., require operators of websites or online services to disclose how the operator responds to “Do Not Track” signals regarding the collection of personally identifiable information about an individual consumer’s online activities over time and across third-party Web sites or online services, as well as to disclose whether third parties may collect personally identifiable information about an individual consumer’s online activities over time and across different Web sites or online services. It is possible that other states could adopt legislation similar to California’s. The Do-Not-Track Online Act of 2013 was introduced in the United States Senate in February 2013, and it is possible that the federal government may adopt Do Not Track legislation. We may be subject to disclosure requirements such as California’s, and while we do not collect data that is traditionally considered personally identifiable information in the United States without user consent, we may nonetheless elect to respond by adopting a policy to discontinue profiling or web tracking in response to “Do Not Track” requests, and it is possible that we could in the future be prohibited from using non-personal consumer data by industry standards or state or federal legislation, which may diminish our ability to optimize and target advertisements, and the value of our services.
In addition to “Do Not Track” options, certain mobile devices allow users to “Limit Ad Tracking” on their device. Like “Do Not Track,” “Limit Ad Tracking” is a signal that is sent by particular mobile devices, when a user chooses to send such a signal. While there is no clear guidance on how third parties must respond upon receiving such a signal, it is possible that sellers, regulators, or future legislation may dictate a response that would limit our access to data, and consequently negatively impact the effectiveness of our solution and the value of our services.
Legislation and regulation of digital businesses, including privacy and data protection regimes, could create unexpected additional costs, subject us to enforcement actions for compliance failures, or cause us to change our technology solution or business model, which may have an adverse effect on the demand for our solution.
In the course of our business, we collect, store, transmit and use information (including geo-location information) related to computing and communications devices (mobile and stationary), user activity on devices and advertisements placed through our solution. U.S. and foreign governments have enacted or are considering legislation related to digital advertising and we expect to see an increase in legislation and regulation related to digital advertising, the use of geo-location data to inform advertising, the collection and use of anonymous Internet user data and unique device identifiers, such as IP address or mobile unique device identifiers, and other data protection and privacy regulation. Such legislation could affect the costs of doing business online and may adversely affect the demand for or effectiveness and value of our solution.
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A wide variety of local, state, national and international laws and regulations apply to the collection, use, retention, protection, disclosure, transfer and other processing of data collected from and about consumers and devices, and the regulatory framework for privacy issues is evolving worldwide. Various government and consumer agencies and public advocacy groups have called for new regulation and changes in industry practices, including some directed at the digital advertising industry in particular. Some of our competitors may have more access to lobbyists or governmental officials and may use such access to effect statutory or regulatory changes in a manner to commercially harm us while favoring their solutions. It is possible that new laws and regulations will be adopted in the United States and internationally, or existing laws and regulations may be interpreted in new ways, that would affect our business, particularly with regard to collection or use of data to target advertisements and communication with consumers through mobile devices and/or using location and the collection of data from apps and websites that are targeted to children.
The U.S. government, including the FTC and the Department of Commerce, has announced that it is reviewing the need for greater regulation of the collection of consumer information, including regulation aimed at restricting some targeted advertising practices. For example, the U.S. Senate is currently considering enacting the Location Privacy Protection Act, which would place significant restrictions on the collection and use of geo-location data, including for advertising purposes. More recently, U.S. President Barack Obama has announced that he intends to encourage the U.S. Congress to pass legislation that would codify the “Consumer Bill of Rights” that his office issued in February 2012, which would impose detailed restrictions on the collection, use, and disclosure of certain types of consumer information. The FTC has also adopted revisions to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act that expand liability for the collection of information (including certain anonymous information such as persistent identifiers) by operators of websites and other online services that are directed to children or that otherwise use (for certain purposes) information collected from or about children. In addition, the European Union has adopted Directive 2002/58/EC, commonly referred to as the EU e-Privacy Directive, and is in the process of proposing reforms to its existing data protection legal framework, which may result in a greater compliance burden for us in the course of delivering our solution in Europe. Complying with any new regulatory requirements could force us to incur substantial costs or require us to change our business practices in a manner that could reduce our revenue or compromise our ability to effectively pursue our growth strategy.
Further, many governments are restricting the movement of information about individuals beyond their national borders. Such restrictions could, depending upon their scope, limit our ability to utilize technology infrastructure consolidation, redundancy, and load-balancing techniques, resulting in increased infrastructure costs, decreased operational efficiencies and performance, and potentially a greater risk of system failure.
We strive to comply with all applicable laws and regulations relating to privacy and data collection processing, use and disclosure, but these laws and regulations are continually evolving, not always clear, and not always consistent across the jurisdictions in which we do business. We take measures to protect the security of information that we collect, use and disclose in the operation of our business, and to offer certain privacy protections with respect to such information, but such measures may not always be effective. Our failure to comply with applicable laws and regulations or industry standards applicable to personal data or other data relating to consumers, or to protect such data, could result in enforcement action against us, including fines, imprisonment of our officers and public censure, claims for damages by consumers and other affected individuals, damage to our reputation and loss of goodwill. This is particularly true given that the FTC, Attorneys General of various U.S. States and various international regulators (including numerous data protection authorities in the European Union), have specifically cited as enforcement priorities certain practices that relate to digital advertising, such as the use of geo-location for advertising purposes, the delivery of targeted advertising to children, and the placement of cookies and the EU “Cookie Directive.” Even the perception of concerns relating to our collection, use, disclosure, and retention of data, including our security measures applicable to the data we collect, whether or not valid, may harm our reputation and inhibit adoption of our solution by current and future buyers and sellers. We are aware of ongoing lawsuits filed against, or regulatory investigations into, companies in the digital advertising industry concerning various alleged violations of consumer protection, data protection, and computer crime laws, asserting various privacy-related theories. Any such proceedings brought against us could hurt our reputation, force us to spend significant amounts in defense of these proceedings, distract our management, increase our costs of doing business, adversely affect the demand for our services and ultimately result in the imposition of monetary liability or restrictions on our ability to conduct our business. We may also be contractually liable to indemnify and hold harmless buyers or sellers from the costs or consequences of litigation or regulatory investigations resulting from using our services or from the disclosure of confidential information, which could damage our reputation among our current and potential sellers or buyers, require significant expenditures of capital and other resources and cause us to lose business and revenue.
Further, privacy and other regulatory violations by other participants in the digital advertising ecosystem could lead to increased regulatory and enforcement activities, reductions in the growth of demand for digital advertising, and increased user requirements, all of which could have adverse consequences and impose additional costs for all industry participants, including us.
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The European Parliament is considering revocation of the EU-U.S. Safe Harbor Framework, under which personal data of EU residents may be transferred to the United States, and this revocation, if implemented, could hamper our plans to expand our business in Europe.
The use and transfer of personal data in EU member states is currently governed under Directive 95/46/EC (which is commonly referred to as the Data Protection Directive) as well as legislation adopted in the member states to implement the Data Protection Directive. The transfer of what is deemed to be personal data of EU subjects to countries (like the United States) that are determined to have inadequate privacy protections for such data is currently permitted under, among other methods, a process agreed to by the EU and the United States known as the EU-U.S. Safe Harbor Framework, pursuant to which U.S. businesses commit to treat the personal data of EU residents in accordance with privacy principles promulgated by the Data Protection Directive, and may self-certify their compliance with the Safe Harbor Framework.
Currently, we do not participate in the Safe Harbor Framework. Nonetheless, recent developments have called into question whether we would be able to participate in the future, should we decide to do so, or should participation become necessary. The EU is currently considering adoption of a General Data Protection Regulation to supersede the Data Protection Directive, and a European Parliament Inquiry has recently indicated that it will recommend suspension of the Safe Harbor Framework as part of the General Data Protection Regulation. Meanwhile, the European Commission recently published its analysis of the Safe Harbor Framework and concluded that it should be revised to include greater transparency and active enforcement. More recently, the High Court of Ireland has referred to the European Court of Justice a case that calls into question the continued viability of adequacy programs like the Safe Harbor Framework. If restrictions are adopted by the EU that completely prohibit the transfer of our data regarding EU subjects to our computer servers in the U.S., or if the European Court of Justice determines that the Safe Harbor Framework is not sufficient to permit transfer of data between the EU and the United States, we would no longer have the option of participating in the Safe Harbor Framework (in which we currently do not participate), and may be forced to create duplicative, and potentially expensive, information technology infrastructure and business operations in Europe, which may hinder our expansion plans in Europe, or render such plans commercially infeasible.
Changes to the definition of personal information or personal data, as well as jurisdictional variances regarding what constitutes personal information or personal data, may require us to change our business practices, which may inhibit our ability to conduct our business.
Although we do not collect data that is traditionally considered personal data in the United States, such as names, email addresses, addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, credit card numbers, or financial or health data in the ordinary course of providing our solution (except to the limited extent personal data is voluntarily submitted by a user or collected by us with the user’s knowledge and consent), we typically do collect and store IP addresses, geo-location information, and device or other persistent identifiers that are or may be considered personal data in some jurisdictions or otherwise may be the subject of legislation or regulation. For example, some jurisdictions in the EU regard IP addresses as personal data, and certain regulators, like the California Attorney General’s Office, have advocated for including IP addresses, GPS-level geolocation data, and unique device identifiers as personal data under California law.
Evolving definitions of personal data, within the EU, the United States and elsewhere, especially relating to the classification of IP addresses, machine or device identifiers, geo-location data and other such information, may cause us in the future to change our business practices, diminish the quality of our data and the value of our solution, and hamper our ability to expand our offerings into the EU or other jurisdictions outside of the United States. They might likewise result in additional regulatory, legislative or public scrutiny, including investigations. While we have not collected data that is traditionally considered personal data, such as name, email address, address, phone numbers or social security numbers, we typically do collect and store IP addresses and other device identifiers. Our failure to comply with evolving interpretations of applicable laws and regulations, or to adequately protect personal data, could result in enforcement action against us or reputational harm, which could have a material adverse impact on our business, financial condition and results of operations.
Changes in tax laws affecting us and other market participants could have a material adverse effect on our business.
U.S. legislative proposals have been made that, if enacted, would limit or delay the deductibility of advertising costs for U.S. federal income tax purposes. Any such proposals, if enacted, will likely cause advertisers to reduce their advertising spending in order to mitigate or offset any loss resulting from a change in the tax treatment of such costs. Accordingly, any such changes would likely have a negative impact on the advertising industry and us by reducing the aggregate amount of money spent on advertising.
U.S. legislation has also been proposed that would limit the ability to defer taxation for U.S. federal income tax purposes of earnings outside the United States until those earnings are repatriated. Any changes in the taxation of our non-U.S. earnings could increase our tax expense and harm our financial position and results of operations.
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We generally do not have privity with Internet users who view advertisements that we place, and we may not be able to disclaim liabilities from such Internet users or consumers.
Advertisements on websites, applications and other digital media properties of sellers purchased through our solution are viewed by Internet users visiting these digital media properties. Sellers often have terms of use in place with their users that disclaim or limit their potential liabilities to such users, or pursuant to which users waive rights to bring class-actions against the sellers. Potential liabilities could include liabilities to Internet users arising as a result of malicious activities, such as the introduction of malware into users’ computers through advertisements served through our platform. Certain of our competing advertisement networks are also prominent sellers, and may be able to include protections in their website terms of use that also limit liability to users for their advertising services. We generally do not have terms of use in place with such users. As a consequence, we generally cannot disclaim or limit potential liabilities to such users through terms of use, which may expose us to greater liabilities than competing advertising networks that are also prominent sellers.
Changes in market standards applicable to our solution could require us to incur substantial additional development costs.
Market forces, competitors’ initiatives, regulatory authorities, industry organizations, seller integration revisions and security protocols are causing the emergence of demands and standards that are or could be applicable to our solution. For example, in 2013, changes to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act required us to change our system to stop user tracking on some seller websites. In addition, German law required us to make engineering changes to stop tracking IP addresses in that country. Consensus or law on a “Do Not Track” standard could require us to stop tracking many Internet users. Similar dynamics are evolving in international markets.
We expect compliance with these kinds of standards to become increasingly important to buyers and sellers, and conforming to these standards is expected to consume a substantial and increasing portion of our development resources. If our solution is not consistent with emerging standards, our market position and sales could be impaired. If we make the wrong decisions about compliance with these standards, or are late in conforming, or if despite our efforts our solution fails to conform, our offerings will be at a disadvantage in the market to the offerings of competitors who have complied.
Evolving concepts of viewability involve competitive uncertainty and may cause us to incur additional costs and liability risk.
Viewability of digital advertising inventory is relevant to marketers because it represents a way of assessing the value of particular inventory as a means to reach a target audience. However, there is no consensus definition of viewability. Some approaches focus on whether an advertisement can be seen at all, and others focus on whether an advertisement that can be seen is actually seen, in whole or part, or for how long. Low viewability can be caused by various factors, including technical issues (e.g. device screen size, browser functionality and settings, web site load times), media design (e.g. below-the-fold or sub-page placements), and user behavior (e.g. the decision whether to scroll down a website or click on an advertisement or how long to watch a video). Non-viewability is a separate issue and may result, for example, from stacking ads so the one in the back is obscured, or serving ads into a single pixel space too small to be seen. Sometimes these two concepts of viewability are conflated, which tends to obscure analysis.
Aside from non-viewable inventory, which is generally well understood, various vendors and other industry participants advocate definitions and measurements of low viewability that are consistent with their technology or interests. We cannot predict whether consensus views will emerge, or what they will be. Nevertheless, some themes seem to have emerged:
• | Buyers of advertising inventory are increasingly using technology, often provided by third parties, to assess viewability of impressions for use as a bidding or purchasing criterion, or to determine value for purposes of determining pricing. |
• | Assessment of viewability is imperfect, but technology can be expected to improve as data providers, DSPs, and buyers themselves develop viewability assessment tools and build viewability factors into their algorithms for bidding, purchasing, and pricing decisions. |
• | Inventory viewability and value correlate. More viewable inventory is more valuable, and viewability of inventory increases in importance with the price paid for that inventory. |
• | Viewability can be used as an inventory differentiator, by domain or on an impression level, with higher viewability generally associated with higher value and pricing, and lower viewability generally associated with lower value and pricing. |
These themes are relevant to our business of facilitating fully informed purchase and sale of advertising, and evolution of viewability standards may represent an opportunity to refine matching of supply and demand. However, incorporating viewability concepts fully into our business as they evolve will require us to incur additional costs to integrate relevant technologies and process additional information through our system. If we do not handle viewability well, we could be competitively disadvantaged.
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Also, inventory that is well differentiated on the basis of viewability will also be differentiated on the basis of value, with less viewable inventory valued lower. In this context, if we are not positioned to transact the higher viewability inventory competitively, our revenue and profitability could be adversely affected.
Buyers could attempt to hold us responsible for impressions that do not satisfy their viewability requirements or expectations, and depending upon how viewability evolves, market practice or emerging regulation may require us to incur compliance costs and assume some responsibility for viewability of advertisements transacted through our solution. Divergent views of how to measure viewability and imperfect measurement technology could lead to disagreement, increasing risk of disputes, demands for refunds, and reputational harm.
Failure to comply with industry self-regulation could harm our brand, reputation and our business.
In addition to compliance with government regulations, we voluntarily participate in trade associations and industry self-regulatory groups that promulgate best practices or codes of conduct addressing privacy and the provision of Internet advertising. For example, we have undertaken to comply with the Network Advertising Initiative’s Code of Conduct and the Digital Advertising Alliance’s Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising in the United States, as well as similar self-regulatory principles in other jurisdictions. On our website, we offer Internet users the ability to opt out of receiving interest-based advertisements based on a cookie we place. However, in the past, some of these guidelines have not comported with our business practices, making them difficult for us to implement. If we encounter difficulties in the future, or our opt-out mechanisms fail to work as designed, or if Internet users misunderstand our technology or our commitments with respect to these principles, we may be subject to negative publicity, as well as investigation and litigation by governmental authorities, self-regulatory bodies or other accountability groups, buyers, sellers, or other private parties. Any such action against us could be costly and time consuming, require us to change our business practices, divert management’s attention and our resources, and be damaging to our reputation and our business. In addition, we could be adversely affected by new or altered self-regulatory guidelines that are inconsistent with our practices or in conflict with applicable laws and regulations in the United States and other countries where we do business. As a result of such inconsistencies or conflicts, or other business or legal considerations, we may choose not to comply with some self-regulatory guidelines. If we fail to abide by or are perceived as not operating in accordance with applicable laws and regulations and industry best practices, or any industry guidelines or codes with regard to privacy or the provision of Internet advertising, our reputation may suffer and we could lose relationships with buyers and sellers.
Forecasts of market growth may prove to be inaccurate, and even if the market in which we compete achieves the forecasted growth, our business may not grow at similar rates, if at all.
We have in the past provided, and may continue to provide, forecasts related to our market, including forecasts relating to the expected growth in the digital advertising market and parts of that market (including display, mobile and digital video advertising), as well as the forecasted trend towards automation of analog and print advertising markets. Growth forecasts are subject to significant uncertainty and are based on assumptions and estimates that may prove to be inaccurate. Moreover, the anticipation that the advertising industry will continue to shift from analog and print media to digital advertising at the rate forecasted, or the anticipation of the shift in advertising spending from analog to digital, may not come to fruition. Further, we may not succeed in our plans to enter or increase our presence in various markets for various reasons, including possible shortfall or misallocation of resources or superior technology development or marketing by competitors.
Risks Related to Our Relationships with Buyers and Sellers and Other Strategic Relationships
We depend on owners of digital media properties for advertising inventory to deliver advertising campaigns, and any decline in the supply of advertising inventory from these sellers could hurt our business.
We depend on digital media properties to provide us with advertising inventory within their websites and applications. The sellers that supply their advertising inventory to us typically do so on a non-exclusive basis and are not required to provide any minimum amounts of advertising inventory to us or provide us with a consistent supply of advertising inventory. Sellers may seek to change the terms at which they offer inventory to us or they may elect to make advertising inventory available to our competitors who offer advertisements to them on more favorable economic terms or may sell inventory directly to buyers through other channels. Supply of advertising inventory is also limited for some sellers, such as special sites or new technologies, and sellers may request higher prices, fixed price arrangements or guarantees. In addition, sellers sometimes place significant restrictions on the sale of their advertising inventory. These restrictions may include strict security requirements, prohibitions on advertisements from specific advertisers or specific industries, or restrictions on the use of specified creative content or format. In addition, sellers or competitors could pressure us to increase the prices for inventory, which may reduce our operating margins, or otherwise block our access to that inventory, without which we would be unable to deliver advertisements using our solution.
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If sellers decide not to make advertising inventory available to us, decide to increase the price of inventory, or place significant restrictions on the sale of their advertising inventory, we may not be able to replace this with inventory from other sellers that satisfies our requirements in a timely and cost-effective manner. In addition, significant sellers in the industry may enter into exclusivity arrangements with our competitors, which could limit our access to a meaningful supply of advertising inventory. If any of this happens, the value of our solution to buyers could decrease and our revenue could decline or our cost of acquiring inventory could increase, lowering our operating margins.
Our contracts with buyers and sellers are generally not exclusive and generally do not require minimum volumes or long-term commitments. If buyers, or sellers representing a significant portion of the demand or inventory in our marketplace decides to materially reduce the use of our solution, we could experience an immediate and significant decline in our revenue and profitability and harm to our business.
Generally, our buyers and sellers are not obligated to provide us with any minimum volumes of business, have established relationships and may also do business with our competitors as well as with us, and may bypass us and transact directly with each other or through other intermediaries. Most of our business with buyers originates pursuant to “insertion orders” or other arrangements that are limited in scope and can be reduced or canceled by the buyer without penalty. Similarly, sellers make inventory available to us on a discretionary basis. Accordingly, our business is highly vulnerable to changes in the macro environment and development of new or more compelling offerings by our competitors, which could reduce business generally or motivate buyers or sellers to migrate to competitors’ offerings. Further, if our relationships with buyers or sellers become strained due to service failures or other reasons, including possible perceptions that our buyer applications compete with buyers, it might not be difficult for some of these buyers to reduce or terminate their business with us. Because we do not have long-term contracts, our future revenue may be difficult to predict and there is no assurance that our current buyers will continue to use our solution or that we will be able to replace lost buyers or sellers with new ones. If a buyer or group of buyers representing a significant portion of the demand in our marketplace, or a seller or group of sellers representing a significant portion of the inventory in our marketplace decides to materially reduce use of our solution, it could cause an immediate and significant decline in our revenue and profitability and harm to our business. Additionally, if we overestimate future usage, we may incur additional expenses in adding infrastructure without a commensurate increase in revenue, which would harm our profitability and other operating results. If a buyer or group of buyers representing a significant portion of our business decides to materially reduce use of our solution, it could cause an immediate and significant decline in our revenue and profitability and harm to our business.
Loss of business associated with large buyers or sellers could have significant negative impact on our results of operations and overall financial condition.
Certain large buyers and sellers have accounted for and will continue to account for a disproportionate share of business transacted through our solution. Our contracts with buyers and sellers generally do not provide for any minimum volumes or may be terminated on relatively short notice. Buyer and seller needs and plans can change quickly, and buyers or sellers may reduce volumes or terminate their arrangements with us for a variety of reasons, including financial issues or other changes in circumstances; development or acquisition by buyers or sellers of their own technologies that reduce their reliance upon us; new offerings by or strategic relationships with our competitors; opportunities for buyers and sellers to bypass us and deal directly with each other; change in control (including consolidations through mergers and acquisitions); or declining general economic conditions (including those resulting from dissolutions of companies). Technical issues could also cause a decline in spending. The number of large media buyers in the market is finite, and it could be difficult for us to replace revenue loss from any buyers whose relationships with us diminish or terminate. Similarly, it could be difficult for us to replace inventory loss from any large sellers whose relationships with us diminish or terminate. Just as growth in our inventory strengthens buyer activity in a network effect, loss of inventory or buyers could have the opposite effect. Loss of revenue from significant buyers or failure to collect accounts receivable, whether as a result of buyer payment default, contract termination or other factors, or significant reductions in inventory, could have a significant negative impact on our results of operation and overall financial condition.
We must provide value to both buyers and sellers of advertising without being perceived as favoring one over the other.
Buyers and sellers have different interests, and we are interposed between them. To be successful, we must continue to find ways of providing value to both. For example, our proprietary auction algorithms, which are designed to optimize auction outcomes, influence the allocation and pricing of impressions and must do so in ways that add value to both buyers and sellers. Because new business models continue to emerge, we must constantly adapt our relationship with buyers and sellers and how we market ourselves to each. Further, consistent with our mission of connecting buyers and sellers, we inevitably grow closer to each, and we must take care that our deeper connections with buyers, on the one hand, or sellers, on the other hand, do not come at the expense of the other’s interests. If we fail to achieve this balance, our ability to provide a full suite of services and our growth prospects may be compromised.
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We rely on buyers to use our solution to purchase advertising on behalf of advertisers. Such buyers may have or develop high-risk credit profiles, which may result in credit risk to us.
Our revenue is generated from advertising spending transacted over our platform using our technology solution. We invoice and collect from buyers the full purchase price for impressions they have purchased, retain our fees (where applicable), and remit the balance to sellers. However, in some cases, we may be required to pay sellers for impressions delivered even if we are unable to collect from the buyer of those impressions. There can be no assurances that we will not experience bad debt in the future. Any such write-offs for bad debt could have a materially negative effect on our results of operations for the periods in which the write-offs occur.
Our sales efforts with buyers and sellers may require significant time and expense.
Attracting new buyers and sellers and increasing our business with existing buyers and sellers involves substantial time and expense, and we may not be successful in establishing new relationships or in maintaining or advancing our current relationships. We may spend substantial time and effort educating buyers and sellers about our offerings, including providing demonstrations and comparisons against other available solutions. This process can be costly and time-consuming, and is complicated by us having to spend time integrating our solution with software of buyers and sellers. Because our solution may be less familiar in some markets outside the United States, the time and expense involved with attracting, educating and integrating buyers and sellers in international markets may be even greater than in the United States. If we are not successful in targeting, supporting and streamlining our sales processes, our ability to grow our business may be adversely affected.
If we are unable to maintain or expand our sales and marketing capabilities, we may not be able to generate anticipated revenue.
Increasing our base of buyers and sellers and achieving broader market acceptance of our solution will depend to a significant extent on our ability to expand our sales and marketing operations and activities. We are substantially dependent on our sales force to obtain new buyers and sellers and to drive sales to our existing buyers. We currently plan to expand our sales team in order to increase revenue from new and existing buyers and sellers and to further penetrate our existing markets and expand into new advertising channels and additional international markets. Our solution requires a sophisticated sales force with specific sales skills and specialized technical knowledge that takes time to develop. Competition for qualified sales personnel is intense, and we may not be able to retain our existing sales personnel or attract, integrate or retain sufficient highly qualified sales personnel. In particular, it may be difficult to find qualified sales personnel in international markets, or sales personnel with experience in emerging segments of the market. Our ability to achieve revenue growth in the future will depend, in large part, on our success in recruiting, training and retaining sufficient numbers of sales personnel. These new employees require significant training and experience before they achieve full productivity. We estimate that it takes approximately six months before a newly hired domestic sales representative is fully trained and productive in selling our solution, and often longer in the case of non-U.S. sales representatives and sales personnel focused on new geographies or specific market segments. As a result, the cost of hiring and carrying new sales team members cannot be offset by the revenue they produce for a significant period of time. Our recent hires and planned hires may not become productive as quickly as we would like, and we may not be able to hire or retain sufficient numbers of qualified individuals in the markets where we do business. Our business will be seriously harmed if these expansion efforts do not generate a corresponding significant increase in revenue.
Legal claims resulting from the actions of buyers or sellers could expose us to liabilities, damage our reputation, and be costly to defend.
The buyers and sellers engaging in transactions through our platform impose various requirements upon each other, and they and the underlying advertisers are subject to regulatory requirements by governments and standards bodies applicable to their activities. We assume responsibility for satisfying or facilitating the satisfaction of some of these requirements through the contracts we enter into with buyers and sellers. In addition, we may have responsibility for some acts or omissions of buyers or sellers transacting business through our solution under applicable laws or regulations or as a result of common law duties, even if we have not assumed responsibility contractually. These responsibilities could expose us to significant liabilities, perhaps without the ability to impose effective mitigating controls upon, or to recover from, buyers and sellers. Moreover, for those third parties who are both a buyer and seller on our platform, it is feasible that they could use our platform to buy and sell advertisements in an effort to inflate their own revenue. While we do not believe we would have legal liability in connection with such a scheme, we could still nevertheless be subject to litigation as a result of such actions, and, if we were sued, we would incur legal costs in our defense and cannot guarantee that a court would not attribute some liability to us.
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We generally attempt to obtain representations from buyers that the advertising they place through our solution complies with applicable laws and regulations and does not violate third-party intellectual property rights, and from sellers about the quality and characteristics of the impressions they provide. We also generally receive representations from buyers and sellers about their privacy practices and compliance with applicable laws and regulations, including their maintenance of adequate privacy policies that disclose and permit our data collection practices. However, we are not always able to verify or control their compliance with their obligations under their agreements with us or to consumers or other third parties, and the acts or omissions of sellers, buyers or advertisers may subject us to regulatory action, legal claims and liability that would be difficult and costly to defend and expose us to significant costs and reputational harm. We may not have adequate indemnity to protect us against, and our policies of insurance may not cover, such claims and losses.
Our business relationships expose us to risk of substantial liability for contract breach, violation of laws and regulations, intellectual property infringement and other losses, and our contractual indemnities and limitations of liability may not protect us adequately.
Our agreements with sellers, buyers and other third parties typically obligate us to provide indemnity and defense for losses resulting from claims of intellectual property infringement, damages to property or persons, business losses or other liabilities. Generally, these indemnity and defense obligations relate to our own business operations, obligations and acts or omissions. However, under some circumstances, we agree to indemnify and defend contract counterparties against losses resulting from their own business operations, obligations and acts or omissions, or the business operations, obligations and acts or omissions of third parties. For example, because our business interposes us between buyers and sellers in various ways, buyers often require us to indemnify them against acts and omissions of sellers, and sellers often require us to indemnify them against acts and omissions of buyers. In addition, our agreements with sellers, buyers and other third parties typically include provisions limiting our liability to the counterparty and the counterparty’s liability to us. These limits sometimes do not apply to certain liabilities, including indemnity obligations. These indemnity and limitation of liability provisions generally survive termination or expiration of the agreements in which they appear.
We have limited ability to control acts and omissions of buyers and sellers or other third parties that could trigger our indemnity obligations, and our policies of insurance may not cover us for acts and omissions of others. We attempt to obtain indemnity from buyers and sellers (as well as other third parties) to protect us in case we become liable for their acts and omissions, but because we contract with many buyers and sellers and those contracts are individually negotiated with different scopes of indemnity and different limits of liability, it is possible that in any case our obligation to provide indemnity for the acts or omissions of a third party such as a buyer or seller may exceed what we are able to recover from that party. Further, contractual limits on our liability may not apply to our indemnity obligations, contractual limits on our counterparties’ liability may limit what we can recover from them, and contract counterparties may be unable to meet their obligations to indemnify and defend us as a result of insolvency or other factors. Large indemnity obligations, or obligations to third parties not adequately covered by the indemnity obligations of our contract counterparties, could expose us to significant costs.
In addition to the effects on indemnity described above, the limitation of liability provisions in our contracts may, depending upon the circumstances, be too high to protect us from significant liability for our own acts or omissions, or so low as to prevent us from recovering fully for the acts or omissions of our counterparties.
Our solution relies on third-party open source software components. Failure to comply with the terms of the underlying open source software licenses could expose us to liabilities, and the combination of certain open source software with code that we develop could compromise the proprietary nature of our solution.
Our solution utilizes software licensed to us by third-party authors under “open source” licenses. The use of open source software may entail greater risks than the use of third-party commercial software, as open source licensors generally do not provide warranties or other contractual protections regarding infringement claims or the quality of the code. Some open source licenses contain requirements that we make available source code for modifications or derivative works we create based upon the type of open source software we use. If we combine our proprietary software with open source software in a certain manner, we could, under certain open source licenses, be required to release the source code of our proprietary software to the public. This would allow our competitors to create similar solutions with lower development effort and time and ultimately put us at a competitive disadvantage.
Although we monitor our use of open source software in an effort to avoid subjecting our products to conditions we do not intend, the terms of many open source licenses have not been interpreted by U.S. courts, and there is a risk that these licenses could be construed in a way that could impose unanticipated conditions or restrictions on us. Moreover, we cannot guarantee that our processes for controlling our use of open source software will be effective. If we are held to have breached the terms of an open source software license, we could be required to seek licenses from third parties to continue operating using our solution on terms that are not economically feasible, to re-engineer our solution or the supporting computational infrastructure to discontinue use of certain code, or to make generally available, in source code form, portions of our proprietary code.
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Risks Relating to Our Operations
Real or perceived errors or failures in the operation of our solution could damage our reputation and impair our sales.
Our solution processes more than 3.5 million peak queries per second and approximately 5 trillion bid requests per month and must operate without interruption to support the needs of sellers and buyers. Because our software is complex, undetected errors and failures may occur, especially when new versions or updates are made to our software or network infrastructure or changes are made to sellers’ or buyers’ software interfacing with our solution. Errors or bugs in our software, faulty algorithms, technical or infrastructure problems, or updates to our systems could lead to an inability to process data to place advertisements or price inventory effectively, cause the inadvertent disclosure of proprietary data or cause advertisements to display improperly or be placed in proximity to inappropriate content. Despite testing by us, errors or bugs in our software have in the past, and may in the future, not be found until the software is in our live operating environment. For example, changes to our solution have in the past caused errors in the reporting and analytics applications for buyers, resulting in delays in their spending on our platform. Errors or failures in our solution, even if caused by the implementation of changes by buyers or sellers to their systems, could also result in negative publicity, damage to our reputation, loss of or delay in market acceptance of our solution, increased costs or loss of revenue, loss of competitive position, or claims by advertisers for losses sustained by them.
We may make errors in the measurement of transactions conducted through our solution, causing discrepancies with the measurements of buyers and sellers, which can lead to a lack in confidence in us and require us to reduce our fees or provide refunds to buyers and sellers. Alleviating problems resulting from errors in our software could require significant expenditures of capital and other resources and could cause interruptions, delays or the cessation of our business.
Various risks could interrupt access to our network infrastructure or data, exposing us to significant costs and other liabilities.
Our revenue depends on the technological ability of our solution to deliver and measure advertising impressions, and the operation of our exchange and our ability to place impressions depend on the continuing and uninterrupted performance of our IT systems. Our platform operates on our data processing equipment that is housed in third-party commercial data centers that we do not control. In addition, our systems interact with systems of buyers and sellers and their contractors. All of these facilities and systems are vulnerable to interruption and/or damage from a number of sources, many of which are beyond our control, including, without limitation: (i) power loss, loss of adequate cooling and telecommunications failures; (ii) fire, flood, earthquake, hurricane and other natural disasters; (iii) software and hardware errors, failures or crashes; (iv) financial insolvency; and (v) computer viruses, malware, hacking, terrorism, and similar disruptive problems. In particular, intentional cyber-attacks present a serious issue because of the difficulty associated with prevention and remediation of intentional attacks and sabotage, and because they can be used to defraud our buyers and sellers and their customers, and to steal confidential or proprietary data from us or our users. Further, because our Los Angeles headquarters and San Francisco office and our California and Japan data center sites are in seismically active areas, earthquakes present a particularly serious risk of business disruption. These vulnerabilities may increase with the complexity and scope of our systems and their interactions with buyer and seller systems.
We attempt to mitigate these risks to our business through various means, including redundant infrastructure, disaster recovery plans, separate test systems and change control and system security measures, but our precautions may not protect against all problems, and our ability to mitigate risks to related third-party systems is limited. In addition, we rely to a significant degree upon security and business continuity measures of our data center operators, which may be ineffective. Our disaster recovery and business continuity plans rely upon third-party providers of related services, and if those vendors fail us, we could be unable to meet the needs of buyers and sellers. Any steps we take to increase the reliability and redundancy of our systems may be expensive and may not be successful in preventing system failures. Inaccessibility of our data would have a significant adverse effect upon the operation of our solution. Any failures with our solution or delays in the execution of transactions through our system may result in the loss of advertising placements on impressions and, as a result, the loss of revenue. Our facilities would be costly to repair or replace, and any such efforts would likely require substantial time.
Buyers may perceive any technical disruption or failure in the performance of advertisements on seller’s digital media properties to be attributable to us, and our reputation could similarly suffer, or buyers may seek to avoid payment or demand future credits for disruptions or failures, any of which could harm our business and results of operations. If we are unable to operate our exchange and deliver advertising impressions successfully, our ability to attract potential buyers and sellers and retain and expand business with existing buyers and sellers could be harmed and our business, financial condition and operating results could be adversely affected.
Malfunction or failure of our systems, or other systems that interact with our systems, could disrupt our operations and negatively impact our business and results of operations to a level in excess of any applicable business interruption insurance. Interruption in the operation of our solution would result in a loss of revenue and potential liability to buyers and sellers, and any significant instances of system downtime could negatively affect our reputation and ability to sell our solution.
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Any breach of our computer systems or confidential data in our possession could expose us to significant expense and liabilities and harm our reputation.
We must maintain facility and systems security measures to preserve the confidentiality of certain data belonging or related to sellers, buyers and their clients that is transmitted through or stored on our systems or is otherwise in our possession. Additionally, we maintain our own confidential information, and confidential information received from other third parties, in our facilities and systems. We take steps to protect the security, integrity and confidentiality of this data, but there is no guarantee that inadvertent or unauthorized use or disclosure will not occur or that third parties will not gain unauthorized access to this data despite our efforts.
Security breaches, computer malware and computer hacking attacks may occur on our systems or those of our information technology vendors in the future. Any security breach, whether caused by hacking, the inadvertent transmission of computer viruses or other harmful software code, or otherwise, could result in the unauthorized disclosure, misuse or loss of information, legal claims and litigation, indemnity obligations, regulatory fines and penalties, contractual obligations and liabilities, other liabilities and significant costs for remediation and re-engineering to prevent future occurrences. Any such security breach could interrupt, disable, or interfere with our computer systems or networks, and could materially interfere with or prevent us from providing services to our sellers, buyers or their clients. In addition, if our security measures or those of our vendors are breached or unauthorized access to consumer data otherwise occurs, our solution may be perceived as not being secure, and sellers and buyers may reduce or cease the use of our solution.
Despite our security measures, and those of buyers and sellers, we are subject to ongoing threats and, therefore, these security measures may be breached as a result of employee error, failure to implement appropriate processes and procedures, malfeasance, third-party action, including cyber-attacks, cyber-extortion or other intentional misconduct by computer hackers, or otherwise. Additionally, buyers and sellers typically have security measures in place, but we typically do not have means for controlling the adequacy or efficacy of their security measures. Third parties could obtain unauthorized access to our computer systems or networks, or to sellers’ or buyers’ data or our data, including personally identifiable information, intellectual property and other confidential business information. Third parties may also attempt to fraudulently induce employees into disclosing sensitive information such as user names, passwords or other information in order to gain access to our buyers’ data or our data, including intellectual property and other confidential business information.
Because techniques used to obtain unauthorized access or sabotage systems change frequently and generally are not identified until they are launched against a target, we may be unable to anticipate these techniques or to implement adequate preventative or mitigation measures. Though it is difficult to determine what harm may directly result from any specific interruption or breach, any failure to maintain performance, reliability, security and availability of our network infrastructure or otherwise to maintain the confidentiality, security, and integrity of data that we store or otherwise maintain could result in significant distraction to our business, adverse publicity, and damage to our reputation, our relationships with buyers and sellers and our ability to retain and attract new buyers and sellers.
If any such unauthorized disclosure or access does occur, we may be required to notify buyers and sellers or those persons whose information was improperly used, disclosed or accessed. We may also be subject to claims of breach of contract for such use or disclosure, investigation and penalties by regulatory authorities and potential claims by persons whose information was improperly used or disclosed. The unauthorized use or disclosure of information in our control may result in the termination of one or more of our commercial relationships or a reduction in the confidence of buyers, sellers or Internet users and usage of our solution. We may also be subject to litigation and regulatory action alleging the improper use, transmission or storage of confidential information, which could damage our reputation among our current and potential buyers, sellers or Internet users, require significant expenditures of capital and other resources and cause us to lose business and revenue.
Failure to maintain the brand security features of our solution could harm our reputation and expose us to liabilities.
Auction-based advertising is bought and sold through our solution in automated transactions that occur in milliseconds. It is important to sellers that the advertising placed on their media not conflict with existing seller arrangements and be of high quality, consistent with applicable seller standards and compliant with applicable legal and regulatory requirements. It is important to buyers that their advertisements are placed on appropriate media, in proximity with appropriate content, that the impressions for which they are charged are legitimate, and that their advertising campaigns yield their desired results. We use various measures, including proprietary technology, in an effort to store, manage and process rules set by buyers and sellers and to ensure the quality and integrity of the results delivered to sellers and buyers through our solution. If we fail to properly implement or honor rules established by buyers and sellers, advertisements may be improperly placed through our platform, which can result in harm to our reputation as well as the need to pay refunds and other potential legal liabilities.
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If we fail to detect or prevent fraud, intrusion of malware through our platform into the systems or devices of our clients and their customers, or other actions that impact the integrity of our solution or advertisement performance, sellers and buyers could lose confidence in our solution and we could face legal claims, which would cause our business to suffer. If we terminate relationships with sellers as a result of our screening efforts, our volume of paid impressions may decline.
We have in the past, and may in the future, be subject to fraudulent and malicious activities undertaken by persons seeking to use our platform for improper purposes, including to divert or artificially inflate the purchases by buyers through our platform, or to disrupt or divert the operation of the systems and devices of our clients and their customers to misappropriate information, generate fraudulent billings, stage hostile attacks, or for other illicit purposes. Examples of such activities include the use of bots or other automated or manual mechanisms to generate fraudulent impressions that are delivered through our platform, which could overstate the performance of advertising impressions. Such activities could also include the introduction of malware through our platform by persons seeking to commandeer, or gain access to information, on consumers’ computers. We use proprietary technology to identify non-human inventory and traffic, as well as malware, and we terminate relationships with sellers that appear to be engaging in such activities, which results in fewer paid impressions in the year the relationships are terminated than would have otherwise occurred. Because buyers will frequently re-allocate campaigns to other sellers, it is difficult to measure the precise impact on paid impressions and revenue from the loss of these sellers. Although we assess the quality and performance of advertising on sellers’ digital media properties, it may be difficult to detect fraudulent or malicious activity because we do not own content and we rely in part on sellers and buyers for controls with respect to such activity. Further, perpetrators of fraudulent impressions and malware change their tactics and may become more sophisticated, requiring us to improve over time our processes for assessing the quality of seller’s inventory and controlling fraudulent activity. If fraudulent or other malicious activity is perpetrated by others, and we fail to detect or prevent it, we could face legal claims from customers and/or consumers and the affected advertisers may experience or perceive a reduced return on their investment or heightened risk associated with use of our solution, resulting in dissatisfaction with our solution, refusals to pay, refund demands, loss of confidence of buyers or sellers, or withdrawal of future business. We could experience similar consequences if inventory sold through our platform is not viewable by the consumer for technical or other reasons.
Any acquisitions we undertake may disrupt our business, adversely affect operations and dilute stockholders.
Acquisitions have been an important element of our business strategy. We expect to continue to pursue acquisitions in an effort to increase revenue, expand our market position, add to our technological capabilities, respond to dynamic market conditions, or for other strategic or financial purposes. However, there is no assurance that we will identify suitable acquisition candidates or complete any acquisitions on favorable terms, or at all. Further, any acquisitions we do complete would involve a number of risks, including the following:
• | The identification, acquisition and integration of acquired businesses require substantial attention from management. The diversion of management’s attention and any difficulties encountered in the transition process could hurt our business. |
• | The identification, acquisition and integration of acquired businesses requires significant investment, including to harmonize service offerings, expand management capabilities and market presence, and improve or increase development efforts and technology features and functions. |
• | The anticipated benefits from the acquisition may not be achieved, including as a result of loss of customers or personnel of the target, other difficulties in supporting and transitioning the target’s customers, the inability to realize expected synergies from an acquisition or negative culture effects arising from the integration of new personnel. |
• | We may face difficulties in integrating the personnel, technologies, solutions, operations, and existing contracts of the acquired business. |
• | We may fail to identify all of the problems, liabilities or other shortcomings or challenges of an acquired company, technology or solution, including issues related to intellectual property, solution quality or architecture, income tax and other regulatory compliance practices, revenue recognition or other accounting practices or employee or customer issues. |
• | To pay for future acquisitions, we could issue additional shares of our common stock or pay cash. Issuance of shares would dilute stockholders. Use of cash reserves could diminish our ability to respond to other opportunities or challenges. Borrowing to fund any cash purchase price would result in increased fixed obligations and could also include covenants or other restrictions that would impair our ability to manage our operations. |
• | Acquisitions expose us to the risk of assumed known and unknown liabilities including contract, tax, and other obligations incurred by the acquired business, for which indemnity obligations, escrow arrangements or insurance are not available or not sufficient to provide coverage. |
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• | New business acquisitions can generate significant intangible assets that result in substantial related amortization charges and possible impairments. |
• | The operations of acquired businesses, or our adaptation of those operations, may require that we apply revenue recognition or other accounting methodologies, assumptions, and estimates that are different from those we use in our current business, which could complicate our financial statements, expose us to additional accounting and audit costs, and increase the risk of accounting errors. |
• | Acquired businesses may have insufficient internal controls that we must remediate, and the integration of acquired businesses may require us to modify or enhance our own internal controls, in each case resulting in increased administrative expense and risk that we fail to comply with the requirements of Section 404 or that our independent registered public accounting firm is unable to express an opinion as to the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting, resulting in late filing of our periodic reports, loss of investor confidence, regulatory investigations, and litigation. |
If we fail to attract, motivate, train and retain highly qualified engineering, marketing, sales and management personnel, our ability to execute our business strategy could be impaired.
We rely to a significant degree upon our founder, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Product Architect, Frank Addante; our President, Gregory R. Raifman; and our Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer, Todd Tappin, for their strategic vision, industry knowledge, management execution and leadership. The loss of any of them would have a significant adverse effect upon our business.
In addition, our success depends significantly upon our ability to recruit, train, motivate, and retain key technology, engineering, sales and management personnel. We are a technology-driven company and the innovation and delivery of complex solutions at massive scale upon which our success depends are technological and engineering problems. It is imperative that we have highly skilled mathematicians, computer scientists, engineers and engineering management, and appropriately qualified personnel can be difficult to recruit and retain. In addition, as we execute on our international expansion strategy, we will encounter staffing challenges that are unique to a particular country or region, such as recruiting and retaining qualified personnel in foreign countries and difficulty managing such personnel and integrating them into our culture. Skilled and experienced management is critical to our ability to execute against our strategic vision and maintain our performance through the growth and change we anticipate. For certain of our employees, including our CEO, a significant portion of their equity ownership is vested. As a result, it may be more difficult, and require additional equity awards, for us to continue to retain and motivate these team members.
Competition for employees with experience in our industry can be intense, particularly in California, New York and London, where our operations and the operations of other digital media companies are concentrated and where other technology companies compete for management and engineering talent. Other employers may be able to provide better compensation, more diverse opportunities and better chances for career advancement. None of our founders, officers or other key employees has an employment agreement for a specific term, and any of such individuals may terminate his or her employment with us at any time.
It can be difficult, time-consuming, and expensive to recruit personnel with the combination of skills and attributes required to execute our business strategy, and we may be unable to hire or retain sufficient numbers of qualified individuals in the markets where we do business or plan to do business. New hires require significant training and it may take significant time before they achieve full productivity. As a result, we may incur significant costs to attract and retain employees, including significant expenditures related to salaries and benefits and compensation expenses related to equity awards, and we may lose new employees to our competitors or other companies before we realize the benefit of our investment in recruiting and training. Moreover, new employees may not be or become as productive as we expect, and we may face challenges in adequately or appropriately integrating them into our workforce and culture. In addition, as we move into new geographies, we will need to attract and recruit skilled employees in those areas. We have little experience with recruiting in geographies outside of the United States, and may face additional challenges in attracting, integrating and retaining international employees.
Even if we are successful in hiring qualified new employees, we may be subject to allegations that we have improperly solicited such employees while they remained employed by our competitors, that such employees have improperly solicited other colleagues of theirs employed by the same competitors, or that such employees have divulged proprietary or other confidential information to us in violation of their agreements with such competitors.
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Our proprietary rights may be difficult to enforce, which could enable others to copy or use aspects of our solution without compensating us, thereby eroding our competitive advantages and harming our business.
Our success depends, in part, on our ability to protect proprietary methods and technologies that we develop or otherwise acquire, so that we can prevent others from using our inventions and proprietary information. If we fail to protect our intellectual property rights adequately, our competitors might gain access to our technology, and our business might be adversely affected. We rely on trademark, copyright, trade secret laws, confidentiality procedures and contractual provisions to protect our proprietary methods and technologies. Our patent strategy is still in its early stages and, while we have four issued patents, seven pending U.S. patent applications and three pending patent applications in other jurisdictions, valid patents may not be issued from our pending applications. Further, the claims of our issued patents or the claims eventually allowed on any pending applications may not be sufficiently broad to protect our technology or offerings and services. Any issued patents may be challenged, invalidated or circumvented, and any rights granted under these patents may not actually provide adequate defensive protection or competitive advantages to us. Additionally, the process of obtaining patent protection is expensive and time-consuming, and we may not be able to prosecute all necessary or desirable patent applications at a reasonable cost or in a timely manner. Additional uncertainty may result from changes to intellectual property legislation enacted in the United States, including the recent America Invents Act, and other countries, and from interpretations of the intellectual property laws of the United States and other countries by applicable courts and agencies. Accordingly, despite our efforts, we may be unable to obtain adequate patent protection, or to prevent third parties from infringing upon or misappropriating our intellectual property.
Unauthorized parties may attempt to copy aspects of our technology or obtain and use information that we regard as proprietary. We generally enter into confidentiality and/or license agreements with our employees, consultants, vendors and buyers, and generally limit access to and distribution of our proprietary information. However, steps taken by us may not prevent misappropriation of our technology and proprietary information or infringement of our intellectual property rights. Policing unauthorized use of our technology and intellectual property is difficult. Effective trade secret, copyright, trademark, domain name and patent protection are expensive to develop and maintain, both in terms of obtaining and maintaining such rights and the costs of defending our rights. We may be required to protect our intellectual property in an increasing number of jurisdictions, a process that is expensive and may not be successful or which we may not pursue in every location. We may, over time, increase our investment in protecting our intellectual property through additional patent filings, which could be expensive and time-consuming and which may not result in issued patents. Our competitors and others could attempt to capitalize on our brand recognition by using domain names or business names similar to ours, and we may be unable to prevent third parties from acquiring or using domain names and other trademarks that infringe on, are similar to, or otherwise decrease the value of our brands, trademarks or service marks. In addition, the laws of some foreign countries may not be as protective of intellectual property rights as those of the United States, and mechanisms for enforcement of our proprietary rights in such countries may be inadequate. Also, despite the steps we have taken to protect our proprietary rights, it may be possible for unauthorized third parties to copy or reverse engineer aspects of our technology or otherwise obtain and use information that we regard as proprietary, or to develop technologies similar or superior to our technology or design around our proprietary rights.
From time to time, legal action by us may be necessary or appropriate to enforce our intellectual property rights, to protect our trade secrets, to determine the validity and scope of the proprietary rights of others, or to defend against claims of infringement. Regardless of the ultimate success of the litigation, such litigation could result in substantial costs and the diversion of limited resources and could negatively affect our business, operating results and financial condition, and might not be successful. If we are unable to protect our proprietary rights (including aspects of our technology solution) we may find ourselves at a competitive disadvantage to others who have not incurred the same level of expense, time and effort to create and protect their technology and intellectual property.
We may be subject to intellectual property rights claims by third parties, which are costly to defend, could require us to pay significant damages and could limit our ability to use certain technologies and intellectual property.
The digital advertising industry is characterized by the existence of large numbers of patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets and other intellectual property and proprietary rights. Companies in this industry are often required to defend against litigation claims that are based on allegations of infringement or other violations of intellectual property rights. Our technologies may not be able to withstand any third-party claims or rights against their use.
Third parties may assert claims of infringement or misappropriation of intellectual property rights in proprietary technology against us or third parties for which we may be liable or have an indemnification obligation. We cannot be certain that we are not infringing or violating any third-party intellectual property rights. From time to time, we or buyers and sellers may be subject to legal proceedings relating to our solution or underlying technology and the intellectual property rights of others, particularly as we expand the complexity and scope of our business. As a result of disclosure of information in filings required of a public company, our business and financial condition will become more visible, which may result in threatened or actual litigation, including by competitors and other third parties.
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Regardless of whether claims that we are infringing patents or infringing or misappropriating other intellectual property rights have any merit, these claims are time-consuming and costly to evaluate and defend, and can impose a significant burden on management and employees. The outcome of any claim is inherently uncertain, and we may receive unfavorable interim or preliminary rulings in the course of litigation. There can be no assurances that favorable final outcomes will be obtained in all cases. We may decide to settle lawsuits and disputes on terms that are unfavorable to us. Some of our competitors have substantially greater resources than we do and are able to sustain the costs of complex intellectual property litigation to a greater degree and for longer periods of time than we could.
Although third parties may offer a license to their technology or intellectual property, the terms of any offered license may not be acceptable and the failure to obtain a license or the costs associated with any license could cause our business, results of operations or financial condition to be materially and adversely affected. In addition, some licenses may be non-exclusive, and therefore our competitors may have access to the same technology or intellectual property licensed to us. Alternatively, we may be required to develop non-infringing technology or to make other changes, such as to our branding, which could require significant effort and expense and ultimately may not be successful. Furthermore, a successful claimant could secure a judgment or we may agree to a settlement that prevents us from distributing certain products or performing certain services or that requires us to pay substantial damages, including treble damages if we are found to have willfully infringed such claimant’s patents or copyrights, royalties or other fees. Claims of intellectual property infringement or misappropriation also could result in injunctive relief against us, or otherwise result in delays or stoppages in providing all or certain aspects of our solution. Any of the foregoing could adversely affect our relationships with current or future buyers and sellers.
We are subject to government regulations concerning our employees, including wage-hour laws and taxes.
We are subject to applicable rules and regulations relating to our relationship with our employees, including health benefits, unemployment and similar taxes, overtime and working conditions, immigration status and classification of employee benefits for tax purposes. Legislated increases in additional labor cost components, such as employee benefit costs, workers’ compensation insurance rates, compliance costs and fines, as well as the cost of litigation in connection with these regulations, would increase our labor costs. Moreover, we are subject to various laws and regulations in federal, state, and foreign jurisdictions that impose varying rules and obligations on us with respect to the classification of employee benefits for income tax and other purposes and that require us to report and/or withhold in respect of such items. In addition, many employers nationally have been subject to actions brought by governmental agencies and private individuals under wage-hour laws on a variety of claims, such as improper classification of workers as exempt from overtime pay requirements and failure to pay overtime wages properly, and failure to provide meal and rest breaks or pay for missed breaks, with such actions sometimes brought as class actions, and these actions can result in material liabilities and expenses. Should we be subject to employment litigation, such as actions involving wage-hour, overtime, break and working time, it may distract our management from business matters and result in increased labor costs.
Risks Related to Our International Business Strategy
Our international operations and expansion plans require increased expenditures and impose additional risks and compliance imperatives, and failure to execute successfully our international plans will adversely affect our growth and operating results.
We have numerous operations outside of the United States, in Northern Europe, Australia, Japan, Singapore and Brazil. Our expansion plans are also focused on the rest of Asia and other Latin American countries, and other countries in Europe, but many of these operations are nascent. We view further international expansion as imperative, and we expect our international operations to contribute significantly to our future growth, particularly through the mobile business, which could provide access to vast user populations in China and the developing world. However, our experience operating outside the United States is still limited, and our international employees currently represent a modest portion of our headcount. Achievement of our international objectives will require a significant amount of attention from our management, finance, analytics, operations, sales and engineering teams, as well as significant investment in developing the technology infrastructure necessary to deliver our solution and establishing sales, delivery, support, and administrative capabilities in the countries where we operate. Attracting new buyers and sellers outside the United States may require more time and expense than in the United States, in part due to the need to educate such buyers and sellers about our solution, and we may not be successful in establishing and maintaining these relationships. In addition, our international operations will require us to develop and administer our internal controls and legal and compliance practices in countries with different cultural norms, legal requirements and business practices than the United States.
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International operations also impose risks and challenges in addition to those faced in the United States, including management of a distributed workforce; the need to adapt our offering to satisfy local requirements and standards (including differing privacy policies that are sometimes more stringent); laws and business practices that may favor local competitors; legal requirements or business expectations that agreements be drafted and negotiated in the local language; longer accounts receivable payment cycles and other collection difficulties; the effect of global and regional recessions and economic and political instability; potentially adverse tax consequences in the United States and abroad; staffing challenges, including difficulty in recruiting and retaining qualified personnel as well as managing such a diversity in personnel; reduced or ineffective protection of our intellectual property rights in some countries; and costs and restrictions affecting the repatriation of funds to the United States.
One or more of these requirements and risks may make our international operations more difficult and expensive or less successful than we expect, and may preclude us from operating in some markets. There is no assurance that our international expansion efforts will be successful, and we may not generate sufficient revenue or margins from our international business to cover our expenses or contribute to our growth.
Operating in multiple countries requires us to comply with different legal and regulatory requirements.
Our international operations subject us to laws and regulations of multiple jurisdictions, as well as U.S. laws governing international operations. These various laws and regulations are often evolving and sometimes conflict. For example, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or FCPA, and comparable foreign laws and regulations (including the U.K. Bribery Act) prohibit improper payments or offers of payments to foreign governments and their officials and political parties by U.S. and other business entities for the purpose of obtaining or retaining business. Other laws and regulations prohibit bribery of private parties and other forms of corruption. As we expand our international operations, there is some risk of unauthorized payment or offers of payment or other inappropriate conduct by one of our employees, consultants, agents or other contractors, which could constitute a violation by us of various laws, including the FCPA, even though such parties are not always subject to our control. Safeguards we implement to discourage these practices may prove to be ineffective and violations of the FCPA and other laws may result in severe criminal or civil sanctions, or other liabilities or proceedings against us, including class action lawsuits and enforcement actions from the SEC, Department of Justice and international regulators. Other laws applicable to our international business include local employment, tax, privacy, data security and intellectual property protection laws and regulations, including restrictions on movement of information about individuals beyond national borders. In some cases, buyers and sellers operating in non-U.S. markets may impose additional requirements on our non-U.S. business in efforts to comply with their interpretation of their own or our legal obligations. These requirements may differ significantly from the requirements applicable to our business in the United States and may require engineering, infrastructure and other costly resources to accommodate, and may result in decreased operational efficiencies and performance. As these laws continue to evolve and we expand to more jurisdictions, compliance will become more complex and expensive, and the risk of non-compliance will increase.
Compliance with complex foreign and U.S. laws and regulations that apply to our international operations increases our cost of doing business abroad, and violation of these laws or regulations may interfere with our ability to offer our solution competitively in one or more countries, expose us or our employees to fines and penalties, and result in the limitation or prohibition of our conduct of business. As we continue to grow, we will need to expand into new geographies and learn the regulatory and business laws and customs of each new geography. For example, we are planning to add a data center in Hong Kong, which would be our first business presence in China, a country where intellectual property and other proprietary information may not be protected to the same extent as in the United States and Europe, and where government could exercise significant influence or control over our business operations. We also expect our growing mobile business to rely extensively on China. Intellectual property and other proprietary information may not be protected in China to the same extent as in the United States and Europe, and the Chinese government could exercise significant influence or control over our business operations. The Chinese government has recently announced plans to require certain foreign companies operating in China to submit their software and other technology to intrusive security testing, include indigenous Chinese intellectual property and encryption technology in their software, disclose source code and other proprietary information to the Chinese government, and engineer their products to restrict the flow of data outside of China. It is not clear whether such requirements would apply to us, but our operations could attract Chinese government scrutiny as a result of our significant consumer reach and large database. Also, any censorship of websites and content served on computers in mainland China could result in latency with respect to our services in mainland China if our servers are located in Hong Kong or otherwise outside of mainland China, which could significantly impair our ability to process the auction impressions on a timely basis or our ability generally to facilitate the serving of advertisements in China. These factors could result in increased operational expense, and if we are not able to comply with these new regulatory requirements, our business, results of operations and prospects may be adversely affected.
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We are subject to governmental export and import controls that could subject us to liability or impair our ability to compete in international markets.
Our operations are subject to U.S. export controls, specifically the Export Administration Regulations, or EAR, and economic sanctions enforced by the Office of Foreign Assets Control. These regulations provide that encryption technology may be exported outside of the United States only with the required export authorizations, including by license, license exception or other appropriate government authorizations, which may require the filing of an encryption registration and classification request. Furthermore, U.S. export control laws and economic sanctions prohibit the shipment of certain products and services to countries, governments and persons targeted by U.S. sanctions. We incorporate encryption technology into the servers that operate our solution. As a result of locating some servers in data centers outside of the United States, we may have exported encryption technology prior to obtaining the required export authorizations and/or submitting the required requests, including a classification request and/or request for an encryption registration number, resulting in a possible inadvertent violation of U.S. export control laws. As a result, in January 2014, we filed a Voluntary Self Disclosure with the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security, or BIS, concerning these potential violations, and in June 2014, we submitted reports concerning our exports of encryption items with the BIS. While the potential penalties for violations of the EAR include a monetary fine of up to $250,000 or twice the value of the transaction, whichever is greater, per violation and/or a denial of export privileges under the EAR, we do not expect a penalty to be assessed against us in connection with our Voluntary Self Disclosure and, if one is assessed, we do not expect it to be material.
In addition, various countries regulate the import of certain encryption technology, including through import permit and license requirements, and have enacted laws that could limit our ability to deploy our technology or could limit our customers’ ability to use our solution in those countries. Changes in our technology or changes in export and import regulations may create delays in the introduction of our solution or the deployment of our technology in international markets, prevent our customers with international operations from using our solution globally or, in some cases, prevent the export or import of our technology to certain countries, governments or persons altogether. Any change in export or import regulations, economic sanctions or related legislation, shift in the enforcement or scope of existing regulations, or change in the countries, governments, persons or technologies targeted by such regulations, could result in decreased use of our solution by, or in our decreased ability to export our technology to, international markets. Any decreased use of our solution or limitation on our ability to export our technology or sell our solution would likely adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.
Fluctuations in the exchange rates of foreign currencies could result in currency transaction losses that negatively impact our financial results.
We currently have transactions denominated in various non-U.S. currencies, and may, in the future, have sales denominated in the currencies of additional countries. In addition, we incur a portion of our expenses in many of these same currencies, as well as other currencies, and to the extent we need to convert U.S. Dollars or a different foreign currency to pay expenses, we are exposed to unfavorable changes in exchange rates and added transaction costs. We expect international sales and transactions to become an increasingly important part of our business. Such sales and transactions may be subject to unexpected regulatory requirements and other barriers. Any fluctuation in the exchange rates of these foreign currencies may negatively impact our business, financial condition and results of operations. We have not previously engaged in foreign currency hedging. If we decide to hedge our foreign currency exposure, we may not be able to hedge effectively due to lack of experience, unreasonable costs or illiquid markets. In addition, those activities may be limited in the protection they provide us from foreign currency fluctuations and can themselves result in losses.
Risks Related to Our Internal Controls and Finances
We have previously identified certain material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting. Failure to maintain effective internal controls could cause our investors to lose confidence in us and adversely affect the market price of our common stock. If our internal controls are not effective, we may not be able to accurately report our financial results or prevent fraud.
Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, or Section 404, requires that we maintain internal control over financial reporting that meets applicable standards. We may err in the design or operation of our controls, and all internal control systems, no matter how well designed and operated, can provide only reasonable assurance that the objectives of the control system are met. Because there are inherent limitations in all control systems, there can be no absolute assurance that all control issues have been or will be detected. If we are unable, or are perceived as unable, to produce reliable financial reports due to internal control deficiencies, investors could lose confidence in our reported financial information and operating results, which could result in a negative market reaction.
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When we are no longer an “emerging growth company” we will be required, pursuant to Section 404, to furnish a report by management on, among other things, the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting, and we will need to disclose any material weaknesses identified by our management in our internal control over financial reporting. We will also need to provide a statement that our independent registered public accounting firm has issued an opinion on our internal control over financial reporting, provided that our independent registered public accounting firm will not be required to attest to the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting until our first annual report required to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, following the later of the date we are deemed to be an “accelerated filer” or a “large accelerated filer,” each as defined in the Exchange Act, or the date we are no longer an “emerging growth company,” as defined in the Jumpstart Our Businesses Act of 2012, or the JOBS Act.
We have previously identified certain material weaknesses in our internal controls resulting from:
• | a historical lack of qualified personnel within our accounting function that possessed an appropriate level of expertise to perform certain functions; |
• | absence of formalized and documented policies and procedures; |
• | absence of appropriate review and oversight responsibilities; |
• | lack of an effective and timely financial close process; |
• | lack of general information technology controls over financially significant applications, including inadequate segregation of duties; and |
• | lack of regular evaluations of the effectiveness of internal controls over financial reporting. |
We commenced measures to remediate these material weaknesses during the third quarter of 2013, and remediation has been completed as of December 31, 2014. However, completion of remediation does not provide assurance that our remediated controls will continue to operate properly or that our financial statements will be free from error. There may be undetected material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting, as a result of which we may not detect financial statement errors on a timely basis. Moreover, in the future we may implement new offerings and engage in business transactions, such as acquisitions, reorganizations or implementation of new information systems, that could require us to develop and implement new controls and could negatively affect our internal control over financial reporting and result in material weaknesses.
We continue to develop our internal controls, processes and reporting systems in an effort to maintain the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting, and we expect to incur ongoing costs in this effort. However, we may not be successful in developing and maintaining adequate internal controls, which may undermine our ability to provide accurate, timely and reliable reports on our financial and operating results.
If we identify new material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting, if we are unable to comply with the requirements of Section 404 in a timely manner, if we are unable to assert that our internal control over financial reporting is effective, or if our independent registered public accounting firm is unable to express an opinion as to the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting, we may be late with the filing of our periodic reports, investors may lose confidence in the accuracy and completeness of our financial reports and the market price of our common stock could be negatively affected. As a result of such failures, we could also become subject to investigations by the stock exchange on which our securities are listed, the SEC, or other regulatory authorities, and become subject to litigation from investors and stockholders, which could harm our reputation, financial condition or divert financial and management resources from our core business.
Impairment of intangible assets could increase our expenses.
A portion of our assets consists of capitalized software development costs, goodwill and other intangible assets acquired in connection with acquisitions. Current accounting standards require us to evaluate goodwill on an annual basis and other intangibles if certain triggering events occur, and adjust the carrying value of these assets to net realizable value when such testing reveals impairment of the assets. Various factors, including regulatory or competitive changes, could affect the value of our intangible assets. If we are required to write-down the value of our goodwill or intangible assets due to impairment, our reported expenses will increase, resulting in a corresponding decrease in our reported profit.
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If our estimates or judgments relating to our critical accounting policies are erroneous or based on assumptions that change or prove to be incorrect, our operating results could fall below the expectations of securities analysts and investors, resulting in a decline in our stock price.
The preparation of financial statements in conformity with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States, or GAAP, requires management to make estimates and assumptions that affect the amounts reported in the consolidated financial statements and accompanying notes. We base our estimates on our best judgment, historical experience, information derived from third parties, and on various other assumptions that we believe to be reasonable under the circumstances, the results of which form the basis for making judgments about the carrying values of assets, liabilities, equity, revenue and expenses that are not readily apparent from other sources. Our operating results may be adversely affected if our judgments prove to be wrong, assumptions change or actual circumstances differ from those in our assumptions, which could cause our operating results to fall below the expectations of securities analysts and investors or guidance we may have provided, resulting in a decline in our stock price. Significant assumptions and estimates used in preparing our consolidated financial statements include those related to revenue recognition, stock-based compensation and income taxes.
We report revenue on a net basis. If, in the future, we engage in transactions for which revenue is recorded on a gross basis, we may have significant increases in our revenue and decreases in our GAAP margins that do not necessarily correspond with changes in our underlying business, which could cause comparisons with prior periods to be less meaningful and make it more difficult for investors to evaluate our performance.
The recognition of our revenue is governed by certain criteria that must be met and that determine whether we report revenue either on a gross basis, as a principal, or net basis, as an agent, depending upon the nature of the sales transaction. Our revenue is currently recognized on a net basis. In the future we may engage in transactions for which revenue is recorded on a gross basis, due to substantive changes in our business, such as through acquisitions, changes to the commercial terms with buyers and sellers or structural changes to our existing business, or due to changes in accounting standards or interpretations. In that case, we may have significant increases in our revenue and decreases in our GAAP margins that do not necessarily correspond with changes in our underlying activity. We may experience significant fluctuations in revenue and margins in future periods depending upon, in part, the nature of our sales and our recognition of such revenue.
Our tax liabilities may be greater than anticipated.
The U.S. and non-U.S. tax laws applicable to our business activities are subject to interpretation. We are subject to audit by the Internal Revenue Service and by taxing authorities of the state, local and foreign jurisdictions in which we operate. Our tax obligations are based in part on our corporate operating structure, including the manner in which we develop, value, and use our intellectual property and sell our solutions, the jurisdictions in which we operate, how tax authorities assess revenue-based taxes such as sales and use taxes, the scope of our international operations and the value we ascribe to our intercompany transactions. Taxing authorities may challenge our tax positions and methodologies for valuing developed technology or intercompany arrangements, as well as our positions regarding jurisdictions in which we are subject to certain taxes, which could expose us to additional taxes and increase our worldwide effective tax rate. Any adverse outcomes of such challenges to our tax positions could result in additional taxes for prior periods, interest and penalties, as well as higher future taxes. In addition, our future tax expense could increase as a result of changes in tax laws, regulations or accounting principles, or as a result of earning income in jurisdictions that have higher tax rates. An increase in our tax expense could have a negative effect on our financial position and results of operations. Moreover, the determination of our provision for income taxes and other tax liabilities requires significant estimates and judgment by management, and the tax treatment of certain transactions is uncertain. Although we believe we will make reasonable estimates and judgments, the ultimate outcome of any particular issue may differ from the amounts previously recorded in our financial statements and any such occurrence could materially affect our financial position and results of operations.
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Our ability to use our net operating losses and tax credit carryforwards to offset future taxable income may be subject to certain limitations, which could result in higher tax liabilities.
Our ability to fully utilize our net operating loss and tax credit carryforwards to offset future taxable income may be limited. At December 31, 2014, we had U.S. federal net operating loss carryforwards, or NOLs, of approximately $65.4 million, state NOLs of approximately $61.5 million, federal research and development tax credit carryforwards, or credit carryforwards, of approximately $4.3 million, and state credit carryforwards of approximately $3.4 million. A lack of future taxable income would adversely affect our ability to utilize these NOLs and credit carryforwards. In addition, under Section 382 and 383 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, or the Code, and comparable state income tax laws, a corporation that undergoes an “ownership change” is subject to limitations on its ability to utilize its NOLs and credit carryforwards to offset future taxable income following the ownership change. As a result, future changes in our stock ownership, including because of issuance of shares of common stock in connection with acquisitions or other direct or indirect changes in our ownership that may be outside of our control, could result in limitations on our ability to fully utilize our NOLs and credit carryforwards. The Company had an ownership change in January 2008 and $2.3 million of federal and state NOLs are already subject to limitation under Section 382. Additionally, approximately $3.4 million of our federal NOLs and approximately $3.4 million of our state NOLs were generated during the pre-acquisition period by corporations that we acquired, and thus those NOLs already are subject to limitation under Section 382 of the Code and comparable state income tax laws. In addition, depending on the level of our taxable income, all or a portion of our NOLs and credit carryforwards may expire unutilized, which could prevent us from offsetting future taxable income by the entire amount of our current and future NOLs and credit carryforwards. We have recorded a full valuation allowance related to our NOLs, credit carryforwards and other net deferred tax assets due to the uncertainty of the ultimate realization of the future benefits of those assets. To the extent we determine that all, or a portion of, our valuation allowance is no longer necessary, we will reverse the valuation allowance and recognize an income tax benefit in the reported financial statement earnings in that period. Once the valuation allowance is eliminated or reduced, its reversal will no longer be available to offset our current financial statement tax provision in future periods.
We may require additional capital to support growth, and such capital might not be available on terms acceptable to us, if at all. Inability to obtain financing could limit our ability to conduct necessary operating activities and make strategic investments.
We intend to continue to make investments in pursuit of our strategic objectives and to support our business growth. Various business challenges may require additional funds, including the need to respond to competitive threats or market evolution by developing new solutions and improving our operating infrastructure, either through additional hiring or acquisition of complementary businesses or technologies, or both. In addition, we could incur significant expenses or shortfalls in anticipated cash generated as a result of unanticipated events in our business or competitive, regulatory, or other changes in our market.
Our available cash and cash equivalents, including the proceeds from our IPO, the cash we anticipate generating from operations and our available line of credit under our credit facility may not be adequate to meet our capital needs, and therefore we may need to engage in equity or debt financings to secure additional funds. We may not be able to obtain additional financing on terms favorable to us, if at all. If we are unable to obtain adequate financing on terms satisfactory to us when we require it, our ability to continue to support our business growth and respond to business challenges could be significantly impaired, and our business may be adversely affected.
If we do raise additional funds through future issuances of equity or convertible debt securities, our existing stockholders could suffer significant dilution, and any new equity securities we issue could have rights, preferences and privileges superior to those of holders of our common stock. Any debt financing that we secure in the future could involve restrictive covenants relating to our capital raising activities and other financial and operational matters, including the ability to pay dividends. This may make it more difficult for us to obtain additional capital and to pursue business opportunities, including potential acquisitions. In addition, if we issue debt, the holders of that debt would have prior claims on the Company’s assets, and in case of insolvency, the claims of creditors would be satisfied before distribution of value to equity holders, which would result in significant reduction or total loss of the value of our equity.
Our credit facility subjects us to operating restrictions and financial covenants that impose risk of default and may restrict our business and financing activities.
On September 27, 2011, we entered into a loan and security agreement with Silicon Valley Bank that, as amended to date, provides a senior secured revolving credit facility in the aggregate principal amount of $40 million. At December 31, 2014, we had no amounts outstanding under this loan and security agreement. Borrowings under this agreement are secured by substantially all of our tangible personal property assets and all of our intangible assets are subject to a negative pledge in favor of Silicon Valley Bank. This credit facility is subject to certain financial ratio and liquidity covenants, as well as restrictions that limit our ability, among other things, to:
• | dispose of or sell our assets; |
• | make material changes in our business or management; |
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• | consolidate or merge with other entities; |
• | incur additional indebtedness; |
• | create liens on our assets; |
• | pay dividends; |
• | make investments; |
• | enter into transactions with affiliates; and |
• | pay off or redeem subordinated indebtedness. |
These covenants may restrict our ability to finance our operations and to pursue our business activities and strategies. Our ability to comply with these covenants may be affected by events beyond our control. In the past, we were not compliant with certain administrative covenants. Although the bank waived such noncompliance or agreed to amend certain covenants in the past, there is no guarantee it will do so in the future. If a default were to occur and not be waived, such default could cause, among other remedies, all of the outstanding indebtedness under our loan and security agreement to become immediately due and payable. In such an event, our liquid assets might not be sufficient to meet our repayment obligations, and we might be forced to liquidate collateral assets at unfavorable prices or our assets may be foreclosed upon and sold at unfavorable valuations.
Our ability to renew our existing credit facility, which matures in September 2018, or to enter into a new credit facility to replace or supplement the existing facility may be limited due to various factors, including the status of our business, global credit market conditions, and perceptions of our business or industry by sources of financing. In addition, if credit is available, lenders may seek more restrictive covenants and higher interest rates that may reduce our borrowing capacity, increase our costs, and reduce our operating flexibility.
If we do not have or are unable to generate sufficient cash available to repay our debt obligations when they become due and payable, either upon maturity or in the event of a default, we may not be able to obtain additional debt or equity financing on favorable terms, if at all. Our inability to obtain financing may negatively impact our ability to operate and continue our business as a going concern.
Risks Related to the Securities Markets and Ownership of our Common Stock
The price of our common stock may be volatile and the value of an investment in our common stock could decline.
Technology stocks have historically experienced high levels of volatility. The trading price of our common stock has fluctuated substantially and may continue to do so. These fluctuations could result in significant decreases in the value of an investment in our common stock. Factors that could cause fluctuations in the trading price of our common stock include the following:
• | announcements of new offerings, products, services or technologies, commercial relationships, acquisitions or other events by us or our competitors; |
• | price and volume fluctuations in the overall stock market from time to time; |
• | significant volatility in the market price and trading volume of technology companies in general and of companies in the digital advertising industry in particular; |
• | fluctuations in the trading volume of our shares or the size of our public float; |
• | actual or anticipated changes or fluctuations in our results of operations; |
• | actual or anticipated changes in the expectations of investors or securities analysts, and whether our results of operations meet these expectations; |
• | litigation involving us, our industry, or both; |
• | regulatory developments in the United States, foreign countries, or both; |
• | general economic conditions and trends; |
• | major catastrophic events; |
• | breaches or system outages; |
• | sales of large amounts of our common stock or the perception that such sales could occur, as a result of open trading windows under our Insider Trading Policy, pre-arranged sales by insiders under Rule 10b5-1 promulgated under the Exchange Act, sales to cover taxes upon vesting of restricted stock awards or RSUs, or other factors; |
• | departures of officers or other key employees; or |
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• | an adverse impact on the company resulting from other causes, including any of the other risks described in this Annual Report. |
In addition, if the market for technology stocks or the stock market, in general, experiences a loss of investor confidence, the trading price of our common stock could decline for reasons unrelated to our business, results of operations or financial condition. The trading price of our common stock might also decline in reaction to events that affect other companies in our industry even if these events do not directly affect us. In the past, volatility in the market price of a company’s securities has often resulted in securities litigation being brought against that company. Declines in the price of our common stock, even following increases, may result in securities litigation against us, which would result in substantial costs and divert our management’s attention and resources from our business.
Sales of substantial amounts of our common stock in the public markets, or the perception that sales might occur, could reduce the price of our common stock and may dilute the voting power and ownership interest of investors in our common stock.
Sales of a substantial number of shares of our common stock in the public market, or the perception that these sales could occur, could adversely affect the market price of our common stock and may make it more difficult for investors in our common stock to sell their shares at a time and price that they deem appropriate. As of February 27, 2015, we had 37,750,998 shares of common stock outstanding, including 1,705,378 shares of restricted stock issued pursuant to our 2007 Stock Incentive Plan, none of which were vested, but excluding shares of common stock issuable upon exercise of outstanding stock options and vesting of restricted stock units. As of February 27, 2015, we had outstanding options to purchase an aggregate of 6,206,758 shares of our common stock issued pursuant to our 2007 Stock Incentive Plan, of which 3,591,402 were vested at a weighted-average exercise price of $6.23 per share, and options to purchase an aggregate of 1,076,150 shares of our common stock issued pursuant to our 2014 Equity Incentive Plan, of which 312 were vested at a weighted-average exercise price of $12.15 per share, options to purchase an aggregate of 99,666 shares of our common stock issued pursuant to the iSocket, Inc. 2009 Equity Incentive Plan, of which 63,135 were vested at a weighted-average exercise $3.93 per share, and 115,000 shares of our common stock issued pursuant to our 2014 Inducement Grant Equity Incentive Plan, none of which were vested. Furthermore, as of February 27, 2015, we had outstanding 2,091 restricted stock units issued pursuant to our 2007 Stock Incentive Plan, 801,834 restricted stock units issued pursuant to our 2014 Equity Incentive Plan, and 114,050 restricted stock units issued pursuant to our 2014 Inducement Grant Equity Incentive Plan. All of these outstanding stock options, together with an additional 2,958,475 shares of our common stock reserved for issuance under our 2014 Equity Incentive Plan, 137,577 shares of common stock reserved under our iSocket, Inc. 2009 Equity Incentive Plan, 770,950 shares of common stock reserved under our 2014 Inducement Grant Equity Incentive Plan, 896,927 shares of common stock reserved under our 2014 Employee Stock Purchase Plan, and any increase in the shares available pursuant to the plans’ evergreen provisions (if applicable), are registered for offer and sale on Form S-8 under the Securities Act of 1933. We also intend to register the offer and sale of all other shares of common stock that may be authorized under our current or future equity compensation plans, issued under equity plans we may assume in acquisitions, or issued as inducement awards under New York Stock Exchange rules. Shares registered under these registration statements on Form S-8 will be available for sale in the public market subject to vesting arrangements and exercise of options, our Insider Trading Policy trading blackouts, and the restrictions of Rule 144 in the case of our affiliates.
Under our Insider Trading Policy, we impose trading blackouts during the period beginning on the first day of the last month of each quarter and ending after two trading days following the filing of our next quarterly report on Form 10-Q or Annual Report on Form 10-K. A substantial portion of the equity issued to certain of our officers and employees is in the form of stock options that are vested and in-the-money, and can be exercised for shares that are eligible for sale during open trading windows. Sales of a substantial number of such shares, or the perception that such sales may occur, could cause our share price to fall or make it more difficult for investors to sell our common stock at a time and price that they deem appropriate.
Pre-IPO investors have rights, subject to some conditions, to require us to file registration statements covering the sale of their shares in registration statements that we may file for ourselves or other stockholders.
We may issue our shares of common stock or securities convertible into our common stock from time to time in connection with financings, acquisitions, investments or otherwise. Any such issuance could result in substantial dilution to our existing stockholders and cause the trading price of our common stock to decline.
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Insiders have substantial control over us, which could limit investors’ ability to influence the outcome of key transactions, including a change of control.
Our directors, executive officers and stockholders who own greater than 5% of our outstanding common stock, in the aggregate, beneficially own approximately 53% of the shares of our common stock outstanding as of February 27, 2015. As a result, these stockholders will be able to influence or control matters requiring approval by our stockholders, including the election of directors and the approval of mergers, acquisitions or other extraordinary transactions. They may also have interests that differ from other investors and may vote in a manner that is adverse to investors’ interests. This concentration of ownership may have the effect of deterring, delaying or preventing a change of control of the company, could deprive our stockholders of an opportunity to receive a premium for their common stock as part of a sale of the company, and might ultimately affect the market price of our common stock.
The trading market for our stock is new and not fully developed, and small trading volumes can contribute to sudden declines in price and make it more difficult to sell significant numbers of shares quickly without adversely affecting the market price for our stock.
Our common stock has been publicly traded only since April 2, 2014, and the trading volumes for our stock have been relatively small due to the fact that only 18% of our outstanding shares, at the time of the initial public offering, were sold in our initial public offering, and the holders of the balance of our outstanding common stock were subject to lock-up agreements that prohibited sales of their shares until September 29, 2014. Now that the lock-ups have expired, we expect more shares to be sold in the public market. In addition, we have and may continue to make acquisitions that include the additional issuance of stock, which may increase dilution and potentially increase the number of shares available for sale. However, our trading volumes may remain relatively small for some time for various reasons, including the fact that we are new to the public markets and not well known to analysts, investors, and others who could influence demand for our shares. Further, because we are a relatively small company without an established history of profitability, the range of investors willing to invest in our shares may be relatively limited. As a result of these factors, our shares can be susceptible to sudden, rapid declines in price, especially when large blocks of shares are sold by investors or upon exercise of employee stock options or vesting of restricted stock and restricted stock unit awards and the subsequent or concurrent sale of shares to cover the holders’ tax obligations. Sales of substantial amounts of common stock by stockholders, or even the potential for such sales, may cause the market price to decline, which could make it more difficult for our stockholders to sell their shares at the time or price they desire, and could also impair our ability to raise capital through the sale of equity securities.
Our business could be negatively affected as a result of actions of activist stockholders.
Campaigns by stockholders to effect changes at publicly traded companies are sometimes led by investors seeking to increase short-term stockholder value through actions such as financial restructuring, increased debt, special dividends, stock repurchases or sales of assets or the entire company. If we are targeted by an activist stockholder in the future, the process could be costly and time-consuming, disrupt our operations and divert the attention of management and our employees from executing our strategic plan. Additionally, perceived uncertainties as to our future direction as a result of stockholder activism or changes to the composition of our board of directors may lead to the perception of a change in the direction of our business, instability or lack of continuity, which may be exploited by our competitors, cause concern to current or potential buyers and sellers on our platform, and make it more difficult to attract and retain qualified personnel. If buyers and/or sellers choose to delay, defer or reduce transactions with us or through our platform or transact with our competitors instead of us because of any such issues, then our revenue, earnings and operating cash flows could be adversely affected.
The requirements of being a public company may strain our resources, divert our management’s attention and affect our ability to attract and retain qualified board members.
As a public company, we are subject to the reporting requirements of the Exchange Act, and are required to comply with the applicable requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the listing requirements of the New York Stock Exchange, and other applicable securities rules and regulations. Among other things, we must file annual, quarterly and current reports with respect to our business and results of operations, maintain effective disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting, and comply with various requirements regarding the composition and operation of our board of directors. Compliance with these rules and regulations requires significant resources and management oversight, increases our legal and financial compliance costs, makes some activities more difficult, time-consuming or costly and increases demand on our systems and resources. As a result, management’s attention and company resources may be diverted from other business concerns. Although we have already hired additional employees to help us comply with these requirements, we may need to hire even more employees in the future, which would increase our costs.
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The risks and costs associated with being a public company and complying with related rules and regulations have also made it significantly more expensive for us to obtain director and officer liability insurance, and we may be required to accept reduced coverage or incur substantially higher costs to obtain coverage as a result of risks or claims we encounter. These factors could also make it more difficult and expensive for us to attract and retain qualified members of our board of directors, particularly to serve on our Audit Committee and Compensation Committee, and qualified executive officers.
We are an “emerging growth company,” and we cannot be certain if the reduced disclosure requirements applicable to emerging growth companies will make our common stock less attractive to investors.
For as long as we remain an “emerging growth company,” as defined in the JOBS Act, we may take advantage of certain exemptions from various requirements that are applicable to public companies that are not “emerging growth companies.” For example, we are not required to comply with the independent auditor attestation requirements of Section 404, we may provide reduced disclosure regarding executive compensation in our periodic reports and proxy statements, and we are exempt from the requirements of holding a nonbinding advisory vote on executive compensation and stockholder approval of any golden parachute payments not previously approved. We may take advantage of these exemptions for as long as we are an “emerging growth company,” which could be as long as five years following the completion of our initial public offering, although, if we have more than $1.0 billion in annual revenue, if the market value of our common stock that is held by non-affiliates exceeds $700 million as of June 30 of any year, or we issue more than $1.0 billion of non-convertible debt over a three-year period before the end of that five-year period, we would cease to be an “emerging growth company” as of the following December 31. Investors may find our common stock less attractive because we rely on these exemptions, which could contribute to a less active trading market for our common stock, and increased volatility or reduction in our stock price.
If securities or industry analysts do not publish research or reports about our business, or publish inaccurate or unfavorable research or reports about our business, our share price and trading volume could decline.
The trading market for our common stock to some extent depends on the research and reports that securities or industry analysts publish about us or our business. We do not have any control over these analysts, and their reports or analyst consensus may not reflect our guidance, plans, or expectations. If one or more of the analysts who cover us downgrades our shares or changes their opinion of our business prospects, our share price could decline. If one or more of these analysts decreases or ceases coverage of our company, we could lose visibility in the financial markets, which could cause our share price or trading volume to decline.
We do not intend to pay dividends for the foreseeable future and, consequently, investors’ ability to achieve a return on their investment will depend on appreciation in the price of our common stock.
We have never declared or paid any dividends on our common stock. We intend to retain any earnings to finance the operation and expansion of our business, and we do not anticipate paying any cash dividends in the future. In addition, our credit facility contains restrictions on our ability to pay dividends. As a result, investors may only receive a return on their investment in our common stock if the market price of our common stock increases. In addition, our credit facility contains restrictions on our ability to pay dividends.
Provisions of our charter documents and Delaware law may inhibit a potential acquisition of the company and limit the ability of stockholders to cause changes in company management.
Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws include provisions, as described below, that could delay or prevent a change in control of the company, and make it difficult for stockholders to elect directors who are not nominated by the current members of our board of directors or take other actions to change company management.
• | Our certificate of incorporation gives our board of directors the authority to issue shares of preferred stock in one or more series, and to establish from time to time the number of shares in each series and to fix the price, designations, powers, preferences and relative, participating, optional or other rights, if any, and the qualifications, limitations, or restrictions of each series of the preferred stock without any further vote or action by stockholders. The issuance of shares of preferred stock may discourage, delay or prevent a merger or acquisition of the company by significantly diluting the ownership of a hostile acquirer, resulting in the loss of voting power and reduced ability to cause a takeover or effect other changes. |
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• | Our certificate of incorporation provides that our board of directors is classified, with only one of its three classes elected each year, and directors may be removed only for cause and only with the vote of 66 2/3% of the voting power of stock outstanding and entitled to vote thereon. Further, the number of directors is determined solely by our board of directors, and because we do not allow for cumulative voting rights, holders of a majority of shares of common stock entitled to vote may elect all of the directors standing for election. These provisions could delay the ability of stockholders to change the membership of a majority of our board of directors. |
• | Under our bylaws, only the board of directors or a majority of remaining directors, even if less than a quorum, may fill vacancies resulting from an increase in the authorized number of directors or the resignation, death or removal of a director. |
• | Our certificate of incorporation prohibits stockholder action by written consent, so any action by stockholders may only be taken at an annual or special meeting. |
• | Our certificate of incorporation provides that a special meeting of stockholders may be called only by the board of directors. This could delay any effort by stockholders to force consideration of a proposal or to take action, including the removal of directors. |
• | Under our bylaws, advance notice must be given to nominate directors or submit proposals for consideration at stockholders’ meetings. This gives our board of directors time to defend against takeover attempts and could discourage or deter a potential acquirer from soliciting proxies or making proposals related to an unsolicited takeover attempt. |
• | The provisions of our certificate of incorporation noted above may be amended only with the affirmative vote of holders of at least 66 2/3% of the voting power of all of the then-outstanding shares of the company’s voting stock, voting together as a single class. The same two-thirds vote is required to amend the provision of our certificate of incorporation imposing these supermajority voting requirements. Further, our bylaws may be amended only by our board of directors or by the same percentage vote of stockholders noted above as required to amend our certificate of incorporation. These supermajority voting requirements may inhibit the ability of a potential acquirer to effect such amendments to facilitate an unsolicited takeover attempt. |
• | Our board of directors may amend our bylaws by majority vote. This could allow the board to use bylaw amendments to delay or prevent an unsolicited takeover, and limits the ability of an acquirer to amend the bylaws to facilitate an unsolicited takeover attempt. |
We are also subject to Section 203 of the Delaware General Corporation Law, or the DGCL, which prohibits us from engaging in any business combination with an interested stockholder for a period of three years from the date the person became an interested stockholder, unless certain conditions are met. These provisions make it more difficult for stockholders or potential acquirers to acquire the company without negotiation and may apply even if some of our stockholders consider the proposed transaction beneficial to them. For example, these provisions might discourage a potential acquisition proposal or tender offer, even if the acquisition proposal or tender offer were to be at a premium over the then current market price for our common stock. These provisions could also limit the price that investors are willing to pay in the future for shares of our common stock.
Item 1B. Unresolved Staff Comments
None.
Item 2. Properties
Our corporate headquarters are located in Los Angeles, California, where we occupy facilities totaling approximately 47,000 square feet under a lease which expires in 2021, with an early termination option in 2016. We use these facilities for our principal administration, sales and marketing, technology and development and engineering activities. We also maintain additional offices and data centers in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, including offices in New York, San Francisco, London, Paris, and Sydney. We believe that our current facilities are adequate to meet our current needs, and that, if we require additional space, we will be able to obtain additional facilities on commercially reasonable terms.
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Item 3. Legal Proceedings
We and our subsidiaries may from time to time be parties to legal or regulatory proceedings, lawsuits and other claims incident to our business activities and to our status as a public company. Such matters may include, among other things, assertions of contract breach or intellectual property infringement, claims for indemnity arising in the course of our business, regulatory investigations or enforcement proceedings, and claims by persons whose employment has been terminated. Such matters are subject to many uncertainties, and outcomes are not predictable with assurance. Consequently, we are unable to ascertain the ultimate aggregate amount of monetary liability, amounts which may be covered by insurance or recoverable from third parties, or the financial impact with respect to such matters as of December 31, 2014. However, based on our knowledge as of December 31, 2014, we believe that the final resolution of such matters pending at the time of this report, individually and in the aggregate, will not have a material adverse effect upon our consolidated financial position, results of operations or cash flows.
Item 4. Mine Safety Disclosures
Not applicable.
PART II
Item 5. Market for Registrant's Common Equity, Related Stockholder Matters and Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities
Our common stock has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange, or the NYSE, since April 1, 2014, under the symbol "RUBI". Prior to our initial public offering, or IPO, there was no public market for our common stock. The following table sets forth, for the indicated periods, the high and low sales prices of our common stock as reported on the NYSE.
Fiscal 2014 Quarters Ended: | High | Low | ||||||
June 30, 2014 (from April 1, 2014) | $ | 23.20 | $ | 11.15 | ||||
September 30, 2014 | $ | 13.45 | $ | 8.76 | ||||
December 31, 2014 | $ | 17.00 | $ | 8.76 | ||||
Holders of Record
As of December 31, 2014, there were approximately 121 holders of record of our common stock. The actual number of stockholders is greater than this number of record holders and includes stockholders who are beneficial owners but whose shares are held in street name by brokers and other nominees. This number of holders also does not include stockholders whose shares may be held in trust by other entities.
Dividend Policy
We have never declared or paid any dividends on our common stock, and we do not anticipate paying any cash dividends in the foreseeable future. We currently intend to retain any earnings to finance the operation and expansion of our business. Any future determination to pay dividends will be at the discretion of our board of directors and will be dependent upon then-existing conditions, including our earnings, capital requirements, results of operations, financial condition, business prospects and other factors that our board of directors considers relevant. See Item 7 “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” for additional information regarding our financial condition. In addition, our credit facility contains restrictions on our ability to pay dividends.
Purchases of Equity Securities by the Issuer and Affiliated Purchasers
In November 2014 we purchased 174,495 shares of our common stock at an average price of $13.32. All these purchases reflect shares withheld upon vesting of restricted stock for minimum tax withholding obligations.
We presently have no publicly announced repurchase plan or program.
Recent Sale of Unregistered Securities
On November 14, 2014, we entered into an agreement and plan of merger to acquire iSocket, Inc. The acquisition closed on November 17, 2014. As part of the acquisition, we agreed to issue 840,885 shares of our common stock (valued at approximately $11.2 million based on the stock price at the time of acquisition) to stockholders of iSocket in private placements under Section 4(a)(2) of the Securities Act.
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Use of Proceeds
On April 7, 2014, we closed our IPO, whereby we sold 6,432,445 shares of common stock (including 1,015,649 shares sold pursuant to the underwriters' exercise of their over-allotment option), and the selling stockholders sold 1,354,199 shares of common stock. The offer and sale of all of the shares in the IPO were registered under the Securities Act pursuant to a registration statement on Form S-1 (File No. 333-193739), which was declared effective by the SEC on April 1, 2014. Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, Goldman, Sachs & Co. and RBC Capital Markets, LLC acted as joint book-running managers for the offering. Needham & Company, LLC, Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., and LUMA Securities LLC acted as co-managers for the offering. The public offering price of the shares sold in the offering was $15.00 per share. We did not receive any proceeds from the sale of shares by the selling stockholders. The total gross proceeds from the offering to us were $96.5 million. After deducting underwriting discounts and commissions of $6.8 million and offering expenses payable by us of $3.5 million, we received approximately $86.2 million. There has been no material change in the planned use of proceeds from our IPO as described in our final prospectus filed with the SEC on April 2, 2014 pursuant to Rule 424(b) of the Securities Act.
Stock Performance Graph
This performance graph shall not be deemed "soliciting material" or to be "filed" with the SEC for purposes of Section 18 of the Exchange Act, or otherwise subject to the liabilities under that Section, and shall not be deemed to be incorporated by reference into any filing of ours under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, except as shall be expressly set forth by specific reference in such filing.
The following graph compares the cumulative total stockholder return on an initial investment of $100 in our common stock between April 1, 2014 (the date of our IPO) and December 31, 2014, with the comparative cumulative total returns of the S&P 500 Index and NYSE Composite Index over the same period. As previously discussed, we have not paid any cash dividends and, therefore, the cumulative total return calculation for us is based solely upon stock price appreciation (depreciation) and not reinvestment of cash dividends, whereas the data for the S&P 500 Index and NYSE Composite Index assumes reinvestments of dividends. The graph assumes our closing sales price on April 1, 2014 of $15.00 per share as the initial value of our common stock. The returns shown are based on historical results and are not necessarily indicative of, nor intended to forecast, future stock price performance.
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Item 6. Selected Financial Data
The following selected consolidated financial data should be read in conjunction with Item 7 "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" and our consolidated financial statements and the related notes appearing in Item 8 "Financial Statements and Supplementary Data" of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
The following table sets forth our selected consolidated historical financial and operating data for the periods indicated. The consolidated statements of operations data for the years ended December 31, 2014, 2013, and 2012 and the consolidated balance sheet data as of December 31, 2014 and 2013 have been derived from our audited consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Year Ended | ||||||||||||||||
December 31, 2014 | December 31, 2013 | December 31, 2012 | December 31, 2011 | |||||||||||||
(in thousands, except per share data) | ||||||||||||||||
Revenue | $ | 125,295 | $ | 83,830 | $ | 57,072 | $ | 37,059 | ||||||||
Expenses: | ||||||||||||||||
Costs of revenue(1) | 20,754 | 15,358 | 12,367 | 12,893 | ||||||||||||
Sales and marketing(1) | 43,203 | 25,811 | 20,458 | 17,748 | ||||||||||||
Technology and development(1) | 22,718 | 18,615 | 13,115 | 12,496 | ||||||||||||
General and administrative(1) | 57,398 | 27,926 | 12,331 | 8,926 | ||||||||||||
Total expenses | 144,073 | 87,710 | 58,271 | 52,063 | ||||||||||||
Loss from operations | (18,778 | ) | (3,880 | ) | (1,199 | ) | (15,004 | ) | ||||||||
Other (income) expense, net | (277 | ) | 5,122 | 1,029 | 269 | |||||||||||
Loss before income taxes | (18,501 | ) | (9,002 | ) | (2,228 | ) | (15,273 | ) | ||||||||
Provision for income taxes | 172 | 247 | 134 | 136 | ||||||||||||
Net loss | (18,673 | ) | (9,249 | ) | (2,362 | ) | (15,409 | ) | ||||||||
Cumulative preferred stock dividends(2) | (1,116 | ) | (4,244 | ) | (4,255 | ) | (4,244 | ) | ||||||||
Net loss attributable to common stockholders | $ | (19,789 | ) | $ | (13,493 | ) | $ | (6,617 | ) | $ | (19,653 | ) | ||||
Basic and diluted net loss per share attributable to common stockholders(3)(4) | $ | (0.70 | ) | $ | (1.17 | ) | $ | (0.60 | ) | $ | (1.95 | ) | ||||
Basic and diluted weighted-average shares used to compute net loss per share attributable to common stockholders(4) | 28,217 | 11,488 | 11,096 | 10,099 | ||||||||||||
(1) | Stock-based compensation expense included in our expenses was as follows: |
Year Ended | ||||||||||||||||
December 31, 2014 | December 31, 2013 | December 31, 2012 | December 31, 2011 | |||||||||||||
Cost of revenue | $ | 166 | $ | 87 | $ | 78 | $ | 270 | ||||||||
Sales and marketing | 3,217 | 1,105 | 1,039 | 309 | ||||||||||||
Technology and development | 2,228 | 1,645 | 828 | 858 | ||||||||||||
General and administrative | 18,235 | 3,515 | 1,099 | 831 | ||||||||||||
Total | $ | 23,846 | $ | 6,352 | $ | 3,044 | $ | 2,268 | ||||||||
(2) | The holders of our convertible preferred stock were entitled to cumulative dividends prior and in preference to common stock. Because the holders of our convertible preferred stock were entitled to participate in dividends, net loss attributable to common stockholders is equal to net loss adjusted for cumulative preferred stock dividends for the period. Immediately upon the closing of the initial public offering in April 2014, each outstanding share of convertible preferred stock was automatically converted into one-half of a share of our common stock and these holders were no longer entitled to the cumulative dividends. See Note 11 to our consolidated financial statements for a description of our convertible preferred stock. |
(3) | See Note 2 to our consolidated financial statements for a description of the method used to compute basic and diluted net loss per share attributable to common stockholders. |
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(4) | All share, per-share and related information has been retroactively adjusted, where applicable, to reflect the impact of a 1-for-2 reverse stock split, including an adjustment to the preferred stock conversion ratio, which was effected on March 18, 2014. |
Consolidated Balance Sheet Data
At December 31 | ||||||||||||||||
2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | |||||||||||||
(in thousands) | ||||||||||||||||
Cash and cash equivalents | $ | 97,196 | $ | 29,956 | $ | 21,616 | $ | 16,252 | ||||||||
Accounts receivable, net | $ | 133,267 | $ | 94,722 | $ | 67,335 | $ | 40,580 | ||||||||
Property, equipment and capitalized software, net | $ | 26,697 | $ | 15,916 | $ | 12,697 | $ | 10,411 | ||||||||
Total assets | $ | 296,481 | $ | 149,887 | $ | 108,014 | $ | 71,142 | ||||||||
Debt and capital lease obligations, current and non-current | $ | 105 | $ | 4,181 | $ | 5,215 | $ | 5,504 | ||||||||
Total liabilities | $ | 167,729 | $ | 133,727 | $ | 90,005 | $ | 55,341 | ||||||||
Convertible preferred stock | $ | — | $ | 52,571 | $ | 52,571 | $ | 52,571 | ||||||||
Common stockholders’ equity (deficit) | $ | 128,752 | $ | (36,411 | ) | $ | (34,562 | ) | $ | (36,770 | ) | |||||
Operational and Financial Measures
Year Ended | ||||||||||||||||
December 31, 2014 | December 31, 2013 | December 31, 2012 | December 31, 2011 | |||||||||||||
Operational Measures: | ||||||||||||||||
Managed revenue (in thousands) | $ | 667,796 | $ | 485,080 | $ | 338,918 | $ | 238,838 | ||||||||
Paid impressions (in billions) | 999 | 1,336 | 1,431 | 980 | ||||||||||||
Average CPM | $ | 0.67 | $ | 0.36 | $ | 0.24 | $ | 0.24 | ||||||||
Take rate | 18.8 | % | 17.3 | % | 16.8 | % | 15.5 | % | ||||||||
Financial Measures: | ||||||||||||||||
Revenue (in thousands) | $ | 125,295 | $ | 83,830 | $ | 57,072 | $ | 37,059 | ||||||||
Adjusted EBITDA (in thousands) | $ | 19,098 | $ | 11,223 | $ | 9,205 | $ | (6,698 | ) | |||||||
Managed Revenue
Managed revenue is an operational measure that represents the advertising spending transacted on our platform, and would represent our revenue if we were to record our revenue on a gross basis instead of a net basis. Managed revenue does not represent revenue reported on a GAAP basis. We review managed revenue for internal management purposes to assess market share and scale. Many companies in our industry record revenue on a gross basis, so tracking our managed revenue allows us to compare our results to the results of those companies. Our managed revenue is influenced by the volume and characteristics of paid impressions and average CPM.
Our managed revenue has increased period over period as a result of increased use of our solution by buyers and sellers and increases in average CPM. We expect managed revenue to continue to grow with increases in the pricing or volume of transactions on our platform, which can result from increases in the number of buyers or advertising spending, and from improvements in our auction algorithms. This increase may fluctuate due to seasonality and increases or decreases in average CPM and paid impressions. In addition, we generally experience higher managed revenue during the fourth quarter of a given year, resulting from higher advertising spending and more bidding activity, which may drive higher volumes of paid impressions or average CPM.
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Paid Impressions
We define a paid impression as an impression sold to a buyer and into which an advertisement is served for display to a user on a website or mobile application, which is transacted via our platform through either direct or indirect relationships between buyers and sellers and us, or between buyers and sellers directly. We use paid impressions as one measure to assess the performance of our platform, including the effectiveness and efficiency at which buyers and sellers are trading via our platform and using our solution, and to assist us in tracking our revenue-generating performance and operational efficiencies. The number of paid impressions may fluctuate based on various factors, including the number and spend of buyers using our solution, the number of sellers, their allocation of advertising inventory using our solution, our traffic quality control initiatives, and the seasonality in our business. Because of the volatility of this metric, we believe that paid impressions are useful to review on an annual basis.
Average CPM
Pricing is generally expressed as average cost per thousand impressions, or average CPM. Average CPM is an operational measure that represents the average price at which paid impressions are sold. We review average CPM for internal management purposes to assess buyer spend, liquidity in the marketplace, inventory quality, and integrity of our algorithms. Average CPM may be influenced by our inventory placements and demand for such inventory facilitated by our relationships with both buyers and sellers, as well as by a variety of other factors, including the precision of matching an advertisement to an audience, changes in our algorithms, seasonality, quality of inventory provided by sellers, penetration of various channels and advertising units, and changes in buyer spend levels. We expect average CPM to increase with the continued adoption of our solution by premium buyers and sellers, resulting in a higher quantity of premium advertising inventory available to advertisers. Because of the volatility of this metric, we believe that average CPM is useful to review on an annual basis. We compute average CPM by dividing managed revenue by total paid impressions and multiplying by 1,000.
Take Rate
Take rate is an operational measure that represents our share of managed revenue. We review take rate for internal management purposes to assess the development of our marketplace with buyers and sellers. Our take rate can be affected by a variety of factors, including the terms of our arrangements with buyers and sellers active on our platform in a particular period, the scale of a buyer or seller’s activity on our platform, product mix, the implementation of new products, platforms and solution features, auction dynamics, and the overall development of the digital advertising ecosystem.
Adjusted EBITDA
Adjusted EBITDA is a non-GAAP financial measure defined by us as net income (loss) adjusted for stock-based compensation expense, depreciation and amortization, interest income or expense, change in fair value of pre-IPO convertible preferred stock warrant liabilities, and other income or expense, which mainly consists of foreign exchange gains and losses, certain other non-recurring income or expenses such as acquisition and related costs, and provision for income taxes. Adjusted EBITDA should not be considered as an alternative to net income (loss), operating income, or any other measure of financial performance calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP. Adjusted EBITDA eliminates the impact of items that we do not consider indicative of our core operating performance. You are encouraged to evaluate these adjustments and the reason we consider them appropriate. We believe Adjusted EBITDA is useful to investors in evaluating our operating performance for the following reasons:
• | Adjusted EBITDA is widely used by investors and securities analysts to measure a company’s operating performance without regard to items such as stock-based compensation expense, depreciation and amortization, interest income or expense, change in fair value of preferred stock warrant liabilities, foreign exchange gains and losses, certain other non-recurring income or expenses such as acquisition and related costs, and provision for income taxes that can vary substantially from company to company depending upon their financing, capital structures, and the method by which assets were acquired; |
• | our management uses Adjusted EBITDA in conjunction with GAAP financial measures for planning purposes, including the preparation of our annual operating budget, as a measure of operating performance and the effectiveness of our business strategies, and in communications with our board of directors concerning our financial performance; |
• | Adjusted EBITDA may sometimes be considered by the compensation committee of our board of directors in connection with the determination of compensation for our executive officers; and |
• | Adjusted EBITDA provides consistency and comparability with our past financial performance, facilitates period-to-period comparisons of operations and also facilitates comparisons with other peer companies, many of which use similar non-GAAP financial measures to supplement their GAAP results. |
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Although Adjusted EBITDA is frequently used by investors and securities analysts in their evaluations of companies, Adjusted EBITDA has limitations as an analytical tool, and you should not consider it in isolation or as a substitute for analysis of our results of operations as reported under GAAP. These limitations include:
• | stock-based compensation is a non-cash charge and is and will remain an element of our long-term incentive compensation package, although we exclude it as an expense when evaluating our ongoing operating performance for a particular period; |
• | depreciation and amortization are non-cash charges, and the assets being depreciated or amortized will often have to be replaced in the future; Adjusted EBITDA does not reflect any cash requirements for these replacements; |
• | Adjusted EBITDA does not reflect changes in, or cash requirements for, our working capital needs or contractual commitments, and therefore may not reflect periodic increases in capital expenditures; |
• | Adjusted EBITDA does not reflect cash requirements for income taxes and the cash impact of other income or expense; and |
• | other companies may calculate Adjusted EBITDA differently than we do, limiting its usefulness as a comparative measure. |
Our Adjusted EBITDA will be impacted by the rate at which our revenue increases and the timing of our investments in our operations.
The following table presents a reconciliation of net loss, the most comparable GAAP measure, to Adjusted EBITDA for each of the periods indicated:
Year Ended | ||||||||||||||||
December 31, 2014 | December 31, 2013 | December 31, 2012 | December 31, 2011 | |||||||||||||
(in thousands) | ||||||||||||||||
Financial Measure: | ||||||||||||||||
Net loss | $ | (18,673 | ) | $ | (9,249 | ) | $ | (2,362 | ) | $ | (15,409 | ) | ||||
Add back (deduct): | ||||||||||||||||
Depreciation and amortization expense | 12,517 | 8,438 | 6,857 | 5,538 | ||||||||||||
Stock-based compensation expense | 23,846 | 6,352 | 3,044 | 2,268 | ||||||||||||
Acquisition and related items | 1,513 | 313 | 503 | 500 | ||||||||||||
Interest expense, net | 110 | 273 | 343 | 252 | ||||||||||||
Change in fair value of preferred stock warrant liabilities | 732 | 4,121 | 515 | 304 | ||||||||||||
Foreign currency (gain) loss, net | (1,119 | ) | 728 | 171 | 216 | |||||||||||
Other income | — | — | — | (503 | ) | |||||||||||
Provision for income taxes | 172 | 247 | 134 | 136 | ||||||||||||
Adjusted EBITDA | $ | 19,098 | $ | 11,223 | $ | 9,205 | $ | (6,698 | ) | |||||||
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Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations
You should read the following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations in conjunction with the consolidated financial statements and the related notes to those statements included in Item 8 to this Annual Report on Form 10-K. In addition to historical financial information, the following discussion contains forward-looking statements that reflect our plans, estimates, beliefs and expectations that involve risks and uncertainties. Our actual results and the timing of events could differ materially from those discussed in these forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to these differences include those discussed below and elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, particularly in "Item 1A. Risk Factors" and the "Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements."
Overview
We are a technology company on a mission to automate the buying and selling of advertising. Our Advertising Automation Cloud is a highly scalable platform that provides leading user reach and a marketplace for the real-time trading of digital advertising between buyers and sellers. Through the speed and big data analytics of our algorithm-based solution, we have transformed the cumbersome, complex process of direct buying and selling of digital advertising into a seamless automated process that optimizes results for both buyers and sellers. Buyers of digital advertising use our platform to reach approximately 600 million Internet users globally on some of the world’s leading sellers. Sellers of digital advertising use our platform to maximize revenue from advertising, decrease costs, and protect their brands and user experience, while accessing a global market of buyers representing top advertiser brands around the world. We believe the benefits we provide to both buyers and sellers, and the time and effort spent by both buyers and sellers to integrate with our platform and associated applications, give us a critical position in the digital advertising ecosystem.
Our Advertising Automation Cloud features applications for digital advertising sellers, including websites, applications and other digital media properties, to sell their advertising inventory; applications for buyers, including advertisers, agencies, ATDs, DSPs, and ad networks, to buy advertising inventory; and a marketplace over which such transactions are executed. Together, these features power and optimize a comprehensive, transparent, independent advertising marketplace that brings buyers and sellers together and facilitates intelligent decision-making and automated transaction execution for the advertising inventory we manage on our platform. Our Advertising Automation Cloud incorporates proprietary machine-learning algorithms, sophisticated data processing, high-volume storage, detailed analytics capabilities, and a distributed infrastructure. We analyze billions of data points in real time to enable our solution to make approximately 300 data-driven decisions per transaction in milliseconds, and to execute up to 3.5 million peak queries per second, and 5 trillion bid requests per month. Since 2012, we have processed approximately 100 trillion bid requests. We believe we help increase the volume and effectiveness of advertising, increasing revenue for sellers and improving return on advertising investment for buyers.
We have direct relationships built on technical integration with our sellers, including over 50% of the U.S. comScore 100. We believe that our direct relationships and integrations with sellers differentiate us from many other participants in the advertising ecosystem and make us a vital participant in the digital advertising industry. Our integration of sellers into our platform gives sellers the ability to monetize a full variety and volume of inventory. At the same time, buyers leverage our platform to manage their advertising spending, simplify order management and campaign tracking, obtain actionable insights into audiences for their advertising, and access impression-level purchasing from hundreds of sellers. We believe buyers need our platform because of our powerful solution and our direct relationships and integrations with some of the world’s largest sellers. Our solution is constantly self-optimizing based on our ability to analyze and learn from vast volumes of data. The additional data we obtain from the volume of transactions on our platform help make our machine-learning algorithms more intelligent, leading to higher quality matching between buyers and sellers, better return on investment for buyers, and higher revenue for sellers. As a result of that high quality matching, we attract even more sellers which in turn attracts more buyers and vice versa. We believe this self-reinforcing dynamic creates a strong platform for growth.
Since our incorporation in April 2007, we have invested in our solution to meet the complex needs of buyers and sellers of digital advertising. We have achieved significant growth as we have scaled our solution, including the functionality of our Advertising Automation Cloud and its applications for buyers and sellers. During our early stages, our solution helped sellers to automate their existing advertising network relationships to match the right buyer with each impression, as well as increase their revenue and decrease their costs. Between 2008 and 2009, we developed direct relationships with buyers and created applications to assist buyers to increase their return on investment. During 2010, we added RTB capabilities, allowing sellers’ inventory to be sold in an auction to buyers, creating a real time unified auction where buyers compete to purchase sellers’ advertising inventory. During 2012, we launched our private marketplace, which allows sellers to connect directly with pre-approved buyers to execute direct sales of previously unsold advertising inventory.
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In 2014, we expanded our orders automation technology and expanded our capabilities in the automated guaranteed market with the acquisition of two companies, iSocket, Inc., or iSocket, and Shiny Inc., or Shiny. The addition of iSocket and Shiny provides additional solutions to automate the buying and selling of direct-sold, guaranteed deals, which according to eMarketer, is a market that is forecasted to surpass $8 billion in the U.S. alone by 2016. When combined with our existing orders technology, these acquisitions have helped us create a fully integrated solution for automating, streamlining, and managing the processes of direct buying and selling of guaranteed and non-guaranteed advertising.
According to Magna Global (September 2014), the global RTB market will grow from $9.2 billion in 2014 to $28.9 billion by 2018, a compounded annual growth rate of 33%. RTB is the fastest growing area of our business. Managed revenue attributable to RTB grew 884% from 2010 to 2011, 191% from 2011 to 2012, 94% from 2012 to 2013 and 71% from 2013 to 2014. We believe this trend will directly benefit us and our prospects for continued growth.
Large agencies, DSPs and ad networks, many of which are already established in size and scale, are responsible for the majority of automated digital advertising spending. Accordingly, we believe our growth will be less affected by an increase in buyers than by increases in the amount of spending per buyer as more advertising shifts from traditional to automated buying and selling.
Another industry trend is the expansion of automated buying and selling of advertising through new channels. The growth of automated buying and selling advertising is also expanding into new markets, and in some markets the adoption of automated digital advertising is greater than in the United States. We intend to expand our business in existing territories served and enter new territories.
We generate revenue from buyers and sellers who use our solution for the purchase and sale of advertising inventory. Buyers use our solution to reach their intended audiences by purchasing advertising inventory that we make available from sellers through our solution. We recognize revenue upon the completion of a transaction, which is when an impression has been delivered to the consumer viewing a website or application, subject to satisfying all other revenue recognition criteria. We are responsible for the completion of the transaction. We generally bill and collect the full purchase price of impressions from buyers, together with other fees, if applicable. We report revenue net of amounts we pay sellers for the impressions they provide. In some cases, we generate revenue directly from sellers who maintain the primary relationship with buyers and utilize our solution to transact and optimize their activities.
For the years ended December 31, 2014, 2013 and 2012 our revenue was $125.3 million, $83.8 million and $57.1 million, respectively, representing a year-over-year increase of 49% during 2014 and 47% during 2013, and our managed revenue was $667.8 million, $485.1 million and $338.9 million, respectively, representing a year-over-year increase of 38% during 2014 and 43% during 2013. For the year ended December 31, 2014, 2013, and 2012 our net loss was $18.7 million, $9.2 million and $2.4 million, respectively, and our Adjusted EBITDA was $19.1 million, $11.2 million and $9.2 million, respectively. Adjusted EBITDA is a non-GAAP financial measure. For information on how we compute Adjusted EBITDA, and a reconciliation of Adjusted EBITDA to net income (loss) on a GAAP basis, please refer to “Key Operational and Financial Measures.”
Our net income (loss) and Adjusted EBITDA will be impacted by the rate at which our revenue increases, seasonality, amount and the timing of our investments in our operations.
Substantially all of our revenue is U.S. revenue, determined based on the location of our legal entity that is a party to the relevant transaction.
Key Operational and Financial Measures
We regularly review our key operational and financial performance measures, including those set forth below, to help us evaluate our business, measure our performance, identify trends affecting our business, establish budgets, measure the effectiveness of investments in our technology and development and sales and marketing, and assess our operational efficiencies. In addition to revenue, we also review managed revenue and Adjusted EBITDA, which are discussed immediately following the table below. Revenue is discussed under the headings “Components of Our Results of Operations” and “Results of Operations.” We report our financial results as one operating segment. Our consolidated operating results, together with the following operating and financial measures, are regularly reviewed by our chief operating decision maker, principally to make decisions about how we allocate our resources and to measure our consolidated operating performance.
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Year Ended | |||||||||||
December 31, 2014 | December 31, 2013 | December 31, 2012 | |||||||||
Operational Measures: | |||||||||||
Managed revenue (in thousands) | $ | 667,796 | $ | 485,080 | $ | 338,918 | |||||
Paid impressions (in billions) | 999 | 1,336 | 1,431 | ||||||||
Average CPM | $ | 0.67 | $ | 0.36 | $ | 0.24 | |||||
Take rate | 18.8 | % | 17.3 | % | 16.8 | % | |||||
Financial Measures: | |||||||||||
Revenue (in thousands) | $ | 125,295 | $ | 83,830 | $ | 57,072 | |||||
Adjusted EBITDA (in thousands) | $ | 19,098 | $ | 11,223 | $ | 9,205 | |||||
Managed Revenue
Managed revenue is an operational measure that represents the advertising spending transacted on our platform, and would represent our revenue if we were to record our revenue on a gross basis instead of a net basis. Managed revenue does not represent revenue reported on a GAAP basis. We review managed revenue for internal management purposes to assess market share and scale. Many companies in our industry record revenue on a gross basis, so tracking our managed revenue allows us to compare our results to the results of those companies. Our managed revenue is influenced by the volume and characteristics of paid impressions and average CPM.
Our managed revenue has increased period over period as a result of increased use of our solution by buyers and sellers and increases in average CPM. We expect managed revenue to continue to grow with increases in the pricing or volume of transactions on our platform, which can result from increases in the number of buyers or advertising spending, and from improvements in our auction algorithms. This increase may fluctuate due to seasonality and increases or decreases in average CPM and paid impressions. In addition, we generally experience higher managed revenue during the fourth quarter of a given year, resulting from higher advertising spending and more bidding activity, which may drive higher volumes of paid impressions or average CPM.
Paid Impressions
Paid impressions is an operational measure. We define a paid impression as an impression sold to a buyer and into which an advertisement is served for display to a user on a website or mobile application, which is transacted via our platform through either direct or indirect relationships between buyers and sellers and us, or between buyers and sellers directly. We use paid impressions as one measure to assess the performance of our platform, including the effectiveness and efficiency at which buyers and sellers are trading via our platform and using our solution, and to assist us in tracking our revenue-generating performance and operational efficiencies. The number of paid impressions may fluctuate based on various factors, including the number and spend of buyers using our solution, the number of sellers, their allocation of advertising inventory using our solution, our traffic quality control initiatives, and the seasonality in our business. Because of the volatility of this metric, we believe that paid impressions are useful to review on an annual basis.
Average CPM
Pricing is generally expressed as average cost per thousand impressions, or average CPM. Average CPM is an operational measure that represents the average price at which paid impressions are sold. We review average CPM for internal management purposes to assess buyer spend, liquidity in the marketplace, inventory quality, and integrity of our algorithms. Average CPM may be influenced by our inventory placements and demand for such inventory facilitated by our relationships with both buyers and sellers, as well as by a variety of other factors, including the precision of matching an advertisement to an audience, changes in our algorithms, seasonality, quality of inventory provided by sellers, penetration of various channels and advertising units, and changes in buyer spend levels. We expect average CPM to increase with the continued adoption of our solution by premium buyers and sellers, resulting in a higher quantity of premium advertising inventory available to advertisers. Because of the volatility of this metric, we believe that average CPM is useful to review on an annual basis. We compute average CPM by dividing managed revenue by total paid impressions and multiplying by 1,000.
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Take Rate
Take rate is an operational measure that represents our share of managed revenue. We review take rate for internal management purposes to assess the development of our marketplace with buyers and sellers. Our take rate can be affected by a variety of factors, including the terms of our arrangements with buyers and sellers active on our platform in a particular period, the scale of a buyer’s or seller’s activity on our platform, product mix, the implementation of new products, platforms and solution features, auction dynamics, and the overall development of the digital advertising ecosystem.
Adjusted EBITDA
Adjusted EBITDA is a non-GAAP financial measure defined by us as net income (loss) adjusted for stock-based compensation expense, depreciation and amortization, interest income or expense, change in fair value of pre-IPO convertible preferred stock warrant liabilities, and other income or expense, which mainly consists of foreign exchange gains and losses, certain other non-recurring income or expenses such as acquisition and related costs, and provision for income taxes. Adjusted EBITDA should not be considered as an alternative to net income (loss), operating income, or any other measure of financial performance calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP. Adjusted EBITDA eliminates the impact of items that we do not consider indicative of our core operating performance. You are encouraged to evaluate these adjustments and the reason we consider them appropriate. We believe Adjusted EBITDA is useful to investors in evaluating our operating performance for the following reasons:
• | Adjusted EBITDA is widely used by investors and securities analysts to measure a company’s operating performance without regard to items such as stock-based compensation expense, depreciation and amortization, interest income or expense, change in fair value of preferred stock warrant liabilities, foreign exchange gains and losses, certain other non-recurring income or expenses such as acquisition and related costs, and provision for income taxes that can vary substantially from company to company depending upon their financing, capital structures, and the method by which assets were acquired; |
• | our management uses Adjusted EBITDA in conjunction with GAAP financial measures for planning purposes, including the preparation of our annual operating budget, as a measure of operating performance and the effectiveness of our business strategies, and in communications with our board of directors concerning our financial performance; |
• | Adjusted EBITDA may sometimes be considered by the compensation committee of our board of directors in connection with the determination of compensation for our executive officers; and |
• | Adjusted EBITDA provides consistency and comparability with our past financial performance, facilitates period-to-period comparisons of operations and also facilitates comparisons with other peer companies, many of which use similar non-GAAP financial measures to supplement their GAAP results. |
Although Adjusted EBITDA is frequently used by investors and securities analysts in their evaluations of companies, Adjusted EBITDA has limitations as an analytical tool, and you should not consider it in isolation or as a substitute for analysis of our results of operations as reported under GAAP. These limitations include:
• | stock-based compensation is a non-cash charge and is and will remain an element of our long-term incentive compensation package, although we exclude it as an expense when evaluating our ongoing operating performance for a particular period; |
• | depreciation and amortization are non-cash charges, and the assets being depreciated or amortized will often have to be replaced in the future; Adjusted EBITDA does not reflect any cash requirements for these replacements; |
• | Adjusted EBITDA does not reflect changes in, or cash requirements for, our working capital needs or contractual commitments, and therefore may not reflect periodic increases in capital expenditures; |
• | Adjusted EBITDA does not reflect cash requirements for income taxes and the cash impact of other income or expense; and |
• | other companies may calculate Adjusted EBITDA differently than we do, limiting its usefulness as a comparative measure. |
Our Adjusted EBITDA will be impacted by the rate at which our revenue increases and the timing of our investments in our operations. Please see below for a reconciliation of Adjusted EBITDA to net income (loss), the most directly comparable financial measure calculated in accordance with GAAP.
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The following table presents a reconciliation of net loss, the most comparable GAAP measure, to Adjusted EBITDA for the year ended December 31, 2014, 2013, and 2012:
Year Ended | |||||||||||
December 31, 2014 | December 31, 2013 | December 31, 2012 | |||||||||
(in thousands) | |||||||||||
Financial Measure: | |||||||||||
Net loss | $ | (18,673 | ) | $ | (9,249 | ) | $ | (2,362 | ) | ||
Add back (deduct): | |||||||||||
Depreciation and amortization expense | 12,517 | 8,438 | 6,857 | ||||||||
Stock-based compensation expense | 23,846 | 6,352 | 3,044 | ||||||||
Acquisition and related items | 1,513 | 313 | 503 | ||||||||
Interest expense, net | 110 | 273 | 343 | ||||||||
Change in fair value of preferred stock warrant liabilities | 732 | 4,121 | 515 | ||||||||
Foreign currency (gain) loss, net | (1,119 | ) | 728 | 171 | |||||||
Provision for income taxes | 172 | 247 | 134 | ||||||||
Adjusted EBITDA | $ | 19,098 | $ | 11,223 | $ | 9,205 | |||||
Components of Our Results of Operations
Revenue
We generate revenue from buyers and sellers who use our solution for the purchase and sale of advertising inventory. Buyers use our solution to reach their intended audiences by buying advertising inventory that we make available from sellers through our solution. Our solution enables buyers and sellers to purchase and sell advertising inventory, matches buyers and sellers, and establishes rules and parameters for open and transparent auctions of advertising inventory. We recognize revenue upon the completion of a transaction, that is, when an impression has been made available to the consumer viewing a website or application, subject to satisfying all other revenue recognition criteria. We are responsible for the completion of the transaction. We generally bill and collect the full purchase price of impressions from buyers, together with other fees, if applicable. We report revenue net of amounts we pay sellers for the impressions they provide. In some cases, we generate revenue directly from sellers who maintain the primary relationship with buyers and utilize our solution to transact and optimize their activities. Our accounts receivable are recorded at the amount of gross billings to buyers, net of allowances, for the amounts we are responsible to collect, and our accounts payable are recorded at the net amount payable to sellers. Accordingly, both accounts receivable and accounts payable appear large in relation to revenue reported on a net basis.
Our revenue, cash flow from operations, operating results and key operational and financial performance may vary from quarter to quarter due to the seasonal nature of advertiser spending, as well as other circumstances that affect advertising activity. For example, many advertisers devote a disproportionate amount of their advertising budgets to the fourth quarter of the calendar year to coincide with increased holiday purchasing. Moreover, advertising inventory in the fourth quarter may be more expensive due to increased demand. Historically, the fourth quarter of the year reflects our highest level of revenue, and the first quarter reflects the lowest level of our revenue.
Our revenue recognition policies are discussed in more detail in the notes to our consolidated financial statements presented in "Item 8. Financial Statements and Supplementary Data."
Expenses
We classify our expenses into the following four categories:
Cost of Revenue. Our cost of revenue consists primarily of data center costs, bandwidth costs, depreciation and maintenance expense of hardware supporting our revenue-producing platform, amortization of software costs for the development of our revenue-producing platform, amortization expense associated with acquired developed technologies, personnel costs, and facilities-related costs. Personnel costs included in cost of revenue include salaries, bonuses, stock-based compensation, and employee benefit costs, and are primarily attributable to personnel in our network operations group, who support our platform. We capitalize costs associated with software that is developed or obtained for internal use and amortize the costs associated with our revenue-producing platform in cost of revenue over their estimated useful lives. Many of these expenses are generally fixed and do not increase or decrease proportionately with increases or decreases in our revenue.
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Sales and Marketing. Our sales and marketing expenses consist primarily of personnel costs, including stock-based compensation and the sales bonuses paid to our sales organization, and marketing expenses such as brand marketing, travel expenses, trade shows and marketing materials, professional services, and to a lesser extent, facilities-related costs and depreciation and amortization. Our sales organization focuses on marketing our solution to increase the adoption of our solution by existing and new buyers and sellers.
Technology and Development. Our technology and development expenses consist primarily of personnel costs, including stock-based compensation, and professional services associated with the ongoing development and maintenance of our solution, and to a lesser extent, facilities-related costs and depreciation and amortization. These expenses include costs incurred in the development, implementation, and maintenance of internal use software, including platform and related infrastructure. Technology and development costs are expensed as incurred, except to the extent that such costs are associated with internal use software development that qualifies for capitalization, which are then recorded as internal use software development costs, net on our consolidated balance sheet. We amortize internal use software development costs that relate to our revenue-producing activities on our platform to cost of revenue and amortize other internal use software development costs to technology and development costs or general and administrative expenses, depending on the nature of the related project.
General and Administrative. Our general and administrative expenses consist primarily of personnel costs, including stock-based compensation, associated with our executive, finance, legal, human resources, compliance, and other administrative personnel, as well as accounting and legal professional services fees, facilities-related costs and depreciation, and other corporate related expenses. General and administrative expenses also include amortization of internal use software development costs that relate to general and administrative functions.
Other Expense, Net
Interest Expense, Net. Interest expense is mainly related to our credit facility and capital lease arrangements. Interest income consists of interest earned on our cash equivalents and was insignificant for the years ended December 31, 2014, 2013 and 2012.
Change in Fair Value of Convertible Preferred Stock Warrant Liability. Prior to our initial public offering, the convertible preferred stock warrants were subject to re-measurement to fair value at each balance sheet date, and any change in fair value was recognized as a component of other expense, net. In connection with the closing of our IPO in April 2014, one warrant for 845,867 shares of convertible preferred stock was exercised on a net basis, resulting in the issuance of 286,055 shares of common stock, and the remaining warrant for 25,174 shares of convertible preferred stock was automatically converted into a warrant exercisable for 12,587 shares of common stock. Following the closing of our IPO, we are no longer required to re-measure the converted common stock warrants to fair value and record any changes in the fair value of these liabilities in our statement of operations. The common stock warrant was net exercised in June 2014. As of December 31, 2014, we had no outstanding warrants.
Foreign Currency Exchange (Gain) Loss, Net. Foreign currency exchange (gain) loss, net consists primarily of gains and losses on foreign currency transactions. We have foreign currency exposure related to our accounts receivable and accounts payable that are denominated in currencies other than the U.S. Dollar, principally the British Pound and Euro.
Provision for Income Taxes
Provision for income taxes consists primarily of federal, state, and foreign income taxes. Due to uncertainty as to the realization of benefits from our domestic deferred tax assets, including net operating loss carryforwards and research and development tax credits, we have a full valuation allowance reserved against such assets. We expect to maintain this full valuation allowance in the near term.
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Results of Operations
The following tables set forth our consolidated results of operations and our consolidated results of operations as a percentage of revenue for the periods presented:
Year Ended | |||||||||||
December 31, 2014 | December 31, 2013 | December 31, 2012 | |||||||||
(in thousands) | |||||||||||
Revenue | $ | 125,295 | $ | 83,830 | $ | 57,072 | |||||
Expenses: | |||||||||||
Costs of revenue (1) | 20,754 | 15,358 | 12,367 | ||||||||
Sales and marketing (1) | 43,203 | 25,811 | 20,458 | ||||||||
Technology and development (1) | 22,718 | 18,615 | 13,115 | ||||||||
General and administrative (1) | 57,398 | 27,926 | 12,331 | ||||||||
Total expenses | 144,073 | 87,710 | 58,271 | ||||||||
Loss from operations | (18,778) | (3,880) | (1,199) | ||||||||
Other (income) expense, net | (277 | ) | 5,122 | 1,029 | |||||||
Loss before income taxes | (18,501) | (9,002) | (2,228) | ||||||||
Provision for income taxes | 172 | 247 | 134 | ||||||||
Net loss | $ | (18,673 | ) | $ | (9,249 | ) | $ | (2,362 | ) | ||
(1) Stock-based compensation expense included in our expenses was as follows:
Year Ended | |||||||||||
December 31, 2014 | December 31, 2013 | December 31, 2012 | |||||||||
(in thousands) | |||||||||||
Costs of revenue | $ | 166 | $ | 87 | $ | 78 | |||||
Sales and marketing | 3,217 | 1,105 | 1,039 | ||||||||
Technology and development | 2,228 | 1,645 | 828 | ||||||||
General and administrative | 18,235 | 3,515 | 1,099 | ||||||||
Total | $ | 23,846 | $ | 6,352 | $ | 3,044 | |||||
Year Ended* | ||||||||
December 31, 2014 | December 31, 2013 | December 31, 2012 | ||||||
Revenue | 100 | % | 100 | % | 100 | % | ||
Cost of revenue | 17 | % | 18 | % | 22 | % | ||
Sales and marketing | 34 | % | 31 | % | 36 | % | ||
Technology and development | 18 | % | 22 | % | 23 | % | ||
General and administrative | 46 | % | 33 | % | 22 | % | ||
Total expenses | 115 | % | 105 | % | 102 | % | ||
Loss from operations | (15 | )% | (5 | )% | (2 | )% | ||
Other (income) expense, net | — | % | 6 | % | 2 | % | ||
Loss before income taxes | (15 | )% | (11 | )% | (4 | )% | ||
Provision for income taxes | — | % | — | % | — | % | ||
Net loss | (15 | )% | (11 | )% | (4 | )% | ||
* Certain figures may not sum due to rounding.
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Comparison of the Years Ended December 31, 2014, 2013 and 2012
Revenue
Year Ended | |||||||||||
December 31, 2014 | December 31, 2013 | December 31, 2012 | |||||||||
(in thousands) | |||||||||||
Revenue | $ | 125,295 | $ | 83,830 | $ | 57,072 | |||||
Revenue increased $41.5 million, or 49%, for the year ended December 31, 2014 compared to the year ended December 31, 2013. The increase in revenue was primarily due to an increase in the amount of advertising spending on our platform during the year ended December 31, 2014 compared to the year ended December 31, 2013. This increase was primarily attributable to an increase in average CPM of $0.31, or 86%, partially offset by a decrease of 25% in paid impressions during the year ended December 31, 2014 compared to the year ended December 31, 2013. This increase in average CPM during the period was due to an increase in average spend per buyer transacted on our platform in association with increased matching efficiency. In addition, the increase in average CPM was due to a shift in mix of advertising spend on our platform from lower-priced higher-volume static inventory to higher-priced lower-volume RTB transactions. Our paid impressions decreased during the year ended December 31, 2014 compared to the year ended December 31, 2013 due to the shift in mix of advertising spend on our platform from lower-priced higher-volume static inventory to higher-priced lower-volume RTB transactions and our traffic quality control initiatives put into place during the last several months of 2013 to maintain a high standard of quality advertising inventory and reduce lower quality traffic.
Revenue increased $26.8 million, or 47%, during the year ended December 31, 2013 compared to the year ended December 31, 2012 primarily for the same reasons described above. The increase was primarily attributable to an increase of $0.12, or 50%, in average CPM during the year ended December 31, 2013 compared to the year ended December 31, 2012, representing an increase in revenue of approximately $30.5 million after consideration of our take rate. The increase in average CPM was partially offset by a decrease of 7% in paid impressions during the year ended December 31, 2013 compared to the year ended December 31, 2012, representing a decrease in revenue by approximately $3.8 million after consideration of our take rate.
We expect revenue to continue to grow on an annual basis. Revenue may be impacted by seasonality, the amounts of fees we are able to charge buyers and sellers, and other factors such as changes in the market, our execution of the business, and competition.
Cost of Revenue
Year Ended | |||||||||||
December 31, 2014 | December 31, 2013 | December 31, 2012 | |||||||||
(in thousands, except percentages) | |||||||||||
Costs of revenue | $ | 20,754 | $ | 15,358 | $ | 12,367 | |||||
Percent of revenue | 17 | % | 18 | % | 22 | % | |||||
Cost of revenue increased by $5.4 million, or 35%, for the year ended December 31, 2014 compared to the year ended December 31, 2013. This increase was primarily due to an increase of $3.6 million in depreciation and amortization expense and an increase in data center, hosting, and bandwidth costs of $1.2 million. The increase in depreciation and amortization was primarily attributable to increase in depreciation of computer equipment and network hardware and amortization of capitalized internal use software primarily due to additional personnel and their development of new features and functionality to our solution. The amortization of capitalized internal use software reflected in cost of revenue was $4.3 million and $2.6 million for the year ended December 31, 2014 and 2013, respectively. The increases in data center, hosting, and bandwidth costs were primarily attributable to support the increase in the use of our platform and international expansion efforts requiring additional hardware, software, and maintenance expenses.
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Cost of revenue increased by $3.0 million, or 24%, during the year ended December 31, 2013 compared to the year ended December 31, 2012. This increase was primarily due to an increase in data center, hosting, and bandwidth costs of $1.4 million, and an increase of $1.1 million in depreciation and amortization expense, including amortization of capitalized internal use software. The increases in data center, hosting, and bandwidth costs were primarily attributable to data center locations added during the year ended December 31, 2013 in order to support the increase in bidding volume on our platform and resulting additional hardware, software, and maintenance expenses. The increase in depreciation and amortization was primarily attributable to an increase in depreciation of computer equipment and network hardware and amortization of capitalized internal use software due to our continued investment in our revenue-producing platform. The amortization of capitalized internal use software reflected in cost of revenue was $2.6 million and $1.9 million for the years ended December 31, 2013 and 2012, respectively.
We expect cost of revenue to increase in absolute dollars in future periods as we continue to invest additional capital into our data centers, hire additional personnel to continue to build and maintain our systems, and invest in our technology. As a percentage of revenue, cost of revenue may fluctuate on a quarterly basis based on revenue levels, the timing of these investments, and due to increased amortization of acquired technology from business combinations.
Sales and Marketing
Year Ended | |||||||||||
December 31, 2014 | December 31, 2013 | December 31, 2012 | |||||||||
(in thousands, except percentages) | |||||||||||
Sales and marketing | $ | 43,203 | $ | 25,811 | $ | 20,458 | |||||
Percent of revenue | 34 | % | 31 | % | 36 | % | |||||
Sales and marketing expense increased by $17.4 million, or 67%, for the year ended December 31, 2014 compared to the year ended December 31, 2013. This increase was primarily due to an increase in personnel costs of $13.4 million, and to a lesser extent, an increase in marketing expenses of $1.1 million. The increase in personnel costs was primarily due to an increase in sales and marketing headcount in order to support our sales efforts and continue to develop and maintain relationships with buyers and sellers, as well as an increase in marketing, which was mainly related to our participation in industry events and tradeshows and related public relations activities.
Sales and marketing expense increased by $5.4 million, or 26%, during the year ended December 31, 2013 compared to the year ended December 31, 2012. This increase was primarily due to an increase in personnel expenses of $3.4 million, primarily due to an increase in sales and marketing headcount. Our sales and marketing headcount increased in order to support our sales efforts and continue to develop and maintain relationships with buyers and sellers, as well as to provide information to the market with respect to our solution.
We expect sales and marketing expenses to increase in absolute dollars in future periods as we continue to invest in our business, including expanding our domestic and international business. Sales and marketing expense as a percentage of revenue may fluctuate from period to period based on revenue levels, the timing of our investments, the seasonality in our industry and business, and increased amortization as a result of customer relationship intangibles acquired in our 2014 business combinations.
Technology and Development
Year Ended | |||||||||||
December 31, 2014 | December 31, 2013 | December 31, 2012 | |||||||||
(in thousands, except percentages) | |||||||||||
Technology and development | $ | 22,718 | $ | 18,615 | $ | 13,115 | |||||
Percent of revenue | 18 | % | 22 | % | 23 | % | |||||
Technology and development expense increased by $4.1 million, or 22%, for the year ended December 31, 2014 compared to the year ended December 31, 2013. This increase was primarily due to an increase in personnel costs of $3.3 million. The increase in personnel costs was primarily due to an increase in headcount, which reflects our continued hiring of engineers to maintain and support our technology and development efforts.
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Technology and development expense increased by $5.5 million, or 42%, during the year ended December 31, 2013 compared to the year ended December 31, 2012. This increase was primarily due to an increase in personnel expense of $4.7 million. The increase in personnel expense was primarily due to an increase in headcount, which reflects our continued hiring of engineers to maintain and support our technology and development efforts primarily for the same reasons described above.
We expect technology and development expense to increase in absolute dollars in future periods as we continue to invest in our engineering and technology teams to support our technology and development efforts; however, the timing and amount of our capitalized development and enhancement projects may affect the amount of development costs expensed in any given period. Technology and development expense as a percentage of revenue may fluctuate from period to period based on revenue levels, the timing of these investments, the timing and the rate of the amortization of capitalized projects, and increased amortization as a result of non-compete intangibles acquired in our 2014 business combinations.
General and Administrative
Year Ended | |||||||||||
December 31, 2014 | December 31, 2013 | December 31, 2012 | |||||||||
(in thousands, except percentages) | |||||||||||
General and administrative | $ | 57,398 | $ | 27,926 | $ | 12,331 | |||||
Percent of revenue | 46 | % | 33 | % | 22 | % | |||||
General and administrative expense increased by $29.5 million, or 106%, for the year ended December 31, 2014 compared to the year ended December 31, 2013. This increase was primarily due to an increase in personnel costs of $23.5 million and an increase in professional services fees of $2.6 million. The increase in personnel costs was primarily due to an increase in stock-based compensation of $14.7 million and increased headcount. The increase in stock-based compensation expense was primarily associated with equity awards granted subsequent to December 31, 2013. The increase in headcount and third-party professional services fees was primarily related to supporting our operations as a public company.
General and administrative expense increased by $15.6 million, or 126%, during the year ended December 31, 2013 compared to the year ended December 31, 2012. This increase was primarily due to an increase in personnel expense of $8.4 million and an increase in professional services of $5.2 million. The increase in personnel costs was driven primarily by increased headcount to support our growth. The increase in third-party professional services was related to accounting, audit, tax and legal services as we continued to invest in our infrastructure, processes, and controls to support our growth and in preparation for our initial public offering and becoming a public company.
We expect general and administrative expense to increase in absolute dollars as we continue to invest in corporate infrastructure to support our growth and our operation as a public company, including professional services fees, insurance premiums and compliance costs associated with operating as a public company.
Other (Income) Expense, Net
Year Ended | |||||||||||
December 31, 2014 | December 31, 2013 | December 31, 2012 | |||||||||
(in thousands) | |||||||||||
Interest expense, net | $ | 110 | $ | 273 | $ | 343 | |||||
Change in fair value of convertible preferred stock warrant liabilities | 732 | 4,121 | 515 | ||||||||
Foreign exchange (gain) loss, net | (1,119 | ) | 728 | 171 | |||||||
Total other (income) expense, net | $ | (277 | ) | $ | 5,122 | $ | 1,029 | ||||
Following the closing of our IPO, we were no longer required to re-measure the warrants to fair value and record any changes in the fair value of these liabilities in our statement of operations, and accordingly, we did not record any related expenses subsequent to the closing of our IPO. The change in fair value of the preferred stock warrant liabilities for the year ended December 31, 2014 reflected an increase in the valuation of our convertible preferred stock from January 1, 2014 through the close of our IPO, due to increases in our value driven by our growth and progress toward becoming a public company. The change in fair value of the preferred stock warrant liabilities for the year ended December 31, 2013 reflected an increase in the valuation of our preferred stock from January 1, 2013 through December 31, 2013.
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Foreign exchange (gain) loss, net is impacted by movements in exchange rates, primarily the British Pound and Euro relative to the U.S. Dollar, and the amount of foreign-currency denominated receivables and payables, which are impacted by our billings to buyers and payments to sellers. The foreign currency gain, net during the year ended December 31, 2014 was primarily attributable to the strengthening of the U.S. Dollar in relation to the British Pound and Euro for foreign denominated transactions. The foreign currency loss, net during the year ended December 31, 2013 was primarily attributable to the weakening of the U.S. Dollar in relation to the British Pound and Euro for foreign denominated transactions.
Provision for Income Taxes
Our provision for income taxes during the years ended December 31, 2014, 2013, and 2012 of $0.2 million, $0.2 million and $0.1 million, respectively, was primarily related to taxes due in foreign jurisdictions.
At December 31, 2014, we had U.S. federal net operating loss carryforwards, or NOLs, of approximately $65.4 million, which will begin to expire in 2027. At December 31, 2014, we had state NOLs of approximately $61.5 million, which will also begin to expire in 2027. At December 31, 2014, we had federal research and development tax credit carryforwards, or credit carryforwards, of approximately $4.3 million, which will begin to expire in 2027. At December 31, 2014, we had state research and development tax credits of approximately $3.4 million, which carry forward indefinitely. Utilization of certain NOLs and credit carryforwards may be subject to an annual limitation due to ownership change limitations set forth in the Code and similar state provisions. Any future annual limitation may result in the expiration of NOLs and credit carryforwards before utilization. A prior ownership change and certain acquisitions resulted in us having NOLs subject to insignificant annual limitations.
Quarterly Results of Operations and Key Metrics
The following tables set forth our quarterly consolidated statements of operations data in dollars and as a percentage of total revenue for each of the eight quarters in the two year period ended December 31, 2014. We have prepared the quarterly unaudited consolidated statements of operations data on a basis consistent with the audited consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. In the opinion of management, the financial information in these tables reflects all adjustments, consisting only of normal recurring adjustments, which management considers necessary for a fair statement of this data. This information should be read in conjunction with the audited consolidated financial statements and related notes included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. The results of historical periods are not necessarily indicative of the results for any future period.
Three Months Ended | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Mar. 31, 2013 | June 30, 2013 | Sept. 30, 2013 | Dec. 31, 2013 | Mar. 31, 2014 | June 30, 2014 | Sept. 30, 2014 | Dec. 31, 2014 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
(in thousands) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Revenue | $ | 16,600 | $ | 19,035 | $ | 20,063 | $ | 28,132 | $ | 23,015 | $ | 28,283 | $ | 32,165 | $ | 41,832 | ||||||||||||||||
Expenses: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Cost of revenue(1) | 3,437 | 3,594 | 4,181 | 4,146 | 4,460 | 4,852 | 5,144 | 6,298 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sales and marketing(1) | 6,195 | 6,167 | 6,405 | 7,044 | 9,027 | 10,296 | 11,540 | 12,340 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Technology and development(1) | 4,111 | 5,138 | 4,823 | 4,543 | 4,677 | 4,598 | 5,766 | 7,677 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
General and administrative(1) | 4,634 | 5,726 | 7,603 | 9,963 | 11,320 | 15,653 | 15,157 | 15,268 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Total expenses | 18,377 | 20,625 | 23,012 | 25,696 | 29,484 | 35,399 | 37,607 | 41,583 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Income (loss) from operations | (1,777 | ) | (1,590 | ) | (2,949 | ) | 2,436 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||