…and not just Roku. FuboTV is the latest in a long line of ad related releases. Q2 seems to have bounced back across the board including… Shopify, MercadoLibre, Perion Networks, Meta, Google, AMAZON and FuboTV.
Of major note, MercadoLibre saw advertising grow 70% to become 1.6% of GMV in Q2 and Fubo also noted a line bending experience in advertising in July, so this is really accelerating…
Earnings Commentary & Q&A:
“…And since the closing of the second quarter, we have seen a significant uptick in advertising revenue, with July posting strong sequential improvement from the second quarter. With only a third of the way through the third quarter, it bodes well for the second half of the year and reflects the positive impact of the strategic work we are doing to improve our performance in this area.”
" Your next question is from the line of Darren Aftahi with ROTH MKM.
Darren Aftahi
Hey, guys, good morning. Nice progress here. Two if I may. So, your comments about advertising, not necessarily about 2Q, but the July commentary, I think, David, you said about green shoots and kind of confidence in the second half of the year, is that something that’s sort of Fubo specific and progress you’re making on direct, or do you think that’s more of an industry-wide phenomenon?
David Gandler
Yeah, Darren, thank you for the question. I think that the industry basically between June and July has hit a trough. I think at Fubo, we were dealing with something that is, I would say, more specific. As you know, about six months ago, we set out to change the way we were doing things, and direct has become a greater part of the overall mix between programmatic direct response and direct sales. So, we’re starting to see the benefits of that.
We saw a little bit of that at the end of June, but what was really nice to see that it was sustained well into July with some really robust numbers, which gives us confidence that the third quarter and potentially the fourth quarter again with local sports with the NBA and the NHL starting up, I think will allow us to continue to drive CPMs, again just given the fact that we’re sports-first. So, we feel pretty good about it so far, and the team is performing quite well.
And the last area I think that we’ve been focused on, which I don’t believe we focused on last year, many companies have been focused on it, is really the supply chain routes. As you know the [indiscernible] that some of these ad tech partners take is quite significant. And so, we’ve gone back to start reviewing our deals. Just given the high-quality inventory that we provide, we feel we should be getting much better terms than what we have been getting. And so, we’re doing, I would say, a little bit of everything to get those numbers up. But again, we haven’t seen this level of improvement since maybe 2020.
So, we’re excited about that. Of course, we’re cautiously optimistic and our views are based off of what we’re able to see today. Obviously, if market conditions deteriorate quickly that would change it. But as of now, we feel pretty good about third quarter ad revenue.
John Janedis
And, Darren, maybe I can add a couple of things in there for you. With more granularity on the direct front, what I can tell you is that on a year-over-year basis for July, we’re seeing pretty dramatic growth, and we saw very dramatic growth. And then, I would tell you on top of that for August, the money on the books, call it, four days in for the month is already larger than what we did for the month of July. So, we feel good on that front.
Secondly, I would say, the visibility that we have has improved. So, call it, 3Q visibility starting today versus the visibility in May is better. And then I would say just more broadly, you know this, but I want to put a bit of an exclamation point on it, because we have the dual-pronged tailwind of secular growth within CTV and then also subscriber growth, and I would just add that the upheaval in linear TV has given us access to talent that we maybe would not have had just a year or two ago."…