Perion at Canaccord Conference: Strategic Shift to AI-Driven Platform

On Tuesday, 12 August 2025, Perion Network Ltd (NASDAQ:PERI) outlined its strategic transformation at Canaccord Genuity’s 45th Annual Growth Conference. The company is shifting from a supply-side advertising technology provider to a demand-side platform, focusing on AI and centralized data solutions. Despite a slight decline in its Connected TV (CTV) business, Perion remains optimistic about surpassing market growth expectations and reaffirming its revenue and EBITDA guidance for the year.

Key Takeaways

• Perion is transitioning to a unified platform for Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) to manage budgets across various digital channels.
• The company is prioritizing AI and data optimization, with a focus on digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising and performance-based CTV solutions.
• Full-year revenue guidance is set at approximately $440 million, with EBITDA between $44 million and $46 million.
• The recent acquisition of Greenbids is expected to enhance AI bidding capabilities and expand the company’s total addressable market.
• Perion aims for over 20% growth this year, exceeding the market average of 13%.

Financial Results

• Q2 saw a minor 5% decline in the CTV business.
• Full-year revenue guidance remains at approximately $440 million.
• EBITDA guidance is reaffirmed at $44 million to $46 million.
• Expected double-digit growth overall, excluding the declining search business.
• Search business is projected to generate about $20 million each quarter.

Operational Updates

• Perion is shifting to a demand-side platform for CMOs, focusing on digital out-of-home (DOOH) and performance-based CTV.
• The company is expanding its DOOH presence in EMEA and APAC regions, including Italy, Germany, and Korea.
• Integration of Greenbids aims to boost AI-driven bidding capabilities.
• A new CTV performance solution has been launched, offering conversion attribution and budget optimization.

Future Outlook

• Perion projects overall growth to surpass the market average, aiming for over 20% growth this year.
• The company is positioning itself as the "Salesforce" for CMOs worldwide.
• Expansion plans include targeting larger brands initially, with future plans to reach SMBs and offer self-serve options.
• AI-driven optimization and centralized data are key strategies for enhancing campaign performance.
• No further R&D investment will be allocated to the search business.

Q&A Highlights

• Customers are excited about Greenbids synergies, with increased orders for deployment.
• The integration of Greenbids is generating enthusiasm among existing Perion customers.
• The minor 5% decline in CTV was noted, with optimism for future growth using performance solutions.

Perion’s strategic focus on AI and centralized solutions positions it to capitalize on market opportunities. For further details, readers are invited to refer to the full transcript.

Full transcript - Canaccord Genuity’s 45th Annual Growth Conference:

Maria Ripps, Internet Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: Can I get started? Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the first session of the day. I’m Maria Ripps, Internet analyst here at Canaccord Genuity, and I’m joined today by my colleague, Matt Weber. And it’s our pleasure to introduce Tal Jakobson, Current’s CEO. Tal, thank you so much for joining us today.

Tal Jakobson, CEO, Current: Thank you for having me.

Maria Ripps, Internet Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: Awesome. Maybe just to start, your company went through quite a transformation over the past several quarters. Maybe talk to us about your platform, sort of high level, how it has evolved, and how are you positioned today in the broader digital advertising ecosystem?

Tal Jakobson, CEO, Current: Yeah. Absolutely. So as you said, our company went through a big transformation. Up until now, I’ve been with the company for seven years now. Until now, we were focusing in advertising on technology for managing inventory, so that’s supply side.

And now, we’re shifting strongly into the demand side. So this happened for one major reason. We see that, you know, even though digital marketing is trans there’s a trillion dollar going through the pipes of of digital marketing, it became impossible for people that are running that CMOs to actually run and manage those budgets. Right. Right?

Because it’s too fragmented, so our company basically creates a unified centralized platform for CMOs to manage all their funds, all their media investment. It’s kind of a sales force for c l o’s. We’re the platform for c m o’s, right? And we’re agnostic. They can buy whatever channel they want.

They can buy meta, they can buy YouTube, they can buy open web. It’s all it’s all good. Everything’s there. Perfect. Perfect.

Matt Weber, Colleague of Maria Ripps, Canaccord Genuity: And then Tal, you just Perion just reported q two results on Monday. Yep. What areas of the business are you seeing the most momentum and what are you most excited about? So

Tal Jakobson, CEO, Current: so as I said, we’re now focusing on CMOs, Right? So our eyes is really about how much budget we’re we’re going we’re seeing going through our system. What’s our actual x tax? What’s our profit? Is it going actually growing?

But within that, we see shifts between channels. Right? So we we’re the biggest platform for digital out of home worldwide. We’re working 40 countries. It’s a very exciting channel.

It grows very, very fast, especially the programmatic part, which grows very, very fast worldwide. That’s actually the only channel on the planet that is growing faster worldwide versus The US. US, everything grows very fast. Out of home, APAC and EMEA grows way way faster. So we have that part, the digital out of home programmatic.

We have CTV. We just launched our performance CTV. And we obviously, we have social, we have web, and we have search. And those parts are are growing.

Maria Ripps, Internet Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: So that leads into our next question and I feel like you sort of touched on that a little bit in your opening sort of question which is period one. Can you maybe talk about that offering? Talk about key sort of capabilities and functionality, and what inefficiencies are you trying to solve sort of in the market? Maybe expand on that a little bit more.

Tal Jakobson, CEO, Current: Yeah. So so the major inefficiency we see in the market, I don’t know if you guys saw the statistic that CMOs in The US are now getting replaced every year. Right. Right? Mhmm.

Now those are the people who are in charge of a trillion dollar every year that will go through the pipes. So

Matt Weber, Colleague of Maria Ripps, Canaccord Genuity: you

Tal Jakobson, CEO, Current: give a trillion dollar to a c level of CMOs, but they’re getting replaced every year. Right? Now in the past few years, CMOs are transitioning their state of mind into becoming investment managers. Right? They’re getting their money from a CFO, and they need to invest that money and to show yield, like like you guys.

Right? A CFO has a very hard time understanding what the CMO actually did with the money. And it’s not because of the CMO. It’s because, one, there are too many platforms. Right?

So any platform by itself is great, but there are just too many to translate what actually happened. So you have Meta, and you have Google and you have the trade desk and you have Magnite and PubMatic and you have out of home and you have you have a lot. Right? And then on top of that, you have a lot of agencies. And every agency would send their presentation saying we’ve done an amazing job, which probably they did.

But then when when you need to translate that into a CFO language, you do not have the right metrics because our industry does not provide the metrics that a CFO can understand. Right? Like, how many people saw the ad or how many people clicked on that? A CFO doesn’t care about how many people saw the ad. Right?

He wants to know if I’m Nike, how many shoes are actually sold through that investment. Right. So while the market is expanding, ad tech is expanding, there’s still a fundamental issue within that market. There is no, centralized platform. And with AI coming, and, you know, we’re putting everything we have on AI, The major thing a company needs is data.

Now when your data sits within so many agencies and so many platforms, it’s almost impossible to optimize across the ecosystem. So when you have everything in a centralized place, AI can actually start working for you because it can optimize. It can say, you know what? Maybe for that specific campaign, less TikTok, more Instagram or Snapchat or whatever it is. But for you to be able to shift in between the channels, you have to put everything in one place.

So there’s there’s a gap in the market. We’re aiming to become part of this huge solution and provide that to the market.

Maria Ripps, Internet Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: So what are some functionalities that sort of Perion One is offering to address that gap? To close that gap?

Tal Jakobson, CEO, Current: So as as you know, we’re a company that is in transition. Right? Right. So we have all the moving pieces. We have probably the best solution out there for digital at home with planning, location based planning, data.

We’re connected to all the data layers, so Experian, Mastercard, you name it. Right? We have CTV performance solutions. We have, high impact for web. We have video.

We have social. We have everything. Now we’re in phase, and we just launched this new strategy and the new executives on that team six months ago. And now we’re in a phase where we’re consigning everything into one data lake and a layer of AI that can actually speak to each other. Right?

Now we’ve announced this transformation, this new platform six months ago. We’re seeing an amazing traction. Mhmm. It got us very optimistic to the point that we’re next last quarter, we actually raised our guidance because we saw better traction. Mhmm.

And and we believe that’s gonna get that’s gonna get accelerated, the traction.

Maria Ripps, Internet Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: Mhmm. And do you feel like there is a specific type of advertiser that this solution will be particularly appealing to?

Tal Jakobson, CEO, Current: So at first stage, we’re targeting the bigger brands, brands that have multiple agencies, multiple, platforms. Right? Next phase will go to the SMBs. Mhmm. And the third and the last phase would be to actually self serve small businesses.

So that that’s how we’re thinking about our business.

Maria Ripps, Internet Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: Got it. That makes sense.

Matt Weber, Colleague of Maria Ripps, Canaccord Genuity: And then, one of the most exciting new product additions was, the acquisition of Greenbids, which, brought, custom based, AI bidding capabilities. Could you talk about how that enhances your optimization capabilities and broadens your TAM as well?

Tal Jakobson, CEO, Current: Yeah. Absolutely. So what happens is when you buy media through any platform media. Right? If you buy it through Google, if you’re buying YouTube, or you’re buying through Meta, or you’re buying through TikTok, or you’re buying through The Trade Desk, they’re all great by themselves, but you need to remember, they have one algorithm that optimizes for the DSP.

Now this is not because they’re doing something bad. This is just because it’s it’s a vanilla type of algorithm, so it would fit to everybody. Right? But in reality, every campaign and every brand has to be customized to the performance you wanna get out of this specific campaign. So if I’m Nike, what am I get what am I trying to get out of this specific campaign?

Is that brand awareness? Is that actual leads? Is that actual people to come to my store? What am I trying to get? And every campaign has different goals.

Right? So this AI algorithm sits in between the client and the platform, and in real time, constantly optimizes the results. Mhmm. Right? So we are now connected into platforms like The Trade Desk, but we’re also connected to walled gardens like Meta and Google, and we’re working with others to continue to deploy on other platforms.

And that helped us to increase our TAM. So now we’re pretty much connected to 70 to 80% of the market. Right. And is it

Matt Weber, Colleague of Maria Ripps, Canaccord Genuity: you know, yesterday, on your earnings call, you highlighted 1,000,000 in booked business from existing Perion clients through Green Bids. Yep. Is is is that a function of of the, you know, those TAM expansion capabilities or just kind of what’s driving that? So,

Tal Jakobson, CEO, Current: you know, we’re trying we’re now we just bought them three months ago. Mhmm. We’re now integrating them into the company, but we saw a lot of excitement through our existing customers, our existing Perion customers, not the Grid Me customers about what is that algorithm? How does that work? And we we started to get, you know, a lot of orders to start deploying that.

Mhmm. And that’s what got us excited. I mean, we haven’t completed our integration. We’re starting we’re already starting to see synergies in between that. So and the synergies, actually, we reported the synergies of Perion customers wanting to use the algo, but we haven’t reported well, and we I don’t have that number of my head, but we actually see the other way around as well.

We see Greenbit’s customers asking to start using our CTV or out of home. So the cross pollination in between the solution, in between the companies is, was an immediate, synergy that that we saw, and, you know, we’re excited about it. We we feel that this is another confirmation that the acquisition was the right acquisition, and it had a very strategic fit to our company. Mhmm.

Maria Ripps, Internet Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: Great. Yeah. It seems like there is a lot of cross sell opportunity there. Yep. So switching gears here a little bit, sort of in focusing on channels for for a minute.

I think yesterday, you announced a new CTV performance solution. Yeah. Can talk about some of the key capabilities of this solution, and how is it different from what’s available in the market?

Tal Jakobson, CEO, Current: Yeah. Absolutely. So up until now, our CTV solution was mainly focused on high impact.

Maria Ripps, Internet Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: And

Tal Jakobson, CEO, Current: within that, we have something called DCO. So it’s the dynamic optimization creative optimization. So it means that every person, even the imagine we are all neighbors, but every person, even though we we live each near each other, would see something else because we have different layers of data. Right? So that’s our high impact solution.

We would know to say, well, maybe you should try eating your lunch at this restaurant. It’s only five minutes walk away from your home. It’s not because we know who you are. It’s because a TV is now basically a computer. Right?

And we have the IP and we know it’s Google Maps, basically. Right? We would know this location from this location takes five minutes. Right? And self violating privacy is just it just looks personal, but it’s not.

So that was the original solution we had. Now we took all our AI algorithm of performance. We’ve matched that with our CTV, solution, and we added attribution ability. So we would now know let’s say, you’re seeing an amazing campaign for Golden Coral, and you’re getting the QR code to say, you know, maybe you should just order order in or reserve play, a table. So from that, the attribution would know which channel was that initiated from.

Right? Was that Disney? Was that Hulu? Was that Discovery? And then we can start the algorithm would start to know which channel at which time at which location out of which TV type you would get the most performance.

And then the algorithm would shift budgets, so you would optimize your investment to get a better yield.

Maria Ripps, Internet Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: Got it.

Tal Jakobson, CEO, Current: Interesting. That’s pretty much it.

Matt Weber, Colleague of Maria Ripps, Canaccord Genuity: And then focusing a little bit more on near term trends, CTV came under a bit of pressure, I think, in in in q two, but I believe you reiterated your expectation to outpace the market in terms of growth, which I think eMarketer’s estimating about 13% for the year.

Tal Jakobson, CEO, Current: Yep.

Matt Weber, Colleague of Maria Ripps, Canaccord Genuity: Could you just talk about what’s underpinning that, you know, expectation? Is it how much of it is this new solution versus other dynamics?

Tal Jakobson, CEO, Current: So yeah. So in in q two sorry. In q two, we did see very minor decline of 5%. But as a overhaul, we believe that, know, as you said, 13%, the market, we believe we’re gonna be above 20. Mhmm.

Right? And we’re already seeing and I think we said that in the in the earnings, we’re already seeing good traction. Right? So in q three is undergoing from everything we saw in q three up until now, we see good results. We see a very healthy pipeline.

So it’s it is bouncing back. So that’s not that’s not a concern that we have, and it’s not because we believe the new solution would bounce it back. We’re always seeing the the bounce. But now we actually have more fuel. So we have the existing solution we had.

We have the performance solution, which is another fuel into that engine. And then we have the Perion algo, which is green beads that also need to fuel YouTube campaign, which is basically CTV. Right? Most of a lot of the YouTube views are happening on a TV. So if you take all three and you take the pipeline and you take whatever we just saw through q three up until now, you know, we feel very comfortable with that.

Got it.

Matt Weber, Colleague of Maria Ripps, Canaccord Genuity: That makes a lot of sense. And then maybe switching to digital out of home, another, you know, fast growing channel for you. You know, you touched on this earlier, but I believe you acquired, you know, a company called Hive Stack Yep. Couple years ago. You saw you’ve seen strong organic growth of of late.

Yesterday, you announced expansion into EMEA and, I believe, Korean markets. So just talk to us about how you’re thinking about that segment. You know, what does the growth profile look like? And, maybe just just comment on that.

Tal Jakobson, CEO, Current: Yeah. So in The US, digital home grows roughly 8%. Programmatic grows 15%. We’re in the programmatic part. We’re in the digital, but we especially specialize in programmatic.

Right? So programmatic means out of home ads with the layers of data. Right? So the layers of data would say would would affect what the ad would show. Right?

If so training, the ad might show something like a person with an umbrella. Right? So that’s a programmatic part. So I can bid and have layers of data, which out of home never had. And you can see better performance just because of that.

But if you’re you’re gonna look at APAC, which is the fastest growing in digital out of home, especially programmatic, they are growing very, very fast. So the whole APAC market is, I think, next year, $21,000,000,000 just in digital out of home. It’s a huge market. Now you need to understand, Americans spend less time out of the house. So Americans would consume more TV and more web, while people in Asia, in APAC, are spending a lot more time out of the house.

Right?

Maria Ripps, Internet Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: That’s a sad statistic.

Tal Jakobson, CEO, Current: They’re spending more time out of the house. So with that, digital out of home actually has a huge potential. And that’s why we’re putting so much emphasis on digital out of home. We have an amazing partnership with Dentsu Japan where actually, our technology operates, I think, roughly 80% of the screens in Japan. We have amazing partnerships in China, so we’re seeing some money getting out of China, out of Chinese companies towards other markets.

Right? So Chinese company would buy screens in Times Square. They would buy screens in Japan or in Korea to promote their products. Right? So within that, because we’re getting to become so big in digital out of home, we’re seeing money getting from different countries to other countries.

Right? Because we’re basically when you think about it, it’s like Google. Right? Even companies in Italy would spend money on TVs in The US. Right?

So you would get that movement of money. So, yeah, APAC is very important to us. We also, announced two partnerships in in EMEA, one in Italy, one in Germany. I think we actually have another one. I’m not even sure that we announced it, but we have another one, that we just signed.

But even though DigitalOfHome is growing very, very fast and we’re the biggest company in that sector, it actually helps us in another strategic layer where we would meet agencies. And because we’re the biggest at this part, because we’re getting into the agency, now we can sell them our CTV solutions, our, you know, our web solutions, our algo solutions. So the cross selling opportunity is very, very big.

Matt Weber, Colleague of Maria Ripps, Canaccord Genuity: Got it. And then just maybe before we ask a question on financials and wrap up, I just want to touch briefly on the search business. You outlined earlier how that came a little bit under pressure. How should we think about the trajectory for that going forward?

Tal Jakobson, CEO, Current: Yeah. So so as we said, you know, we were one of the biggest partners of Microsoft in the past, ten years. Right? Unfortunately, for us and for Microsoft, web search is not a thing. It’s not a it’s not a popular thing.

Right? I don’t know how many times you guys actually use web search in the past three months. I’m using it less and less. So human behavior is changing. This has nothing to do with Microsoft or Google.

It’s about humans. So we do think this specific sector would continue to decline. For this year, we’re estimating roughly $20,000,000 every quarter from our search business. Having said that, we’re not putting any r and d efforts into that. We’re not doing any innovation.

Our focus as long as search exists, that’s great. We’re gonna make money out of that. But we’re actually our eyes are in one on that CMO centralized solution. We really wanna be that Salesforce worldwide for CMOs.

Maria Ripps, Internet Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: So let’s, let’s talk about, your financials before, excuse me, before we wrap up. I think yesterday you reiterated your full year revenue and profitability outlook. Maybe just talk about what’s kind of underneath that guidance, and how should we think about sort of revenue progression as we head into next year?

Tal Jakobson, CEO, Current: So our for this year, we’re roughly talking about 440,000,000 in revenue, I think 44 to 46 in EBITDA. That’s our guidance for this year. We look at next year, and we’re not gonna give guidance now, and we’re not going to actual numbers. You’ll gonna start, you’re gonna continue to see growth, not on the search part, but on everything else. You’ll see healthy growth.

We believe double digits. So on that part, you know, I think we’re gonna have good trajectory.

Maria Ripps, Internet Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: Got it. I think we have just about thirty seconds left here. Tal, is there anything that we didn’t talk about that you’d like to highlight for our audience today?

Tal Jakobson, CEO, Current: I think panel is an amazing opportunity. So I’ve been with the company for six years. We’ve done one turnaround. I think the market changed. We’re gonna do another turnaround.

I believe I personally believe that’s that’s what’s gonna happen. But you need to to understand this is what we’re doing is bigger than paying. It’s a huge shift in the market. A trillion dollar is not being managed by any company. Everybody’s focusing on channels.

We’re focusing on the client. We’re all AI based, and AI is gonna take over by storm, and we’re gonna be in the front of it. So it is a huge opportunity for investors and and for us.

Maria Ripps, Internet Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: Great. Well, with that, we’re out of time. Tal, thank you so much for

Tal Jakobson, CEO, Current: joining us. Thank you, Tal. Thank you.

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