Revenue Growth for Public Companies in Q2: Insights & Analysis

Every quarter, business analyst Matthew Scott Goldstein details and shares his insights on what he saw happen with publicly traded companies across advertising, technology and media.

Top-Level Insights for Publicly Traded Companies Q2 (2022)

Macroeconomic headwinds are affecting everyone:

Looking at macro pressures from a litany of different angles — lingering supply chain and labor supply issues impacting certain segments that began during the pandemic.

More recently, we’ve seen the impact of persistently high inflation, then rising interest rates and rising geopolitical risks associated with the war in Ukraine.

Advertisers are pausing & rethinking spend:

In aggregate, advertising dollars are now growing more slowly and that intensifies the competition.

When macro pressure occurs, marketers often reevaluate their priorities to ensure that they’re making the right investments in the right places. With digital advertising, it is the easiest thing to turn off.

The current economic state is causing advertisers to pause and reconsider spending, which is painful in the short term, but it also causes them to seek greater efficiency and ROI, which will benefit some companies in the mid and long term.

Revenue Growth for Public Companies in Q2 (2022)

Breaking down year-over-year revenue for top publicly traded digital companies across media, tech and advertising for the second quarter of 2022, from best to worst:

• Trade Desk +35%
• Pubmatic +27%
• Spotify +23%
• Roku +18%
• Google +18%
• Snap Inc +13%
• Omnicrom +11.3%
• IPG +10.3%
• New York Times +11%
• Amazon +10%
• Netflix +9%
• Pinterest +9%
• Apple +2%

Trade Desk Inc Revenue Growth +35%

Trade Desk (TTD) grew revenue 35% compared with last year, outpacing their competitors and gaining market share, despite some macroeconomic uncertainty.

Pubmatic Revenue Growth +27%

Pubmatic (PUBM) saw organic revenue grow27% year-over-year, well above market growth rates. In fact, they saw an acceleration in year-over-year growth as the quarter progressed, with June being the strongest month of the quarter.

Spotify Q2 Revenue Growth +23%

Spotify (SPOT) had 23% year-over-year revenue growth, led by advertising. Ad-supported revenue grew 31% YOY to $366 million, reaching an all-time high as a percent of total revenue at 13% for Q2.

Roku Revenue Growth +18%

Roku in Q2, saw total net revenue increase 18% year-over-year to $764 million coming in below their expectations.

Recessionary fears and elevated inflation caused advertisers to significantly curtail or pause spend in the scanner market and consumers to moderate discretionary spend.

However, Roku noted trepidation about future growth, “As we look ahead to the third quarter, we are facing an increasingly difficult and uncertain environment. Recessionary fear, inflationary pressures, rising interest rates and ongoing supply chain issues will continue to impact both consumers and advertisers. We believe consumers are going to continue to moderate discretionary spend.”

Google Revenue Growth +13%

Google (GOOGL), for the second quarter, stated that consolidated revenues were $69.7 billion, up 13% year-over-year. YouTube advertising revenues were $7.3 billion, up 5% from Q2 (2021).

Snap Inc Revenue Growth +13%

Snapchat‘s (SNAP) second quarter of 2022 proved more challenging than expected. Revenue grew 13% year-over-year to $1.11 billion. Thus far in Q3, revenue is approximately flat on a year-over-year basis.

Snap executives noted, “Forward-looking visibility remains incredibly challenging, and it is unclear how the headwinds we observed in Q2 will evolve as we move through Q3.”

Omnicrom Revenue Growth +11.3%

Omnicom second quarter performance was very strong. They exceeded their expectations with organic growth of 11.3%, which was broad-based across their agencies, disciplines, regions and client sectors.

During the quarter, Omnicrom continued to focus on evolving their existing capabilities to meet the needs of their clients, most notably, expanding their e-commerce and retail media capabilities.

Interpublic Group of Companies Inc Revenue Growth +10.3%

IPG delivered record revenue growth in the first half in 2022. After a strong start to the year with plus 10.5% organic growth in Q1, they recorded revenue growth of 10.3% in Q2.

New York Times Revenue Growth +11%

New York Times Co (NYT) revenue grew more than 11%, with digital subscription revenue up nearly 26% and total advertising revenue up just over 4%.

They added 180,000 net digital subscriber additions in the quarter, which represents an approximately 70% improvement over the second quarter of 2021, driven by the games and their acquisition of The Athletic.

Amazon Revenue Growth +10%

Amazon (AMZN), worldwide net sales of $121.2 billion exceeded the top end of their revenue guidance range and represented an increase of 10% year-over-year.

Amazon noted, “We still see strong advertising growth. Again, it’s got be a positive both for the customer and for the brand. I think our advantage is that we have highly efficient advertising.”

Amazon’s advertising services led to $8.76 billion in revenue in the second quarter, an increase of 18% year over year

Netflix Revenue Growth +9%

Netflix Q2 was better-than-expected on membership growth, and foreign exchange was worse-than-expected (stronger US dollar), resulting in 9% revenue growth (13% constant currency).

Pinterest Revenue Growth +9%

Pinterest (PINS) Q2 revenue grew 9% year-over-year to $666 million, while noting “the digital advertising environment has been and will continue to be challenging.”

Pinterest went on to say they saw strength from “retail and international advertisers, however we experienced softer demand from CPG, big-box retailers and our mid-market advertisers. Despite these headwinds, shopping ads continue to make progress on the platform.”

Apple Revenue Growth +2%

Apple (AAPL) set a June quarter revenue record of $83 billion, up 2% year-over-year despite supply constraints, noting “there were some Services that were impacted, for example digital advertising was clearly impacted by the macroeconomic environment.”

Facebook Revenue Growth -1%

Facebook (META) has total revenue of $28.8 billion in Q2, a decrease of 1% year-over-year.

Facebook executives noted, “Many of the macro factors having an impact on our revenue are continuations of things we’ve seen in previous quarters, such as the continued impact of the war in Ukraine and the normalization of e-commerce after the pandemic peak.”

More so, “there are also new challenges with rising inflation and uncertainty around a looming recession. We know that recessions put pressure on marketers to make sure their ad budgets are spent in the smartest way possible. We’re focused on helping them run efficient marketing campaigns, including helping them shift their ad strategies on our platform in line with user trends and our own evolving ad solutions. Working on adapting our ad system to do more with less data.”

Insights provided by Matthew Scott Goldstein, from his Quarterly newsletter “What I Saw Happen“

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