Q1 2021 Applovin Corp Earnings Call
Greetings and welcome to the Apple Loving first quarter 2021 earnings call.
At this time all participants are in a listen only mode.
A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance. During the conference. Please press star zero on your telephone keypad as a reminder, this conference is being recorded.
It is now my pleasure to introduce Tory Valensuela, Chief legal officer, and corporate Secretary for App Loving you may begin.
Thank you and welcome to the Apple of an earnings call for the quarter ended March 31, 2021, joining me today to discuss up 11 day results and key business initiatives, our co founder CEO and chair person, Adam Faruqi, <unk>, President and Chief Financial Officer, Harold Chen before we begin I'd like to take this opportunity.
To remind you that during the call we will be making forward looking statements, including statements related to the expected performance of our business future financial results and guidance strategy long term growth and margin targets and overall future prospects the expected benefits of our acquisition of adjusted as well as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
And apples iOS $14 five rollout.
These statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those we projected or implied during this call.
In particular those described in our risk factors included in our final prospectus related to our initial public offering filed on April 15, 2021, and in our form 10-Q for the first quarter of 2021 that will be filed following this call as well as the current uncertainty and unpredictability in our business the markets and the economy.
No.
You should not rely on our forward looking statements as predictions of future events. All forward looking statements that we make on this call are based on assumptions and beliefs as of the date hereof and up 11 disclaims any obligation to update any forward looking statements, except as required by law.
Our discussion today will include non-GAAP financial measures.
These non-GAAP measures should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute for or in isolation from our GAAP results.
Information regarding our non-GAAP financial results, including a reconciliation of our historical GAAP to non-GAAP results may be found in our shareholder letter, which was furnished with our form 8-K filed today with the SEC and May also be found on our Investor Relations website at investors day Athletic.
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Finally, a recording of this conference call will also be available on our Investor Relations website. Shortly after this call isn't it.
And now I'll turn it over to Adam.
Thank you for joining us today for our first public company earnings call I want to begin by thanking our amazing teammates around the world, who continue to push relentlessly execute on our vision.
Of course, we wouldn't be here without our partners, who trust us as an integral part of their growth growth in monetization strategy.
And thank you for the support from our new investors. We are very much focused on the long term and I appreciate that you recognize our competitive advantages and long term opportunities.
We are looking forward to sharing details about Apple ovens first quarter results.
I don't want to steal Harold Thunder by covering financial metrics I do want to say that we are very proud of our record first quarter growing revenue and EBITDA over 100% year over year.
I also want to highlight the three primary objectives that we focus on and driving long term growth. We reviewed each objective in detail in our shareholder letter on the website, but I want to touch on each at a high level here.
First we're a marketing software company that helps mobile app developers to attract new users and grow their businesses. Our most important objective is to focus on growing our software platform and our key business decisions always going back to this objective.
We accelerated to 90 per cent growth year over year in Q1, and our business software segment.
Unlike many tech companies the pandemic had a negligible impact on our business since our audiences play casual games on the go.
Our growth the last few quarters was primarily driven by technological improvements from our machine learning engine axon, which we launched late in 2020 and continues to improve dramatically.
Prevents helped us significantly grow our customer base and the average revenue per customer.
We're also excited about closing the adjusted acquisition in April the acquisition provides us access to their leading attribution analytics products over 2000 potential clients and a sales force for the first time in our company's history.
With these new adjusted assets under our beloved and we're excited to grow both their solution and our axon powered software.
Our second objective is to continue to expand our portfolio of apps to generate more first party data for axon.
Since 2018, we built a high growth diversified portfolio, our combined business apps and consumer apps include over 200 games and nearly 40 million daily active users.
We work with 15 studios around the globe that have a workforce of approximately 2000 game creators.
Today, our ops or some of the world's most popular mobile games, including project makeover Wordscapes match, you can imagine clockmaker Bingo story final fantasy 15, and many others.
We're able to grow these games because of our seasoned team accretive M&A and most importantly, our marketing expertise and cost synergies, we got from marketing our apps on our software platform.
Our scaled first party data advantaged feeds or software engine and also Insulates our business model from privacy changes relative to peers, we've already seen over 10% of iOS users update to Iowa, 14 point fiber later and within that audience, we're not seeing any material impact to our business.
Our third business objective as a platform business with high margins is to create shareholder value through long term growth and increasing cash flows.
We believe predictable growth and cash flow is the ultimate determinant of shareholder value.
The combination of our machine learning software, our first party data advantage and a massive Tam gives us confidence in our long term annual cash flow growth target of over 30 per site.
We've made great progress in Q1, but believe we're just getting started.
That wasn't we built market, leading tools that help our customers grow their businesses.
We've recently put all the pieces together and our business model that has evolved over a decade of investment.
As you evaluate our results. We believe you will see the strength of our platform and why we're excited about our path of growth for years to come.
With that I'll now turn the call over to Harold.
Thanks, Adam and thanks, everyone for taking the time to join us.
As Adam mentioned, we appreciate that our business model is a bit nuanced.
Hope through this call our shareholder letter, our first quarter results, our guidance and our financial performance over time, you come to appreciate that our integrated model is the reason for our strong Q1 and for our confidence in our long term growth prospects.
Before we get to your questions I want to briefly highlight a few topics.
We did have a very strong first quarter with 132% and 110% year over your revenue and EBITDA growth respectively.
For those wanting to understand our mix of organic versus inorganic growth or organic growth was a robust 89%.
Next I want to discuss our software business, which falls into our business revenue.
Wanted to provide you additional metrics regarding just your software business to help you understand the scale and growth drivers of that business.
The first is total software transaction value a new metric for us it measures and helps dimensionalize the scale of our software business.
Our software is used by our first party apps and third party clients. However, we can't report our own spend on our own software under GAAP rules.
So we measured T S T V. Our total software transaction value.
The total net value transaction from all clients as if our own studios were standalone businesses.
In Q1. This T S T measure increased by 155% year over year to $148 million.
So nearly a $600 million run rate that illustrates both the scale and rapid growth of our software platforms.
The second new matrix software platform enterprise clients, where we.
Already report business enterprise clients J.
<unk> on an annual basis, we think it would be helpful for investors to have price times quantity metrics for just the software business on a quarterly basis.
<unk> is the number of third party software clients, who in a quarter spend an annualized run rate revenue of over 125000.
We had 193 specs in the first quarter versus 130 in the first quarter of 2020, the 48% year over year increase with the average value per customer rising 32%. We grew both price and quantity primarily because of the improvements in axon, which in turn increase the efficacy of our software.
On the content side, I'd summarize, but we do have many structural and financial advantages on marketing spend which simply bucks is invest more effective user acquisition spend in the market.
Since in the mobile App market marketing dollars drugs mobile App growth, we were able to rapidly grow our apps.
With respect to Adam comment regarding long term cash flow growth. We believe our strong rule out performance ultimately will translate into long term cash flow growth, we are targeting at 30 plus percent.
In the letter we provided you with descriptions of our operating cost structure to better able to appreciate our ability to grow cash flows over time in particular as our software business continues to expand.
Turning to guidance.
For full year 2021, we expect revenues to grow approximately 85% to between $2 65 to $2 seven zero billion for.
For the full year 2021, we're guiding to adjusted EBITDA in the range of $680 million to 700 million, representing a doubling from the prior year on.
Our policy will be to provide you with fiscal year guidance for both revenue and adjusted EBITDA updating it quarterly.
With that we're happy to answer your questions. Operator, Please open the line for questions.
Thank you at this time, we'll be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question. Please press star one on your telephone keypad.
Confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You May press star two if you'd like to remove your question from the queue for participants using speaker equipment. It may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys, one moment, please while we poll for questions.
Your first question comes from the line of Stephen Ju with Credit Suisse. Please proceed with your question.
Okay. Thank you so much so Adam I think it's only been about non short months since you've switched over from contextual ads to axon and it seems like the benefits you got from ml and particularly as you keep feeding it more first party data should continue to accrete over time. So you know what inning do you think you are.
In terms of the overall value you think you can extract.
Secondarily, just wondering you know what the M&A pipeline look like at this point on our deals getting more test. It now on the private market valuation is quoting on.
Whether you are thank you.
Thanks, Stephen for the questions on taking the first one.
Really I don't know if you look at the success of all the biggest companies in the world today, whether it's Google or Facebook you can tie their success over years back to the inflection point, where they really executed on putting ml into the core of their platforms and then growing off of these systems are built so that as they get bigger more data.
Feeds into them more clients come in and the system becomes more and more accurate our axon engines trying to predict what a consumer will download and engage with us in the future and it doesn't it exceptionally high accuracy, but every day. We go forward that accuracy improves and really when we executed on it we were trying to exit.
On the vision of expanding our first party data, which was feeding it and then unlocking the power of that data with the machine learning engine. So as that first party data continues to grow as well that engine will only get better.
I would say really what inning are we on its six months and so we think we're very early on it.
Tying into adjust to we're just we're thrilled to bring that team on they have great products, but the reality is the strategic benefit for us with that deal that can unlock the most cash flow for us going forward was that to date, we haven't had a sales force we haven't been selling our products to the marketplace is working exceptionally well on as you look at the growth of both.
The third party clients and the T. S television start growth rate second to none in the marketplace and our enterprise clients are still under 200. The market has over 10000 potential enterprise clients and we're excited about adjusted sales force coming in and really help us deliver on more clients into the system, which will.
To help it grow.
On the stocking question around M&A, our pipeline is always robust because our approach is different when it comes to the content side of M&A, we're working with our own clients to bring them into effectively our walled garden and help facilitate more growth off of their business that they built.
Almost every single one of our transactions in the past had been clients burst outside of banker run processes early in their evolution companies that we were able to acquire and then accelerate the growth thereof, and then we just announced in the release two deals that we executed on in April for two more early but.
Top grossing games that we think we can grow quite materially from here, one west game and.
Two a slots game that brings the first slots game into our portfolio. These two games are at a run rate of $200 million a year revenue and we paid upfront $300 million for them within some contingent payments that will there'll be able to accumulate as they grow their businesses with our platform.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Your next question comes from the line of Alexia <unk> with J P. Morgan. Please proceed with your question.
Hi, Thank you I just have two questions as well one can you discuss the integration of machine sales, so far and the learnings from operating in the mid course day and then Midwest game. This does look like you're moving deeper into the space I guess do you expect synergies you realized in casual can be applied other genres like mid core and casino and then.
My second question is just if you could maybe elaborate on the full year revenue guide on what your assumption is in that guidance for organic growth.
Thanks, Alexia I'll take the first question and I'll I'll leave the guidance question over to Harold on the first question on the machines on transaction, we closed actually almost exactly a year ago and really integration for us with content studios, it's pretty pretty straightforward, we want them to focus on creating and then we want our platform to reach.
B, there accelerator of growth and so it creates the perfect environment to unlock that creative talent that they've got the machines on transaction for US was interesting for two reasons. One was they had a team that was very skilled at building these core games.
And we believe that they can unlock that value going forward with future games, but then more importantly, the reason it was interesting to us as they have.
The biggest pool of first party data where consumers are transacted in their games consumers that are interested in these male centric strategy games are really high value segment for advertising and our content strategy really the core reason, we got into content was to be able to supply our advertising.
<unk> system, our platform and our software with first party data machines on gave us scaled data second to none and with West game as far as synergies go. The reason we're excited about growing that game, particularly is it much earlier in its lifecycle than machines on games and we've got the data to be able to execute on.
On the machine learning to be able to grow that game through our platform. So we think we're going to be able to grow it quite a lot from where it is today already one of the top 100 grossing games on the world.
Harold do you want to take the point around <unk>.
If the forecast.
Yeah, that's great. Thanks. Thanks for the question in terms of the guidance, we've given for the full year. It really takes into consideration just the tremendous opportunities we're seeing across all of our assets and you can see it on our strong first force first quarter here, where we had growth in each one of the businesses and we also had very very robust.
Organic growth and so we see that continuing in our 2021 full year guidance, where the majority of it will continue to be from organic measures as well as we will augment that with M&A.
Just mentioned, we just did two acquisitions.
Our run rate on about 200 million, which are included in our guidance.
We still see opportunities for M&A on top of that but in terms of guidance. Our policy is really not to include any additional meaningful M&A nor do we include any.
You know large new hits from our studios both of which are very hard to predict we're certainly pursuing both of those things, but notwithstanding that it's hard to.
Hard to project those two things.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Brian Nowak with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.
Thanks for taking my questions I have two first one on the on the software side Axon has been a big success I'd be curious to hear about how you.
Other areas, where you see low hanging fruit improvements to make to that product to continue to competitively differentiate and win even more market share and just kind of get beyond the axon lapping and then secondly on the on the first party consumer business can you give us examples where are you using any machine learning on that side, yet or is that sort of something.
Are you still thinking about doing over time to improve the over algorithms in the consumer side. Thanks.
Thanks, Brian for the questions on the first point really when it comes to machine learning.
One you have to have a data advantage to be able to execute on machine learning at this level and we have the data advantage, we executed on getting the machine learning to market. We also invested over the last decade in building our large scale data infrastructure, which is a key component on a machine learning now where it is today once you put the software programs out there.
Areas, where you got leverage to grow them. One is just getting more clients into our platform will continue to expand the business model. Two is the first party data continuing to scale, giving us that exclusive data will continue to power that machine learning to become more accurate and allow us to get more growth in that business model.
And then the third is of course, we've got data scientists machine learning engineers working on improving the algorithms. All the time those three pieces are all really early stages. So we see a lot of upside in that technology and then you brought up taking market share we don't look at the ecosystem as well.
We're executing on axon and we're taking market share from peers.
A couple of our direct peers have been in the public markets recently and just reported their first quarter earnings were all doing very well the way. The ecosystem works is when something like axon happens, we're driving more value to our clients and as our clients grow and has their own studio's grow the Tam just grows.
With it and all of the companies in the ecosystem of different models different algorithms and different data and all of US end up growing with that and that's what makes us market. So exciting.
On the on the other question around applying axon or machine learning specifically to games, it's a great point and frankly, we started our games business three years ago, we're really new in the content and the intent of the games business was to get first party data at scale to power our advertising business, we've been busy building.
On and applying it to the advertising side. So we haven't had the time yet to go apply it to the game side of the business, we think that presents us an immense opportunity for growth as we go forward and it's worth that we're actively working on today.
Great. Thanks.
Your next question comes from the line of Jason Bazinet with Citi. Please proceed with your question.
Thanks, So much you guys have been pretty consistent in your messaging about wanting to do M&A.
And you've done some work today, but I guess my my longer term question is do you feel like it's mostly done on the AD tech side and more of what Youre going to do is more about.
Buying apps or gains is that the way to think about it or do you still think there are other pieces of the puzzle on the on the tech side.
I think the way we look at it in the content side is just natural if we've got clients on the platform, whether they're gaming or they're non gaming and they've got content and they need a growth partner then we can be acquisitive and really help facilitate their growth and facilitate our goal of accumulating more first party data into our engine on the <unk>.
Offer side, it's much more opportunistic if you look at the three deals we've done on that side Max safety Kay and adjust they were all to go acquire software that our studios used or our platform could utilize to expand the offering to the marketplace and we'll continue to look for those opportunities that we think there are.
Our teams to be acquisitive to augment the offering that we've got on the market.
Super helpful. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Ryan Gee with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.
Hey, good afternoon, guys. Thanks for taking my questions two if I may.
You know I think consumer business was very strong accelerating to over <unk> year over year, well ahead of our expectations I think the complacent investor I view that as just you know.
A gaming company benefiting from the pandemic, but is there a way that you can maybe tie in how the strength there.
Actually a direct reflection of the power of your platform should drive monetization and discovery.
For your first party apps and then secondly, just on the outlet real quick here. It seems like that was also well ahead of what we were expecting in absolute terms regarding the profit margin of the business can you talk about the factors influencing the year over year trends there on margins how much of this is evolving revenue mix.
Versus incremental investments to grow software grow apps. Thank you.
Thanks, Brian I'll jump on the first on that Harold handle the second on the first point really of course, we know the pandemic was beneficial for for many gaming companies, but I think there is a little bit of a disconnect on the types of games that benefited our games are predominantly casual mobile games. If you look at some of the oldest titles in our library that we own.
I'm like Wordscapes that games played on the go and when we had the pandemic hit and we're all sitting at home, we had plenty more time on our hands on.
Full gaming really benefited the most and then the second benefit was to the deeply engaging.
On meta versus type games on mobile casual games didn't see much of an uptick if you look back at the growth of our content you can see a direct correlation to when we launched axon and we gave you that on that T. S. Television start to you can see the acceleration and the difference between the total G S television and the third party clients on our.
What form that difference is our spending on our own platform to grow our apps.
Pre oxon frankly, we just werent as successful at growing our own apps, because we didn't have that that software at the level of efficiency that is today now today with that software running at the capacity its running up we're accelerating every part of our business the content growth because we're able to grow the spend through.
Our own platform and through other channels utilizing our software and.
Then that content on feedback data, which makes the software more accurate and then the software growth is the content. So we've really unlocked that flywheel effect that we highlighted in our S. One only dating back six months ago and that's what we're so excited about looking forward.
Yeah, Hey, Ryan Thanks for the second question as well so I'll dress.
Yeah again in terms of the guidance on the margin structure on how that progresses.
We're confident in our top line growth rates across the board as we mentioned again, we show that.
And this quarter with 90% on software 57 on business apps, and 215% growth on consumer apps and so as we built out the year, we see each one of those businesses continuing to grow and as we were able to grow in scale over our cost structure, our margins to expand and so composition is important to follow as well and certainly in this.
First quarter with project makeover, where we have more as you noted more consumer app revenue.
Which did increase that side and also increased cost of goods sold on that on that piece of revenue. So we see for our full year guidance at 26% margin, we do see our software business accelerating relative to the other businesses and you also saw in this first quarter, but I think relative to most of your models that you published earlier this week.
And so we're confident in the top line just given all the aspects of the business that we're executing against on against.
Against and then having margins expand as we continue to scale over our cost structure as well as the mix of the business continues to accelerate on the software side.
Your next question comes from the line of USEC Scully with Truest Securities. Please proceed with your question.
Great. Thank you very much on the guys. Congrats on your inaugural earnings call. So two questions. If I may 1st four per games you acquire can you just speak to maybe a typical lift in growth to their revenue is how long until day AP I realize it is.
Probably early on until most of the peak, but to those that may have half and what's kind of a net decline curve.
For some of these may be earlier games. That's a question that we've actually gotten from on a number of investors earlier. This week and then second can you can you speak to the non gaming opportunity, especially now that you're on and just how quickly do you start moving in that direction in any verticals that that excite you.
Or I guess, what are the verticals that excite you. The most if you can comment on that thanks.
Thanks Joseph on.
On the acquisition side, where we put in the S. One just data around the acquisitions that we had for over a year, but we are just so fresh on the strategy. So we haven't had a lot of time with a lot of the games in the portfolio. We typically in the first 12 months when we measure it on average grow these businesses over a 100% once they come on to.
On the platform now there's something interesting about our acquisition strategy is that we don't buy to sit on top of the EBITDA that they previously had most gaming companies don't operate in an aggressive marketing fashion, because they're sensitive to generating cash flow our objective with the content business is not to generate cash.
Flow of material cash flow from the content business yet.
<unk> from the content business is to grow the games to as large as possible to get as much transactional data that we can get from the customers playing our games and use that data in a behavioral and privacy safe manner, and our AD algorithm, which accelerates our business and our exceptionally high software margins and so we operate that.
Way, we're growing these games through their lifecycle, where when their early they can grow to a ceiling in revenue eventually the cohorts that you're accumulating stock up on top of each other and the games to become cash flow businesses. So over time as our game business continues to become bigger and bigger we will get to a point, where it will also become a high contribute.
Or a margin to the business, but right now we're focused on growth and we've been able to execute on that strategy across almost every single one of the acquisitions we've made.
On the second question when it comes to non gaming of course exclusively for for most of the company's history. We've been focused on gaming companies, that's not because our technology was specifically geared toward gaming. It's also not because our data or machine learning is geared toward toward gaming the data that we have in our <unk>.
Business is built on top of this casual audience that we have across all of our games and then also that male centric strategy player, which is a very high value category of consumer for many advertisers outside game, but the non gaming businesses require companies to sell into them to explain to them. There is an.
<unk> on our platform for them to go execute a growth strategy to date, we've never had a sales force and adjust brings US 300, seasoned salespeople, who know how to sell software in the ecosystem. They have over 3000 clients and 40% of those enterprise clients are non gaming companies we're on.
Already executing on the strategy there of being able to bring non gaming companies onto our platform is the fastest growing category of company that's coming onto the platform today and just to give you a sense of one case study of why we were really excited about the adjusted transaction and the potentially leveraged financial.
File so we can build off of that sales force cross selling our product against their clients. When we went and assess that transaction. We did one case to really build the case internally on why this is potentially so valuable we took a health and fitness subscription app and took that put it on our plan.
Hum.
He is paying adjust today $3000 a month. They went live on our platform about 90 days ago and they are now yielding us close to $500000 a year or 40 K a month.
We're not to say that every one of adjusted clients that amount over $100 million a year SaaS business are going to convert at 13 times revenue dollars to our platform, but we're very excited about the cross sell opportunity, especially when it comes to non gaming.
Thanks, Tom.
Yeah go ahead.
You can go back to your question on the game side you'd asked about just the decline rate.
What we're finding with these casual games as we once we get them launched we do grow them once we own them launched new games. They reached peaks they do plateau at some level, but they do last for a very long period of time, you'll see in our letter for Q1, we show our existing studios from Q1 of 2020 to Q1 of 'twenty one.
On existing studios, we're able to grow to 91% rate.
So even after a year of continuing to grow because of our software and because of our marketing expertise and so we're trying to build these cohorts as Adam said, we're only three years into this so we start layering these annual cohorts and they start building up the great thing behind that too is that that the content business then starts to generate even higher margins, because we're not going out and have to buy.
Lot of that revenue stream, that's been already paid for overall.
<unk> business grew for those 2% to 141% so still the new piece and so we've added that we acquired added more growth, but at 91% growth on existing games. We think those that type of Larry will allow us to continue to compound growth on the content side.
Alright, Thanks al.
As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question. Please press star one on your telephone keypad as a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question. Please press star one on your telephone keypad one moment. Please while we poll for more questions.
Your next.
<unk> comes from the line of Martin Yang with Oppenheimer <unk> Company. Please proceed with your question.
Hi, Adam and Darryl Thanks for taking my question. My first question is on your acquisition targets, but do you think about the content you're going to acquire.
How that aligned with your first party data strategy do you intentionally pick out like the missing genres or.
Trying to fill out the full spectrum on the most popular genres for mobile games.
Hey, Martin.
That's a good point and a good cash if you look at our acquisition strategy historically, we've targeted a whole bunch of different genres and that wasn't by coincidence fundamentally we want content that is appealing to every single one of the 400 million plus daily active users we see on the platform. So that we can build first party data relationships with those consumers.
And we've been able to execute on that strategy really efficiently. We're at a point now where we've got content per everyone and so now the strategy is just scaling that content the bigger we get on the content side the better our software it gets the better our software gets the more growth we get on the content side and so we're really excited about getting to this point, where now we've got.
Titles. After this slots transaction that we just announced across every single major genre on mobile gaming.
Got it so related to that question to you.
By the same strategy with maybe different geographies because my understanding is some.
The player behavior my might differ a little bit is it.
In between different regions.
Yeah, that's for sure true International was actually one of our big growth vectors. So far the U S has made up a majority of our revenue tier one English speaking markets as the focus Japan is actually our second biggest market and to your point some games will overlap with the Japanese audience, but culturally there are some games that are specific to it and then China as the.
Whole another back through that's just unique to itself has the world's gaming audience in opportunity, but contained within the country. We think these international expansion points present, a big opportunity for growth in the future.
Thanks.
One more question if I may.
Can you maybe comment on user acquisition environment in the first quarter, whether you see any unique or different than usual as most publishers are preparing for.
The idea of the impact.
Yeah, we haven't seen any changing trends if you look at it our T. Stv's that youll see a lot of our user acquisition does flow through our own platform. So that does make us a little bit unique in terms of having this perspective, but we do spend a lot on other channels as well I would say the marketplace itself continues to expand in.
<unk> applications that can market on marketing platforms and this is why we're really excited about potentially new clients and new categories on our software platform things like Fintech have been exploding in competitiveness and add auctions with crypto based apps spending a lot of money and these are just all new concepts to us and our software.
Platform, we haven't gone out and sold these companies to buy with us yet, but we are actively executing on that strategy when it comes to our platform.
Got it thank you very much.
Your next question comes from the line of Ralph <unk>.
<unk> with.
William Blair. Please proceed with your question.
Good afternoon, and thanks for taking the question on the consumer business, which overall is much stronger than expected and particular at least relative to our model.
You had a very strong map number just curious how much of that might have been driven by project makeover versus just the broader portfolio set of games performing well versus perhaps you're on it and improvements that you got on the software platform. Thank you.
Yes, so I can handle that.
And then Harold knows the exact split so you can give it to you but for the most part.
We look at our content portfolio is at any given time the content in the newer that pressure is going to be what we're going to be able to accelerate the growth of and project may go over it launched in November it accelerated to today, it's the top 15 grossing games. So certainly it's feeding a whole bunch of consumers that are transacting backend.
Our systems, but a launch in November and that was three months. After we launched axon and really the growth in that game was facilitated from how well our software is performing and it just fed back into the system. So what we're really excited about it and you see that number grow the most important data that really drives the success.
Of add algorithms for any company is if you can accumulate scaled transactional data when you understand what the consumer is interested in purchasing you can give them much more relevant advertising and when consumers purchase in and project makeover, we're able to take that map data anonymize, it and use that behavioral signals.
In our AD algorithm and that facilitates expansion and everything and that's why you're seeing our business growing so quickly in Q1.
Hey, Ralph apparel.
Yes, certainly product maker, having a big impact on our first quarter and consumer revenue.
But even when excluding <unk>.
Project.
From consumer in the quarter, we still grew at a very very high rate.
So almost a triple digit maybe actually just slightly over triple digit rate on everything else and that's really due to the fact that adds referring to the overall platform also improved right at the same time with the launch of axon underlying a lot of our own marketing spend and we increased our percentage of our own spending on our platform.
And setting that improve the consumer base overall, but certainly nice to have project makeover included to get to that 200% plus growth rate.
Great. Thanks, Adam Thanks Harold.
Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time.
I would like to turn the floor back over to management for closing comments.
And we just wanted to thank everyone for spending time with us and really getting to know our business and we'll look forward to talking to you all more on callbacks and at our next quarter's earnings call. We are thrilled with where our business is that we don't know many other companies in this environment that are growing revenue and EBITDA triple dip.
This Q1 versus last year's Q1, we're executing on all cylinders and we see a roadmap to growth for many years to come and we're excited for you all to learn more about our business as we go forward.
This concludes today's conference you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you all for your participation.
Okay.
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Yeah.
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