Q2 2022 Eventbrite Inc Earnings Call
So it's directly comparable GAAP financial measure is available at shareholder letter.
We encourage you to read our shareholder letter.
Important information about GAAP and our GAAP results.
And with that I'll now turn the call over to Julia Hartz, co founder and Chief Executive Officer.
Thank you Catherine and thank you to everyone. Joining us today, we saw many of you about a month ago at Eventbrite first Investor day. It was great to be back in person and to share the team's vision and strategy for the company.
We've made considerable progress against that long term plan and we're on a course for more improvement in the second half.
So let's talk about the quarter product momentum was strong and our platform is used by quickly growing creator base.
Revenue was up 43% year over year in the quarter, which is at the high end of the outlook range that we raised in June .
Also opposed to Covid peak.
We achieved our fourth consecutive quarter of adjusted EBITDA profitability.
I'm excited about the surge in consumer demand for unique and local events, which drove a 58% increase in search volume and a 37% increase in paid tickets on our platform.
10 million unique buyers attended paid events the revamp right in Q2.
That is the highest level of consumer activity on our platform in two years.
<unk> music performing arts, and food and drink are particularly popular right now and ticket sales in the United Kingdom, and Australia are now 15% to 20% higher than they were pre pandemic, while North America was once again, our fastest growing primary market in Q2.
We brought on over 100000, new creators during the quarter and this year's new creators of paid events are outselling the levels we saw in 2019.
Total paid creators on our platform grew 48% year over year and are closing the gap to 2019 level.
Since we lost volume in June we shipped 10 major product releases to our creators I'm really proud of that effort in the second quarter, our focus was on consumer conversion.
Creator efficiency and Eventbrite boots.
We added Google pay as a payment option to improved checkout conversion, we introduced a new dashboard for creators, which built on earlier work we've done to overhaul the navigation experience and makes it easier to manage many events and.
And boost you received the 12 updates since we launched it a year ago.
With each update goes becomes easier to use them more robust for creators we reduced the steps required to launch a social AD campaign from eight down to four which resulted in a 16% increase in campaign creation and we launched a closed beta release of Eventbrite ads, which will give creators the ability to advertise to the high intent.
And searching for events on our platform.
The team is on track to release more than 50, new features and product enhancements in the year and that includes major launches for all four technical and product pillars, we shared at Investor day.
These improvements will better align our capabilities with our creator knee, which we think is key to driving sustainable and profitable growth in the long run.
Now I want to touch on some of the other important work, we're doing to serve our creators our employees and our community.
On the creative front, we announced the creator collective which is a group of highly experienced and successful creators who will serve as a customer counsel to us.
And we also launched the reconvene accelerator, a grant and Mentorship program that will help launch new event professional on the team front Eventbrite was certified as a great place to work in May with 93% of our Breitling nominating the company for the designation that has an incredible level of support and speaks to our people first culture.
And just last week, we announced that John <unk>, who will be joining the team as our new Chief people officer, we're thrilled to have him here for the next leg of growth.
On the ESG front, we launched the social connection project, which is our initiative to understand and reduce social isolation, especially amongst youth.
We're tackling this challenge with leading partners like researchers at University of Georgia, and Brigham Young University also in partnership with Lady Gaga is born this way foundation, and the coalition and social isolation and loneliness.
As we look to the second half of the year were optimistic and confident that our collective work will continue to compound and strength.
The consistent recovery paid tickets since the omicron related slowdown at the start of the year has been especially encouraging our third quarter business outlook calls for 25% year over year revenue growth at the midpoint of the range as we anticipate this trend to continue.
Based on recent performance, we believe our strategy and our execution have well positioned eventbrite to build strength even through harsh environment.
First our focus on frequent creators means that our product investments prioritize the broadest and most active customers on our platform and in our market.
Our self service product model continues to get stronger with our self sign on channel now outpacing pre Covid era results.
And this is important for both revenue and also the profit we generate from our core ticketing business.
Third our emerging marketing and demand generation products will be even more valuable in an environment of increased competition for consumer dollars.
And finally, our financial position remains strong with ample available liquidity and another quarter of adjusted EBITDA profitability.
We have proven ability to operate successfully through very challenging headwinds and I believe we can continue to do so even as we keep an eye on macroeconomic and pandemic related development as.
<unk> will talk about we are balancing our near term view with some caution regarding external factors that may impact our business, but.
But more importantly, we remain fully committed to the strategy and business model that has consistently yielded growth and margin expansion over the last two years.
So we will continue to invest responsibly in the technology and products that matter to our customers and deepen our long term differentiation.
But in this environment that also means being clear eyed about the priorities and execution and being ready to adapt if conditions do change this.
This is how our team will tackle any challenges ahead and I'm confident that we're firmly in the driver's seat for long term success and now I'll pass the call over to Mandy.
Thank you Julia we extended the strong momentum built in March into the second quarter and delivered our highest revenue since the fourth quarter of 2019.
The improved results in the quarter and the first half of the year reflect consistent execution on our strategy and our focus on delivering increasing value to the greater community.
Revenue grew 43% year over year.
18% over the first quarter.
During the second quarter, we saw continued strength in consumer demand as the world came back to live events.
In keeping with the customary seasonality of our business ticket sales volume declined from a peak in March through June .
The decline was smaller in 2022 compared to pre pandemic yours.
The strong topline growth was fueled by improvements across most of our fleet ticketing metrics.
Here's what drove our revenue engine work as follows first the number of paid creators grew 48% year over year to almost 170000 creators. This.
Is the highest paid greater level since early 2020.
Within those numbers, we saw creators of larger one off events come back even stronger this year.
And at the same time, our core strategic base of frequent creators continue to grow rapidly in the second quarter up 32% year over year.
With the return of less frequent creators the number of big events per creator was average down to three in the second quarter compared with four per creator one year ago. However.
However, the total number of big events transacting on the platform grew by 7% year to year to more than half a million above.
As indicated the consumer demand side of our marketplace remains strong in the second quarter and paid tickets per event.
<unk> 43.
Compared to approximately 34 tickets per event in the same period of 2021.
The total paid ticket volume grew 37% versus 2021 and totaled $21 9 million tickets in the second quarter.
That kind of growth reflects both the appeal of our creators content as well as our own success in marketing the elegance and helping to convert ticket buyers.
The average ticket value in the second quarter was roughly flat year over year at $39.
The strengthening of the U S dollar relative to other currencies, particularly the pound and the euro.
A slight adverse impact on overall average ticket value and revenue in the quarter.
On the order of about 2%.
Finally, our revenue take rate was seven 8% in the second quarter.
40 basis point increase from a year ago reflects our customer focus and their recognition of additional value. We are building into the platform.
Revenue per ticket was $3 in Tucson in the quarter.
Bruce subscription fees contributing forced them to that average.
Alongside our topline momentum, we delivered adjusted EBITDA profitability for the fourth consecutive quarter.
Gross margin in the second quarter was 65, 1% compared to 61% in the year ago period.
With growth in ticket volume and revenue lifting gross margins in line with our expectation.
Total operating expenses for the quarter were $56 million compared to $46 million a year ago.
Normalizing for a $1 million reserve reversal in the current quarter.
$600000 in non routine expenses in the second quarter of 2021.
Total operating expenses were up $11 million or 25% year to year.
More than half of that increase reflects investments, we've made to strengthen and expand our product design data and engineering team.
These investments are directly linked to a product led strategy for sustainable long term growth and profitability.
We're pleased with the return on investment that we're seeing as measured by improvements in part from reliability release velocity creator growth and overall revenue.
Elsewhere, we continue to manage expenses carefully.
Sales and marketing and general administrative expenses increased 18% year over year, when excluding nonrecurring items.
Which is less than half as fast as revenue or gross profit growth in the second quarter.
As a percentage of revenue we gained more than 10 points of operating leverage on sales and marketing and G&A combined over the past year.
Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter almost doubled from the first quarter to $4 7 million.
Representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of 7%.
We ended the first half of the year with $671 million in cash and net liquidity of $353 million.
Which provides financial flexibility to support our growth plans.
Looking to the third quarter in the second half of 2022, we have considered a variety of internal and external factors as well as long term and shorter term trends informing our business outlook.
We currently anticipate third quarter revenue within a range of 65 million to $68 million.
Within that outlook, we expect consumer demand for live events to remain healthy based on the return of live events and our renewed ability to gather together safely.
As long as the affordable local nature of most of the inventory on our platform.
We've taken a more cautious view of the near term outlook around our creators.
Nike that macroeconomic factors like inflation labor shortages and rising interest rates may lead to more friction around staging you bet.
Accordingly, we saw a stronger than typical month to month progression across the second quarter.
Our assumptions for third quarter revenue reflect month to month progression in line with to slightly below pre pandemic norms.
On the cost side, we will be disciplined about expenses and investments with an eye on protecting adjusted EBITDA in the near term.
While it is critical that we continue to invest in our product, which is the foundation of our long term growth.
Our experienced through Covid honed our ability to be flexible make bold decisions and take swift action where needed to achieve our priorities are.
Our team has proven it is capable of effectively navigating challenging conditions.
As we shared at our recent Investor Day, we believe we can achieve long term revenue growth of 20% per year or better along with adjusted EBITDA margins of at least 20% in our long term model.
None of that has changed.
We have deep conviction in our strategy, which centers on giving creators the confidence tools and the visibility to host events successfully using our platform.
Well, we've realized strong results in frequent creators eventbrite driven tickets take rate revenue gross margin and EBITDA, we can credit that strategy and our execution for a large part of those gains the favorable secular growth trends in the experience economy and the greater economy.
Another strong source of encouragement as we look ahead.
Finally over the past two years and even longer really our creators have proven themselves time, and again to be nimble and resilience as well as tremendously innovative.
For all these reasons, we're excited about what lies ahead and working hard to capture that opportunity.
I'll now turn the call over to the operator for the question and answer part of the call.
Thank you.
I'd like to ask a question. Please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If for any reason you would like to remove that question. Please press star followed by two again to ask a question Thats Star one as a reminder, if you are using a speakerphone. Please remember to pick up your handset before asking your question.
Our first question comes from <unk>.
Matt Farrell with Piper Sandler.
Your line is now open.
Thanks, Congrats on the really strong execution in Q2 as things continue to open back up My first question is on your commentary around Q3, and the cautious creator environment.
Is that something that you have already started to see in your business as we've moved here through July or had conversations with creators you know over the last couple of weeks that they're kind of feeling as we enter the back half of the year or where should we just kind of think of it as a.
Maybe we read the writing on the wall from a lot of the macro data points and things.
May just get a little bit worse from here and from an economic perspective.
Thanks, Matt and welcome.
I did have you.
I would say its the latter we haven't seen any sense of the macro environment impacting our creators yet.
And we also want to be cautious about this and this is everything everybody is talking about and.
We believe that Eventbrite based on our history is recession resistant, but I wouldn't.
I would say that any company is fully recession proof and so we think it's prudent to be cautious, but also we know that creators have shown that they can be incredibly resilient.
<unk> grown the number of new creators from Q4 of last year at 90000 to Q1 at 95000, Q2, 105000, plus and so we see continued strength in not only the net new growth of creators, but also and I think more.
You know relevant activity that the creators on our platform are having.
I would say that the other thing is that we.
We are seeing this consumer demand, that's really strong and we believe that in recessionary periods.
Types of events that are on our platform with an average ticket price of $40 or less are exactly the types of events that people want to get out too during stressful times and the economic environment, we've actually seen that before in the history of the company through 2008 2009.
And then finally I think that you know we're a different company.
Our head count is 30% lower than it was prior to March of 2020, our Dev.
Head count is 20% higher or gross margins are 10 points higher and our Opex is 20% lower so I think the actions. We took in 2020 to take $100 million out of our Opex and really reorient the company towards being truly product lead is starting to bear some some really nice.
Through for Us as we head into what could be a harsh environment.
Thanks, that's all.
Very helpful. With my second question I wanted to move over to boost.
You have continued to introduce new updates here.
I'm just curious if you kind of released these updates and are you continuing to see these updates drive either further adoption.
From either free people, who who use it for free tickets or from paid creators.
Just any sort of trends that you kind of see from adoption perspective as you continue to.
Update the platform. Thank you.
Absolutely we've been pleased with the progress, especially on the product side. That's been made on various we reported 12 update.
And almost as many months and what we want to do there is continually iterate the product to not only expand its surface area. So for instance, where.
Adding the ability to to post on Linkedin and advertise there in Q3, but we also want to make it easier to use and so we reported some of the activation work that we did leading to a 16%.
Creator campaign increase and so that's what you should expect to see moving forward is we're going to be working both both streams and thats really as we think about taking this creator platform that we've built and strengthening it to not only be a great commerce engine for our customers, but also a growth platform.
One.
So I think that that's something that we're focused on we're going to be constantly making it easier for creators to discover boost as well as being right in front of them at the exact right time, when theyre thinking about marketing, they're their event and then.
Good.
Police in closed beta Eventbrite pads, which is a really important extension of the boost functionality because not only can you now.
Use the power of the Eventbrite platform and the data we have to advertise on external platforms, but now you can also advertise the extremely high intent audience searching for events on Eventbrite.
Awesome. Thank you so much.
Thanks, Matt Thank you.
Our next question comes from.
Youssef Squali with true Securities you Sir your line is now open.
Great. Thank you so much and congrats guys on a nice progression here. So a couple of questions for me, maybe let me just.
Just help us understand a bit of.
But nonetheless, as well I guess, the linearity of demand throughout the quarter and more importantly, what you saw in July .
It looks like the guide.
It seems to be keeping our eyes on the conservative side. So maybe just help us understand the puts and takes there and just remind us of the seasonality of the business not only in Q3, but in Q4 as well.
Sure.
Sure. Thanks, the normal it's hard to say what the normal seasonality is because the world has changed but if we go back to 2018 in 2019.
There is a fairly linear progression across the course of the year from the second quarter to the third quarter, we have seen historically fairly flat maybe up a little bit.
But within a quarter to quarter, but within the quarters. There is a lot more seasonality than you see at the whole quarter level. So as we said we kind of come in the first quarter to a peak in March and then the ticket sales typically come down through the month of June they did that this year. They came down less than what we would sort of look at is quote unquote normal.
<unk>, so we outperformed what we what we've seen historically and then as you look into the third quarter typically from a base in July start to rise through August September and then our outlook, we've contemplated that our seasonality. This year will be in line with and perhaps a little bit softer than what we'd seen in those prior periods as you got into the fourth quarter.
<unk> October starting the quarter is another really big month, and then ticket sales true up into the holidays, but then we have a great finish to the year around.
Typically around the new year's event.
That's typically one of our biggest sales events of the year for for our platform.
Last year in 2021 nears was impacted by omicron, so that'll be a factor at the end of this year, but I would say, yes, we're stepping back as we look at the second half of this year. We anticipate continued strong consumer demand as we return to gathering and we are anticipating as we look at the world as Julie said.
More cautious environment potentially from creators around the macro environment labor shortages inflation supply chain or anything else that we're talking to the world's kind of talking about.
We think could be impacted in the second half and.
We'll see how it goes.
Okay.
Thank you Randy and then an event like that.
So it's been rolled out carefully any kind of early learnings.
So far in just one when do club opening it up to everybody and kind of <unk>.
Resolutely pushed it out.
Sure.
We've noted that demand from creators is strong and budgets are higher than we had originally anticipated which is exciting we think that as we get a greater handle on fulfilling.
The demand and ensuring that we can deliver that fulfillment and created a really lights out creator experience, we'll be quick to open it up and I think.
It's only been a matter of weeks and the team has done a great job at quickly iterating and testing and ensuring again that we can offer a delightful experience.
I think this is one of those those aspects to eventbrite, that's quite unique for this small business owner because the advertising landscape is incredibly noisy and it's very hard to find the signal. So we want to make sure that when we released it to the broader.
Group of creators, which is hundreds of thousands of active creators on the platform every month that we can really deliver.
On the promise of helping them drive more ticket sales and that's what we're laser focused on.
And Julia I guess funding wise is it realistic to expect what you're talking about to be happening before year end or is it really more of a 2023.
Alright, that's something.
I couldn't hear the question.
The question was around the timing of that probably the ads rollout.
And.
As Joe said, we have had.
It now in a pretty limited data.
With a select number of customers in a select number of markets.
<unk>.
We're going to be purposeful and thoughtful and also bold about expanding the number of markets and the number of advertisers that can be in there. It's hard to say when I don't want to say today, when we will have a.
Contribution that's meaningful in name it by month or by quarter, but we have based on the signals we've seen a tremendous amount of confidence in the long term opportunity for us to be that growth partner for creators and do it in this way.
That's correct.
Thanks Julia.
Thanks Lisa.
Okay.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from.
Ryan Sundby with William Blair Ryan Your line is now open.
Hey, Julien Thanks for the question.
It sounds like pay traded growth of 48% was driven by larger less frequent creators this quarter.
He also said the new traders that are publishing for the first time are transacting at higher levels and trying to achieve.
The question is here then.
These less frequent creators come back Patrick SaaS are you starting to see them become less infrequent or are there any signs that I guess.
The exception is helping to encourage others to come back as well.
It would be great.
Sure Yes.
I can give you to perhaps pieces of insight on that Ryan.
<unk>.
As we said as new creators who are coming on the platform. We're seeing if you look at the first 60 days. The first 90 days 120 days.
There are events that those new creators are having or the number of ticket sales that are that they are bringing on is better than it is higher there being more successful than going back 234 years ago.
And I think that's reflective of a couple of things one is the external environment. There's a lot of demand for live events, it's reflective of our very targeted marketing.
And product efforts to go after those who are going to be frequent creators with great content and then it's also the tools that we've made that are helping enable creators reach that audience.
<unk>.
We're very excited about the fact that over the last couple of years Eventbrite driven tickets have been outgrowing all other tickets on our platform. So we are becoming a bigger.
Our muscle to help those new creators I think is being developed quarter over quarter over quarter.
We look at cohort data all the time and.
It's on the order of 80% to 90% of the frequent creators are increasing their events frequency.
Day relative to where they were.
Let's call it six or 12 months ago. So.
There are some clear signals that we see with our customers of enabling their success and what is the what is a really good market for them.
That's good to hear and then it sounds like the UK and Australia or I.
I think it was 15% to 20% above pre pandemic levels now.
What is it about those markets that are a lot of them I guess rebound past Trinity level is there.
Anything we can I guess take a read into that in terms of your other markets and when they can return to that type of level two.
Yeah, So I mean I think for each.
The country specific story related to Covid policy, and I think the U K has taken a stance of being more open for longer and so youre starting to see more and more events, particularly in music performing arts food and drink really take off and continue to sustain with Australia.
Just the opposite story, but also leading to great growth, which is that they've been closed the longest are now having their euphoric moment every openings such that we had in North America last summer. So I think that each country instead of on its own time access in terms of consumer demand visa B Howe.
Long Lockdown has has lasted for them and then just Covid policy moving forward and so what we're doing is we're capturing that demand and we're also driving that message back to our creator community in terms of where what kind of event.
That where consumers are going to start to reinforce creator confidence and that's something that drives our marketing programs, our sales programs and the content that we produce on eventbrite.
And let me just talk about them that way, it's great to hear thanks.
Yeah.
Yes.
Thanks, Brian .
Thank you.
Our next question comes from.
Justin Patterson with Keybanc.
Justin Your line is now open.
Thank you. This is sergio on for Justin We had two questions I was hoping you could talk about a little bit about what drove the outperformance on the top line versus your original outlook.
In other words, what was better than expected than what you had originally.
Having your guidance and then second on investment level, how do you think about the appropriate investment level, just given the uncertain macro environment right now thank you.
Thanks, a lot.
So in the quarter in the second quarter I would say the biggest surprise to us was relative to our expectations going into the quarter was the strength of consumer demand and the place where you can see that the most clearly is in the attendance per event.
For that number to be up 910 attendees year over year was.
There is really significant and so.
We just saw that.
It was a great market for creators who put on events. They were met with very very strong demand. So that's probably the single place of most excitement relative to our initial expectations for the quarter.
So thinking about the investment level going forward, our long term model and our goal is 20% plus adjusted EBITDA and we've laid out the path to get there we delivered some pretty we're very proud of the progress we delivered in the second quarter gross margins were up four points year over year, as Julian said sales and marketing and G&A.
Give us 10 points of operating leverage on a year over year basis, we're continuing to invest in product development to drive growth year to date, our so our total head count is up about 15%, 16% since the start of the year with almost two thirds of that hiring activity happening in product and engineering to drive our roadmap to deliver.
Our value to our customers and to build the platform for future growth so in the environment or the macro environment.
It's natural to keep an eye on the economy.
We will project protect the adjusted EBITDA profitability that we have as a company.
I think you can expect that if the macro environment does become more difficult, we'll take a more measured pace on hiring in the second half of the year.
But.
But we as I said as Joey said earlier, when we look at the places where we look for return on investment we've been making in the product we see it and we're going to keep making that investment because we think it's resonating with our customers.
Thanks Sergio.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from.
Ben Swinburne with Morgan Stanley .
Ben Your line is now open.
Thanks, Hi team this is Cameron on for Ben.
Two quick ones on the product side.
Hey, How's it going.
Two quick ones on the product side.
Wanted to follow up on that Brian .
Thanks, Joe.
Just anything you can share and I realize this is in beta so it might be.
It's still kind of testing a little bit, but anything you can share on what that experience looks like for creators.
Is there are there different channels that youre going through if you wanted if you.
Want to promote on the Eventbrite platform versus.
Signing up for social promotion.
And just kind of back UI or UX slides for creators kind of more what that looks like.
And then.
On the enabling new payment methods and making it a.
A bit more of a frictionless process for attendees.
The lessons so far from Apple pay and how incremental do you expect enabling Google Adobe.
Okay.
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks Kamran.
On the Eventbrite ads vision really for us, it's about making it seamless for our creator to not only create their event listings, but at the same time access marketing and advertising tools. So.
The two things that I think really matter to our customers our core customer of a frequent creators that they can they can get efficiency out of the workflows on eventbrite and that they can expand their community really meaningfully not just getting.
A good placement, but also converting that into into an ongoing event goers. So we keep that as our north star and we think about driving efficiency through that UI flow as being one where you are basically prompted to.
Tell us what your marketing budget is oftentimes, we see a frequent creator of especially paid event spending between 20% to 40% of the face value of a ticket on marketing. So we want them to be able to indicate what their budget is and then also be able to easily to the surface.
Areas that they want that eventbrite at or that event add to show up in an event bright can start to serve that eventbrite ads is going to be an additional channel to them alongside other off platform social advertising.
For us the second part of that that's really important is making other means of promotion easily accessible. So we'll continue to invest in distribution into partners.
That provides a wide audience range and exposure will continue to iterate and improve our E mail marketing toolset and this is all going to be it is a part of the eventbrite boost experience today and so as we continue to not only expand surface area.
We also are continuing to invest in the UI and make it easier and easier and I think we have a lot of great work ahead of us to simplify it but at the at the end of the day, we keep that north star of efficiency.
Top of mind, alongside making sure we're meaningfully expanding the community.
Like the community addressable market for our event creators on that payment method.
What we're seeing early days is a nice lift in consumer conversion after rolling out Apple pay.
And that is predominant in our iOS app users and so.
Making that a one click to buy ticket is something that has shown some really positive returns for our creators and with a fast follow of Google pay too early to give you any report on that but we expect that especially with our Android users will see a nice lift as well so.
Really seeing it through our native App usage and.
I think the rising tide will raise all boats on that on that front and we're going to continue working on how we can make conversion.
Just easier and easier because we know that the sooner we can get a consumer through buying a ticket to an event that better.
We can deliver value for our creators.
Great. Thanks, so much.
Okay. Thank you.
Our next question comes from.
Hey, Lee with J P. Morgan.
Your line is now open.
Great. Thanks for taking our questions.
So sorry to clarify on the cautious here around greater call. Today. So is that more of a ROM their ability to create events because of shortage in cost rising or was that.
Typically much slower.
Patient with demand slowing.
Dave This is Lenny.
I would say, it's kind of hard to guess ambiguous the two I think that.
Our our outlook is that.
There could be more caution amongst greater space with things like labor shortages faced with inflation and the cost of putting on events.
For some creators supply chains can be constraints.
We haven't seen these things be a factor year to date, but I think they have compounded over the course of the year and as we look ahead.
We have a high degree of confidence in our expectation that the consumer demand for our events events around our platform is going to remain strong.
We have a as we said, we're just spending a bit more cautious in our outlook.
Activity level from graders.
I guess as a follow up.
In that case, thank you Sir.
Hey, guys good quarter potentially.
<unk> creators on the platform to replace those.
Are you seeing headwinds or was that just.
Tough to do given the environment.
Well I think everything that we do today and our acquisition cycle, it's really focused on helping creators have more confidence to come back and either come back to the platform or be publishing their first event with eventbrite and so what we've been doing is really tying together the.
Consumer demand signals, we see and delivering that back to the creator community whether they're at.
Previously active creator who has been dormant or an entirely net new creator audience. Some of the marketing activities that we have done.
In the last year around our reconvene summit in theories has also been focused on that because we're taking real time success stories and replaying those for our creator community in audience and so everything that we think about in terms of marketing is really focused on how can we help our creator feel.
Confident and see the results that they can get when they post post more events and I think you can see that start to play out for us in the frequency numbers with number of events being strong and tickets per event.
On the platform are growing in strength and so we just want to continue that drumbeat and we believe that with more and more data and more functionality to help them truly sell out their events. We can continue to compound and strength and the one thing we know about our market is it is incredibly <unk>.
<unk>.
And it also is highly networks. So word of mouth has always been a really strong component of our growth story, and we think we're getting even stronger than that as we see the brand ubiquity.
ROE and strength.
Great makes sense. Thank.
Thanks for color.
Thanks, Dan.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Lamont Williams with Stifel. Lamont. Your line is now open.
Hi, good afternoon.
Given the growth in the number of creators.
<unk>.
And as we get you know continue to reopen and recover from.
Where are you.
Where are the greatest <unk> from and are you seeing anything any difference and changes in the consumer landscape.
I'm sorry, the competitive landscape.
Yes, absolutely.
As you know that the landscape is incredibly fragmented and I think where we win.
Is in our both our SCO marketing strength and our paid marketing efficiency and that self signed on channel, that's driving 98% of our creator acquisition and so that continues to build in strength and that channel.
Is now at all time high.
So for US I think that will continue to be the playbook that we strengthen.
And we continue to lean into and on the sales front.
In terms of when we take a targeted approach at acquiring customers and locking them into a contract that sales team is in lock step with our total acquisition machine, meaning we're looking for frequent creators who are successful on the platform and as we gain greater insight in combined data.
On that frequent creator, we're getting better and better at finding that perfect sweet spot for our sales acquisition.
Panel and so that's something I'm really pleased about and I think it just streamlines the acquisition machine and a really nice way and delivers profitable return.
Okay. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
That concludes today's Q&A session as well as todays event right second quarter 2022 event earnings call. Thank you for your participation you may now disconnect your lines.
Goodbye.