Audioboom’s revenue has dropped by almost 30% year-on-year, according to the company’s latest financial results, despite a strong performance in attracting advertisers to its platform.
The company’s half-year results for H1 2023, released this morning, included revenue of $31.8 million, down from $40.9 million in the first half of last year. This includes a 6.5% increase in Q2 revenue compared to the previous quarter, and comes despite an 11% drop in year-on-year operational expenditure thanks to greater cost-cutting measures.
Audioboom has put a great deal of focus on expanding partnerships within its creator network this year. The company has also seen a 24% increase in the number of brand advertisers compared to Q1 2023.
"Significant growth of our content network and the continued development and evolution of our revenue product offering is key to our progress in 2023,” said Audioboom CEO Stuart Last. “Our strategy and model continue to work well, with the fast expansion of our network and the refocusing of our advertising strategy setting us up to emerge from the economic downturn in a position of strength.”
The majority of the platform’s revenue drop has been attributed to the loss of flagship podcast Morbid, the impact of which continues to be felt after its departure from Audioboom in May last year. According to the filing, the highly popular true crime show was responsible for over $7 million in revenue by itself in H1 2022.
Even taking this into account, however, the company has still been affected by headwinds in the wider advertising market, and a muted spending environment has resulted in a 5% year-on-year revenue drop even with the revenue generated from Morbid in 2022 removed from the equation.
While Last said the company has reduced expectations due to the “softer advertising market since the second half of 2022”, it remains bullish about the potential for the rest of the year, and expects to return to meaningful growth.
“We continue to refine and adapt our model so that we are primed for further success,” he said, “which will be seen in the second half of 2023 as we move back into a positive growth phase."
