Marketing technology provider Inuvo Inc. of Little Rock (NYSE American: INUV) on Thursday reported $18.2 million in second-quarter revenue, an 8.9% increase from $16.7 million in the same quarter last year.
On a linked quarterly basis, revenue was up 6.7%.
The company reported a loss of $1.7 million for the quarter, an improvement from the $3.34 million loss it posted in the same quarter a year ago. Per share, the loss came to 1 cent.
Expenses totaled $17 million, down 3.5% from $17.6 million in the second quarter of 2023. Expenses for the first quarter of 2024 totaled $17.01 million.
The company said $12.4 million of the expenses can be attributed to marketing costs, down from $13.1 million in the previous quarter, but still up from the same quarter last year.
Inuvo’s IntentKey technology is the first large-language generative artificial intelligence solution able to identify and target ad audiences without tracking or using consumer cookies. The company believes the product is the “next evolution in digital advertising.”
Inuvo CEO Richard Howe said in the earnings report that Inuvo expects to sign a master services agreement with the company’s largest retail client in the third quarter of 2024, a deal that “provides Inuvo the opportunity to expand across their enterprise.”
Inuvo’s clients include Microsoft, Spotify, Hulu and ESPN, among others.
Shares of the company fell 4.5% to 30 cents Friday morning. Year to date, shares were down nearly 27%.
“This year we are making significant strides towards the distribution of our self-service and predictive media mix modeling products, with roughly a half dozen self-serve models built in the quarter and a number of media mix product sales cycles well underway,” Howe said in the report.
“The self-serve product boasts high margins, with gross profit ranging from 85-95%,” Howe said. “The media mix modeling provides the means for Inuvo to act in a more strategic capacity within clients.”
As of June 30, Inuvo had $2 million in cash and cash equivalents and an unused working capital facility of $5 million and no debt.
The company in July sought to soothe investor concerns over Google’s turnabout decision to continue to allow advertising cookies on its Chrome web browser. Instead of phasing out cookies, as had been planned for years, Google will give consumers a choice to opt out of being tracked.
Howe said he expects Google’s announcement to actually accelerate the demise of third-party cookies.
“When Apple gave consumers the choice, the answer was overwhelmingly no, I don’t want to be tracked around the internet,” he said. “I think Google is going to do something similar, and that’s going to be the outcome, and then the cookie is going to be dead.”
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