Nextdoor (NXDR) Q3 2026 Earnings Call: Rekord-Plattform-WOW und 14 % Umsatzwachstum

Nextdoor (NYSE: NXDR) wies für das dritte Quartal 2026 einen Umsatz von 78,8 Millionen US-Dollar aus, ein Plus von 14 % im Jahresvergleich, während Platform WOW einen Rekordwert von 24,5 Millionen US-Dollar erreichte. Das bereinigte EBITDA stieg auf 10,3 Millionen US-Dollar, getragen von einer produktgetriebenen Nutzerreaktivierung, Self-Serve-Werbung und höheren Werbeausgaben.

Wichtigste Erkenntnisse

• Der Umsatz im dritten Quartal stieg im Jahresvergleich um 14 % auf 78,8 Millionen US-Dollar und übertraf damit die Prognosespanne des Unternehmens von 76 bis 78 Millionen US-Dollar.
• Platform WOW erreichte mit 24,5 Millionen US-Dollar ein Allzeithoch, was einem Zuwachs von 7 % gegenüber dem Vorquartal und 14 % im Jahresvergleich entspricht. Nach Angaben des Managements war das Wachstum organisch und produktgetrieben, ohne wesentliche bezahlte Nutzerakquise.
• Die Zahl der wöchentlich aktiven Beitragsleistenden – Nachbarn, die Beiträge veröffentlichen, kommentieren oder reagieren – wuchs im Quartalsvergleich um 12 % und im Jahresvergleich um 27 % und übertraf damit das Gesamtwachstum von Platform WOW.
• Das bereinigte EBITDA belief sich auf 10,3 Millionen US-Dollar, was einer Marge von 13 % und einer Verbesserung von rund 6 Millionen US-Dollar gegenüber dem Vorjahr entspricht. Der Nettoverlust nach GAAP verringerte sich auf 0,7 Millionen US-Dollar.
• Die Self-Serve-Umsätze legten im Jahresvergleich um 35 % zu und machten rund 69 % des Gesamtumsatzes aus, verglichen mit 59 % im dritten Quartal 2025.
• Für das vierte Quartal 2026 erwartet das Management einen Umsatz von 78 bis 80 Millionen US-Dollar sowie ein bereinigtes EBITDA von 10 bis 11 Millionen US-Dollar.

Zentrale Finanzdaten

Geschäftliche und operative Entwicklung

Nextdoor führte das Wachstum bei Platform WOW in erster Linie auf Verbesserungen am Feed und bei den Benachrichtigungen zurück. Ein KI-basiertes Ranking wählt Unterhaltungen aus, an denen sich Nutzer mit höherer Wahrscheinlichkeit beteiligen, während der Feed stärkere Interaktions- und lokale Relevanzsignale einbezieht. In Nachbarschaften mit geringerer Beitragsaktivität ergänzt das Unternehmen zeitlose Inhalte und Veranstaltungshinweise aus der näheren Umgebung.

Das Management erklärte, das Wachstum resultiere vor allem aus der Reaktivierung bestehender Nutzer und weniger aus der Neukundengewinnung am oberen Ende des Funnels. Benachrichtigungen würden häufiger geöffnet, ohne dass das Unternehmen das Volumen der E-Mail- oder mobilen Benachrichtigungen erhöhen müsse.

ASK, das KI-System von Nextdoor für lokale Antworten, wurde für alle US-Nutzer in die Suchfunktion integriert. Es liefert konsolidierte Antworten auf Basis lokaler Unterhaltungen, Empfehlungen und Unternehmen. Nach Angaben des Managements wiesen historisch 20 % bis 30 % der Suchanfragen eine kommerzielle Absicht auf, was Monetarisierungspotenzial eröffnet, ohne ASK von der regulären Plattformnutzung zu trennen.

Zudem verzeichnete das Unternehmen im September rund 5 Millionen Stimmen bei den „Faves“-Abstimmungen für 750.000 lokale Unternehmen, was während des Abstimmungszeitraums einem Durchschnitt von mehr als 200.000 Stimmen pro Tag entsprach. Die Anzahl der Faves-Stimmen wird nun auch in Werbeanzeigen lokaler Unternehmen ausgewiesen.

Das Werbewachstum erforderte keine Erhöhung der Werbedichte. Die durchschnittlichen Ausgaben pro US-Direktvertriebskunden stiegen im Jahresvergleich zweistellig, und Neukunden starteten mit höheren Budgets als ein Jahr zuvor. Finanzdienstleistungen waren neben dem Gesundheitswesen, der Technologiebranche und der Telekommunikation ein führendes Segment.

Der über den Außendienst vertriebene Videobereich verzeichnete ein Plus von 37 % im Jahresvergleich. Vertikale Videoformate steuerten etwa ein Viertel dieses Wachstums bei. Opportunity Alerts, das Lead-Generierungs-Produkt des Unternehmens für kleine und mittelständische Unternehmen, gewann im Quartalsvergleich Kunden hinzu, blieb jedoch ein kleiner Teil des Geschäfts.

Auch die operative Effizienz verbesserte sich: Der annualisierte Umsatz pro Vollzeitmitarbeiter stieg im Jahresvergleich um 23 %.

Prognose der Unternehmensleitung

Das Management begründete die Erwartung eines gegenüber dem Vorquartal unveränderten Platform WOW mit der typischen Saisonalität im vierten Quartal. Einen Ausblick auf das Geschäftsjahr 2027 gab das Unternehmen nicht, da der Planungsprozess noch im Gange war.

Nextdoor plant, die Monetarisierung durch dynamische Produktanzeigen, standortübergreifende Werbeanzeigen und frühe Tests von App-Installationsanzeigen auszubauen. Das Management rechnet im vierten Quartal nur mit einem bescheidenen Beitrag dieser Produkte, da sich mehrere noch in der Betaphase befinden oder gerade erst eingeführt wurden; im Jahr 2027 könnten sie jedoch weitere Instrumente bieten, um mittelgroße und größere Werbetreibende zu gewinnen.

Das Unternehmen entwickelt zudem „Neighborhood Intelligence“, was nach Angaben des Managements eine etwa zwölfmal höhere geografische Granularität als ein Targeting nach Postleitzahlen (ZIP Codes) bietet.

Risiken und Beobachtungspunkte

• Das ARPU-Wachstum verlangsamte sich mit der Erholung von Platform WOW auf 1 %. Das Management erläuterte, dass reaktivierte Nutzer anfangs tendenziell weniger aktiv seien, weshalb die Monetarisierung erst mit einer gewissen zeitlichen Verzögerung greife.
• Neue Werbeprodukte befinden sich in einer frühen Einführungs- oder Betaphase, was ihren erwarteten Beitrag im vierten Quartal begrenzt.
• Opportunity Alerts skaliert zwar, bleibt aber klein und ist derzeit in Kategorien wie haushaltsnahen Dienstleistungen am stärksten.
• KI-Assistenten könnten vermehrt Anfragen zu lokalen Dienstleistungen beantworten oder Buchungen direkt abschließen. Das Management argumentierte, dass verifizierte Empfehlungen von Anwohnern aus der Nachbarschaft weiterhin ein wichtiges Alleinstellungsmerkmal bleiben, während Online-Inhalte zunehmend synthetisch erzeugt werden.
• Das Management quantifizierte die ARPU-Trends für 2027 nicht und gab auch keinen umfassenderen Finanzausblick für das kommende Jahr.

Höhepunkte der Fragerunde für Analysten

Nach Angaben der Unternehmensleitung vollzog sich die Beschleunigung bei Platform WOW marktübergreifend und war nicht auf eine bestimmte Region konzentriert. Das Unternehmen geht davon aus, dass anhaltende Produktverbesserungen die Reaktivierung inaktiver Nutzer bis ins vierte Quartal und im Jahr 2027 weiter unterstützen werden.

In puncto Nutzerinteraktion hob das Management die durch maschinelles Lernen gestützte Personalisierung und den Zuwachs bei den Beitragsleistenden als sich gegenseitig verstärkende Faktoren hervor. Mehr Beitragsleistende schaffen mehr Inhalte, was dem Unternehmen zusätzliche Datenpunkte liefert, um Feeds und Benachrichtigungen passgenau zuzuschneiden.

Hinsichtlich der generativen Suche erklärte Nextdoor, keine Beeinträchtigung der Plattformnutzung festgestellt zu haben. Das Unternehmen betonte zudem, beim Traffic nicht von der Google-Suche abhängig zu sein, was die Anfälligkeit für rückläufige Weiterleitungen infolge KI-generierter Suchantworten verringere.

Beim Thema Werbung bezeichnete das Management die Nachfrage im dritten Quartal als solide. Zudem dürften neue Formate die Relevanz der Plattform für weitere Werbekunden steigern, wenngleich ihr kurzfristiger finanzieller Beitrag voraussichtlich begrenzt bleiben wird.

Vollständiges Transkript der Telefonkonferenz zu den Ergebnissen

Vollständiges Transkript der Telefonkonferenz

Ausführungen des Managements

Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Nextdoor Q3 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Colin Bourland, Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Please go ahead.

Colin Bourland

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Nextdoor's Q3 2026 Earnings Call. My name is Colin Bourland, Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Joining me today are Nirav Tolia, our Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder; and Indrajit Ponnambalam, our Chief Financial Officer. During this call, we may make statements related to our business that are forward-looking statements under federal securities laws. These statements are not guarantees of future performance. They are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties. Our actual results could differ materially from expectations reflected in any forward-looking statements.

For a discussion of the material risks and other important factors that could affect our actual results, please refer to our SEC filings available on the SEC's website in the Investor Relations section of our website as well as the risks and other important factors discussed in today's earnings release. Additionally, non-GAAP financial measures will be discussed on today's conference call. A reconciliation of these measures that are most directly comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in the Q3 2026 Nextdoor investor update posted on the Investor Relations section of our website today. And now I'll turn the call over to Nirav.

Nirav Tolia

Thanks, Colin, and good morning, everyone. Q3 was another record quarter for -- Nextdoor, and it's the strongest proof yet that our transformation is well underway. At the start of this year, Platform WOW turned, it has grown every quarter since. And every quarter, we finished above the high end of our guidance on both revenue and adjusted EBITDA, that consistency comes from steady iterative improvements that compound on 1 another, a smarter update, a more relevant feed, and easier way to join a conversation. None of the loan is the story, but taken together, they are. Each improvement makes the next 1 work better, and that's what makes our progress exciting.

The approach shows up clearly in the results. Platform WOW grew to $24.5 million, another all-time high, up 7% sequentially and 14% year-over-year. That's our fastest sequential and year-over-year growth since we began reporting Platform Wow. Revenue grew 14% to $79 million and adjusted EBITDA was $10 million, a 13% margin, both finished above the high end of our guidance. These are our strongest results yet, but what encourages me the most is how we got here. And so before I go further, I want to recognize the real driver behind this progress, our team behind every 1 of these hundreds of improvements is a person who kept working hard quarter after quarter, long before the numbers confirmed it. Today, the numbers do to everyone in Nextdoor. Thank you. You should be proud of what you're building.

Our team has always known what Nextdoor is at its heart, local community neighbors helping neighbors as human connection that grows from it. Last quarter, I described our contribution flywheel. More contributors create more content. More content creates more relevance and more relevance kids neighbors, more reasons to come back. This quarter, that flywheel turned faster here 3 places you can see it.

The first is how neighbors stay connected and what they find when they arrive. We made our update smarter using AI to choose the conversations a neighbor is most likely to join, not just open. We made our feed better at understanding what matters to each neighbor. While it has always favored what's close to you and what you care about, now reads more signals, including how much conversation of post is sparking nearby and in quieter neighborhoods or fewer neighbors are posting, we now fill the gaps with nearby evergreen and event content. So there's always something worth opening. The result is more neighbors visiting and more importantly, taking part. Weekly contributors, the neighbors who post comment or react grew 12% sequentially and 27% year-over-year.

That's faster than our overall platform WOW! growth, and it means that more of our growth is coming from neighbors who read and contribute. The second is ASK, our AI operating system for local answers. Last quarter, I told you how ASK was keeping conversations alive. This quarter, we brought ASKAI into search for every neighbor in the U.S. Search is where neighbors go when they need something specific, a trusted service, a recommendation or an answer about what's happening nearby. Now instead of sorting through post, they get a direct answer drawn from the conversations, recommendations and local businesses their neighbors have already weighed in on.

That matters because more and more people are turning to AI assistance rather than traditional search for answers. It's the same shift we're seeing across the Internet from parsing a page of BlueLinx to getting 1 consolidated intelligent answer. ASK brings that shift to local with answers that come directly from your neighbors. But what makes ASK different isn't the AI, it's what's behind it. 15 years of verified local conversations that no 1 else has growing every day as neighbors contribute. While AI makes that knowledge easier to reach, every new conversation makes the next answer better. And third, phases. Last quarter, I told you we bring back the Faves awards with an all-new in-product voting experience. In September, neighbors cast about 5 million votes for 750,000 local businesses, averaging more than 200,000 Faves a day while voting was open.

Faves matter because they capture something no algorithm can, which local businesses neighbors actually trust. We're now showing fade counts directly on local business ads, so a neighbor deciding who to hire or where to eat can see which businesses their neighbors have recommended. That's a win for the neighbor and for the local business trying to stand out. We'll keep building on this momentum through the rest of the year, making it easier to recommend a business any day, not just during the phase awards.

Now let me tell you how we keep the flywheel turning. Over the coming months, every effort will anchor on the same goals, more neighbors contributing and more reasons for all neighbors to come back. First is our desire to keep turning more users into contributors. This quarter, we made commenting a single tap. Next, we're simplifying posting prompting neighbors to turn a reaction into a comment and piloting new ways for our most active neighbors to take a bigger role in their communities. Then there's Revise, which is where ASK comes in again. We'll take ASK from answers to neighborly Health. When ASK can't answer a question, neighbors will be able to post it to their community in 1 tap. Urgent searches like a lost pet will alert nearby neighbors, and ASK will cover more, including what's for sale or free nearby.

And finally, we want to give neighbors a reason to come back. Our updates have to earn their attention. we've already seen that fewer better notifications get open more. Soon, AI catch-up summaries in the main feed will reach neighbors who visit less often. Badging will get smarter and neighbors will be able to pause notifications when they need a break rather than turning them off for good. Stronger communities create better content, better content drives deeper engagement and deeper engagement builds a stronger business. With that, I'll turn it over to Indrajit to walk through our financial results and outlook in more detail.

Indrajit Ponnambalam

Thanks, Nirav. As Nirav described, Q3 was another strong quarter that reinforced the progress we are making across the business. Let's walk through the details. Q3 Platform while was $24.5 million up 14% year-over-year and up sequentially for the third consecutive quarter. We continue to feel confident that our focus on quality over quantity is driving incremental results that set the stage for continued durable platform while growth. Looking at what drove the 7% sequential increase, the growth was organic and product-led with no material paid user acquisition. Growth came from the feed and notification improvements that Nirav covered. .

Now turning to revenue. Q3 revenue was $78.8 million, up 14% year-over-year, finishing above our guidance range of $76 million to $78 million. Our self-serve channel remained strong, growing 35% year-over-year, another quarter of accelerating growth. Self-serve, which includes both national advertisers and SMBs, now comprises approximately 69% of total revenue up from 59% in Q3 last year. Revenue grew without an increase in ad load. Growth came from more neighbors rather than more ads per neighbor. Average revenue per user, or ARPU, increased 1% year-over-year.

Advertisers are getting more from Nextdoor through better ad formats, more supply and the second way for local businesses to pay for demand. Revenue is up for both national advertisers and SMBs and a few drivers stood out. Starting with the U.S. direct sales channel, where advertisers are committing more. Average spend per customer is up double digits year-over-year, and new customers are starting with larger budgets than a year ago. Financial Services was a standout vertical this quarter, along with health care and tech and telco. On the product side, we also made it simpler for businesses to start and buy on Nextdoor with more ways to target.

Q3 upgrades included Quick create improvements, new lead generation capabilities, added targeting built on local signals such as weather and audience extension. Another driver was video, which is moving from a new format to a core buy. Video sold through our field sales team grew 37% year-over-year with vertical video accounting for about 1/4 of that growth and opportunity alerts, our lead gen offering for SMBs is building on its early traction. Customers are up significantly compared to Q2 and we're seeing early signs of improving adoption. It's still small, but we're glad to see this additional monetization opportunity take shape.

Turning now to profitability. Q3 GAAP net loss was $0.7 million or negative 1% margin. This represents 18 points of year-over-year margin expansion. With GAAP results near breakeven and stock-based compensation down to 18% of revenue from 24% a year ago, the quality of our earnings continues to improve. Q3 adjusted EBITDA was $10.3 million or a 13% adjusted EBITDA margin. This compares to the $6.5 million to $8 million range we guided to last quarter. It also represents an approximately $6 million improvement year-over-year.

Our beat versus guidance was driven by revenue outperformance and the timing of certain expenses. We continue to drive productivity improvements across the organization. Annualized revenue per full-time employee increased 23% year-over-year in Q3, another quarter of continued efficiency. Turning to the balance sheet. We ended Q3 with $382 million in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities, up $4 million sequentially. We also continue to have no debt. Through the first 9 months of 2026, we generated $28 million of cash flow from operations, a $31 million improvement over the same period in 2025.

Our strong cash position and ability to generate cash leave us well positioned to fund future growth, continue investing in the business and return capital through our share repurchase program. In Q3, we repurchased roughly 3 million shares for about $7 million at an average price of $2.38 per share. We had approximately $93 million remaining on our $100 million authorization at the end of the quarter. We plan to keep repurchasing shares on an opportunistic basis. Now let me turn to our financial outlook for the remainder of the year. For Q4 2026, we expect revenue of $78 million to $80 million and adjusted EBITDA of $10 million to $11 million. Our guidance for the fourth quarter implies full year revenue growth of approximately 14%, in line with the low teens range we provided last quarter. It also implies an adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 10%.

Given typical Q4 seasonality, we expect Platform WOW to be flat sequentially, which would represent over 15% growth year-over-year. It's too early for us to provide an outlook for next year but I want to highlight our monetization priorities for Q4 and into 2027. Our focus is to both grow our advertiser base and to deliver better results for advertisers. This is how we expect ARPU to grow over time without increasing ad load. First, we are working on launching additional ad formats. These include dynamic product ads to help us capture commerce budgets and multi-location adds to enable brands with many locations to run local campaigns at scale. We're also in the early stages of trialing app install ads in Q4.

Second, we're continuing to develop neighborhood intelligence the platform we recently announced at Advertising Week. This market differentiated offering gives advertisers hyper local insights that sharpen targeting and measure results. It offers approximately 12x greater granularity than ZIP Code targeting down to the neighborhood level. And third, we're providing more utility for local businesses. We're making it faster to get started on Nextdoor, adding more lead generation partners and building more products for businesses to grow with over time. These priorities, combined with continued cost discipline give us confidence in our ability to keep driving sustainable, profitable growth. Now let's turn to Q&A, which will structure in a similar manner to the last few quarters. We'll start by taking live questions from our covering analysts. After that, we'll take some questions submitted by our investors. With that, operator, let's open the line for questions.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs.

Fragen und Antworten

Eric Sheridan

Thanks for all the detail in the release. I wanted to come back to the comments on weekly active users and maybe go a little bit deeper in what you're seeing around the themes of reactivation of prior period users back into the user base, better understand depth of engagement among your weekly active users and sort of paint a broader matrix around what you're seeing where you're investing to stimulate weekly active usage and how we'd be thinking about some of this reacceleration over the last couple of quarters, sustaining deeper into 2027 and beyond?

Nirav Tolia

Yes. I'll take that one, and thank you for the question, Eric. Appreciate it. We are delighted that we have managed to turn around weekly active users, and that's been done without any real top of the funnel growth. And so to answer your question very specifically, the growth is coming from the reactivation of our existing user base, and we think there's a lot of upside there. The growth is particularly coming from neighbors who take part. So we call those contributors. And the weekly contributor number grew 12% and quarter-over-quarter, 27% year-over-year, which is faster than Platform WOW overall. .

I think the most important thing is the growth was organic and product-led. There was no material paid user acquisition, and we're continuing to get better at sending high-signal notifications versus sending more notifications. Our notifications are being opened more versus us just needing to send more e-mails and more noble notifications to activate more users. I think, in general, we believe that there is a ton of upside in improving the product and in a sense, waking up dormant users. And that's the trend that we're seeing, and we'll continue with that into Q4 and into 2027.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Youssef Squali with Truist Securities.

Robert Zeller

This is Robert on for Youssef. I also wanted to dial into the WOW acceleration. Curious what markets you guys are seeing, WOWs accelerate the most in? And on ASK, I'm curious like how much of the questions are commercial intent. -- like related to phase and local businesses versus just stale content. And then I think I have 1 follow-up. .

Nirav Tolia

Okay. Thank you, Robert. Let me actually hit both of those. So on the WOW acceleration, I would say that it's broad and encompasses all of the user bases in all of the markets. And so there's nothing we see that would lead us to believe that the WOW acceleration is coming from a particular market. I think we are very optimistic that we can grow the entire platform and the things that we do that are foundational and beneficial to all users will result in all of those markets being lifted over time. So that's the answer to your first question.

As it relates to ASK, I think we see the same kind of trend on ASK that we typically see whenever we are things that are posted to the newsfeed, which is historically, we've seen between 20% and 30% of all what we like to think of as queries as those that have commercial intent. We do think that there is an opportunity with ASK not just to ensure that we are answering queries from neighbors that are general. The ones that have that commercial intent that can be monetized. And so ask is something that we don't see a separate from the normal course of usage that we've seen historically. It's just another way for us to provide those answers as quickly as possible to our users.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Jamesmichael Sherman-Lewis with Citi. Jamesmichael, your line is now open.

Nirav Tolia

Should I make up a question for Jamesmichael to ask. Maybe we go to the next one, and we'll come back to Jamesmichael.

Operator

Yes. Just 1 moment. Our next question comes from the line of Naved Khan with B. Riley Securities.

Ryan James Powell

This is Ryan Powell on for Naved. So we wanted to Ask about ask engagement since much. And as queries shift into AI surfaces on the platform, is there any impact on the quality of the home feed and engagement? And then second, with the rollout of DPAs, multi-location ads and app install initiatives, do you expect any contribution to large advertiser spend? .

Nirav Tolia

Okay. Thank you for the question. I'll take the first one, and then I'll turn it over to Indrajit to answer the question about the additional ad products that you mentioned. And so -- but let me kind of maybe take a step back and say that we all agree with the industry that we're going to see a shift from what we might think of as query-based search into what we might think of as a genetic search. And that's why Ask is such an important product for us. We have not seen any degradation of usage to date.

And so I know that others have reported, and we had a retail investor question that we'll get to a little later where others in the industry have noted that now that Google is starting to answer things agentically with Gemini, there may be less traffic coming to places that were accustomed to Google Search driving traffic into them previously. Because we haven't relied on Google search for traffic, that isn't something that's affected us. What we have seen is that over time, people are using Ask more as they experience it.

Now the important thing to realize about next door is the interface has always been a genetic in some sense. So we've never been a traditional search engine where people go in, ask a question and then get 10 BlueLinx as answers. We've always been conversational which is more like agentic search anyway. And so the shift that we see, I think, is something that is going to be less pronounced on our platform, and we see it really just as upside. We don't have any concern that this is going to degrade either the amount of searches, the amount of activity or the quality results. I'll turn it over to Indrajit to talk about the ad-related question now.

Indrajit Ponnambalam

Great. Thanks, Nirav. Ryan, we wanted to plant that seed of information into show. There's a lot of things in our pipeline. Our revenue guidance for Q4 kind of reflects all of that thinking. We think the impact of those specific ad products will be relatively small for Q4 as some of them are just rolling out or honestly just in beta phase. But as we move forward into 2027, we do think those will help us with having more tools for our sales force to sell and more ad products, and that should help us with all advertisers, but notably the medium and larger ones as we go through next year and attract some new advertisers as well by having those capabilities in-house.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Jason Kreyer with Craig-Hallum. .

Jason Kreyer

Yes. I wanted to unpack the ARPU trends. You're seeing strong self-serve growth, Andrew, you commented on growth in budget from national buyers. But if we look at the numbers, the end result has been an ARPU that's kind of gone from mid-teens to 1% growth over recent quarters. So I just wanted to see what else is driving the current trends in ARPU? .

Indrajit Ponnambalam

Yes. There's a few trends there. I think -- we are very proud of the turnaround we've seen in WOW! -- this year. But if you look at those year-over-year trends earlier this year and WOW was down quite a bit. And so revenue held up. So naturally, the math would show ARPU increasing quite a bit. We have now, on the supply side, caught up quite a bit with that strong growth. And so while demand is strong, the natural sort of math suggests the ARPU growth has flattened a little bit. But on the dynamics there, I would say we're pulling in more users, as Nirav have talked about earlier. And initially, some of those users are a little less active. .

And then over time, as they reengage with the platform, we move them to become more active users. And so the blend of that is bringing new users on the platform is obviously a good thing for the near-term and long-term health of the platform, but it takes a little while for monetization to fully catch up as those users become more habituated on the platform. So that's what sort of led to that trend on ARPU in the last few quarters.

Jason Kreyer

So just to clarify, I mean, would you expect a continuation of what we've seen then? Should we expect to be a little bit more flattish as we go into '27? .

Nirav Tolia

I don't want to -- I don't -- we're in the middle of planning for 2027. So I don't want to get too far into metrics for next year. I would say we would expect users to increase. We expect revenue to increase the exact ratio of the 2. We'll have to wait, and we'll provide more guidance on that next quarter.

Jason Kreyer

I just wanted to add that given the trade-off between more users, particularly ones that had been dormant in the past coming back to the platform and learning that Nextdoor is here and it's useful and seeing them use it more over time. We would take the trade-off of WOW increasing and ARPU staying flat or growing the 1% any day of the week. That's a much better long-term trend in our business. .

Nirav Tolia

Yes. That makes sense. .

Jason Kreyer

I wanted to ask about alert advertising. Maybe if you can just talk about the interest in alert ads and how demand has shaped up there? Yes. I'll let Indrajit add to this. I mean, I would say, generally speaking, more and more, we think of the ads opportunity as something that unless it's a different product altogether like opportunity alerts or search advertising. I mean we would think of selling the ads as targeting them regardless of where in the experience they show up. So I don't -- I mean, Indrajit can build on this, but I don't think we think about it specifically as ads related to alerts. Are you talking about opportunity alerts? .

Nirav Tolia

I was talking about opportunity I didn't have the right terminology. .

Jason Kreyer

Okay. Got it. Got it. Okay. Indrajit go ahead. .

Indrajit Ponnambalam

Yes, Jason, we're very happy with the product. It's still relatively early stage. We launched it really the back half of last year, and it's very -- it's scaling, but it's still small. We're in the process of optimizing our sort of SMB ad product for the various ways that advertisers can reach our users. And so opportunity alerts is another way for small and medium businesses to reach people in their communities. And so we're still optimizing that. We still think there is considerable room for growth heading into next year. But we think it's a product. And right now, it's particularly strong in sort of certain categories like home services, but we'll be looking to see how we can broaden that over time.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Jamesmichael Sherman-Lewis with Citi.

Jamesmichael Sherman-Lewis

Yes. Perfect. Apologies. Underpinning the usage gains you've seen this year. I wonder if you could provide more color on the health of engagement trends is session count expanding, daily time been growing. It's great to hear that posting rates have improved. So I just wanted to dilator Nextdoor is becoming a more everyday utility. .

Nirav Tolia

Okay. So this is probably what we're most excited about as we think about the progress that we've made this year because as everyone knows, I mean, it's very difficult to turn around a consumer asset that has either flattened out or is starting to decline, and we've seen increasing momentum in this area. I would say it's pretty much off the board, and it's driven primarily by I would just call out 2 things.

So the first is the use of ML to ensure that the usage of Nextdoor feels much more personalized and relevant. And that shows up both in the notifications and in the feed experience. And then the second thing I'd point out is more contributors creating more content. And the more content we have, the more that can use the quantity of content to create a more tailored experience. And so when we look at the fact that contributors are growing for the first time in a long time, that's not only a good thing because there's more content. That's a really good thing because the more content compounds in value because the ML gains that we've seen take that additional content and creates an even more personalized experience for users.

And so the good news is these are kind of foundational improvements, and they continue to increase the velocity of the flywheel that I talk about. And so ultimately, we are in an ecosystem business. And if we create a more healthy ecosystem then all of the improvements we make ultimately compound on each other. And that's what we're seeing, and that's what gives us a lot of optimism as we look towards 2027.

Jamesmichael Sherman-Lewis

Great. A quick follow-up here on the monetization side. With the progress question from Jed formats, the dynamic product ads multi-location. But also U.S. spend improving. Any way you can help us parse out the improvements in the underlying advertising macro environment versus some of the product-based work that you're doing? .

Nirav Tolia

Yes. I would just say we're seeing pretty good advertiser interest demand in Q3. And so we expect having those products actually make us more attractive to certain advertisers as we can meet some of their demands even better. So we're looking forward to serving their needs even better Q4 and into next year.

Operator

At this time, I will pass it to Indrajit for a few prepared investor questions.

Indrajit Ponnambalam

Okay. Thank you, operator. Like we said, we're going to take a few investor questions that were submitted to us in advance. Actually, the first question Nirav touched on earlier, so I'll -- we might go pretty quick on that one. The first question is others in the industry have noted that AI answers are sending platforms far less traffic? How much does Nextdoor depend on Google Search.

Nirav Tolia

Yes. So we did touch on this. And I will say that I'm sure that this is a big concern for consumer Internet companies that have relied on Google Search historically. -- for distribution. We're very fortunate not to be dependent on Google Search. I mean, we built the company from the very beginning to be reliant when it comes to distribution on our own usage and our own platform. It's actually 1 of our founding principles. And so as we see more and more Google referred traffic decline, we will certainly observe the impact to others, but it's not something that we'll feel ourselves.

Indrajit Ponnambalam

Okay. Great. And our second question is with others in the industry launching AI agents that can find a plumber and book a job, won't people ask their assistant and skip Nextdoor.

Nirav Tolia

Yes. This is another 1 of those existential risks that I think everyone in the industry is thinking about. I'm sure that there will be some trial of these AI agents that can find the service provider, book the job, et cetera. We've always believed that neighbors want a real recommendation from neighbors. And people already go to search engines today and other platforms to look for plumbers. But what we've seen is an increasing value in people wanting to find real recommendations that are not created by AI or recommendations from people that they don't know they would much rather put their value and neighbor recommendations from people who live around them. .

So while there may be this industry-wide trend towards people using agents to fulfill some of these tasks, we actually think that we feel a very differentiated -- we still have a very differentiated opportunity, and it's going to be even more important as more of that content on the Internet becomes synthetic and you won't know if it's coming from people or AI agents.

Indrajit Ponnambalam

Great. Thank you, Nirav. With that, I think that concludes our investor questions section. And so I'm going to now turn it back over to Nirav for some closing remarks.

Nirav Tolia

Yes, I'll just close by saying I really appreciate everyone joining us today. As you heard, Q3 was another quarter of steady progress. And in May, I told you that the progress was undeniable in August, I said it was starting to compound. This quarter, you can see it in the numbers. We got Platform WOW up 3 quarters in a row, results above the high end of our guidance 3 quarters in a row and more neighbors contributing. The consistency matters because it doesn't come from any single feature or any single moment. It comes from hundreds of improvements that our team has made, and that's what makes it durable. .

We also think it matters for a bigger reason because, obviously, everyone is focused on AI, but most of that attention on AI is on first order effects, the models, the amount of compute needed now agent-assistant. We think there's a second order effect that matters just as much for Nextdoor. And that is as AI makes it effortless to generate content -- more and more of the Internet is written by no 1 in particular and what becomes scarce is what AI can't produce, which is real people verified to a real place sharing what they actually know, and that's our opportunity. That's Nextdoor.

More than 110 million neighbors verified to a real address over -- across 350,000 neighborhoods, and they've got 15 years of local conversations to draw upon. And so while it starts with neighbors helping neighbors, over time, it grows into human connection. And AI can't replace that. It can't replace the neighbor. That's what we're building, and it's actually why we're so confident in the road ahead. So thank you again for joining us, and we'll see you next quarter.

Operator

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.