넥스트도어(NXDR) 2026년 3분기 실적 발표 컨퍼런스 콜: 사상 최대 플랫폼 WOW 및 14% 매출 성장

넥스트도어(NYSE: NXDR)의 2026년 3분기 매출은 전년 동기 대비 14% 증가한 7,880만 달러를 기록했으며, 플랫폼 WOW는 사상 최고치인 2,450만 달러에 달했다. 제품 주도형 사용자 재활성화, 셀프서브 광고, 광고주 지출 증가가 성장을 뒷받침하면서 조정 EBITDA는 1,030만 달러로 증가했다.

핵심 요약

• 3분기 매출은 전년 동기 대비 14% 증가한 7,880만 달러로, 회사의 가이던스 범위인 7,600만~7,800만 달러를 웃돌았다.
• 플랫폼 WOW는 전분기 대비 7%, 전년 동기 대비 14% 증가하며 사상 최고치인 2,450만 달러를 기록했다. 경영진은 실질적인 유료 사용자 확보 없이 유기적이고 제품 주도적인 성장이 이뤄졌다고 밝혔다.
• 게시글 작성, 댓글 작성 또는 반응을 남기는 이웃인 '주간 기여자(Weekly contributors)'는 전분기 대비 12%, 전년 동기 대비 27% 증가하며 전체 플랫폼 WOW 성장률을 앞질렀다.
• 조정 EBITDA는 1,030만 달러로 13%의 마진율과 전년 동기 대비 약 600만 달러의 개선을 기록했다. GAAP 기준 순손실은 70만 달러로 축소됐다.
• 셀프서브 매출은 전년 동기 대비 35% 증가했으며, 2025년 3분기 59%였던 전체 매출 비중은 약 69%로 확대됐다.
• 2026년 4분기 경영진은 7,800만~8,000만 달러의 매출과 1,000만~1,100만 달러의 조정 EBITDA를 예상하고 있다.

핵심 재무 데이터

사업 및 운영 실적

넥스트도어는 플랫폼 WOW의 성장이 주로 피드 및 알림 기능 개선 덕분이라고 설명했다. AI 기반 랭킹을 통해 사용자가 참여할 가능성이 더 높은 대화를 선별하고 있으며, 피드에는 참여도와 지역 관련성 신호가 더 많이 반영되고 있다. 게시글 활동이 적은 지역에는 인근 지역의 에버그린 및 이벤트 콘텐츠를 추가하고 있다.

경영진은 성장이 신규 유입(탑퍼널) 확대보다는 주로 기존 사용자의 재활성화에서 비롯되고 있다고 밝혔다. 이메일이나 모바일 알림 발송량을 늘리지 않고도 알림 개봉 빈도가 증가하고 있다.

넥스트도어의 지역 맞춤형 AI 답변 시스템인 ASK는 미국 전체 사용자를 대상으로 검색에 도입됐다. ASK는 지역 내 대화, 추천, 업체를 바탕으로 종합적인 답변을 제공한다. 경영진은 과거 검색어의 20%~30%가 상업적 의도를 지니고 있었던 만큼, ASK를 일반적인 플랫폼 이용과 분리하지 않고도 잠재적인 수익화 경로를 창출할 수 있다고 밝혔다.

회사는 또한 9월에 75만 개 지역 업체를 대상으로 약 500만 건의 '페이브스(Faves)' 투표를 기록했으며, 투표가 진행되는 동안 하루 평균 20만 건 이상의 투표가 이뤄졌다. 페이브스 득표수는 현재 지역 비즈니스 광고에 표시된다.

광고 매출 성장은 광고 노출량(애드 로드)의 증가 없이 달성됐다. 미국 직판(direct-sales) 고객당 평균 지출액은 전년 동기 대비 두 자릿수로 증가했으며, 신규 고객도 전년 동기보다 더 큰 예산으로 시작했다. 금융 서비스 부문이 헬스케어, 기술, 통신과 함께 주요 성장 분야로 나타났다.

현장 영업팀을 통해 판매된 동영상 광고는 전년 동기 대비 37% 증가했다. 세로형 동영상이 이러한 성장의 약 4분의 1을 차지했다. 회사의 중소기업(SMB) 대상 리드 생성 상품인 '오퍼튜니티 얼러츠(Opportunity Alerts)'는 전분기 대비 고객 수가 늘었으나 전체 사업에서 차지하는 비중은 여전히 미미했다.

운영 효율성도 개선됐다. 정규직 직원 1인당 연환산 매출은 전년 동기 대비 23% 증가했다.

경영진 가이던스

경영진은 플랫폼 WOW가 전분기 대비 보합세를 보일 것으로 예상한 요인으로 통상적인 4분기 계절성을 언급했다. 회사는 계획 수립 절차가 여전히 진행 중이라는 이유로 2027년 전망은 제시하지 않았다.

넥스트도어는 다이내믹 제품 광고, 멀티 로케이션 광고, 앱 설치 광고의 초기 시범 운영 등을 통해 수익화를 확대할 계획이다. 경영진은 이들 제품 중 다수가 새로 출시되었거나 베타 단계에 있어 4분기 기여도는 제한적일 것으로 예상하면서도, 2027년에는 중대형 광고주를 유치하기 위한 더 많은 도구를 제공할 수 있을 것이라고 밝혔다.

회사는 또한 우편번호(ZIP Code) 타겟팅보다 약 12배 더 정밀한 지리적 세분성을 제공하는 '네이버후드 인텔리전스(Neighborhood Intelligence)'를 개발 중이라고 경영진은 전했다.

리스크 및 주요 점검 사항

• 플랫폼 WOW가 회복세를 보인 반면 ARPU 성장은 1%로 둔화됐다. 경영진은 재활성화된 사용자가 초기에는 활동성이 떨어지는 경향이 있어 수익화가 본격화되기까지 시차가 발생한다고 설명했다.
• 새로운 광고 제품들이 초기 출시 단계이거나 베타 상태에 있어 4분기 예상 기여도는 제한적이다.
• 오퍼튜니티 얼러츠는 규모가 확대되고 있으나 여전히 비중이 작으며, 현재 홈 서비스 등의 카테고리에서 가장 강세를 보이고 있다.
• AI 어시스턴트가 지역 서비스 문의에 답변하거나 직접 예약을 완료하는 경우가 늘어날 수 있다. 이에 대해 경영진은 온라인 콘텐츠가 갈수록 인공적으로 생성됨에 따라 인근 주민들의 검증된 추천은 계속 차별화된 가치를 지닌다고 설명했다.
• 경영진은 2027년 ARPU 추세를 수치로 제시하지 않았으며, 내년에 대한 포괄적인 재무 전망도 내놓지 않았다.

애널리스트 Q&A 주요 내용

경영진은 플랫폼 WOW 성장의 가속화가 특정 지역에 국한되지 않고 전 시장에 걸쳐 광범위하게 나타났다고 밝혔다. 회사는 지속적인 제품 개선이 4분기와 2027년까지 휴면 사용자의 재활성화를 뒷받침할 것으로 기대하고 있다.

사용자 참여도와 관련해 경영진은 머신러닝 기반 개인화와 기여자 수 증가를 상호 강화 요인으로 꼽았다. 기여자가 늘어날수록 더 많은 콘텐츠가 생성되며, 이는 회사가 피드와 알림을 맞춤화하는 데 필요한 추가 데이터를 제공한다.

생성형 검색과 관련해 넥스트도어는 플랫폼 사용량 감소는 관찰되지 않았다고 밝혔다. 아울러 트래픽을 구글 검색에 의존하지 않기 때문에 AI 생성 답변으로 인한 검색 유입 감소 위험에 대한 노출도가 낮다고 강조했다.

광고 부문과 관련해 경영진은 3분기 수요가 견조했으며, 새로운 광고 포맷이 추가 광고주들에게 플랫폼의 적합성을 높여줄 것이라고 밝혔다. 다만 이들의 단기적인 재무 기여도는 여전히 제한적일 것으로 예상된다.

실적 발표 컨퍼런스콜 전문

전체 실적 발표 컨퍼런스 콜 녹취록

경영진 발표

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.

질의응답

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.