Catena Media’s Q3 revenue slumped 29% year on year to €8.3m (£7m), as AI’s disruption of organic search continued to impact the Malta-based affiliate’s Google rankings.
Adjusted EBITDA was €700,000, a fall of 76% compared with €2.9m for the corresponding period the prior year, all of which has contributed to shares in the company falling 21% to SEK2.52 (19p) in early trading in Stockholm.
Management said several factors led to the poor performance in the preliminary Q3 results released on 16 October, pointing to “generative search” transforming how customers discover brands and “reducing new traffic across the affiliate industry”.
The fall in organic search visibility was also attributed to “search engines continuing to elevate lower-relevancy content in search results”.
Furthermore, operators reduced marketing budgets on the back of the expected summer slowdown.
Management said more than 90% of new customers are acquired under CPA deals, which means the group “has limited recurring revenue to buffer against such a combination of market pressures”.
It was also noted that the firm expects to recognise a non-cash impairment charge on intangible assets of €30m-€35m for the three months to the end of September.
Looking at the first nine months of 2026, revenue slipped from €31m to €30.1m, while adjusted EBITDA was €4.6m, down from €5.2m in 2025.
Following the weak Q3 performance, Catena Media reported it did not expect to achieve its 2026 target of double-digit organic growth for both revenue and adjusted EBITDA.
Manuel Stan, Catena Media CEO, said: “This was a weak quarter and our results reflect that.
“The search landscape is undergoing a rapid and fundamental shift, and as a predominantly CPA-based business, our results reflect the effects of these changes immediately and in full.”
The results come after Catena Media announced in August it would shift “beyond affiliation and lead generation into a technical infrastructure and intelligence platform”.
Grandstand – formerly Gambling.com Group – is also making attempts to diversify its business to become less reliant on Google to drive customer acquisition.
Commenting on Catena’s move, Stan added: “The results reinforce the strategic direction we set out in the second quarter.
“We are reducing our dependence on search by diversifying our revenue streams, including through our newly announced TraffiqX project and new verticals like prediction markets, and by continuing to build the strength of our brands through investing in customer loyalty programmes.
“These efforts will be further supported by TraffiqX, the new platform we plan to launch in the first quarter of 2027.”
Catena Media is due to publish its Q3 interim report on 10 November.
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Affiliate’s EBITDA shrinks by three-quarters to €700,000 during “weak quarter”, with management now expecting to miss 2026 organic growth targets
The post Catena Media’s Q3 revenue plummets by 29% as generative search bites first appeared on EGR Intel.