1. CrowdStrike (CRWD) — 2021 Threat Hunting Report Summary

a. CrowdStrike released the results of its annual threat hunting report. Here are the highlights:

• OverWatch (CrowdStrike’s human-managed threat hunting service) has seen a 60% rise in intrusion activity since last year. OverWatch analysts blocked 65,000 additional attacks providing direct evidence of how it bolsters and augments the success of CrowdStrike’s autonomous threat graph.
• 68% of alerts/detections within CrowdStrike’s threat graph did not use any malware.
• E-Crime (financially motivated) makes up 75% of all intrusion activity with established black markets in place for hackers to actually sell their programs to people as a service as well as connect hackers to each other like a broker. No longer does someone need to be an expert to wreak havoc.
• E-Crime adversaries are now capable of moving horizontally throughout a victim’s platform in just 92 minutes. 36% of these adversaries are also able to laterally move into new hosts in less than 30 minutes. This is why Zero Trust and the Preempt acquisition was so important. This prevents a hacker from breaching a vulnerable piece of an ecosystem while then navigating freely throughout it without any further authorization controls in place.
• OverWatch observed a 100% rise in crypto-related intrusions year over year.
• Breakdown of targeted intrusions by which County this adversary came from:

• Breakdown of attack trends by industry:

b. My take:

Rising instances of cybercrime will continue to be a tide that lifts all boats in the space — and I think CrowdStrike is the best-positioned to benefit in its end-point/workload niche. It’s important to note that competition such as SentinelOne places more of an emphasis on stopping malware vs. CrowdStrike’s focus on preventing breaches more broadly. Based on 68% of threat attempts not even using malware anymore, CrowdStrike’s north star seems to be better-placed.

2. Upstart (UPST) — A New Partner

Upstart announced a new partnership with WSFS Bank to bring its AI-powered lending capabilities to one of the oldest banks in the United States. With roughly $27 billion in assets under management (AUM) and a public market cap of $2 billion, this is a solid get for Upstart.

When Upstart went public less than one year ago, it was working with 10 credit unions and banks. Today, that number is now approaching 30 thanks to strong momentum since its listing. Clearly, its solution is gaining traction.

3. The Trade Desk (TTD) — A Campbell’s Soup Case Study

Linda Lee — Campbell’s Chief Marketing Officer — sat down with The Trade Desk’s “The Current” to talk about how a data driven approach to marketing allowed the company to weather the toughest of storms.

Campbell’s pivoted to aggregating and leveraging its data wherever possible to embrace a programmatic approach to ad-buying. And it’s working: Since the beginning of the pandemic, 13 million new households have purchased Campbell brand products and roughly 4.3 million of these households are counted as millennials. This growth handsomely outpaced its direct competition.

According to Lee, the company is drowning in insightful data but limited in how it can organize this data to confidently act. That’s exactly where The Trade Desk helps the demand side of the advertising space — connecting data to tangible marketing results and efficacy.

Click here for my deep dive into The Trade Desk’s business.

4. Facebook (FB) — Advertising Warning

Facebook’s Vice President of Marketing — Graham Mudd — published a blog post warning investors about the challenges associated with Apple’s ad-tracking practices.

According to Mudd, the impact of Apple’s new policies on advertising efficacy has been “larger than expected” as targeting and measurement has gotten more difficult. This is due to the impact that Apple’s iOS privacy changes have had on Facebook’s ability to report iOS web conversions. The social media behemoth estimates that it’s now underreporting these conversions by an average of 15%. Furthermore, it believes the true conversion rates are in reality higher than what Facebook reports to its advertisers. Facebook had already warned investors of tougher 2nd half growth as Apple’s ad-targeting headwinds persisted — this is merely a reiteration of that previous warning.

The company is actively promoting its Conversions API — the vehicle actually connecting marketing data with marketing channels — to help advertisers steer through this new, uncertain world of selling. Facebook has also dedicated resources to improving the accuracy of its conversion rate reporting on a 1-day basis and to building a new tool to help advertisers track conversion even on 3rd party sites like independent marketplaces.

The company issues warnings about the fragility of its advertising business every few months — and then proceeds to continue seeing its advertising business thrive and crush expectations each quarter. To me, this is just another one of those warnings that will eventually end in yet another fantastic quarter for the company. Warnings are never good, but with Facebook they tend to be all bark with no bite. And in the world of advertising — thanks to Facebook’s unparalleled scale — whatever hurts Facebook hurts the rest of its industry more.

In other news, the company’s CTO — Mike Schroepfer — will step down from his role with the company and will become a part-time advisor. Andrew Bosworth — currently an engineering executive with Facebook — will assume Mike’s role.

5. GoodRX (GDRX) — CEO Doug Hirsch and CFO Karsten Voermann Interview with Goldman Sachs + a New Product

a. Hirsch on the competitive Landscape

“In our entire history, no competitor has been able to impact our growth trajectory. Companies have tried to copy the GoodRx model but none of them have actually had an impact. Amazon has been trying to grow a pharmacy delivery service and has not been successful to date. We’ve seen no evidence from any third party data of traction [for Amazon] here — there’s virtually no usage.”