Catena Media Revises Guidance, Cites Weak Q3 for Performance Projections

Catena Media, a leading affiliate business, has taken another hit as the company had to revise its EBITDA growth for 2026, attributing the slowdown to unfavorable results in the third quarter of the financial year. Catena Media Addresses Difficult Financial Results The previously expected organic double-digit revenue is now unlikely, the company explained in a statement detailing its current financial predicament. Catena Media CEO Manuel Stan released a statement in which he presented the business outlook: “This was a weak quarter, and our results reflect that. The search landscape is undergoing a rapid and fundamental shift, and as a predominantly cost-per-acquisition (CPA) based business, our results reflect the effects of these changes immediately and in full.” Among the issues that Stan pointed out was the fact that search engines were transforming themselves in a way that conflicted with traditional discoverability behavior and algorithms, making it harder for legacy affiliates to help boost brand visibility. Traffic has been reduced significantly because of this, Stan argued. The hit to the traffic has been caused by both the impact of AI-assisted personalized search patterns and, similarly, by how search engines have come to treat lower-relevancy content in their search engine results pages, or SERPs, in affiliate speak. Catena Media Doesn’t Wait Out the Changes This change has not only been felt on the affiliate end of the business; however, operators have also proceeded to reduce their marketing budgets, thus impacting partner affiliate businesses. Catena Media is not simply idling through these changes, with the business looking into alternative streams of revenue and reducing its dependency on the knock-on impact these changes have already had on its results. “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,” the CEO added. Catena Media has announced several rounds of layoffs over the past months, with the most recent one affecting five positions within the company. The current financial year is a notable change from last, when Catena Media was reporting strong results since its reorganization reset in 2025.