PRSS 2017 Annual Report

12 If we are unable to attract customers or increase Internet traffic to our websites and manage changes in the manner by which customers access our websites in a cost-effective manner or at all, our business and results of operations could be harmed. Our success depends on our ability to attract customers to our websites. We rely on a variety of methods to draw visitors to our websites and promote our products and services, such as Internet search engine marketing, email marketing, affiliate networks, social media outlets and flash deal promotions through various new types of group and socially curated e-commerce websites. We pay providers of online services, search engines and other websites and e-commerce businesses to provide content, marketing links, advertising banners and other links that direct customers to our websites. If these providers modify or terminate their relationship with us or increase the price they charge us or if our competitors offer them greater fees for traffic, our expenses could rise and traffic to our websites could decrease, which in turn would harm our revenue and results of operations. We also devote substantial resources to optimizing our websites to increase the likelihood of our products and services appearing in unpaid search engine results; however, there can be no assurance that these efforts will be successful. If our products and services receive low placement or do not appear within the listings of search engine results in response to relevant search queries, this could result in fewer customers clicking through to our websites, requiring us to resort to other more costly resources to replace this traffic. Search engines including Google, Yahoo! and Bing frequently refine and modify their search algorithms that determine placement of our relevant search queries. During 2017, our results were adversely impacted by changes in search engine algorithms that had a negative impact on our search visibility and traffic on our websites. If we are unable to maintain or increase traffic to our websites, including through accurate search results and recommendations, our products or services receive low placement or do not appear due to changes in search engine algorithms, such changes could negatively impact the effectiveness of our search engine optimization or search enginemarketing, and our business and financial performancewould be adversely affected, potentially very materially. If our conversion rates decline, whether due to increased traffic from mobile devices or otherwise, our business and operating results could suffer. We also promote our products and special offers through emails targeted to potential customers and our site members. However, if our customers deem such emails and other promotions to be intrusive, we could be forced to discontinue or significantly curtail our email marketing activities. We continue to develop ways to optimize the consumer experience on our websites, products and services through mobile devices, which provide particular challenges given the graphics intensive user experience involved in shopping, creating and selling content based products online. If we are not able to successfully translate our websites for mobile use and traffic from mobile devices continues to accelerate at current rates, our results of operations may be impacted. Lastly, we have terminated a number of affiliate marketing partners in states that have imposed sales tax nexus for such marketing activities, and to the extent we determine it prudent to continue to do so, we may be unable to achieve our strategic goals in those channels. If we are unable to develop or maintain an effective and cost efficient means of reaching content providers and consumers, if the costs of attracting customers using these methods significantly increase, or if we are unable to develop new cost-effective means to obtain customers, then our ability to attract new and repeat customers would be harmed, traffic to our websites would be reduced and our business and results of operations would be harmed. Our strategy with respect to content acquisition may adversely affect our financial condition and future financial results. We obtain content for our websites and our products from multiple sources, including our user designers, to whom we may pay fees on any subsequent sales of products created with such content. We also rely on entertainment, publishing and corporate content provider sources to generate content for our products and services. Due to designer relationship issues, including compensation provided by us compared to that provided by our competitors, users may decrease or cease providing content to our websites in the future. We face challenges in managing the payment infrastructure and taxation implications of these transactions and expect to continue to do so in the future as competitive pressures or new regulatory or other issues arise. In connection with obtaining entertainment and other media content, we sometimes enter into multi-year, royalty-based licenses with content owners and production organizations for film and television and other media distributors. Our competitors may be successful in obtaining exclusive licenses for content we wish to obtain for our site, making such content unavailable to us now or in the future. We may also, as we have in the past, enter into agreements with content providers that contain exclusivity provisions that may restrict our ability to sell certain products or in certain geographies or to partner with certain content providers. In order to compete effectively for these licenses, we could be forced to pay higher royalties or agree to significant advance payments. Our results of operations could be adversely affected as a result of these content licensing payment commitments in the event that sales or revenue growth do not meet our expectations. In addition, our flexibility in planning for, or reacting to, changes in our business and the market segments in which we operate could be limited.