Taboola

Taboola connects advertisers with relevant and personalized content via its AI-powered content discovery platform in order to drive brand engagement. Taboola also offers a news discovery service (Taboola News) that allows personalized news feeds to be directly incorporated into mobile devices. The fiirm has introduced a number of enhancements to its solutions including an AI-powered homepage personalization tool, SmartBid Dimensions, an automated ad bidding technology, and a Generative AI AdMaker. In July 2024, the company launched Taboola for Audience, offering AI-powered personalization capabilities consolidated into a single audience development platform.

 A competitive edge Taboola has over its peers such as Outbrain, is the large number of partnerships it has established with leading media publishers (9,000+ by November 2022) including Bloomberg, USA Today, and NBC, which are exclusive long-term partners. In addition, in November 2021 the firm upgraded its automated ad bidding system with the launch of ‘SmartBid dimensions’ which uses granular customer readership data to provide unique insights on customer intent. 

Taboola has also executed on a number of acquisitions including Connexivity, one of the largest ecommerce advertising media platforms on the open web, which it acquired in In July 2021 for USD 800 million. Taboola expects the incorporation of the ecommerce data provided by Connexivity and the upselling opportunities created to drive higher yields for Taboola’s publishers and advertisers. In May 2022, Taboola acquired Gravity R&D, a developer of an ad personalization engine to further enhance its customization capabilities. 

In November 2022, Yahoo acquired a 25% stake in Taboola, becoming its largest shareholder. The firm deepened its relationship with yahoo and entered into a 30-year partnership to become the exclusive native advertising partner for all of Yahoo’s digital properties and is expected to generate ~USD 1 billion in annual revenue. 

Key customers and partnerships

By December 2023, Taboola’s content discovery platform was reportedly used by 15,000–20,000 advertisers who provide content to more than 1.4 billion daily active users. Taboola News discovery service was offered by leading mobile device manufacturers in at least 80 countries as of July 2021. 

The firm has entered into a number of partnerships to enhance its product offerings including with Microsoft to launch a new ad bidding service as well as with PMC to bring personalized content to leading entertainment websites in its portfolio which includes Rolling Stone, Billboard and Varierty. In February 2023, in partnership with TIME, the firm entered the ecommerce space with the launch of ‘Taboola Turnkey Commerce’, which allows premium publishers to create trustworthy content that helps readers make informed purchase decisions.