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Taboola

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For the former semiconductor company, see Tabula, Inc.
Taboola, Inc.
Company typePublic
Nasdaq: TBLA
IndustryAdvertising
Founded2007; 17 years ago (2007)
FounderAdam Singolda
Headquarters
New York City, U.S.
Number of locations
20
Key people
ProductsTaboola Ads, Taboola Feed, Taboola Newsroom, Taboola News, Taboola Trends
RevenueIncrease US$1.40 billion (2022)
Decrease US$−13.6 million (2022)
Decrease US$−12 million (2022)
Total assetsIncrease US$1.53 billion (2022)
Total equityIncrease US$835 million (2022)
Number of employees
c. 1,815 (2022)
Websitetaboola.com
Footnotes / references
[1]

Taboola, Inc. is a publicly traded advertising and technology company[2] headquartered in New York City. It provides "content recommendation" adverts on its partner websites.[3]

History

[edit]

Taboola was founded in 2007[4] by Adam Singolda.[5] The company was founded in Israel[6] and initially provided a recommendation engine for video content.[4] The company headquarters were later moved to New York City.[7] Taboola raised $1.5 million in funding in November 2007.[8] This was followed by $4.5 million in November 2008 and $9 million in August 2011.[9] Additionally, Taboola raised $15 million in February 2013.[10] By 2019, Taboola was used to provide 450 billion recommendations every month,[11] due to adoption by major news websites, like the IBM-owned The Weather Company.[12]

In 2014, Taboola acquired a California-based programmatic advertising company called Perfect Market.[13] In February 2015, Taboola raised $117 million in a Series E funding round.[14] In May of that year, Taboola announced additional funding from Baidu for an undisclosed amount.[15] In July 2016, Taboola acquired Convert Media, a recommendation engine for video content.[16] Terms of the deal were not disclosed.[16] In January 2017, Taboola acquired a website personalization firm called Commerce Sciences, for an undisclosed sum.[17] Commerce Sciences' technology may re-work a website's layout, based on whether a user is more likely to click on a banner ad, newsletter, or video.[17]

In October 2019, Taboola announced its intention to merge with its rival, Outbrain, subject to regulatory approval.[18] If implemented, the deal would have combined the internet's two largest content-recommendation companies. The aim of this merger was for the two companies to reach a bigger audience to be more competitive against the advertising activities of companies like Google and Facebook.[19] Under the terms of the deal, Taboola would have paid Outbrain shareholders 30 percent of the combined company's stock and $250 million in cash.[20]

The sharp downturn in advertising revenue caused by the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 was felt more keenly by Taboola and Outbrain due to increasing pushback by advertisers for the low-quality ads being placed by these companies.[21] This market negative dynamic brought back Taboola and Outbrain to the negotiating table. Both companies stated their ad rates dropped by double digits at the start of the pandemic. The Wall Street Journal reported that the drop in revenue made it harder for Taboola and Outbrain to continue to make their fixed payments to publishers. In September 2020, Taboola and Outbrain could not agree on revised terms and decided to continue as independent organizations. Taboola CEO Adam Singolda said the merger "failed because of the financial contribution of Outbrain" in the previous 12 months. Singolda also said Outbrain “tried to do a deal that was equity only (but less equity), or equity and cash (but less cash) that matched Outbrain’s financial contribution to Taboola."[22] The combined valuation of the called off merger would have been $2 billion.[23]

On 30 June 2021, Taboola began publicly trading on the Nasdaq at a valuation of around $2.6 billion following a merger with special purpose acquisition company ION Acquisition Corp.[24][25] On 23 July 2021, Taboola announced it was acquiring Connexity, a marketing technology company that operates a retail- and e-commerce-focused advertising network, for $800M from Symphony Technology Group. According to the announcement, the company would become Taboola's e-commerce arm following the completion of the acquisition.[26]

Yahoo partnership

[edit]

On November 28, 2022, Taboola announced that it had signed a 30-year, exclusive commercial agreement with Yahoo!.[27] Under the deal, Taboola will exclusively power native advertising on all of Yahoo's digital properties globally, such as Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo! News, AOL and Engadget, with Taboola Ads also available to buy through the Yahoo DSP.[28][29] Yahoo is receiving 24.99% of Taboola's total issued and outstanding shares as part of the agreement, as well as one representative on the Taboola Board of Directors.[28]

Products

[edit]
Taboola's Facebook-like scrollable feed

Taboola creates the "Around The Web" and "Recommended For You" boxes at the bottom of many webpages.[15] Additionally, it can recommend relevant content, including video content.[30] Taboola is used by content publishers to encourage users to view more articles on the same site, or to gain revenues for referral traffic.[31] Marketers and brands bid for views of their content.[32] Then, an algorithm displays the advertiser's content to certain website users based on the content the user is viewing, the content's length and metadata, the user's history, and other factors.[8] Taboola also has tools for publishers to remove offensive content and vet ads before they are displayed.[33]

Taboola serves approximately 450 billion article recommendations each month.[11] It is implemented on a website with a line of JavaScript.[8] The Taboola Choice feature, which was introduced in 2013, added the ability for users to filter out recommendations they do not want to see.[34] An API for mobile apps was added in December.[35] Taboola started working on extending more features to mobile devices, user-generated content, and apps in 2015.[15] In 2017, the company added a Facebook-like scrollable feed of links to articles and videos.[36][37]

Reception

[edit]

The online thumbnail grid ads promoted by Taboola and other similar companies like Outbrain have been referred to also as chumbox ads.[38]

Taboola is infamous for being one of the most common chum box/clickbait ad providers seen on news websites like CNN.

According to Fortune in 2014, "Popular content isn't always good content.", with Fortune stating that while companies that partnered with Taboola and Outbrain for advertising generally earned significant income from the partnership, the ads recommended by these services "often represent the worst of the Web".[39] Advertiser-sponsored content displayed through the platform might include articles such as "The World's Cutest Cat Pictures All On One Site" or "Jeff Bridges' Magnificent Home Is Beyond Stunning".[40] In May 2013, Taboola founder Adam Singolda said the ads help support a sustainable business model for journalism and the company vets ads before they are displayed.[41] The company has faced criticism for its promoted content alongside the rest of the native advertising industry, including concerns about the promotion of clickbait articles.[42] According to comments made to the BBC, Singolda has said "The problem is that for everyone who hates one piece of content, many others love it, and click on it... if no one clicked on it, or tweeted about it, then we would remove it."[43]

In May 2014, the Better Business Bureau's (BBB) National Advertising Division (NAD) requested that Taboola make it clearer that its recommended links are sponsored by advertisers following a complaint by a rival company, Congoo. The NAD said it recommended the changes, citing the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), due to concerns that Taboola's "sponsored content" disclosures "were not sufficiently clear and conspicuous, or easy to notice, read, and understand."[44]

A report in September 2016 from the nonprofit ChangeAdvertising.org found that 41 of the top 50 news sites – including The Guardian, CNN, Time and Forbes – embed widgets from so-called “content-recommendation” companies, including Taboola. Several of those that do not, including The New York Times, pay for content created with advertisers in-house to appear in the widgets to increase traffic to their sites.[45] In 2016, the Taboola widget was installed on a site promoting numerous fake news stories and subsequently appeared in several articles originating from the site, including one claiming Muslim nurses were refusing to wash their hands before surgery at hospitals in the United Kingdom.[46] Taboola subsequently confirmed that the site operators had displayed its code without permission and that they had since removed their code from the site. A company spokesperson said that "Taboola has a very clear and strict set of guidelines in terms of both fake news as well as trademark infringement".

In 2018, regarding the brand safety issue for marketers, Taboola's CEO mentioned that the company employed less than 50 people monitoring 30+ languages, and has established partnerships with IAB, Moat, TAG, Integral Ad Science, and Double Verify to address the issue.[47][48]

In February 2022, Taboola, a member of the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) UK, was awarded the Gold Standard 2.0 Certification by the organization.[49][50] Some critics have argued that the IAB UK's self-regulatory model and efforts in governmental lobbying[51] may prioritize the interests of its members, which include companies like Taboola, over stricter governmental regulations.[52]

Independent research conducted in January 2024 found that hundreds of major brands have their ads displayed on "Made for Advertising” websites, which are websites that are created for the sole purpose of showing ads. Ad tech vendors, including Taboola, claim to be taking steps to avoid placing ads on MFA sites, but the study found that these efforts appear to be ineffective.[53]

See also

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References

[edit]
  1. ^ "Taboola, Inc. 2022 Annual Report (Form 10-K)". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 13 March 2023.
  2. ^ Rachel Curry. "What to know about the 2021 Taboola IPO". Public.com. Retrieved 3 July 2024.
  3. ^ Hirschauge, Orr (19 March 2015). "Outbrain, Taboola Make Their Mark on Online Advertising Industry". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 15 November 2021.
  4. ^ a b Lawler, Ryan. "Taboola Raises $15M More to Fund International Expansion". TechCrunch. Retrieved May 18, 2017.
  5. ^ "Taboola and Outbrain are battling a bad reputation (and each other)". Fortune. August 18, 2014. Archived from the original on August 22, 2014. Retrieved May 19, 2017.
  6. ^ "Taboola and Outbrain Said to be Discussing a Merger". Fortune. April 28, 2017. Retrieved May 19, 2017.
  7. ^ Carthy, Roi (August 25, 2010). "Taboola Turbo Charges Revision3's Video Uplift by 90%". TechCrunch. Retrieved May 18, 2017.
  8. ^ a b c Deleon, Nicholas (November 14, 2007). "Taboola Lands $1.5 Million, Powers Video Discovery". TechCrunch. Retrieved May 18, 2017.
  9. ^ Kincaid, Jason (August 25, 2011). "Taboola Raises $9 Million To Power Video Recommendations Across The Web". TechCrunch. Retrieved September 27, 2014.
  10. ^ Wauters, Robin (2013-02-19). "Content Recommendation Specialist Taboola Raises $15 Million". The Next Web. Retrieved 2016-05-16.
  11. ^ a b Wauters, Robin. "why Taboola". Taboola Help Centre. Retrieved 2019-11-13.
  12. ^ "WEATHER CO. GOES ALL-IN ON 'TABOOLA FEED,' A FACEBOOK NEWSFEED CLONE". AdAge. 29 March 2018. Retrieved 2019-11-13.
  13. ^ Griffith, Erin (April 8, 2014). "Taboola acquires Perfect Market, expands into programmatic ads". Fortune. Retrieved May 16, 2016.
  14. ^ Griffith, Erin (February 4, 2015). "Taboola raises $117 million". Fortune. Retrieved May 18, 2017.
  15. ^ a b c Catherine, Shu (May 18, 2015). "Baidu, China's Leading Search Engine, Makes Strategic Investment In Content Recommendation Platform Taboola". TechCrunch. Retrieved May 18, 2015.
  16. ^ a b Lunden, Ingrid (July 26, 2016). "Taboola steps up in video, buys ConvertMedia for shy of $100M". TechCrunch. Retrieved July 26, 2016.
  17. ^ a b Marshall, Jack (January 4, 2017). "Taboola Acquires Website Personalization Specialist Commerce Sciences". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved May 27, 2017.
  18. ^ "Taboola and Outbrain Are One". Taboola Press Release. 2019-10-03. Retrieved 2019-11-13.
  19. ^ Lunden, Ingrid (3 October 2019). "Publisher adtech startups Taboola and Outbrain merge in $850M deal to take on Google and Facebook". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2019-11-06.
  20. ^ Maidenberg, Patience Haggin and Micah (2019-10-03). "Digital Ad Companies Taboola and Outbrain to Merge". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2021-09-26.
  21. ^ Joseph, Seb (2022-10-25). "Why some of the largest publishers are breaking up with ad tech middlemen". Digiday. Retrieved 2023-05-12.
  22. ^ Haggin, Patience (2020-09-13). "How the Tie-Up of Clickbait Giants Taboola and Outbrain Unraveled". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2021-09-26.
  23. ^ Hsu, Tiffany (2019-10-04). "You Will Be Shocked by This Article". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-09-26.
  24. ^ Solomon, Shoshanna (2021-06-29). "Taboola heads to Nasdaq as SPAC merger gets green light". Times of Israel. Retrieved 2021-07-01.
  25. ^ Zerachovitz, Omri (2021-06-29). "Israel's Taboola heads to NASDAQ with $2.6b valuation after merger approved". Haaretz. Retrieved 2021-07-01.
  26. ^ "After going public via a SPAC, Taboola acquires e-commerce marketing network Connexity for $800M". TechCrunch. 23 July 2021. Retrieved 2021-07-28.
  27. ^ "Yahoo Takes Minority Stake in Ad Network Taboola". The New York Times. 2022-11-28. Retrieved 2022-12-01.(subscription required)
  28. ^ a b Romain Dillet (2022-11-28). "Yahoo gets 25% stake in Taboola as part of long-term advertising deal". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2022-12-01.
  29. ^ Alicia Diaz (2022-11-28). "Taboola Shares Jump After Yahoo Takes 25% Stake in Ad Deal". Bloomberg. Retrieved 2022-12-01.
  30. ^ Lawler, Ryan (January 18, 2013). "After Growing Revenue 750% In 2012 And Conquering Video, Taboola Goes After Article Recommendations". TechCrunch. Retrieved September 27, 2014.
  31. ^ Richards, Katie. "Website Recommendation Company Taboola Says It's On Pace To Do $250 Million In Revenue". Business Insider. Retrieved May 16, 2016.
  32. ^ Grant, Rebecca (February 19, 2013). "Taboola spices up video advertising with $15M". VentureBeat. Retrieved May 19, 2017.
  33. ^ Maheshwari, Sapna; Herrman, John (October 30, 2016). "Publishers Are Rethinking Those 'Around the Web' Ads". The New York Times. Retrieved May 19, 2017.
  34. ^ Lawler, Ryan (4 September 2013). "Taboola Now Lets You Filter Out Content Recommendations That You Don't Want To See". TechCrunch. Retrieved May 16, 2016.
  35. ^ Lawler, Ryan (December 19, 2013). "Taboola Launches An API To Bring Its Content Recommendations To Native Mobile Apps". TechCrunch. Retrieved September 27, 2014.
  36. ^ Lunden, Ingrid (May 23, 2017). "Taboola intros Facebook-style 'news feed' to target mobile users with more links". TechCrunch. Retrieved May 26, 2017.
  37. ^ Cerullo, Megan (May 24, 2017). "Daily News partners with Taboola to add endless scroll to website". NY Daily News. Retrieved May 27, 2017.
  38. ^ Hsu, Tiffany; de la Merced, Michael (25 January 2021). "Taboola, Purveyor of Clickbait Ads, Will Go Public". The New York Times. New York Times. Retrieved 23 September 2021.
  39. ^ "Taboola and Outbrain: Combating a bad reputation (and each other) - Fortune". 2014-08-22. Archived from the original on 2014-08-22. Retrieved 2021-11-28.
  40. ^ Temperton, James (May 12, 2017). "We need to talk about the internet's fake ads problem". WIRED UK. Retrieved May 19, 2017.
  41. ^ Marshall, Jack (May 16, 2013). "Content Marketing's Got a Quality Problem". Digiday. Retrieved September 27, 2014.
  42. ^ "Taboola and Outbrain Said to be Discussing a Merger". Fortune. Retrieved 2021-11-22.
  43. ^ "Taboola: The internet firm at the forefront of 'click-bait'". BBC News. 2014-09-30. Retrieved 2021-11-22.
  44. ^ Davis, Wendy (May 20, 2014). "Better Business Bureau Tells Taboola To Make 'Sponsored Content' Disclosures More Prominent". Media Post. Retrieved September 27, 2014.
  45. ^ Maheswari, Sapna; Herrman, John (30 October 2016). "Publishers Are Rethinking Those 'Around the Web' Ads". The New York Times. Retrieved 19 October 2021.
  46. ^ Moses, Lucia (November 28, 2016). "'The underbelly of the internet': How content ad networks fund fake news". Retrieved May 18, 2017.
  47. ^ "Challenging Walled Gardens: Q&A with Adam Singolda, CEO, Taboola". ExchangeWire. 2018-07-17. Retrieved 2019-11-13.
  48. ^ "Who are Top Advertisers and Publishers on Taboola?". Anstrex. 24 June 2019. Retrieved 2019-06-24.
  49. ^ "Taboola Awarded IAB UK Gold Standard 2.0 Certification - ExchangeWire.com". www.exchangewire.com. Retrieved 2022-03-17.
  50. ^ "Taboola Takes On Fake News Furor". www.mediapost.com. Retrieved 2021-10-28.
  51. ^ "Public Affairs Lead | IAB UK". www.iabuk.com. Retrieved 2024-07-07.
  52. ^ "'Crack cocaine' for publishers: Insiders reveal what they really think about MFA - The Media Leader". 2024-06-14. Retrieved 2024-07-07.
  53. ^ "Are Amazon and other ad tech vendors serving ANA members' ads on "Made for Arbitrage" websites in 2024?". adalytics.io. Retrieved 2024-07-06.
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