“This is the new Taboola,” says CEO Adam Singolda, proudly, in a video announcing Realize, a new platform designed to go beyond traditional native advertising.
Taboola’s latest offering lets advertisers target display and other inventory types across its publisher network, including NBC and Yahoo, not just placements at the bottom of articles.
According to the company’s press release: “Taboola has pioneered native advertising for more than a decade, driving success for advertisers, primarily in bottom of article placements. Today, Taboola extends far beyond this legacy with the introduction of Realize, an industry-first platform that specializes only in performance outcomes at scale beyond search and social.”
The phrase “beyond search and social” appears throughout the release, signaling Taboola’s effort to reframe how it targets the open web. This is aligned with other players, as everyone – think The Trade Desk, for example – is working to define their own vision for this space.
Why This Matters:
Taboola says it sees a $55 billion market opportunity by addressing inefficiencies in performance advertising – $25 billion related to poor performance across other DSPs and “niche AdTech solutions,” and another $30 billion facing diminishing returns on social media. Taboola is positioning Realize as a potential solution to unlock better ROI for advertisers.
Realize also fits into Taboola’s ongoing AI story. The company says the new offering is powered by an AI performance engine that uses data from code-on-page publisher integrations to inform ad placement and optimization. Because of their presence on publisher pages, Taboola says it has a distinct set of signals compared to other open web media-buying platforms.
Experts React:
Who better to speak on this than Singolda himself:
“Every business deserves a chance to grow and succeed. Performance advertising beyond search and social media has been far too difficult for too long, however. Advertisers have settled on search and social media simply because there has been no viable alternative. Spending money with DSPs and CTV is great for branding but not optimized to drive performance, and running display with hundreds of advertising tech companies at low scale is simply not worth marketers’ time. Amazon started in 1994 and did a great job winning the book business by 2000, which allowed them to go into owning all of e-commerce. This is our ‘Amazon moment.’ After many years of success with native ads, it’s time to go after all of performance advertising. We can do a lot more for advertisers, and a lot more for publishers. Today is an exciting day for me and us at Taboola.”
Also, here’s the great video the company made to promote Realize:
Our Take:
Last thing: the launch of Realize also supports Taboola’s broader strategy of moving beyond its “chumbox” legacy, a challenge its competitor Outbrain is also tackling directly, having recently rebranded as Teads following its acquisition. By expanding beyond bottom-of-article placements and repositioning itself as more than “just” a native content recommendation platform, Taboola is continuing to evolve both its business and perception in market.
