Content Discovery Company Taboola Launches Third-Party Data Marketplace

On Wednesday, online advertising and content discovery company Taboola.com Ltd. announced the launch of a service offering advertisers to reach targeted segmented audiences in high resolution. The service is based on partnerships it signed with third-party data providers, including Oracle Data Cloud, Neustar Inc., and Acxiom Corporation, which will supply their databases.

 

Together with Outbrain Israel Ltd., New York-based Taboola dominates the industry of content recommendation—online advertising through links presented on publishers' websites, often appearing in or near online articles under headers such as “You May Like” or “Recommended from the web.” The company lists as clients publishers including USA TODAY, AOL.com, MSN, Business Insider and The Weather Channel.

Founded in 2007 and headquartered in New York, Taboola's engines recommend web-based editorial and video content to over 1 billion unique visitors each month. The company raised over $150 million in investment from backers including Baidu and Yahoo Japan. Taboola currently employs 800 people and is expected to hire 200 more by the end of 2017.

In 2016, a ComScore report ranked Taboola behind Facebook in the content recommendation industry. Outbrain came in third. Hailing from Tel-Aviv, Taboola and Outbrain were criticized in the past for distributing low-grade content, and for the promotion of content by fake news websites.

"Our new Data Marketplace solves a problem many web advertisers have. It allows us to connect with partners, like Oracle, who create targeted databases, and to offer ad campaigns based on micro-targeted audiences," Taboola CEO and founder Adam Singolda said. The service is an attempt to bridge the gap between Facebook's extensive micro-targeting abilities and the web, he said.

Taboola is now set to reach $1 billion in revenues in 2017, Mr. Singolda said, crediting last year's purchase of Convert Media Ltd., an Israel-based video content discovery engine, for Taboola’s forecasted success. Convert Media's activity brought in nearly $100 million in revenues in the past year, he said, adding that the company is “very interested in buying more companies that will help us grow.”