Pixel power

Singolda claims Taboola can deliver social-like performance via publishers, because it has pixels embedded on their pages that scoop up first party data and allow it to track what’s converting on any page across 600 million people daily.

He claims its AI is trained on circa 500 million conversions a year, and can effectively provide lookalikes based off that data to advertisers. Plus it has lately embedded an AI-powered interface that makes it easy to plug in social and performance ads and stick them on publisher pages.

“Say you’re a pizza oven manufacturer and you get 50-100 conversions on native advertising with Taboola. Now you’re able to say, ‘get me the next 100 conversions based on the price I already pay’. So let’s say the CPA paid is $100, we’re going to look for more conversions at that price and we can predict to you how many we think we can get,” per Singolda. “It’s like lookalikes, but for conversion.”

Hence his conviction Taboola can eat adtech’s lunch, where much of the highly fragmented market is powered by questionable third party data, and compete with social, because it can track conversion while delivering cheaper CPAs.

Client testimonials in yesterday’s investor presentation back that claim – one slide suggests carmaker Peugeot is notching leads 2.45x cheaper than its benchmark and CPAs 14 per cent lower than other campaigns, with similar claims for the likes of Vodafone and Etoro.

Either way, the vast majority of Taboola’s business comes direct from advertisers, “I would say 80 per cent,” per Singolda, which negates agency gatekeeping on adjacency grounds.

There are some big names on its advertiser roster – Salesforce, BMW, General Motors, Mercedes Benz, Hitachi HSBC, Dell, Citi, Cisco, American Express and Verizon – and its investor slide-pack claims Taboola now has more than 2,100 advertisers spending over $100,000 annually.

Singolda said Taboola plays from “mid-size to enterprise” advertisers, and unlike Meta and Google, has not yet cracked the SME market – which might partially reassure publishers worried about the potential for low-grade performance ads starting to climb their premium pages amid Taboola’s performance pivot.

But the prospect of a $55bn swing amid increasing publisher revenue pressure might outweigh such concerns outright.