Taboola is a content discovery platform that provides publishers the option to display content recommendations in three ways – with content discovery widgets, in-stream Native Ads or a hybrid, displaying articles, videos, slideshows and other content, both from within the site and from other advertisers and publishers. Its closest competitor is Outbrain. Clients include MS BBC, USA Today, Ziff Davis Allure Media and the Boston Globe.
In Taboola’s content guidelines for advertisements, the company prohibits content that contains spyware, malware, or automatic download of applications without users’ consent. The site prohibits “Cloaking” or techniques used to hide the true destination that users are directed to as well as scripts that interferes with a user’s control of the site and can takes over a web page or user’s browser. The company also prohibits advertising to children under the age of 13.
In 2014, Taboola was reportedly hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army.
Taboola was founded in 2007 by Adam Singolda in Israel. Taboola provides readers with options to content and topics they may not have thought to search for. In November 2007, Taboola raised $1.5 million from Evergreen Venture Partners in the Series A round. In November 2008, Evergreen Venture Partners invested an additional $4.5 million.
In August 2010, Taboola expanded their offering to include video-to-video and text-to-video recommendations. They were reported to have increased Revision3’s video views by approximately 90%.
In August 2011, Taboola raised a $9 million Series B round from Marker and Evergreen Venture Partners. This was followed by a $10 million Series C from Marker in June 2012, and a $15 million Series D in February 2013 from Pitango VC, along with existing investors Evergreen Venture Partners, WGI Group, and Marker.
In January 2013, Taboola began doing article recommendations. In September 2013, and launched Taboola Choice, a feature where users could filter out content recommendations they didn’t want to see.
In December 2013, Taboola launched an API to bring its content recommendations to native mobile apps.
In August 2014, Taboola acquired Perfect Market, a company that powers programmatic advertising on publishers’ websites. Taboola also announced the launch of Taboola-X, a tool to help publishers monetize their site. Taboola reported that it was serving 150 billion recommendations to 400 million unique users every month with an estimated $250 million run rate.
In February 2015, Taboola raised Series E of $117 million in a round led by Fidelity Investments along with existing investors Marker and Steadfast Capital, as well as strategic investors Comcast Ventures, Groupe Arnault, Yahoo Japan, Advance Publications (parent company of magazine publisher Condé Nast), and Carlo De Benedetti, chairman of Italian Media conglomerate Gruppo Editoriale L’Espresso.
In May 2015, Taboola announced an undisclosed round of “multi-millions” in funding from Baidu.
In May 2016, Taboola announced they had reach over 1 billion unique users worldwide, including 250 million that were reached on mobile.
Taboola is considered a pioneer in native advertising, although the content recommendation space has enlarged to include new competitors.
Taboola and Outbrain have both been described by Internet commentators as alternatives to Google AdSense that content publishers can opt to consider for revenue streams.
In January 2013, Jack Marshall wrote that Taboola recommendations on websites such as Time, Bloomberg.com, and Politico often took users to websites such as Newsmax, which attempted to upsell users to low-quality e-books on topics such as how to avoid financial ruin. A similar criticism was made on Priceonomics in April 2014.
In May 2014, Taboola complied with the Better Business Bureau’s request that they make their “sponsored content” disclosures more prominent.
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