Taboola helps people discover what is interesting and new. The company’s platform and suite of products, powered by deep learning and the largest dataset of content consumption patterns on the open web, is used by over 20,000 companies to reach over 1.4 billion people each month.
Advertisers use Taboola to reach their target audience when they are most receptive to new messages, products and services. Digital properties, including publishers, mobile carriers and handset manufacturers, use Taboola to drive audience monetization and engagement.
Adam Singolda, Founder and CEO, founded Taboolain 2007 and the initial partnerships with publishers and advertisers started forming in 2012. In the years since then, Taboola has become the largest discovery platform, realizing tremendous growth in users and revenue. Today, with over 1,000 employees Taboola’s journey continues, building new technologies that will help people find what is interesting and new wherever they are. Today he talks to us about their India journey and how they have coped with the COVID19 crisis and lock down
Can you take us through Taboola’s journey in India?
Taboola India has had robust growth in the country from a headcount of 2 in 2015 to a whopping 100 in 2020 with teams comprising sales & marketing, customer support, professional services and management functions.
This crisis has seen a major spike in the way people not only in India but across the world the way they are consuming News, your thoughts?
Well, throughout Covid and starting in March 2020 there was the expected spike readership in news that was around 50% above the 6-month average before the pandemic hit. U.S. traffic was heading back toward normal levels before a second wave of interest that came from the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement.
With these spikes in readership came huge opportunities for many advertisers. For example, at the peak of the pandemic, our Newsroom data showed us that there was a 140% increase in readership for home improvement – and topics like ‘how to fix a toilet’ saw a 245% increase. And with everyone home, fostering and adoptions of pets skyrocketed and we saw a 50% increase in readership about pets. When advertisers have real time access to what consumers are reading about and what they are most interested in, they can take advantage by leveraging the data into relevant campaigns and reach their target audiences much faster.
Certain brands have utilized this period to be on top of the mind for consumers, what did they do right and what do you think should be the communication strategy for brands during this crisis?
Readership trends change every week. When advertisers empower themselves with real-time data, they have a real-time gauge of consumer interest. Perdue, a well-known U.S. poultry brand saw readership for chicken-based recipes on the rise, so they knew to invest more in advertising and increased their sales. Real time data means you can be agile.
E-learning portals are seeing a major surge, other categories are technology and health, how should they position themselves post Covid 19?
As a whole, there is a big opportunity for advertisers to reach those audiences while they are engaged. Advertisers can reach consumers by building campaigns based on empathy – for example, e-learning advertisers can run campaigns that focus on adding skills or advertising products that are made for WFH or addressing issues such as lack of wi-fi or hardware (if relevant). We also provide a free tool, Taboola Trends which analyzes the millions of ad creatives that run through our network each week, and provide advertisers with surface image and headline trends that can help them increase advertiser CTR.
How have you maximized your revenues with your tie-ups with Publishers?
Taboola provides insights via Newsroom about readership trends, helping publishers boost subscribers, while continuing to provide massive readership scale for pubs to tap into to attract new audiences. Newsroom helps publishers plan and optimize editorial content and increase readership to more effectively monetize. Newsroom uses AI and the largest dataset on the open web to provide editorial teams with actionable insights and data about content performance in real time, as well as unique insights on trending topics that can inform editorial decision.
