Project Agora exclusive partner Taboola Goes Public, Representing a Major Win For Local Publishers and the Open Web

8 Jul 2021

We’re very excited to report that our exclusive partner Taboola has sealed its reputation as one of the premium players in Open Web advertising – by making a stellar Initial Public Offering (IPO) on the NASDAQ index.

Such global growth is confirmation that native advertising and powered recommendation are becoming increasingly vital elements of the ad-tech ecosystem – building a seamless experience for readers, and benefiting publishers and advertisers alike.

A big win for the Open Web

Like Taboola, Project Agora believes that the Open Web should be free and diverse. We fit outside of the walled garden, working to support thousands of publishers and original content producers across the globe.

The Open Web was estimated to be a $64 billion advertising market in 2020, and more than half of digital advertising budgets were spent within the closed ecosystems of tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon.

This IPO is therefore an important moment, representing a major step towards building a diverse and free advertising ecosystem which is not controlled by a handful of huge firms.

The future of content recommendation

Taboola’s IPO confirms the place of content discovery as one of the three major central poles of digital advertising – alongside search and social. With approximately 500 people working in R&D, this will allow them to expand and ultimately realize their vision for content discovery.

Taboola foresees recommendation power becoming like “a search engine in reverse,” explains CEO Adam Singolda. “Rather than people looking for content, content looks for people.” This IPO is an important step in that direction: it will help recommendation evolve – ultimately enabling people to discover the most interesting, relevant content on any device, at any time.

What does this mean for the strategic alliance between Project Agora and Taboola?

Taboola is an important strategic partner for Project Agora. In combination with our proprietary technology, they allow us to offer a full stack publisher solution to help in our shared mission to keep the Open Web open.

For advertisers, this powers the best possible gateway to run an effective native advertising campaign with the top local publishers of every market – and some of the most premium global ones.

Here are a few recent innovations Taboola has enabled us to launch across our local markets:

Feed

Explore More

Explore Taboola — A feature which helps publishers retain their own readers who have arrived on their content via social media platforms.

NewsRoom

The future is bright

Ultimately, Taboola’s IPO is a huge win for the supporters of the Open Web, demonstrating how bright the future is for content recommendation and how strong our partnerships at Project Agora are.

This will help us all continue to provide the very best possible products and services to publishers and advertisers – forging a more inclusive, diverse and impactful future for digital advertising.

If you would like to learn more on native advertising and content discovery contact us.