Ad tech giant Taboola is launching Realize, a performance platform that has many of the same features as a demand-side platform (DSP). It has direct connections to thousands of publishers worldwide and, like many DSPs, is powered by first-party data and AI.
Realize employs AI to deliver ads to consumers who are most likely to be interested in the product and likely to use or purchase it, placing ads on Taboola network’s premium websites that are most relevant to each brand, including CNBC, BBC, NBC News and Yahoo.
According to Taboolah, “DSPs tend to focus on video and CTV, which is great for branding goals but not performance, while AdTech companies tend to lack enough scale for success.”
Taboola estimates there is nearly $30B of spend suffering from diminishing returns on social media. In addition, 75% of performance advertisers spending on social media say they are dealing with diminishing returns and are looking for solutions, due to audience saturation, rising costs and ad fatigue.
The new platform also provides the tools that take advertisers from setting up the target audience campaign and budget to measuring campaign performance. In addition, it allows advertisers to reach their customer acquisition goals with the same creative assets they use on display or social media campaigns – it transforms existing assets into ads across premium placements on leading publishers.
“Our new display and vertical creative will allow advertisers to drive engagement and interaction in a whole new range of high impact placements on premium sites. We’ll also make it easy for advertisers to use their existing display and social assets with our creative importer tool,” says Dave Struzzi, communications lead at Taboola.
Struzzi tells MiC that the launch of Realize comes as DSPs are focusing more on connected TV than performance advertising (traditional online advertising that is measured by clicks and conversions). “Many DSPs have transitioned into primarily CTV companies, focusing on branding through video ads on large screens rather than delivering ‘Meta-like’ performance advertising results,” he says.
Taboola’s ad platform reaches 600 million daily active users across different publishers around the world and more than 15,000 advertisers use its products, according to the company.
