Taboola expands beyond native ads with Realize, a performance-driven platform

Taboola, known for native advertising, has introduced Realize, a new platform focused on performance-driven advertising beyond search and social media.

Realize taps into Taboola’s data, performance AI, and an increasingly diverse range of inventory and creative formats to achieve performance objectives. Full-funnel marketing solutions often face challenges in delivering strong performance at each stage. To address this, Taboola has launched Realize, a platform designed specifically for performance-focused advertisers.

Taboola estimates that advertisers spend $25 billion annually on DSPs and niche AdTech solutions for performance outcomes, but many of these channels lack the necessary scale, data, or expertise. DSPs focus on video and CTV, which are suited for branding but not performance, while AdTech companies often struggle with scale. Taboola also estimates that nearly $30 billion in social media ad spend faces diminishing returns. About 75% of performance advertisers on social media report rising costs, audience saturation, and ad fatigue, reducing ROI. Overall, Taboola suggests most of the $55 billion spent on performance advertising is not delivering optimal returns.

Realize is a performance platform that extends beyond search and social media, using Taboola’s supply, first-party data, and AI. It allows advertisers to run performance-based campaigns across major publishers, OEMs, and apps.

“Every business deserves a chance to grow and succeed,” said Adam Singolda, CEO at Taboola. “Performance advertising beyond search and social media has been far too difficult for too long, however. Advertisers have settled on search and social media simply because there has been no viable alternative. Spending money with DSPs and CTV is great for branding but not optimised to drive performance, and running display with hundreds of advertising tech companies at low scale is simply not worth marketers’ time. Amazon started in 1994 and did a great job winning the book business by 2000, which allowed them to go into owning all of e-commerce. This is our “Amazon moment.” After many years of success with native ads, it's time to go after all of performance advertising. We can do a lot more for advertisers, and a lot more for publishers. Today is an exciting day for me and us at Taboola.” 

“Taboola’s new technology platform, Realize, expands the potential for success with our performance marketing. Realize provides more options to connect with customers in engaging and prominent ways through a vast network of trusted publishers globally. We expect Realize will greatly benefit our advertising reach and ROI, and we’re excited to use it,” said Julie Hansen, CRO & US CEO at Babbel.

"Taboola has been a longstanding partner for eToro, providing the technology and team that has helped us excel in reaching customers. Taboola's new Realize technology platform helps us go even further, driving success for our performance-focused campaigns and helping us to achieve our customer acquisition goals. We look forward to continuing to grow using Taboola and Realize," said Nir Szmulewicz, CMO, eToro.

“We praise Taboola’s end-to-end approach to ensuring performance advertising success,” says Jeff Ratner, president media, data, analytics at Quigley-Simpson. “We have worked with Taboola for many years and they have shown the technology and expertise needed for driving true ROI for our campaigns. Realize shows promise for going even further, bringing the best of all worlds–AI that works to find us the best outcomes, audiences that are uniquely engaged, and placements that are highly visible that live on trusted publishers.”

“For a media agency that has always been on the cutting edge of performance marketing, as we are at EVERSANA media, I could not be more excited to leverage Taboola’s new performance platform, Realize, which brings to life end-to-end performance campaigns. With Realize, you have the marriage of both audience engagement and scale, along with outcome-driven AI. I think this type of strategic pivot into performance is going to yield major dividends for Taboola and its clients,” says Justin Chase, EVP, media at Eversana.