Google Ads vs. Taboola

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Google Ads
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Google Ads (formerly AdWords) is Google's pay-per-click online advertising program. With Google Ads users set their budget and choose where their ads appear in search listings, and on partner websites. Google Ads uses cost-per-click (CPC) bidding.N/A
Taboola
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
Taboola is a native advertising platform from the company of the same name in New York for publishing "recommended" content in a variety of popularly visited news sites and spaces. Taboola is partnered with many publishers (the Atlantic, Tribune, MailOnline, Business Insider, etc.).
$10
Starting Price Per Day
Pricing
Google AdsTaboola
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Campaigns
$10.00
Starting Price Per Day
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google AdsTaboola
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Google AdsTaboola
Considered Both Products
Google Ads
Chose Google Ads
Taboola is a similar tool, they are both on a cost per click metric. While Taboola is more focused on blogs or content distribution AdWords is great for getting a person to your website to take an action, check out, or sign up for an email.
Taboola
Chose Taboola
Taboola ranks pretty low for us, right next to Criteo and Revcontent, but above Traffic Junky. It's still nowhere as good as the social media platforms or Google. We selected Taboola because we had previously run ads years ago and wanted to see if we could make it profitable …
Chose Taboola
Very large publisher network.
Chose Taboola
Outbrain doesn't charge a fee for automatic credit card billing. Often Outbrain CPC for the same content is cheaper but not always. The Outbrain UX is not as good as Taboola but recent changes had made them better than they used to be. In Outbrain you can not change images or …
Chose Taboola
Taboola and Outbrain are very similar and fairly easy to use to promote content.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
Google AdsTaboola
Small Businesses
Serpstat
Serpstat
Score 9.3 out of 10
Amazon Advertising Sponsored Products
Amazon Advertising Sponsored Products
Score 7.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
WordStream Advisor
WordStream Advisor
Score 7.0 out of 10
Amazon Advertising Sponsored Products
Amazon Advertising Sponsored Products
Score 7.9 out of 10
Enterprises
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Adobe Advertising Cloud
Score 8.8 out of 10
AdSense
AdSense
Score 8.6 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Google AdsTaboola
Likelihood to Recommend
7.1
(115 ratings)
8.0
(9 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.5
(21 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.2
(7 ratings)
5.0
(2 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.9
(8 ratings)
2.9
(5 ratings)
Online Training
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
1.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Google AdsTaboola
Likelihood to Recommend
Google
Clients who are selling products such as dresses, clothes, jewelry, beauty products, etc., generally work well. Also, in some cases, it doesn't fetch a good ROAS for very small business owners. If a client is already doing well in SEO, the probability for it to perform well over Google Ads is always enhanced, and if it doesn't have a good organic reach, Google Ads also suffers.
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Taboola
If you want to have your company advertised on news websites across the United States then Taboola is perfect. If you're looking for clicks and impressions but not so much interested in traffic that is highly engaged and converting often then I'd suggest Taboola as an option to run traffic, too. This is the perfect platform for grey-hat offers and similar ideas. I wouldn't suggest it for running ads on your website due to some strict conditions and the fact that it might not necessarily play nice with traffic coming from Facebook.
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Pros
Google
  • Keyword Research - Google Ads has a handy built in tool that helps determine important keywords to target both for Ads & SEO
  • Intuitive Analytics Dashboad - Google Ads makes it fairly simple to see and analyze important metrics on how your ads are running week after week
  • Intuitive Setup - Google Ads makes it easy to figure out how to run ads with little to no training (although training is highly recommended to run effective ads), as their interface is clean and easy to figure out (unlike competing products).
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Taboola
  • A good value on clicks -- they have visitors for all CPCs!
  • Worldwide reach and relatability -- so many providers use Taboola. It's very easy to reach your audience wherever.
  • High quality -- their policies ensure that only enjoyable, modest content is provided.
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Cons
Google
  • If you don't know what you're doing, it will be a costly mistake. You need to target ads, and it is difficult the first time to do that.
  • There isn't a feature to run an add for a couple set date spans, just hours you want to run them or a single date span.
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Taboola
  • I would like to see an easier way to exclude irrelevant sites that our ads received impressions or clicks on.
  • Being able to bid on specific sites only.
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Likelihood to Renew
Google
I think Google Ads is good for getting your company out there and becoming more visible to potential customers in general. However, for specific product launches, social media advertising might be a better fit. Also, our user base is younger so social media is a better channel for our target audience.
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Taboola
No answers on this topic
Usability
Google
I suspect that Google Ads is not for the novice user. I told my 'Ad Specialist' that I was not the best on computers and apprehensive about my ability to maneuver the website. He told me on more than one occasion that "I work for you...I'm your sherpa...call me any time or send me an email"!
The sales and service representatives for Google Ads are very well trained, though not much integrity. Despite that I told my Google Ad Specialist that my website was incomplete the ad was published live anyway! Beware that the 'talk' is good, but it ain't cheap!
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Taboola
It was pretty straightforward getting an account set up and having an account rep assigned. Compared to some other platforms Taboola is actually rather intuitive when it comes to navigating the user interface. Pixel implementation was easy and we didn't have any discrepancies tracking conversions. Also the ability to target LALs was very useful and semi-straightforward to upload.
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Support Rating
Google
We have not yet had an account rep who hasn't tried to bully me or other employees to raise our budgets. At the same time, several years ago, one attempted to help refine our ads and ended up changing the ads to be something we were not affiliated with
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Taboola
We have a point of contact in Taboola and he has been really great in supporting our campaign. He helped us set up the initial campaign, answered our questions related to the campaign and even agreed when I asked for a lower CPC. Also, while he tried to encourage us to spend more, he never pushed us to the point that it gets annoying.
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Online Training
Google
Daily use with advanced account structures. Familiarity with reporting/api and complex setups.
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Taboola
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Google
Our agency invests heavily in Google Ads (particularly paid search advertising) on behalf of our clients relative to competitors like Microsoft and Yahoo because Google is the top search engine in the world. Google collects the most search data which enables the company to improve its AI to drive better performance for agencies and brands. As such, our paid search and app install campaigns always start with Google. If a client has a large budget, we will allocate media dollars to other search engines, but in some cases, the entire search budget goes to Google because we see the best returns.
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Taboola
Outbrain doesn't charge a fee for automatic credit card billing. Often Outbrain CPC for the same content is cheaper but not always. The Outbrain UX is not as good as Taboola but recent changes had made them better than they used to be. In Outbrain you can not change images or titles once they are submitted. You also can not clone campaigns which you can do with Taboola
Read full review
Return on Investment
Google
  • Google Ads is often one of our highest ROI channels, especially when you factor in branded ads.
  • Depending on the stage your business is in, search ads can be really powerful from an ROI perspective, providing an investment with a very high spend cap.
  • If you do not manage the campaigns well though, you can quickly spend a lot of money on nothing. So make sure someone is keeping an eye on your account.
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Taboola
  • Taboola campaigns have had positive effects on top of funnel activities and engagement metrics though the traffic is not always as qualified as one would like. You will need to carefully tailor your campaign to squeeze out the most relevant traffic.
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ScreenShots