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Taboola

Taboola

Overview

What is Taboola?

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,…

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Taboola has become an essential tool for digital marketers looking to expand their reach and connect with a wider audience. Through …
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Traffic, traffic, traffic.

7 out of 10
February 13, 2018
Taboola is a native advertising platform that I've used to reach top of funnel traffic effectively and on the cheap. You can expect to pay …
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Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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Campaigns

$10.00

Cloud
Starting Price Per Day

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos

Investor Day 2022: Newsroom Demo

YouTube
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Product Details

What is Taboola?

Taboola is a cloud-based, AI-driven native advertising platform — from the global company of the same name headquartered in New York City — known for publishing "recommended" content in a variety of popularly visited news sites and digital properties. Taboola is partnered with many publishers such as TIME, NBC, Business Insider, Yahoo, USA Today, CBS News, MSN, The Independent and BBC Global News. Taboola is used by big brand advertisers, performance marketers, affiliate marketers and others for its massive global reach and ability to drive conversions.

Taboola Video

Demo - Taboola Feed

Taboola Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

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.).

Meta Business Suite, Google Ads, and Outbrain are common alternatives for Taboola.

Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 2.9.

The most common users of Taboola are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(28)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Taboola has become an essential tool for digital marketers looking to expand their reach and connect with a wider audience. Through running display native campaigns, users have been able to target and engage users who may not have otherwise been exposed to their ads. This has proven particularly useful for social media teams who are keen on managing social media accounts and utilizing various digital marketing tools to maximize their reach. By leveraging Taboola, they have successfully expanded their readership and achieved greater visibility.

One of the strengths of Taboola lies in its ability to curate news articles for promotion across its platform. This feature enables marketers to effectively drive top-of-funnel traffic at cost-effective CPM rates, often below $1. Additionally, retargeting users on Taboola's platform can be done with CPM rates ranging between $1-3. The self-serve platform is complemented by responsive and well-trained support from Taboola, ensuring that marketers receive the assistance they need to optimize their campaigns.

The platform also tackles the challenge of addressing 2nd-tier quality web traffic by providing valuable insights into ad clickers' demographics. This information allows marketers to refine their targeting strategies and ensure that their content is reaching the most relevant audience. Moreover, Taboola serves as a recommendation tool that helps create high-quality and engaging content with a global reach. Through this functionality, it has proven itself as a revenue driver on websites, benefiting marketing and client programs departments alike.

With its ability to drive users with similar interests to content, Taboola has emerged as an effective means of increasing engagement. Marketing and search teams have utilized the platform to promote specific content and drive traffic to websites successfully. Additionally, Taboola's collaboration with partners allows for personalized recommendations based on user interests and reading habits, further enhancing the user experience.

Furthermore, the insights provided by trends.taboola.com offer valuable information not only for Taboola users but also for other networks. Marketers can gain valuable industry insights and trends that can inform their strategies beyond the Taboola platform.

In summary, Taboola offers a range of powerful use cases for marketers, enabling them to expand their reach, curate content, target specific audiences, and drive engagement. The platform's effectiveness, combined with its user-friendly interface and responsive support, has made it an indispensable tool in the digital marketing landscape.

Easy-to-use Interface: Many users have praised Taboola for its easy-to-use interface, stating that it is intuitive and simple to navigate. With this user-friendly design, managing campaigns becomes a seamless process, allowing users to easily access the features they need.

Great Customer Service: Several reviewers have expressed their appreciation for the excellent customer service provided by Taboola. Users have reported that the account representatives are responsive and quick to assist with any questions or issues that arise. This level of support helps users feel valued and supported as they navigate the platform.

Custom Targeting Feature: The custom targeting feature offered by Taboola has received positive feedback from numerous customers. This functionality enables users to reach their specific target audience effectively, ensuring their ads are shown to top-of-funnel traffic. By providing this capability, Taboola empowers marketers with the tools needed to optimize campaign performance and achieve desired results.

Difficulty in Excluding Irrelevant Sites: Some users have expressed frustration with the lack of an easy way to exclude irrelevant sites and bid on specific sites only. This has hindered their ability to effectively target their desired audience and optimize their campaigns.

Uneven Performance Across Campaigns: Multiple reviewers have reported experiencing uneven performance across campaigns, with only a few news articles performing well and consuming a large portion of the budget. This inconsistency has made it challenging for users to achieve consistent results and allocate their resources effectively.

Lack of Performance Whitelisting: Several users have mentioned the absence of performance whitelisting as a drawback. Without this feature, it becomes difficult for them to identify the best traffic sources and optimize their campaigns accordingly.

Based on user reviews, the following recommendations have been made for Taboola:

Users recommend reaching out to an account representative at the beginning to obtain a whitelist of placements.

They also suggest diversifying ad providers and not relying solely on Taboola.

Users advise reviewing the pricing structure to ensure it aligns with the brand's budget and goals.

It is important to keep the customer first and prioritize their needs.

Some users believe that the quality of support and integration for new enterprise customers can be improved.

Users recommend spending time filtering placements to achieve the desired quality of traffic.

Unique tracking parameters should be used for each headline/image combination.

Staying in touch with Taboola account managers and support people is recommended, along with providing feedback.

Users have had different experiences with Taboola, with some strongly advising against using it, while others describe their partnership as responsive and good.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-9 of 9)
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Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We're using Taboola to run native advertisements to generate website traffic and lead generation. I am the sole media buyer for our account but I work with another co-worker to maintain the account and the relationship with our Taboola account representative. They address 2nd-tier quality web traffic and provide some insights into who's clicking on our ads.
  • It's easy to set up campaigns.
  • The interface isn't too difficult to navigate.
  • Account Reps are quick to answer questions.
  • Many options for targeting
  • Easy pixel implementation
  • Helpful UTM tracking macros
  • Supports look-alike audiences
  • The UI is clunky navigating between managing campaigns and viewing performance.
  • The lack of performance whitelisting makes it difficult to zero-in on the best traffic.
  • Lack of ability to block websites in bulk
  • Creative approval is arbitrary and vague when denied.
  • Creative approval is slow.
  • I still get traffic outside of the US even after setting up a campaign only in the US.
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.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using Taboola to drive curation of new articles and generate more traffic on the site. Taboola is one of our partners whom we send data and they provide recommendation to the user based on Article they are reading or they are interested in. We using their services across entire site.
  • Advertise
  • Recommendation
  • Curation
  • Customer interest
  • Defensive check on their API
  • API response time
  • Look and feel of their curation module
Well:
It provided good recommendation as curation function on the site to the customer and solves User needs on interested topic they want to read. It is also good to generate traffic on the site by advertising.
Less:
Needs to improve on lazy loading and looks and feel of their curation module design.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Taboola is used by our SEM team to run display/native campaigns to target a wider audience. It helps us target users that we otherwise would not be able to show ads.
  • Custom targeting
  • Remarketing
  • Easy to use user interface
  • Great customer service
  • 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.
I think Taboola is great for either lead gen or for shopping product sites. I would definitely have a full-time person running the campaigns. If not managed properly, things can get out of hand with costs going up and conversion rates dropping.
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I rarely leave reviews, but using Taboola has been a horrible experience for me. I initially signed up for their trial, and suddenly I wasn't able to log in. I created a campaign with a daily budget of 100USD, but since I wasn't able to log in, I couldn't check up on the campaign, or pause it. I reached out to the customer support several times, who of course waited 10 days with replying to my email. They told me to log in and pause it myself, but since this wasn't possible, I emailed them again and asked them to pause it for me. After countless days of back-and-forth emailing with their support team, I was able to log in and see that I had been spending hundreds of USD on a campaign with only a few clicks.

I will not recommend using Taboola to anyone.
I cannot imagine any scenario where Taboola is well suited.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Taboola as a recommendation tool, as it was originally intended. We strive to create high-quality content that engages our readers, and Taboola has an ever-growing reach all over the world. The invaluable insight that trends.taboola.com provides can be useful for other networks as well. It provides a glimpse into what humans currently like to click on.
  • 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.
  • Account managers -- some of them underestimate the effort that goes into creating the creatives and the landing pages, and suggest abandoning them instead of helping (with a simple instruction of a few words) to make them acceptable.
  • Strict content policies and human preferences being mixed up. Inconsistency sometimes sneaks into the review process.
  • Deleting campaigns created in error -- with a bin function even! That would be great.
I recommend you read their extensive policy, and decide if their conditions and your needs match. I cannot give specific scenarios, as Taboola is mainly what you make of it. It all depends on what you want to show and to whom. The targeting isn't nearly as precise as on Google's or Facebook's network, so if you want to sell dog coats to local chihuahua owners, you probably won't love Taboola, but you might!
Devina Heriyanto | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Taboola is used by my company's social media team -- which handles all social media accounts and other digital marketing tools needed to reach out more readers. As a member of the social media team, I am currently responsible for managing Taboola for the company. My responsibility ranges from targeting the audience to curating the news articles that we want to promote across Taboola's platform.
  • Taboola's network is made up of high-quality websites that are similar to our own. This means that we can attract high-quality readers and that the impressions are not wasted on just any other internet user.
  • The pricing is great. There are two bidding systems: smart and fixed bidding so that you can choose according to your need and budget, of course.
  • Related to the first point: since the users are high-quality, they spend more time on your website and end up reading more pages. When you consider this, Taboola's pricing is way cheaper than other similar platforms.
  • Easy to use dashboard. The dashboard puts everything you need to know upfront, from CPC, spending, and results.
  • Uneven performance across one campaign. I usually curate 10 to 15 news articles to be promoted in Taboola, and usually, only two or three perform really well and eat up a huge piece of the budget. Sometimes you have to separate contents into different campaigns so that you'll have more even performance.
  • Since Taboola caters to all kind of websites, it is sometimes hard for news media to compete and follow their content best practice. It takes a while to have a grasp on what kind of contents perform well on Taboola.
  • Also, being a news website, we have varying contents including that which is related to pornography or violence. Sometimes Taboola doesn't allow us to promote these kinds of contents, even though the materials do not promote pornography or violence.
Taboola is well suited when you want to reach out new audience and you have a grasp on what kind of audience you want. Taboola allows you to choose where your promoted contents will be displayed and where they should not (blacklist and whitelist), hence you have the ability to target an audience from similar websites.

I personally use Taboola to promote contents that have longer shelf-life, because it takes a while for a content to perform on Taboola. If you're on tight schedule, you might want to tinker your spending setting on each campaign.
Kelly Saux | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Taboola is a native advertising platform that I've used to reach top of funnel traffic effectively and on the cheap. You can expect to pay CPM rates below $1 and if you retarget those users via their platform, the CPM rates are usually between $1-$3. It is pretty much a self-serve platform, but I found the Taboola support responsive and well trained.
  • Target top of funnel traffic on the cheap.
  • Transparency when it comes to placements, rates, etc.
  • Ability to exclude underperforming segements, placements, devices, etc.
  • Introduce view-trough and click-through reporting
Generating top of funnel traffic. If premium site targeting is your main goal, this may not be the best platform to reach your goals. You will be able to reach some big publishers (e.g., MSN, Huffington Post, Bloomberg), but a lot of traffic comes from smaller publishers. You have the ability to bid up on specific publishers and/or block specific publishers from your campaigns.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Taboola in the marketing and client programs department. We also use Taboola as a revenue driver on our site. The main use for us is as a marketing tool to drive users with similar interests to our content. Since the users are already reading similar content the engagement is pretty high.
  • Platform is very user friendly.
  • Reports are easy to generate.
  • Engagement from users is high.
  • I have noticed that customer support has decreased in the past year as Taboola has grown. It sometimes takes four days or more for a campaign to be approved. It used to be immediate and always within 24 hours.
  • Credit card billing with high fees is now mandatory. If a company is going to make credit card billing mandatory don't charge fees. Our expense has increased by around 2.5% which I need to always keep in mind when comparing the CPC of campaigns on competing platforms.
  • Our customer support rep used to give us a lot of help with optimization. We stopped getting support from her over eight months ago and we recently got an email that we now have to contact support@taboola.com even though our spend had almost doubled! However, we just were informed that we will now have a new rep, hopefully we will get more support now. When I say support I mean a rep that contacts us with optimization ideas.
It really varies depending on the content we upload to taboola. Some campaigns are less expensive than the competition and some are more [expensive], but have the same level of engagement. You can not know unless you try your content with each platform. The Taboola widget on our site is very effective not only for driving revenue but showing our users other articles from our site.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Taboola is used to increase and promote specific content and bring traffic to websites. This tool is used by the search and content marketing teams.
  • Taboola ads blend in with the sites they are shown on so users are more likely to click to the content.
  • I find the interface somewhat difficult to navigate.
  • You are unable to drill down to the article level to view data.
Taboola is a great tool to promote specific content in a native ad.
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