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Taboola Reviews and Ratings

Rating: 8.6 out of 10
Score
8.6 out of 10

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Taboola are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

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.

Reviews

10 Reviews

Viewers become buyers.

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We write a lot of self-help content, but the idea is to convert interested readers into paying customers, and the targeting of this content with Taboola is the key to that conversion.

Pros

  • Simple user interface.
  • AI-powered, which is a good thing now.
  • Reliable customer service.

Cons

  • Conversion metrics can be a bit janky.
  • Cannot bulk block websites.
  • Campaign management and viewing metrics, and performance can be a bit clunky.

Likelihood to Recommend

Maybe have a very clear idea of how your content

will drive paying customers, as you need to be sharp on your focus and let Taboola do the heavy tech lifting. In other words, know your audience and how likely they are to be a market for your service.

Good for Recommendation and Curation To get More Monetization

Rating: 7 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

  • Advertise
  • Recommendation
  • Curation
  • Customer interest

Cons

  • Defensive check on their API
  • API response time
  • Look and feel of their curation module

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

Vetted Review
Taboola
5 years of experience

Not impressive, but it gets the job done for generating second-tier traffic.

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

  • 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

Cons

  • 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.

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

Vetted Review
Taboola
1 year of experience

Terrible company with horrible customer service

Rating: 1 out of 10

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Cons

  • Terrible customer service.
  • Terrible dashboard.
  • Horrible ad performance.

Likelihood to Recommend

I cannot imagine any scenario where Taboola is well suited.

Vetted Review
Taboola
1 year of experience

Taboola Is Great For Targeting A Wider Audience & Getting Results

Rating: 7 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

  • Custom targeting
  • Remarketing
  • Easy to use user interface
  • Great customer service

Cons

  • 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.

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

No taboo about Taboola -- except for confidential info of course!

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

  • 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.

Cons

  • 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.

Likelihood to Recommend

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!

Vetted Review
Taboola
1 year of experience

Taboola: Great network, great users

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

  • 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.

Cons

  • 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.

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

Traffic, traffic, traffic.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

  • Target top of funnel traffic on the cheap.
  • Transparency when it comes to placements, rates, etc.
  • Ability to exclude underperforming segements, placements, devices, etc.

Cons

  • Introduce view-trough and click-through reporting

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

Driving Onsite Users with Taboola

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

  • Platform is very user friendly.
  • Reports are easy to generate.
  • Engagement from users is high.

Cons

  • 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.

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

Vetted Review
Taboola
2 years of experience

Taboola Works to Promote Content

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

  • Taboola ads blend in with the sites they are shown on so users are more likely to click to the content.

Cons

  • I find the interface somewhat difficult to navigate.
  • You are unable to drill down to the article level to view data.

Likelihood to Recommend

Taboola is a great tool to promote specific content in a native ad.

Vetted Review
Taboola
2 years of experience