BY Richard Summerfield
Yahoo Inc has agreed to acquire a near 25 percent stake in advertising tech firm Taboola Inc, becoming the company’s largest shareholder in the process.
As part of the deal, the companies have agreed to a 30-year, exclusive commercial agreement which will see Taboola exclusively power native advertising across all of Yahoo’s digital properties and will be available to buy through the Yahoo demand side platform (DSP), establishing Taboola as a leading native advertising offering for advertisers, publishers and merchants on the open web. In exchange, Yahoo will take a 24.99 percent stake in the company which provides content recommendation widgets on popular news websites. Yahoo will also get a seat on Taboola’s board of directors. Both companies expect to generate $1bn in annual revenue from this newly formed partnership if integrations go well.
Yahoo currently reaches nearly 900 million monthly active users, Taboola partners with 9000 publishers and reaches 500 million users every day.
“Yahoo is an internet pioneer, representing one of the largest, most trusted and most sophisticated publishers in the world,” said Adam Singolda, founder and chief executive of Taboola. “Everywhere I look, I see a rocket ship growth opportunity for both of us – native, eCommerce, Video, header bidding (display) and more. This win-win partnership will meaningfully accelerate our growth flywheel, expanding our reach to more users on the open web with high-intent traffic to provide world-class solutions for advertisers, publishers, merchants and users in a cookie-less world.
“For publishers in the open web, we’ll be able to invest even more in driving revenue, engagement and audience growth moving forward, empowering performance, brand advertisers, merchants as well as agencies with an immense reach to users in a premium, trusted environment,” he continued. “This partnership is a big step toward achieving our goal of generating $1 billion in ex-TAC by 2025.”
“Partnering with Taboola enables Yahoo to further enhance the contextual and native offerings within our unified advertising stack,” said Jim Lanzone, chief executive of Yahoo. “The partnership also allows Yahoo and Taboola to continue to differentiate in market, improving user, advertiser and publisher experiences across properties, while benefiting from the long-term tailwinds in digital native advertising. Together with Taboola, we will maximize reach and campaign performance for advertisers, enhance monetization opportunities for publishers, and drive improved, privacy-forward experiences for users. As we continue to build the next era of Yahoo, we are thrilled to have strong partners by our side.”
News: Yahoo to buy minority stake in Taboola in advertising deal