DailyMail.com is investing $3 million in Israeli content recommendation company Taboola. The companies plan to develop advertising products together, including several that are geared toward improving the performance of sponsor-produced content, the "Wall Street Journal" reports.
Daily Mail North America CEO Jon Steinberg said the investment is aimed at ensuring that the two companies will deepen their partnership together, particularly as DailyMail.com is stepping up its focus on native advertising and video. Publishers use Taboola and its major competitor Outbrain (also Israeli) to help readers find more stories they "might like to read." Consequently, surfers view sets of links near the bottom of a website under a headline such as “Other Stories You Might Like.”
For DailyMail.com, Taboola’s technology has proven particularly useful in driving readers to advertiser-produced content, which is often more lucrative for the company than selling display ads. Steinberg told the "Wall Street Journal" he wants to work with Taboola to build out more products and functionality designed at driving more visitors to sponsored content.
“This investment lets us formalize the relationship a bit more,” he said. “I talked to Taboola at one point about some sort of exclusivity deal, which was a non-starter. So this money is a kind of handshake that we think won’t move needle for them or us [immediately] but over time will deliver an economic return.”
Taboola CEO Adam Singolda said the company has already helped promote over 3 million pieces of sponsored content to date.
Taboola raised $117 million in February and recently drew a big investment from China's Baidu.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on June 4, 2015
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