AdRoll & Taboola ink programmatic native tie-up
Adtech outfit AdRoll and Taboola have today (August 9) announced a partnership that will offer the former’s clients access to native advertising inventory on the latter’s ad exchange, which includes premium publishers such as Chicago Tribune, Huffington Post and USA Today.
The tie-up with AdRoll is the latest in a groundswell of moves in the programmatic native sector / IAB UK
The deal will see Taboola, which claims to have an audience in excess of one billion, become available to AdRoll’s 35,000 advertisers, with the partnership the latest in a line of automation developments in the native advertising business.
Adam Singolda, Taboola, chief executive, described the deal as “exciting,” adding that it would offer advertisers a brand safe environment where they can trade placements programmatically.
Meanwhile, Greg Fulton, AdRoll, vice president of product, said the partnership would enable its network of advertisers to attract new customers as well as retain their existing ones.
Taboola integrates with publisher websites to reroute readers through sponsored stories, and with native advertising spend set to top $22bn in the US alone this year, accounting for over 50% of all display ad spend, according to eMarketer, is among the most prominent inventory sources on the web.
The increase in the programmatic native sector is due in-part to the increase in mobile audiences, meaning publishers must seek inventory more suited to such consumption patterns, namely formats that are less-disruptive than traditional display ads.
Rival native advertising outfits Sharethrough and Outbrain have made their own respective moves to accommodate the trend towards automation in recent months, with the former announcing a tie-up with Yahoo-owned demand-side platform (DSP) BrightRoll. In addition, Outbrain recently announced its purchase of DSP Zemanta as part of its ambition to offer an “end-to-end native marketplace.” This was the second such deal cut by the outfit this year, which has previously announced tie-up with AppNexus to launch Outbrain Programmatic Access.
Separately, Google's publisher-focused network AdSense adding native ad formats earlier in the year, a move described as a "tipping point" by Nudge chief executive Ben Young.
Commenting on the same development, Kevin Flood, chief executive of native advertising platform PowerLinks, added: “The fact that Google entered the native ad market is an incredible testament to the level of performance native advertising can deliver for a brand as well as the level of engagement it garners from the average human being reading the web."