On March 26, Taboola held its 2025 Investor Day at the Nasdaq offices in Times Square, with a packed room of sell-side analysts and investors in attendance. During the event, Taboola speakers and moderators discussed a wide range of topics, including the company’s product strategy and vision for Realize, its new advertising platform that powers performance beyond search and social. Additionally, publisher and advertiser partners participated in panels led by Taboola, sharing their first-hand experiences with the company, discussing industry priorities, and highlighting the benefits they’re already seeing from Realize.
Taboola’s Advertising Strategy Overview and Plan to Fight for Publishers and Advertisers
Adam Singolda kicked off the day by sharing the company’s vision and strategy. He ran through Taboola’s beginning days, specializing in native advertising, and how the company is shifting towards performance advertising—describing this moment as Taboola’s “Amazon moment.”
Singolda introduced Realize and highlighted a $55 billion opportunity in performance advertising and pointed to a $30 billion social advertising market resulting in diminishing returns, suggesting potential for aggregating and supplementing publishers. Singolda also emphasized the need for a reliable alternative to social networks using first-party data and AI algorithms. He mentioned the decline in programmatic display revenue for publishers due to shifts in advertising budgets towards large companies’ owned sites, stressing the need for collaboration to drive performance budgets and programmatic revenue. Singolda predicted the evolution of the open web and the rise of utility apps as publishers, underscoring the importance of data and distribution, and highlighting new advertising opportunities as more companies become publishers seeking to monetize their platforms.
Digging Into Taboola’s Advertising Strategy for Performance and Diving Into the State of Social Advertising
Next was a deeper dive into the performance ad market. Tom Inbal began by discussing the $700 billion spent on digital advertising last year, noting that performance advertising generated $2 trillion in revenue. He emphasized the need to diversify strategies beyond search and social advertising, focusing on display and video formats within the $25 billion market.
Inbal compared Taboola’s market opportunity to the journey of coffee: from Starbucks, to at-home coffee, to better at-home coffee. He suggested Taboola is entering the “better at-home coffee” stage as it shifts towards performance advertising.
Lastly, Inbal gave an overview of a recent study, which showed that nearly 75% of advertisers are experiencing diminishing returns on social media ad spend, resulting in around $30 billion of budget spent. He suggested that Taboola can help with the $7-10 billion of the $30 billion of spend experiencing diminishing returns.
Publisher Perspectives on the Realize Platform and Beyond
Evangeline McDermott moderated a panel with publishers Gannett, Advance Local, and The Weather Company, where they spoke about their long-term partnerships with Taboola and early successes with Taboola’s Realize platform. Speakers also attributed success to Taboola News, which delivers relevant content from Taboola’s premium publisher partners into mobile phones and other user touchpoints, as well as Homepage For You, an AI-powered personalization tool that helps publishers personalize sections of their homepages.
The conversation emphasized the importance of modernization and continuous improvement in publisher partnerships, making “friends with publishers,” which can help drive traffic to newsrooms, as well as the potential of the Realize platform to drive additional revenue through performance-based advertising.
Advertiser Perspectives on Performance Advertising and More
Nadav Perry sat down with Babbel, QuinStreet, Eversana, and Quigley-Simpson to discuss the potential of AI in revolutionizing performance advertising, particularly in media analysis and decision-making. The conversation, covering advertising for both big and small companies across various industries including pharma and healthcare, education, and finance, highlighted AI’s role in providing agility and efficiency in campaigns, with an emphasis on audience quality and targeting to drive growth. Speakers discussed the importance of balancing performance and awareness in campaigns, focusing on smarter algorithms and AI to enhance audience engagement and improve outcomes. They also explored AI’s potential to drive scalability, innovation, and more effective performance advertising.
Realize Puts Advertisers and Publishers in Good Hands
Taboola’s 2025 Investor Day event highlighted its vision for the future, positioning Realize as a pivotal player in performance advertising that will benefit both advertisers and publishers in the long run. As advertisers expand into digital channels beyond social media, Realize offers a promising solution to address diminishing returns and unlock new revenue streams.
From firsthand conversations with both publishers and advertisers, it’s clear that innovation and adaptability are crucial in today’s market. By leveraging AI and first-party data, Taboola is ready to take performance advertising to the next level.
