Israeli company Taboola , which operates a leading content-recommendation platform, is acquiring Perfect Market, in order to broaden its portfolio and its products, and to offer content sites an additional, combined revenue engine. This is Taboola’s first acquisition. Taboola did not disclose financial details of the deal, but the fact that California-based Perfect Market has raised $30 million to date, including an investment by Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune owner Tribune Company, indicates that the deal was in the tens of millions of dollars, at least.
Perfect Market has 20 employees, and the company’s products allow leading content providers to increase their revenue by optimizing text ads that appear on their websites. Thus, the company’s product allows for products and services that are relevant to the user to be promoted, and for content to be presented to the user based on performance.
With the joining of the two companies, a new advertising product will be launched, called Taboola-X. According to Taboola CEO Adam Singolda, the product will allow content websites to receive a package that includes video, text, product and service recommendations. “The idea is to show you relevant content or products automatically, based on context,” explains Singolda. This advertising network will compete with existing advertising platforms. Taboola will compete with companies such as Google, however, Google will also partner with Taboola to buy ads on the new advertising network. The automated advertising market, in which the combined programmatic advertising product will operate, is expected to generate $10 million this year in the US alone.
“Perfect Market has put together an impressive team as well as created superior programmatic technology, and together, we’ve teamed up to provide publishers with innovative solutions to help streamline all content and revenue efforts. With Taboola-X and the introduction of full page monetization opportunities, publishers will be able to drive even stronger monetization results across all platforms with Taboola, and drive an exciting ROI back to content and journalism,” said Singolda.
Taboola’s decision to carry out the deal and to enter another area of advertising in the world of content websites is part of the company’s gradual development, as Singolda explained today in a post he uploaded to the company’s blog: “Seven years ago, we started Taboola, believing that there would be times when we will be overwhelmed with information. Our vision was and remains to build a new category, side by side to search, called Discovery. Instead of people looking for information, have information look for people.
“Predicting what people may like and never knew existed is no easy task. We spent the first 4.5 years focusing just on cracking the code on how to recommend videos. Then, leveraging the mathematical innovation we developed to recommend videos, we spent the past 2.5 years expanding into articles and slideshows, now serving 150 billion recommendations to 400 million unique users every month.”
Taboola also announced that its business is growing, and that its annual turnover was $250 million, prior to the acquisition of Perfect Market. Taboola was chosen by “Globes” last year as one of the most promising companies. At the time, its annual revenue was estimated at $100 million. Prior to the most recent acquisition, the company had 170 employees, 80 of them in Israel. Taboola has raised $40 million since its founding.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on August 4, 2014
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