One of the more interesting ad tech deals last year was Taboola’s acquisition of ConvertMedia, a provider of outstream video solutions. Taboola are one of the companies who have dominated real estate at the bottom of publisher pages and their content recommendation engine helps publishers monetise by both driving additional views on their own inventory and by providing outbound links to external sites. But thus far they haven’t had a video product, but video is now set to play a key role in a newly released product.
Earlier today Taboola launched the Taboola Feed – a continuous-scrolling feed that publishers can use to provide a Facebook-style experience. Users will be able to scroll infinitely after reading an article to discover content, in-feed videos, products and app downloads. Taboola have also announced that the New York Daily News is the first publisher partner to test and implement Taboola Feed on its mobile and desktop pages. Since employing the Taboola Feed on its pages last month, New York Daily News say they have seen an uplift in revenue of 26 percent, and engagement of 40 percent on mobile.
“User behavior evolves as digital environments evolve. Social media platforms have accustomed readers to the behavior of continuous-scrolling,” said Grant Whitmore, Executive Vice President, Digital, at New York Daily News. “The Taboola Feed mirrors that experience and brings an engaging environment to each article page that was previously only available on social media.”
Taboola say they launched the technology to address content consumption that people have developed whilst using social media. Here’s how it works:
The feed will surface ‘cards’ featuring content and formats, and the publisher will be able to decide which cards should be organic (recirculating their own editorial content) and which cards should be sponsored (paid by a marketer, sponsored content, in-feed video, products, apps, etc).
