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Taboola buys video advertising firm ConvertMedia
The acquisition better positions Taboola toward its goals of becoming a webwide powerhouse of video and native ads.
A video ad for a car maker, served via ConvertMedia
Content discovery platform Taboola announced today it is buying outstream video ad firm ConvertMedia.
Although deal terms were not made public, TechCrunch reported that the price was “just under $100 million.” The Israel-based ConvertMedia provides outstream videos that reside inside publishers’ content.
In other words, it is a complement to Taboola’s article-focused content discovery platform, which provides those recommendations at the bottom of pages across the web. Here’s how Taboola’s content recommendations typically appear on a page:
In a blog post about the acquisition, Taboola CEO and founder Adam Singolda wrote that the two companies share a common goal: “to become one of the top video/TV companies in the world.”
“We project that together we’ll stream over one billion videos a day and operate on the same scale as YouTube, Snapchat and Facebook,” he wrote. His New York City-based company says it serves content recommendations to over a billion users monthly.
The newly enlarged company, he said, can also now offer “a full native funnel” to publishers, so that either sponsored content or video can be targeted to “the right user at the right time.”
Standalone or outstream sponsored videos are a lucrative source of revenue for publishers, who are increasingly wary of having their content distribution options limited by Google and Facebook. Singolda has said that he expects more ad spending will move to outstream video.
Meanwhile, Verizon’s new purchase of Yahoo indicates it is positioning itself to become the third biggest content/ad giant, but Taboola has previously partnered with Verizon-owned AOL to expand each company’s content distribution footprint.
Taboola’s new acquisition also builds on its drive to become a bigger player in native ads.
In March, the company launched its native ad server, Taboola Native. It is a free, white-labeled version of its personalization platform for the placement of native ads on publishers’ sites and elsewhere on the web. A bike maker, for instance, might have native content that it wants to place on related sites, which Taboola Native can provide.
Last month, Taboola partnered with AppNexus so that advertisers could buy Taboola native ads programmatically.
