Taboola founder and CEO Adam Singolda confirmed that the company has secured a major deal with Apple to manage native advertising within the Apple News and Apple Stocks apps. This agreement signifies a significant boost for Taboola, which reported over $1.4 billion in annual revenue in 2023.
Taboola's extensive effort to earn Apple's trust involved a multi-year process across various teams and stakeholders. The deal also highlights Apple's recognition that expanding its ad business necessitates a robust sales operation, one that it opted to outsource rather than develop internally.
According to eMarketer, Apple's global ad revenues are expected to reach $10.34 billion this year. Although Apple hasn't disclosed the exact number of app users, it reported more than 1 billion subscriptions to its paid services, including Apple News and Apple Stocks, last year.
As an authorized ad reseller for Apple News and Apple Stocks, Taboola will manage native advertising placements within these apps across all available markets, including the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia. Both apps are pre-installed on every iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Taboola will sell ads and articles for selected publishers within the primary feeds of these apps.
Taboola is known for its chumbox ads at the bottom of online news stories. However, its large scale, global reach, and direct relationships with publishers and advertisers make it an ideal partner for Apple. Taboola collaborates with over 9,000 publishing partners and serves more than 18,000 advertisers globally. These direct client relationships allow Taboola's team of over 100 ad moderators to exercise significant control over which advertisers can sell through Apple apps. This quality control is similar to Taboola's practices on the open web, including its Taboola Select program, which offers large advertisers inventory from a curated set of premium publishers.
This partnership with Apple follows a similar exclusive deal Apple had with NBCUniversal to sell ads for Apple News and Apple Stocks in the U.S. and U.K. However, NBCU is not an authorized reseller in Australia and Canada.
As the advertising industry nears $1 trillion in global spending, partnerships like these are becoming more common. Last year, Taboola secured a 30-year native advertising deal with Yahoo. Yahoo also recently announced a partnership with Kroger for retail media network ads. Other notable collaborations include Instacart and YouTube for shoppable ads, Uber and T-Mobile's ad unit, and CNET and Best Buy.
More companies with direct consumer relationships, such as banks, retailers, and delivery services, are building advertising businesses to make their services more affordable and accessible. Singolda aims to extend Taboola's advertising sales solutions to more large companies lacking the necessary tech and sales expertise, a concept he describes as "advertising in a box."