MIAMI – As advertisers search for more measurable returns in an increasingly volatile economic landscape, Taboola CEO Adam Singolda believes the digital ad industry is at a pivotal inflection point—one defined by the convergence of AI, performance marketing, and a renewed focus on the open web.
“There’s a bunch of things that are happening maybe at the same time,” Singolda said in this interview at the Possible conference. “But over the last three or four years — with the pandemic, a recession, and this volatility in the market — there’s this desire by both advertisers and agencies to make sure that the money they spend gets a return on ad spend.”
Shift away from saturated channels
While search and social media have long been the go-to platforms for performance advertising, Singolda argued those channels are now oversaturated.
“They all buy search and social,” he said. “However, the problem is those are fairly mature businesses…there’s not much more they can give them.”
That saturation has created a new opportunity for open web platforms like Taboola, which offers content recommendations across thousands of publisher sites. But fragmentation remains a challenge.
“From the advertiser point of view, they have to know a new dashboard, a new account management team, maybe not enough scale, different ways of doing things,” Singolda explained.
To address this, Taboola launched Realize, a product aimed at capturing the performance budgets currently locked in social platforms.
“We estimate there’s about $30 billion of budgets on social that advertisers are getting diminishing returns [from],” he said. “That should leave social and go to publisher sites, go to the open web.”
Why the open web matters
Beyond business strategy, Singolda made a passionate case for the societal importance of open web journalism.
“The open web…has this curiosity graph that consumers go to learn things that have some editorial value behind them,” he said. “God help us if our children will make decisions based on social media.”
He pointed to the open web as the natural home for high-value content in science, news, and technology — and an essential counterbalance to algorithm-driven entertainment.
Bringing AI to life across the internet
Artificial intelligence plays a central role in Taboola’s future, internally and externally. “AI is now literally in every part of our business,” Singolda said. From automating ad creative production to optimizing campaign performance in real-time, AI underpins Taboola’s operations at scale.
“One in four ads now takes advantage of our GenAI creative engine,” he said, highlighting the time-saving benefits for marketers. “But by far the biggest investment we make as relates to AI is on the matchmaking.”
With Taboola reaching more than 600 million people a day across global publishers like USA Today, Le Figaro, NBC News and Apple News, the company’s real-time recommendation engine has to process tens of billions of ad impressions daily.
“It’s a very complicated task,” he said. “We’re spending tens of millions of dollars on servers…making mistakes, fixing things, iterating.”
Big Tech partnerships and the rise of Taboola News
Singolda also announced a major partnership with Samsung that will integrate Taboola News into devices across international markets.
“When you buy a device…you can have a news experience that is personalized for you,” he said. “We want to be a source of traffic to quality journalism.”
Performance-driven future of advertising
As uncertainty continues to define the global economy, Singolda believes advertisers will double down on performance marketing.
“TV ads are good…but there’s a trend in the industry to say: Show me that money was well spent so you can do it again,” Singolda said.
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With giants like Amazon, Netflix and Uber moving deeper into advertising, Singolda sees the entire Fortune 500 refocusing on performance.
“Advertising is the new pink,” he quipped. “I think the performance advertising piece of it…will become the vast majority over time.”
Final thoughts: Growing the pie and lifting all boats
Singolda ended with a hopeful vision for the open web’s next chapter. “AI will grow the pie,” he said. “And the revenue per user should be bigger than it is now.”
With innovation, personalization and better monetization, he believes the open web can finally stand toe-to-toe with its walled-garden rivals.
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