Taboola and Outbrain merge to create ‘meaningful advertising competitor’ to Facebook and Google
Content marketing platforms Taboola and Outbrain are set to merge, with the companies saying their combined scale will help them be a more robust competitor to Facebook and Google, giving advertisers more meaningful choice.
Once the transaction is completed, the Outbrain brand will be no more, and Adam Singolda, the founder and CEO of Taboola, will become the leader of the combined entity.
New branding for the combined entity will reflect the merger of the two companies
Yaron Galai, co-founder and co-CEO of Outbrain, will remain with the business for 12 months to help with its transition.
An inevitable development. Both companies offering ever bigger (guaranteed) revenues to publishers to gain market shares = ever-smaller margins for both, not to mention more and more dubious ads to try and prop up revenue. Likely outcome is lower revenues for publishers, but (hopefully) better quality ads. And, as with all mergers or acquisitons, expect to see some reasonably signficiant attrition/rationalisation of staff. Finally, although this is being officially described as a merger it is , of course, an aquisition of Outbrain by Taboola. Hence the new company will be called Taboola and be headed by the Taboola CEO.
I think Benedict Evans put it best
Taboola bought Outbrain – these are the two companies that put piles of horrible ads at the bottom of web pages. This is like two STDs merging. But, they say they’ll do $2bn of gross revenue next year, which shows you how lucrative this stuff is and how hard it is for even reputable publishers to resist.