Taboola has also secured approximately $285m in primary and secondary private investment in public equity (PIPE) financing from institutional investors, including funds affiliated with ION and Phoenix Insurance. By the close of the transaction, expected in Q2 2021, Taboola expects to have $600m in cash and cash equivalents on its balance sheet.

Investors involved in the PIPE deal include Fidelity Management & Research Company, Baron Capital Group, funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, Hedosophia, the Federated Hermes Kaufmann Funds, and others. Exor Seeds will also join the PIPE.

“Taboola is embarking on an exciting new journey as a public company, a milestone only made possible by years of trusted partnerships with tens of thousands of digital properties and advertisers who I want to personally thank for believing in Taboola and me for years,” said Adam Singolda, Founder and CEO at Taboola.

“Today, we’re proud of the Taboola team that has made us a ubiquitous presence on the open web and for helping to bring our category-defining technology to market. Aside from our technology and team, Taboola’s success is built on a simple idea – deliver value to our partners in a way where we only grow if our partners grow, in a true win-win manner. This is in stark contrast to ‘walled gardens’ of closed ecosystems that don’t always have their partners’ best interests in mind.”

Taboola, founded in 2007, has plans to invest more than $100m in research and development growth initiatives in areas including artificial intelligence, eCommerce, TV, and device manufacturers.

“As we move forward, there is immense opportunity for Taboola to continue to be the champion for the open web, and those who do business there,” Singolda added. “Over the next 10 years I see Taboola growing to power recommendations for anything, such as eCommerce, games, applications, and I see those recommendations everywhere, on every device. They will live on our connected TVs at home, recommending shows people love, as well as in people’s cars surfacing content they love, podcasts, and text-to-audio from the open web. I’m excited to have Gilad Shany join our board and journey, and I’m pleased to welcome the ION family of investors and supporters.”

The post Taboola goes public through SPAC merger, company valued at $2.6bn appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

Native placements, which are available through the Verzion Media naïve marketplace and DSP, can be run in-feed via the ‘Today’ tab; in-stream, through publisher channels and articles; or between articles when people are swiping between content.

“Apple News is a highly-personalised, curated news experience that shares our commitment to providing quality stories from trusted outlets to large audiences,” said Guru Gowrappan, chief executive officer at Verizon Media, in a blog post. “We believe that such content experiences provide meaningful consumer engagement opportunities for brands with relevant, engaging advertising.”

Verizon claims to have seen its native formats drive 11 times the average engagement of a traditional banner ad in the past year. The Apple deal builds on a multi-year global native agreement the company signed with Microsoft at the beginning of the year, providing marketers with access to – at the time – 20 per cent more native inventory through Oath Ad Platforms with ad formats on Microsoft News/MSN.

The post Verizon inks programmatic native deal with Apple News appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

Upon closure of deal, Adam Singolda, the founder and CEO of Taboola, will take up the role of CEO of the combined company, which will operate under the Taboola name. The branding, however, will reflect the two companies.

“Over the past decade, I’ve admired Outbrain and the innovation that Yaron Galai, Ori Lahav and the rest of the Outbrain team have brought to the marketplace. By joining forces, we’ll be able to create a more robust competitor to Facebook and Google, giving advertisers a more meaningful choice,” said Singolda.

Outbrain’s shareholders will receive shares for 30 per cent of the combined company plus $250m in cash. The board of directors will be made up of current Taboola and Outbrain management.

“We are excited to partner with Taboola. Both Outbrain and Taboola have a shared mission and vision of supporting quality journalism globally and delivering meaningful value to the open web marketplace,” said Yaron Galai, co-founder and co-CEO of Outbrain. “Ori [Lahav] and I had a vision of helping people discover quality content online, and we see a tremendous opportunity in joining forces in order to bring the next wave of innovation to our publisher partners and advertisers. I’m confident that together, we will be able to further our mission, which we call our Lighthouse, of bringing the best, most trustworthy content discovery capabilities to users around the world.”

The post Content discovery platforms Taboola and Outbrain to merge appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

Facebook will be bringing in-app ads to WhatsApp in 2020, according to an announcement at the Facebook Marketing Summit in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Facebook said the full screen ads will pop up within WhatsApp Statuses, much like Instagram Stories. To learn more about the ad, users can swipe up and be redirected via an embedded link.

According to the slides from the summit, Facebook wants users to communicate with business via WhatsApp, with its first new ad feature called “Ads that Click to WhatsApp(FB).” The second ad feature, focused on Instagram is called “Ads that Click to WhatsApp(IG).” The third does not have a confirmed title but involves bringing in-app ads to the status section of WhatsApp and then promoting it on Facebook.

The more than 1.5bn current WhatsApp users are reacting with mixed messages, considering when the app was originally launched, its creators promised an ad-free environment. Since the app was purchased by Facebook in 2014 for $19bn, users have increased dramatically, but Facebook is much keener on advertisements. Before 2014, users were charged a 99-cent yearly membership fee to cover the cost of running WhatsApp. 

Facebook has been under scrutiny for years now, following multiple privacy scandals. Some WhatsApp users are weary of Facebook selling their data to advertisers or exposing their personal information for financial gain.

The post Facebook is bringing in-app ads to WhatsApp appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

Malicious and disruptive ads have decreased year-over-year, but they still account for 1 in every 100 impressions, according to Confiant’s Demand Quality Report for Q1 2019. Confiant, an advertising security company, studied the most common issues for publishers and their platforms, including malicious ads, low-quality ads, and in-banner video ads.

Confiant found that over 20 per cent of user sessions might be impacted by a malicious or disruptive ad. The study also revealed that malicious and disruptive ads are much more common during weekends and holidays, with the highest number of incidents taking place over President’s Day weekend.

Confiant’s report showed that there is a sizable difference in quality between the best performing supply-side platforms (SSPs) and the worst. According to findings, the worst performing SSPs are 67 times as likely to deliver a malicious or disruptive ad. Most incidents found throughout the quarter came from the same under-performing SSPs, with more than 60 per cent of in-banner video ads and 60 per cent of security issues coming from three specific SSPs.

“This is Confiant’s fourth report and the first time we have access to year-over-year data. By sharing this data, publishers and platforms can better understand the health of the ad ecosystem and make decisions accordingly,” said Louis-David Mangin, Confiant’s CEO and co-founder. “Thankfully, malware and other ad quality issues are not intractable problems. With the right systems in place and commitment from the industry, we can tackle these issues.”

The post Malicious and disruptive ads have decreased from last year: report appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

Bunz, a Toronto-based goods and services trading platform, has launched a new business model that will enables brands to pay users for interacting with in-app advertising and sharing data. Bunz users can now earn a growing amount of Bunz’s digital currency, BTZ, each day, which can go towards trading items with other Bunz members or be used at more than 150 Canadian businesses.

The business model, named #PayPeopleNotPlatforms, promises partners that 60 per cent of their marketing spend will go back to Bunz users. The remaining 40 per cent will go towards operational costs and expanding the app’s user-base. Ads will become viewable on the app’s home feed starting April 1, 2019.

“Data will be the most valuable resource in the world and is the currency of the internet today. There is a massive shift happening in terms of how people value their online data, and Bunz is on a mission to change the way data monetization works,” said Sascha Mojtahedi, CEO, Bunz.

“As innovation on features slows, and all platforms start to look the same, the distinction will become value distribution. Which would you rather use – a platform that makes money off your data, or a platform that pays you? We believe in returning the value derived from data to its rightful owner, the people who share it. The Bunz cryptocurrency BTZ is a vehicle to do this.”

In addition to advertising, businesses can now sponsor Bunz in-app surveys, which will also reward users with BTZ. Bunz already releases daily surveys, which attracts around 13,000 regular respondents. Since beta-testing, businesses such as Wealthsimple, Koho and Lyft have sponsored Bunz surveys.

The post Bunz announces new program that will pay users for interacting with in-app ads appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

Native advertising spend is expected to rise by 372 per cent from 2020 to 2025, according to research performed by in-feed native advertising platform, Adyoulike. By combining the overall digital ad spend growth and the native advertising trends per market globally, Adyoulike revealed the native advertising market will jump from $85.83bn in 2020 to a total global value of $402bn by 2025.

According to Adyoulike’s research, the US will lead the global native advertising markets by 2025, increasing from $29.56bn in 2020, to $139.5bn in 2025. The UK, Germany, and France will help Western Europe grow to be worth an estimated $92.37bn by 2025.

In Europe, the UK will be the largest native advertising market, expecting a growth from $5.81bn in 2020 to $27.42bn by 2025. Germany will climb from $4.43bn to $20.90bn by 2025, followed by France, which will increase from $2.03bn in 2020 to $9.58bn by 2025.

Specifically, Adyoulike predicts advertising spend on native display, or infeed native, will consistently increase until 2025. Advertisers are going to spare no expense when it comes to programmatic native ads and the potential use of outstream native video advertising formats.

“We are entering a new phase in native advertisings journey – universal acceptance and global domination. Our research shows major increases in native advertising spend in all continents globally. The value of infeed native advertising formats is now undisputed,” said Julien Verdier, CEO of Adyoulike. “Advertisers are increasingly recognizing the value of the format and the performance for most campaigns backs out, which is why native is predicted to experience significant annual growth rates every year globally up to 2025.”

“Thanks to continued technical innovation, easily traded programmatically, with video and display capabilities, the future is strong for native ads in general. Native advertising will be the number one digital advertising format of the 2020s. Our research and wider market trends back this up. We are excited to share with the market our findings,” said Verdier.

The post The native advertising market will be worth over $400bn by 2025 – report appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

Moments is now home to Carousel, which enables marketers to create an instant carousel storefront featuring their products or tell a story through cards; Panorama, an immersive 360° interactive experience; Dynamic Product Ads, enabling brands to recapture the attention of users who have previously shown interest using a full-screen carousel; and Countdown, which adds a timer to full-screen ads to increase urgency and conversion.

In addition to those existing solutions, Verizon Media has introduced two new features: Touchpoints and Playable.

With Touchpoints, brands can create an instant shoppable catalogue which enables users to learn more about part of an ad by tapping on pins, while Playable enables game developers to launch an instant interactive preview of their game with no install required.

“Our Moments formats allow us to give customers exciting canvases to connect with mobile users, allowing full screen interaction placed in premium content to reach optimum brand and performance goals,” said Stuart Flint, VP EMEA at Verizon Media. “Feedback from our clients has been positive and useful, allowing us to improve our offering with new and exciting features that provide a more immersive experience for consumers.”

Last month, Verizon Media penned a multi-year global native advertising deal with Microsoft. The deal has resulted in marketers being given access to 20 per cent more native inventory through Oath Ad Platforms with ad formats on Microsoft News/MSN.

The post Verizon Media brings native capabilities to its Moments ad format appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

Traditionally, malicious native ads look harmless and all the damage is done once the user has clicked on the advert, attacking at multiple points throughout the redirection chain. In order to address this, AdSecure has introduced a ‘new click option which scans and analyses the entire redirection chain from native widget display to the final ad’s landing page. Doing so is aimed at understanding and identifying what will happen to the user post-click and putting a stop to this.

“The native ad format has proved to be incredibly popular and effective both on social media platforms and more traditional news media sites,” said Mathieu Derval, product manager at AdSecure. “With the exponential growth of native ad placements, criminals are using this format to inflict cybercrime after the end user engages with the native ad. The end user can then fall victim to a redirection hijack that sends them to a malicious, or offensive landing page. AdSecure’s technology ensures that end users, publishers, ad operations teams and ad networks are fully protected with our new click option, taking creative security to the next level.”  

The post AdSecure introduces protection against malicious native ads appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

The new deal, which launches this month, will see marketers gain access to 20 per cent more native inventory through Oath Ad Platforms with ad formats on Microsoft News/MSN. Furthermore, the companies have extended their existing relationship, covering video, display and content marketing solutions across Microsoft properties around the world – including MSN, Outlook and Xbox.

“We help advertisers easily solve their business challenges with our unified ad platforms, and were continuing to build on this strong foundation by introducing even more high quality, global inventory through this deal,” said Guru Gowrappan, CEO of Verizon Media. “Partnering with Microsoft enables us to bring together this premium inventory with our ad tech, quality content and the most diverse, verified data in the industry to connect marketers with their key audiences at scale.”

The post Verizon Media pens native advertising deal with Microsoft appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.