Taboola, the content discovery engine that serves up recommended links on many sites, just pulled far ahead of competitors like Outbrain and Gravity: Last month, it clocked 1.15 billion clicks, through its ubiquitous “Recommended From The Web” and “Content You Might Like” widgets. The company, which rarely releases public metrics on usage, also added that, according to analytics tool Comscore, it now reaches 640 million unique users on desktop.
“We crossed one billion clicks a month, which means that over a billion times a month people discovered articles and stories someone wrote through our platform, which is a lot,” Taboola CEO Adam Singolda said in a conversation with Fast Company. “At the same time last year, it was 363 million.” Singolda credits much of the growth to aggressive expansion in overseas markets like South Korea, Brazil, and Germany. He added that the firm is launching operations in India next year as well.
Singolda also offered insight into what content performs best on Taboola. The company has a reputation for promoting clickbait–think adult pictures of child stars, diet tips, travel slideshows, and other content of that ilk. But according to Singolda, “evergreen content”–which he defines as content that’s not tagged to a specific time, event, or news story–is most popular, followed by holiday-related fare.
Believed to be valued at approximately $1 billion, Taboola received funding from Comcast and Chinese Internet giant Baidu in 2015.
