Reception
The online thumbnail grid ads promoted by Taboola and other similar companies like Outbrain have been referred to also as chumbox ads.[39] According to Fortune in 2014, "Popular content isn't always good content.", with Fortune stating that while companies that partnered with Taboola and Outbrain for advertising generally earned significant income from the partnership, the ads recommended by these services "often represent the worst of the Web".[40] Advertiser-sponsored content displayed through the platform might include articles such as "The World's Cutest Cat Pictures All On One Site" or "Jeff Bridges' Magnificent Home Is Beyond Stunning".[41] In May 2013, Taboola founder Adam Singolda said the ads help support a sustainable business model for journalism and the company vets ads before they are displayed.[42] The company has faced criticism for its promoted content alongside the rest of the native advertising industry, including concerns about the promotion of clickbait articles.[43] According to comments made to the BBC, Singolda has said "The problem is that for everyone who hates one piece of content, many others love it, and click on it... if no one clicked on it, or tweeted about it, then we would remove it."[44]
In May 2014, the Better Business Bureau's (BBB) National Advertising Division (NAD) requested that Taboola make it clearer that its recommended links are sponsored by advertisers following a complaint by a rival company, Congoo. The NAD said it recommended the changes, citing the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), due to concerns that Taboola's "sponsored content" disclosures "were not sufficiently clear and conspicuous, or easy to notice, read, and understand."[45]
A report in September 2016 from the nonprofit ChangeAdvertising.org found that 41 of the top 50 news sites – including The Guardian, CNN, Time and Forbes – embed widgets from so-called “content-recommendation” companies, including Taboola. Several of those that do not, including The New York Times, pay for content created with advertisers in-house to appear in the widgets to increase traffic to their sites.[46] In 2016, the Taboola widget was installed on a site promoting numerous fake news stories and subsequently appeared in several articles originating from the site, including one claiming Muslim nurses were refusing to wash their hands before surgery at hospitals in the United Kingdom.[47] Taboola subsequently confirmed that the site operators had displayed its code without permission and that they had since removed their code from the site. A company spokesperson said that "Taboola has a very clear and strict set of guidelines in terms of both fake news as well as trademark infringement".[48]
In 2018, regarding the brand safety issue for marketers, Taboola's CEO mentioned that the company employed less than 50 people monitoring 30+ languages, and has established partnerships with IAB, Moat, TAG, Integral Ad Science, and Double Verify to address the issue.[49][50]
In February 2022, Taboola, a member of the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) UK, was awarded the Gold Standard 2.0 Certification by the organization.[51][52] Some critics have argued that the IAB UK's self-regulatory model and efforts in governmental lobbying[53] may prioritize the interests of its members, which include companies like Taboola, over stricter governmental regulations.[54]
Independent research conducted in January 2024 found that hundreds of major brands have their ads displayed on "Made for Advertising” websites, which are websites that are created for the sole purpose of showing ads. Ad tech vendors, including Taboola, claim to be taking steps to avoid placing ads on MFA sites, but the study found that these efforts appear to be ineffective.[55]
