Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Taboola's Singolda: Advertising Shift to 'Storytelling' (Audio)

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Taboola's Singolda: Advertising Shift to 'Storytelling' (Audio) · Bloomberg Intelligence

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  Speaker 1: T I I'm Charlie Pellett, and that's a Bloomberg Business flash.
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  Speaker 1: This is taking Stock with Kathleen Hayes and Pin Box
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  Speaker 1: on Bloomberg Radio. You're reading a story online and you'd
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  Speaker 1: like to read even more. At the bottom, there's a
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  Speaker 1: story that may be connected to what you were previously
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  Speaker 1: interested in. That story is generated by a company, in
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  Speaker 1: one case, by Taboula. This is a digital content recommendation company,
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  Speaker 1: and the founder and the chief executive of Taboula, Adam Single,
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  Speaker 1: that joins me now, Adam, thanks very much for being here,
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  Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. Did I describe that correctly? Does
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  Speaker 1: that make sense? Yeah? I would say it's it's content
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  Speaker 1: recommendation and beyond. You know, we're really trying to be
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  Speaker 1: that discovery box that helps you be connected with things
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  Speaker 1: you may like and never knew existed. It could be content,
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  Speaker 1: could be products, and as of last week, could be videos.
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  Speaker 1: All right, tell us about this new Actless acquisition, because
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  Speaker 1: this has to do with video becoming in many cases,
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  Speaker 1: the dominant form of online content. That's true. You know,
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  Speaker 1: we we've been really taking a good look at Facebook
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  Speaker 1: news feed and you've seen how in the past year,
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  Speaker 1: really we used to see pictures and stories, and as
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  Speaker 1: of recent we've started seeing videos and there's a great
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  Speaker 1: user value in that, and we wanted to essentially bring
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  Speaker 1: the power of news feed that we see on Facebook
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  Speaker 1: to all over the web. So as you get at
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  Speaker 1: the bottom of the article, instead of just being recommended
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  Speaker 1: with stories, you could also experience videos in a way
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  Speaker 1: that's relevant to you based on who you are and
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  Speaker 1: what you may like. And the company that you just
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  Speaker 1: purchased is called convert Media. And let me guess how
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  Speaker 1: much did you pay? Maybe a hundred millions something like that.
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  Speaker 1: You're smiling now we we we don't we don't share
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  Speaker 1: that we diach here that the company fantastic team um
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  Speaker 1: I said it a few times, but it's now one
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  Speaker 1: big family. Were very excited about it, and we did
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  Speaker 1: share that they generated fifty million dollars in runway at
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  Speaker 1: the point we purchased them. Now you've raised what about
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  Speaker 1: a hundred and sixty million, I believe, yeah, yeah, And
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  Speaker 1: that you say you're currently profitable your private leon and
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  Speaker 1: valuation maybe a billion already. So when we raised the money,
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  Speaker 1: and of two thousand fourteen, we were on a two
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  Speaker 1: million dollar revenue. Ever since then, We've grown the company
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  Speaker 1: to over half a billion dollars in revenue this year.
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  Speaker 1: At the time, we were shy of a billion dollars.
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  Speaker 1: So we're a private company. I don't really know. I'm
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  Speaker 1: trying to spend most of my time thinking instead of
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  Speaker 1: what's evaluation, more about financial metrics that drove the business,
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  Speaker 1: you know forward, all right. So some of those metrics
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  Speaker 1: include the kinds of companies that you have in the
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  Speaker 1: kinds of content recommendations that you're making. Uh A O.
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  Speaker 1: L I believe is one of your customers. Conde Nast
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  Speaker 1: is a customer, Microsoft, Microsoft is a customer. How do
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  Speaker 1: those companies make sure that the content that you are
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  Speaker 1: being sent to is first of all appropriate and that
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  Speaker 1: you're actually sending a real person not just kind of
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  Speaker 1: a you know, a robotic back and forth that would
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  Speaker 1: take place online. Right. So, we have about five million
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  Speaker 1: pieces of content index across the Tabula ecosystem, and every
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  Speaker 1: piece of content, similar to a TV rating, is rated
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  Speaker 1: in a way that publishers can say, for us, we'd
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  Speaker 1: like to recommend things within the financial section, or they
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  Speaker 1: can say, never recommend entertainment. So we really work with
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  Speaker 1: all the spectrum of publishers from Microsoft, a L two,
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  Speaker 1: Daily Mail, TAMZ, and anyone in the middle. We call
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  Speaker 1: it the bulla choice, and that allows them to decide,
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  Speaker 1: almost like the parent decides for their kids at home,
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  Speaker 1: what content makes sense for them and who they want
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  Speaker 1: to be. And then beyond that, we use technology to
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  Speaker 1: try to do a really good job curate the best
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  Speaker 1: piece of content that you may like of the entire universe. Now,
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  Speaker 1: obviously this is all end up tied to advertising online
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  Speaker 1: because if you click again and read the next story,
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  Speaker 1: then there are ads being served. Is there a distinction
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  Speaker 1: to be made between the advertising that is purchased as
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  Speaker 1: part of a big plan versus advertising that is involving
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  Speaker 1: real time bidding based on the traffic that they get, right,
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  Speaker 1: I mean real time bidding is more of the mechanics
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  Speaker 1: of how brands can buy efficiency, and we support that.
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  Speaker 1: We work without public companies such as credo um, private
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  Speaker 1: big companies such as the Nexus and others that you're
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  Speaker 1: touching A good point, which is the transition into this
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  Speaker 1: content marketing right. Traditionally, we used to monetize the web,
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  Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty billion dollar market online with banners
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  Speaker 1: and all of us most of us stopped clicking on those.
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  Speaker 1: And the transition that is going on is that brands
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  Speaker 1: are becoming storytellers. They invest in the YouTube channel, they
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  Speaker 1: invest in the corporate blog, they want to create relationship
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  Speaker 1: with consumers. We to call them infomercials. That was another age, right, advertorial, informational.
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  Speaker 1: But now you see brands with thousands of pieces of content,
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  Speaker 1: really high quality content. American Express is open forum. Um.
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  Speaker 1: You know, red Bullets sends people to the sky to
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  Speaker 1: to film that on the video and and you've seen
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  Speaker 1: people invest a lot in storytelling because what we see
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  Speaker 1: now and we see that in a big way, is
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  Speaker 1: that when someone with a piece of content they're engaged
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  Speaker 1: with that, they will consider your products over time. So
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  Speaker 1: I think Facebook is the largest discovery company. We got
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  Speaker 1: a Facebook to see pictures of our friends. We end
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  Speaker 1: up buying things we weren't sure we needed. But that
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  Speaker 1: drove eighteen billion dollars of purchases last year to bullas
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  Speaker 1: over half a billion dollars a year. And I think
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  Speaker 1: this category will continue to grow as display and banners
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  Speaker 1: will retransform into this in feed native field storytelling that's
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  Speaker 1: been paid by top brands all over the world. The
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  Speaker 1: video is where we started because of the purchase that
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  Speaker 1: you just made of convert If you're in mobile and
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  Speaker 1: you're in content, if you're not in video, you did.
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  Speaker 1: I think it's a problem because I think video will
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  Speaker 1: be a significant part of how mobile is monetized um
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  Speaker 1: and a lot of it because the you know, mobile
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  Speaker 1: is a great consumption device for video. If we hope
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  Speaker 1: to become one of the largest TV companies out there,
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  Speaker 1: streaming over one billion VA views a day, that's really
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  Speaker 1: where we want to be. Thank you very much. Adam
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  Speaker 1: Sinolda is the founder and the chief executive of Tabula.
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  Speaker 1: This is taking Stock. Thank you for listening. I'm pim Fox.
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