FORT LAUDERDALE -- Content marketing discovery platform Taboola has completed its latest fundraising above the $100mn rumored in recent reports, with its founder saying some advertisers are spending eight-figure sums through the company.
Taboola is announcing a $117mn Series E round, led by Fidelity Management and Research Company along with previous backers Marker LLC and Steadfast Capital. But notable new investors are Condé Nast parent Advance Publications, Comcast Ventures, the chairman of Italian news publisher L'Espresso, Yahoo! Japan and Groupe Arnault, the majority shareholder of LVMH.
The new names suggest some backing from important publishing houses. Taboola already had a partnership with Yahoo! Japan. The amount dwarfs the total $50m Taboola had raised over five previous rounds since 2007.
Taboola is serving 6bn recommendations daily, is second to Google for audience reach according to comScore and is now seeing 50% of revenue from desktop clicks, CEO and founder Adam Singolda tells Beet.TV in this video interview.
"For the first time, we’re seeing (some individual) advertisers spending more than $10mn a year with us. Native advertising reaches the entire (purchase) funnel.
"The thing that differentiates successful from non-successful brands is, those that ... attach some sort of KPI success rate … are able to spend tens of millions of dollars. Those that are not are still stuck at marketing budgets … they’re testing."
In this new article, Bloomberg examines the content marketing distribution space.
Singolda was interviewed by Furious Corp founder and CEO Ashley J. Swartz at Beet.TV’s annual executive retreat.
The Beet Retreat ’15 was sponsored by AOL and Videology.
