Taboola Partners InMobi to Bring Content Discovery to Miip

Ad-tech companies InMobi and Taboola announced Thursday their strategic partnership to connect bring personalised content recommendations from around the Web to its mobile commerce discovery platform Miip.

According to comScore stats, Taboola's current network already reaches more US desktop users than Facebook. The partnership will expand its reach to by over one billion mobile consumers across 200 countries. Taboola's technology will be integrated into InMobi's mobile advertising network, spanning 700 native mobile apps including news, information, entertainment, sports, productivity, gaming, messaging, and other verticals, the company said.

Piyush Shah, Chief Product Officer at InMobi, told Gadgets 360 that the two companies were in pilot and integration mode for the last three months, and the feature is now live. The partnership aligns with Miip's vision of discovery commerce and native experiences, where users can experience mobile advertising that is not disruptive or distracting like traditional banners or interstitials, he said.

"This partnership is focused squarely on our apps that are using our native ads for monetisation, most of the news and sports apps and feeds, in those cases, content-based advertising is a lot more unique for users. We are going to be more focused on the subset of a native embedded app right now, not the entire network," Shah said.

"For us, we intend to do more such deals, over the last four months we have been a lot more active on global strategic deals of these sorts - a few in China, a couple in India, and starting with a lot more in North America," he said.

InMobi will get access to thousands of content marketers that buy on Taboola every day, said Adam Singolda, Founder and CEO of Taboola in a phone conversation with Gadgets 360. "It's an exciting prospect in terms of reach, and it's very complementary to what InMobi is doing, with their products. This is an opportunity to offer content to over a billion people with content they may like, and never knew existed," he said, adding, "You may not necessarily buy something all the time, but you will be more than happy to read a piece of content if its relevant to you,"

Taboola currently does ad-integration with publisher apps, the partnership will enable the company to go beyond publishers into messaging and other app categories.

Content marketing is so successful, he said, because there is an emotional connection that happens, and that content that serves as a mean of education for consumers, Singolda said.

"We spark that awareness for the first time, and then we can send the consumer a price comparison of the product, and then eventually they may buy that using Miip," he explained.

In September, InMobi had tied up with Chinese startup APUS, maker of customised Android software, and was expecting to reach 500 million new users in China and other countries by 2016.

Founded in 2007, Taboola has raised $160 million (roughly Rs. 1,044 crores) in seven funding rounds so far.