![](\"https:\/\/tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com\/2017\/04\/screen-shot-2017-04-28-at-10-02-13-am.png?w=738\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Taboola<\/a> and Outbrain<\/a>, two\u00a0content recommendations companies that employ roughly 500 people, were formed the same year\u00a0(2006), and\u00a0have each raised substantial sums of venture capital, are in advanced merger talks, reports the Israeli news outlet Calcalist<\/a>.<\/p>\n The deal isn\u2019t final, says the report, but the two companies\u00a0have moved past many of the sticking points\u00a0that ended earlier talks between the two companies,\u00a0including in late 2015.<\/p>\n The report adds that, if successful, the merged company will be valued at more than $1 billion.<\/p>\n Many publishers use Taboola and Outbrain to help readers discover more stories they might like to read, from that publisher or other media sites. Likely, you\u2019ve encountered their links near the bottom of a site, suggesting \u201cother stories you might like.\u201d<\/p>\n Combining efforts would seem to make sense, based on the many synergies between the two, including that both\u00a0companies are headquartered in New York and\u00a0feature development centers in Israel<\/p>\n Still, the merger \u2014 and what it\u2019s\u00a0reported combined value \u2014 also reflects tougher times for ad tech more broadly.<\/p>\n Just two years ago,\u00a0Taboola<\/a> \u2014 which provides billions of content suggestions\u00a0to hundreds of\u00a0million users each\u00a0month, as well as sells analytics to publishers and brands\u00a0\u2014 raised $117 million in funding at a valuation just short of $1 billion.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, a 2013\u00a0report surfaced<\/a> in another Israel outlet, Haaretz, saying that\u00a0Outbrain was weighing an IPO that would raise between $100 million and $300 million and value the company at up to $1 billion. Very soon\u00a0after, the company raised $35 million<\/a> in additional funding.<\/p>\n Altogether, Outbrain has raised $194 million from investors, shows Crunchbase<\/a>. Its investors include GlenRock Israel, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Gemini Israel Ventures, Carmel Ventures, Index Ventures, HarvourVest Partners, and Susquehanna Growth Equity. Taboola has raised nearly as much \u2014 $160 million<\/a>, says Crunchbase \u2014 from Evergreen Venture Partners, Crescent Point Energy, Marker LLC, Pintango Venture Capital, and the Daily Mail.<\/p>\n Both companies have been acquiring new tech as more content gets consumed on mobile devices. Last July, Taboola acquired\u00a0a company called ConvertMedia for just less than $100 million<\/a>. The company had created a recommendation engine designed specifically to\u00a0identify and recommend online videos.\u00a0In January, Taboola\u00a0also acquired for undisclosed terms<\/a> Commerce Sciences,\u00a0which had\u00a0built a platform for smaller e-commerce companies to add \u201cAmazon-style\u201d personalization to their websites.<\/p>\n Outbrain, which has made four acquisitions, counts among its newest purchases Revee, an L.A.-based company whose claimed to be capable of\u00a0letting publishers know exactly how much individual articles are generating in revenue, in real-time. It acquired the company<\/a> in March of last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"\"](\"https:\/\/tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com\/2017\/04\/screen-shot-2017-04-28-at-10-02-13-am.png?w=680\")
Taboola and Outbrain, two\u00a0content recommendations companies that employ roughly 500 people, were formed the same year\u00a0(2006), and\u00a0have each raised substantial sums of venture capital, are in advanced merger talks, reports the Israeli news outlet Calcalist. The deal isn’t final, says the report, but the two companies\u00a0have moved past many of the sticking points\u00a0that ended earlier… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/img><\/a>
<\/img><\/a>
<\/img><\/a>
<\/img><\/a>
<\/img><\/a>
<\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5817,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[59,66,26],"class_list":["post-339593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-media","tag-techcrunch","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5817"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339593\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}