Taboola CEO Adam Singolda

Auren Hoffman (00:00.946) Hello fellow data nerds. guest today is Adam Singolda. Adam is the founder and CEO of Taboola, a content discovery platform that reaches over 600 million people daily. Taboola powers content and recommendations for major publishers like CNBC and Business Insider and serves as Yahoo's exclusive native advertising partner. Taboola went public in 2021 and trades under NASDAQ under the ticker TBLA. Adam, welcome to World of DaaS.

Adam (00:29.698) Thank you for having me. This is fun. It's crazy we've never done this before, you know?

Auren Hoffman (00:34.172) I know it's super crazy and we've both like known of each other for a long time. So I'm really glad to like hang out for those who are not watching on video Adams in his Lego room, which is super fun. And I'm very jealous of as well.

Adam (00:45.784) Yeah. It's all of my, all of my issues are in this room. I have my transformers, my Lego. It's like, you know, all of my childhood dreams, you know, came into fruition later in life.

Auren Hoffman (00:55.654) Yeah, you're too young. You probably don't have like the GI Joe and He-Man and stuff like that, right?

Adam (01:00.214) Well, I I have though, have t-shirts of those, course. And it's just, you know, we watched Voltron and I watched all of that stuff. now, I mean, this is on my table. Yeah. You can see it. like, you know, it's.

Auren Hoffman (01:02.634) nice. Okay.

Auren Hoffman (01:11.344) Transformers. Okay, this is amazing. Okay, I'm extremely jealous. Extremely jealous. Now Google built like a gazillion dollar business showing ads to people who know what they want. Basically, the whole idea is you search for something, you know what you want, you get it. You almost went in the opposite direction where you built a business showing people things that they're not actually searching for. Maybe you didn't really know or maybe you do. So explain your thesis around like discovery.

Adam (01:38.19) Yeah, I think, you know, I started to pull up in 2007. It's my first job before that. was an engineer in the Israeli army. And, and when I, when I graduated, I was kind of like trying to watch TV and I couldn't find anything to watch, which is an experience, you know, men, all of our listeners are familiar with, you know, you're just going through things, hoping to stumble upon something that may be interesting to you. And it was very difficult. And the idea was, you know, we only have 24 hours a day.

Auren Hoffman (01:56.903) Yeah.

Adam (02:07.702) and we will never have enough time to read all the books we want to read or meet the people we're supposed to be meeting and the products we may love. So if only something could have given us this guidance so that we can actually have a better life because we can discover things that would make a positive impact on us. And again, I think if you think about yourself listening to this podcast, we've all been through this experience. go to the gym.

you're working out and there's a song in the background, like, that's a great song. And you fall in love with that band or song and you think it's new, but it was always there. You just never discovered it or TV show. I think there's something really serendipity is a beautiful thing. And I think search is great when you know, but when you don't know, there's really an opportunity to expand your horizon into things that might become, you know, even Lego, which we talked about.

Auren Hoffman (02:43.409) Yeah.

Adam (03:01.708) I wanted Lego as a kid, but it was too expensive for my family to afford it. And then, you know, 20 years after Lego did this piece when they partnered with auto manufacturers to build this huge cars made by Lego. And I kind of discovered that piece of content. And then I just re you know, I fell in love again with Lego and I started buying it because now I can buy it. So that's, that's what it is, you know.

Auren Hoffman (03:23.281) Yeah.

This idea of serendipity is like amazing yet it does seem like it's harder. It's like hard to manufacture or it's hard to actually make it happen. it's something that when we experience our eyes light up and it's like, it's incredible, but it seems more and more rare in today's world, or maybe you don't agree. Like how does one essentially create a company around serendipity?

Adam (03:52.206) Well, I think, you you have to start small, you know, and, small by small. mean, you have to pick a segment that you think you have a chance of truly creating value for us. was, we started off with just video and back. You have to go back in 2007. was Netflix was still selling DVD, no, sending the DVDs to your house. And they just thought about dreaming back then your Kindle just launched. So suddenly you had a device in your hand with, you know, 90,000 titles. It was.

Auren Hoffman (04:03.111) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (04:11.058) Crazy. Yeah.

Adam (04:20.096) It was the beginning of abundance of content available to you in real time, which made the problem discovery real. And I think a lot of times it's about much like, know, like, as you know, best, you know, when you start a company, when you're a founder or when you're on the team, just picking the right problem and focusing on that really, you know, passionately gives you a chance to do that. So for us to spend the years trying to just crack the code on video discovery. And that was actually.

Auren Hoffman (04:22.557) Yep.

Adam (04:49.738) Not an easy problem to solve, but it was a very defined problem. And about four years into it, we expanded into articles and videos. The year after we've expanded into sponsored content. by that, allowing people to promote things from even a broader universe. So for us, it was more about just trying to really focus on few things at the time until we build it such that we could create enough value to consumers in different situations.

Auren Hoffman (05:18.012) does seem that even though with all of the people working on it and all this great content, it seems like the content recommendation and shopping recommendation systems today are still absolutely terrible. Like you'd think they'd be amazing. You'd think I'd log into Netflix and they would show me this like incredible thing that maybe I haven't heard of that is like absolutely the right thing for me. And I would just start watching it I would be so excited and I'd find something new.

But I would say almost every cool thing I found on Netflix has been because someone else has told me about it. or I heard about it somehow, or somebody tweeted about it or whatever. Like every time I log in there, they just show me whatever else is watching. they don't show me anything that interesting. It's like, here's the top. It's not really for me. It's like, really like, here's what else is going on. Whenever I log into Amazon, I never see like, Hey, I've seen.

You've bought a thousand products on Amazon in the last like 20 years, right? I have your history or in of all these things, like I know you or like there's this really cool like vacuum thing that I think you would love, you know, and here, why don't you check it out? Like I'm pretty confident that you were like this, but I never see that. mean, why, why is it not working?

Adam (06:32.474) If you think about what we're talking about here, we're talking about google.com empty page. Imagine you went to google.com as we do now to search for something and the page would be completely empty with no place for me to type what I'm looking for. And Google would just say, here's what we think you want to search, which is, you know, it's very alien like thinking to believe this is possible. It's the perfect Google.

Auren Hoffman (06:44.455) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (06:53.105) Yeah.

Adam (07:00.012) the perfect Google would be an empty page. It's a very hard problem to solve to try and to predict which market I'm in, what's my interest, you know, before I ever told you anything about me. And I think, and there's also different types of.

Auren Hoffman (07:14.194) But I mean, but again, like if I've already seen like so many things on Netflix, like I've already bought, I probably bought over thousand things on Amazon like in my life. Like, I mean, they have a huge corpus for me, yet they still can't show me anything I really want to do.

Adam (07:30.178) But Amazon, think is probably among the best ones. the way I know I'm right is because I have way too many boxes outside of my door that I know nobody needs in this house. you we're just...

Auren Hoffman (07:37.19) Yeah.

But they're not, you are still going in and suggesting like they don't even, I don't even know if there's a page on Amazon where it says, here's the deals for you. Like here's what I want for you. Here's what I think you would want. It's just kind of, it's showing me maybe like every one of my demographic or something like, I don't think they're showing me really anything even personal.

Adam (07:58.648) They call it other people also bought or something. think that's how they, that's the strip of recommendations. And I agree. Netflix is probably still early on, on their journey. Amazon was among the first one to say people who bought this also bought that. And they also have the best of signals, which is I ended up buying it. This is, it's not a click. Remember this is not impressions and clicks and you know, the world of attribution of how do I know, know something really happened.

Auren Hoffman (08:01.233) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (08:15.186) Correct. Yeah. And you didn't return it. You bought it and you did not return it. Yeah.

Adam (08:27.406) And how do I know something really meant anything? This is a company that knows what I'm seeing, what I'm clicking on, what I'm buying, what I'm using, what I'm coming back to. So I mean, they have probably among the best signals. But this is also the opportunity because you're looking at these walled gardens, know, Facebook, Google, Amazon, very good companies. They have a lot of data. Obviously, data is something you know very well from your world.

Auren Hoffman (08:35.996) Yeah.

Adam (08:56.152) They have a lot of great data, first party data. They're great. It's a great consumer business. And what do they do? They end up building great products to serve themselves. You know, it's, it's, it's a classic wall garden situation. They're falling. They, they can do.

Auren Hoffman (09:08.934) Yeah, that's right. In fact, I think they're, I think they are, I think they are showing me things. They're just showing me things that where they make the most money on, or if people are advertising or Netflix, like really only shows me content that they created. don't show me really anything that they bought. Yeah.

Adam (09:26.03) Yeah, they're, I mean, there's, there's a fundamental conflict and should Google put an ad on a publisher or should it put it on YouTube? That's a tough question. Like what do you do on one, on one side, you make a hundred percent on the other, make less. And so there's a conflict for these walled gardens to ever decide, are they more, are they Jedi or, know, they're Darth Vader? Like which one, they're both powerful, but which one are you going to be? You know, I think this is, this is the opportunity the way I see it from our point of view, which is.

Auren Hoffman (09:29.554) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (09:34.375) Yeah, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (09:46.716) Yeah.

Yeah.

Adam (09:56.394) Any one publisher will always be too small to build an Amazon like recommendation engine or Amazon like advertising business. But what if the aggregation of everyone combined, you know, it's a captain planet. We spoke about the cartoons, but it's like with your powers combined, I'm captain planet from a dad show. You know, it's like, if the entire, in the entirety of the open web, anyone outside of searching social and Amazon were on some sort of.

Auren Hoffman (10:16.348) Yeah.

Adam (10:25.006) a unified platform where clicks and traffic and conversions were somehow valuable to everyone collectively. And this is the mission, this is the vision to build that great consumer engagement technology and advertising product outside of search and social.

Auren Hoffman (10:45.766) Yeah, that's super cool. Now, if a lot of publishers are terrified of like AI search, stealing their traffic, you're starting to see like the data, like what's happening on the ground.

Adam (10:59.724) It's, it's obviously it's a hot topic. mean, you can't say, you can't have a conversation these days without saying AI at least once every sentence. It's, it's, it's punctuation basically at this point, but, and I'm not sure all of it it's real, but when it's real, it's valuable, but let me address your questions. think, you know, first of all, there is a scare because, know, obviously publishers rely on search traffic. They're relying on social traffic. So they do need that source of audience coming from.

Auren Hoffman (11:06.352) Yeah, yeah, we're going to say like every three minutes here. Yeah.

Adam (11:28.686) the platforms. And at the same time, you know, have, there's a surge in Chagy Pt and LLM, different types of models implemented across different, you know, walled gardens. So there is a scare. I think, you know, first of all, Gemini, which is the Google version of, of, of that is already live and available to, I don't know, 3 billion people a day. So in many ways we're already in the future. This is, it's already live. It's out there. It's, it's out. So this is not Chagy Pt.

Auren Hoffman (11:50.811) Yeah.

Adam (11:57.294) building a consumer business. This is Google having the largest consumer business already making it available to everyone. So I think that is good news because it means whatever turbulence we might have expected, we're already after it in many ways because it's live. And Google is the best in the world in making that type of service available to consumers. So that gives me some comfort. And we're, as a company, we're not seeing any big

change in traffic as of now, at least we're tracking that of course. On the other side, what I think is interesting is if you look at, and this is again fascinating piece of information, the average American opening TikTok or Instagram will give those platforms at least 50 minutes a day.

Auren Hoffman (12:44.37) Five zero.

Adam (12:45.454) The average American, when they go to read the news on the internet, the average articles per session is about one to one and a half.

That means that...

Auren Hoffman (13:02.312) But most articles are designed almost that you could read them in a couple of minutes though, right? good. So they go to one article. They only read one, leave. bounce.

Adam (13:06.88) That's all they do.

And they bounce. And they bounce. So they give the publisher, call it a minute or two and they bounce. So I think this whole AI revolution has created this, opened up a whole new world in which publishers say, wow, can we, should we adopt, use, utilize AI in a big way on our homepages, on our article pages? Of course not to create the content. That is a tutorial. That is important.

Auren Hoffman (13:18.215) Yeah.

Adam (13:40.034) But when someone comes to our site, should we be as personalized as TikTok, but with high editorial value? Well, that would be a dream. So now, you know, a lot of times, like in life, you only change if you have to. It's a greed and fear type of thing, dynamics, right? So now there's some fear and a lot of greed. There's value to be created. So I actually am very optimistic about kind of the open web and publishers adopting AI in a much bigger way than we've ever seen. Thanks to, you know, those platforms already doing it. So.

That's kind of like what I'm seeing in the marketplace. do have a product called homepage for you, which essentially is trying to render your homepage as if it's as good as tick tock or Instagram, but using your own content. And we're seeing, I mean, 30, 40 % improvement, which shows you that there's a lot of value here while still sustaining editorial value. So I think this is just the beginning. and, not, not to mention advertisers there, I think there's, can get to that too, but I mean,

Auren Hoffman (14:25.035) wow.

Adam (14:39.84) even more value to advertisers adopting AI.

Auren Hoffman (14:43.464) Yeah. One thing I hate is like, if I go to a site, like a new site, and I'm looking at their headlines, like I kind of scroll down and I want to, and then I decide I'm going to either read it or not. I don't, if I go back to the site, like, I don't want to see those headlines again. Like I want to see the ones I haven't seen. but I don't want to have to like re scroll the ones that are in. So it's like, it's, like, I feel like they don't, they, they, they don't take account into the user's time.

they're not really doing that. Maybe they're still insensitive to like take up as much of my time rather than give me the most service for my time. If that makes sense.

Adam (15:21.666) Yeah, I mean, the question you have to ask yourself, let's say Facebook is among the good companies with regards to AI. mean, Instagram is very good. They're very good. I would argue that the ads on Instagram are so good. I would pay Facebook a subscription to see more ads. It's so good. I mean, it's like,

Auren Hoffman (15:30.288) Yeah, they're incredible. Yep.

Auren Hoffman (15:34.716) Dads are amazing. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (15:39.334) Yeah, yeah. So would I, because in some ways that is, but it is my, that is my serendipity is seeing like, I mean, I don't use Instagram as much as I should, but every time I do, I see really cool ads.

Adam (15:52.298) Yeah, I buy things from them and it's great. mean, these are things I like. I and so my point is, it's done right. It's great.

Auren Hoffman (15:59.848) Yeah. It's interesting because I paid more on X so I don't see the ads. But the only reason I did that is because the ads were bad. Like they just weren't engaging. They weren't interesting. They weren't relevant to me. In fact, they were just so not relevant. I was like willing to pay more. I said, I don't see them. I would have, I would almost like rather pay the opposite, rather pay to see good ads. Cause then it's actually showing me things I really want that I can take actions on like and get serendipity.

Adam (16:27.404) Well, look at like back in the day, magazines had beautiful ads. literally bought magazine in part to see some of the advertising experience. know, it's, you know, it's, you know, it's good when you see it, like the famous sentence. And, and I think this is the distinction. And I'm saying that because if Facebook rendered the internet as it is now, my guess, it would have tripled in size. If Facebook rendered, you know, a publisher, entire experience.

Auren Hoffman (16:30.429) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (16:34.056) Of course, yeah, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (16:50.342) Yeah, yep.

Adam (16:57.216) My guess it would have tripled in engagement and size and revenue. So that is the bar. Now, you know, we're not as good as Facebook. They're better than us, but this is the spectrum of what we want to feel. We want to bring that value and never become a consumer. Because we're not a consumer company, then we'll always be a publisher's friend. We'll never compete with them. And that's what's missing in the world. You want a Facebook like technology company that is a win-win, that is everyone's friend.

Auren Hoffman (17:02.226) Yeah.

Adam (17:25.762) And we'll never compete with our, with their friends, which is what we're trying to be in R.

Auren Hoffman (17:30.856) How do you think AI is going to like really impact people's shopping behavior? Like I've started perplexity has recently come out with these agents to help you do that. I've started using it. It's super exciting yet, you know, it still doesn't work perfectly, but super exciting. like how do you, do you see like, like agents helping people and going out on their behalf, buying things on people's behalf? like where do see that going?

Adam (17:57.806) One, think that two things will happen. One, which is the huge one. have about 100 million businesses in the world. About 10 million of them advertise on Google, about 10 million of them advertise on Facebook. If you, again, if you listen to this podcast and you have a business or your partner has a business or you know someone has a business or you have a restaurant you love.

Talk call that friend of yours or walk into this restaurant and ask them. What is their CPM or their CPC? And I promise you you're going to get a look and that look is going to be like, what are you talking about? I have a front. know how much a client is worth to me. I sell tables. I know how much a table is worth to me. I have no idea what CPM is, but then again, at the same time, this entire industry is driven by three letter acronyms. Nobody knows what they mean. It's a very complicated, cumbersome industry that is geared to do good.

Auren Hoffman (18:33.799) Yeah.

Adam (18:53.068) drive growth to businesses.

Auren Hoffman (18:54.44) And by the way, it's, it's, it's CPM, means mill mill in, in, in, in French, which means a thousand, but most people think it means millions. Right. So it's, like cost per thousand, not customer. It's very, very confusing. Just even like the acronym.

Adam (19:00.408) Yeah.

Adam (19:10.062) So I think AI, the first big step, big step is to make advertising accessible to millions of businesses that for the first time.

Auren Hoffman (19:18.981) Yeah. It's very hard to advertise if you want, if you have, even if you're a local plumber or something like that, like it's very, very hard to even like understand how to do it and how to like, often these people have like whole like the only people who can do it effectively are people like real teams to do it for them. Yeah.

Adam (19:34.414) and no one does and no agency will take a small business. mean, you're just stuck in this world in which there is a lot of value to be created, but most businesses are capped out. They can't enter because there's no way to come in. And so the first thing is AI will solve that dramatically. There's a 100x here. This is not like an incremental opportunity. This is a whole new world in which businesses can talk to a machine and say what they want to do.

Auren Hoffman (19:55.505) Yeah.

Adam (20:02.094) And that machine will buy on their behalf, either within that platform or other platforms. And that will change the world as we know it because it's going to create a whole funnel of businesses and innovation.

Auren Hoffman (20:13.64) Yeah, it's a good point. So if I'm a, if it's like, Hey, Hey, agent, maybe it's my marketing agent or something like that. I want to, there, there are times where I have extra tables in my restaurant. I want to try to get people in, help me do that. Help me create the campaigns, help me do that effectively. Let's let's AB test a few things. Like they could, literally, great. Like all.

Do you, or do you authorize me to spend 300 bucks a month on your behalf? Yeah, sure. I authorize you to spend it. Okay. We're going to, we're going to test this out. We're going to test a few different things. We're going see what it's like. We're going to do these things and then let's see. We're really going to try to make your Thursday, you know, lunch like pop. Let's see if we can make your Thursday lunch pop and then see what happens from there.

Adam (20:58.392) And that's a difference perhaps between a business that stays alive and a business that's not because suddenly you can your business. this is, is, advertising is a great thing when it works because it enables companies to provide their services in markets, provide it more affordably. mean, Netflix now reaches 7 million people with their advertising market. That's great for Netflix. It means they can get into new markets. They can maybe create more affordably in markets that people can't afford otherwise. Great. It's a good thing. So, so

So I think this is the first big step I'm aware from our point of view. can tell you we're spending a lot of time AI. I said, it's very easy to say, hard to do. And, you need a lot of data, a lot of machines, a lot of people that are, that know what they're doing. And we, we know we take, we took a first step at this thing of conversational kind of like unborn in first step. You know, we call it Abby. We, and I can tell you the roadmap.

Like where this could go is you just give me your product and I will create even the landing page for you. I will create 10 landing pages for you. I will create your thumbnails and your titles. You just show me what you're trying to do and I will do the entire thing for you. And I suspect in three or five years, you're going to see Facebook, Google, Tabula, Amazon, kind of like offering things in that world in which it's just very easy. So that's the first thing that's going to happen. The second thing that's going to happen is consumers.

We'll have much more, you know, more to choose from because advertising will grow in a whole new kind of, you know, areas. And I do think that we talked about Amazon saying people who bought this also bought. Technically, I'm sure there's a product. If only I knew I liked, I would buy it, but I just, but it just sits outside of my, you know, my realm. So I don't think we'll have, maybe that's like a star wars three PO type of thing, or, or, or, or some sort of other agent or the platforms themselves will offer me.

Auren Hoffman (22:43.793) Yeah.

Adam (22:56.8) things to buy, it's definitely going to happen.

Auren Hoffman (23:01.8) Where do you think like Shopify sits in this feature?

Adam (23:05.742) I mean, it can be the plumbing for all of this, right? And I think they can just say, we are the infrastructure for everything that's about to happen. That's a, that, you know, that's a big play. You're ha you have a lot of good companies in a space. have Shopify, you have Wix out of Israel. have a lot of companies that are, you know, sits in different kinds of parts of that journey. But I mean, look, there's going to be a lot of, there's an ecosystem that's about to be born on top of enabling those services all the way from the platforms to.

the consumer, all the way to the consumer. So I think companies like Shopify and others could help many smaller businesses, bigger businesses to get going. And that's a big player for them. know, if they can make any business on Shopify a successful business, they won.

Auren Hoffman (23:50.162) What are like data or data signals that matter more in this world that are maybe less obvious to the listener?

Adam (23:59.894) It depends. It depends on the word. There's no one answer to that. In my world is an example. Okay. I can tell you, to what will generate almost $2 billion in revenue this year. and about 90 % of our revenue comes from businesses, advertisers who buy directly from us. And they put a pixel on their page that allows us to see if a user we sent to their site ended up doing what we thought that person was supposed to do. If we did not have that pixel.

We would be blind. We would send people to subscribe to this service. We would have sent people to read this article, send these people to thank you for signing up to this newsletter. And we would have never known if we did a good job or a bad job. So that is to us, a very important piece of data. Another important piece of data is our, we know when you go to NBC News or CNBC today, if you go tomorrow, we know you're the same person. We don't know your name.

We don't know your gender. We don't know your age, but we know you're the same person because we have a first part integration across all of our publishers. That is good because then we can try to do what you said, which is, know, if you read a piece of article, I'm not going to give it to you again. That's annoying. Or if you clicked on something, I might try to, you know, change my feed recommendations. So I give you more of what you like. So that is a piece of information that matters, especially as cookies go away and all those things. So that's in my world. I think, you know, in the e-comic.

Auren Hoffman (25:26.472) And how does it work? It's like these publishers, collectively in some ways, they're worse off than they were 10 years ago. They're kind of like fighting against the walled gardens. And in some ways, they almost always think of themselves as competing against the other publishers rather than think of themselves as competing against the walled gardens. And as you kind of mentioned before, you could think of the superhero analogy where they all get together and they're way stronger and they're all kind of working.

together there, what is preventing them, beside for ego, to actually kind of like work together in a way where they could help inform each other, share data, do other types of things to give like the consumer a amazing experience across all of them.

Adam (26:13.708) Yeah, I mean, first of all, we know we have to be empathetic to publishers and, you know, put ourselves in their shoes. This is, these are people that first of all are doing God's work because they create content so that our children can know things that actually have editorial value behind them versus for the life of us, you know, make decisions based on TikTok, which is, know, maybe the end of humanity. So, so first of all, that's we let us all be lucky if journalism and publishers succeed and grow for the rest of time.

Auren Hoffman (26:24.284) For sure. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (26:39.271) Yep.

Adam (26:42.818) That's one too publishers, know, for better or worse, you know, rely on wall garden companies that are just in significant conflict of interest. And, know, how can search engines decide if to send someone to an article that reviews coffee machines or to send that person to a retailer that's paid Google for that, like who gets, who gets the click one click is worth $10.

One click is worth nothing. Massive conflict. So they have to navigate, you know, by the way, these are very powerful, sophisticated companies. you're, when your competition, you know, and you may, mentioned well, garden, which is true. Their competition is a 10 consumer attention, but Google and Facebook can, and these are very powerful companies. So that's not easy. Right. So, so that's, that's tough. And then thirdly, you know, there's, there is an evolution.

Auren Hoffman (27:32.678) Yeah, with rubbed super smart people.

Adam (27:42.67) of an adoption of technology that takes a lot of cultural growth. Because to put on a homepage, an AI software that changes the homepage based on the person reading the homepage is a very new concept, right? Because the homepage is supposed to be the same. It's what matters today. But now you're, because as consumers, we're interacting with those social networks.

even chief editors say, you know what, I get it. So there's, there's a cultural growth and evolution that takes place coming from a, from a world that is very conservative for the right reason, because do you want them to be conservative? And I think we have to be empathetic to that. I, and that's why I said earlier, the good news about. Gen AI, CHEGPT, Gemini, you know, all those things is that publishers seeing that and saying, you know what, we should at least play with that too, and see what happens.

And 10 years ago or five years ago, or maybe two years ago, I think that conversation would have been shut down immediately. And that's, and that's so for those reasons, you know, I show a lot of empathy for these people and I love them for the value they create, but I know sometimes, and some publishers will be more early adopters and some will be less. but there's, there's a big upside here for those who try adopt and essentially improve those metrics for their consumers.

Auren Hoffman (29:09.692) And we've been in the world in the last 10 years where cookies are a smaller smaller percentage of interactions, whether it's because now we're doing more things in apps, things on Safari, which don't have cookies. And then they're kind of slowly going away in Chrome as well. What does that new world look like? How do you think these, because in some ways it could be good for publishers. They have more context. There's other types of things, but also

could go against them because there might be like retargeting ads that they're not going to be able to get. So how is that going to affect these guys going forward?

Adam (29:47.34) Yeah. So, so that's obviously that's another hot topic. So, you know, in the case of Safari, again, this has been already kind of the, the, the, the reality for, I think from 2020. So it's been a while now. And so that is stable. Then you have other browsers, Chrome and others, I think in the case of Google, which obviously is a big one as, as it seems now, they're not really deprecating cookies, but rather allowing users to choose and then building an infrastructure for publishers to still.

Auren Hoffman (29:53.714) Yeah.

Adam (30:17.006) you know, advertisers to still monetize in a way that seems, you know, good. So we'll see what happens. overall, you know, I think all of those trends are good trends because they forced the industry to do the right thing for consumers and the advertiser. At the end of the day, no one wants a creepy ad to hunt them down. Where would they go? We want ads. We, said it on this podcast earlier. If you could see a good ad that's relevant for you, that's great.

I would click on it, buy it, ask to see more of it. That's good. When you see ads that are low quality, not relevant, maybe confusing, those are the things that I believe those platforms are trying to prevent. And so I'm not against that. I like it as a trend. And I think companies, what it basically creates is that companies now in advertising need huge scale. When I started Taboola, I remember,

I thought, wow, if we can get this business to a hundred million dollars, it's going to be a massive success. This was, you know, over a decade ago. And I can tell you now, Tabula is, you know, almost $2 billion in revenue. And I think we're small, you know, we need to be four or five, six, $10 billion. That's that I'm, I'm like, we talked about before we started recording. I plan for the, know, from two to 10 billion, because I mean, that is what you need to have enough data, enough technology, enough clickstream to be great at what you do. Not good.

rate amazing. So I think it forces this kind of like interesting trend in the industry. And what publishers have, which is arguably unique, is that they have this curiosity graph, right? Like when we see what you read, it's true that on Facebook, they know my name, my gender. But I mean, I tell Facebook things I wish people thought of me. I don't tell them the truth. I put movies on Facebook on my hobbies.

Auren Hoffman (32:06.843) Yeah. Yeah.

Adam (32:11.394) that I think if you looked at my profile, you'd be like, Adam is cool, he liked those movies. he likes Godfather. I don't wanna watch Godfather now, but I want you to think I like it. It's a good movie for you to think that I like. That's in my profile. But I'm never gonna...

Auren Hoffman (32:14.94) Right.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yup. Yup. So by the way, Godfather is probably on mine too.

Adam (32:27.148) Yeah. But I would never ever post on Facebook, reading about a medical situation I'm concerned about regarding my family. Never going to happen, but I will read about it all day long. And this is what publishers have. They have this curiosity graph, perhaps even authenticity graph, because I will always read about things I really care to read about. And that could be hobbies of mine, commerce, things, medical things.

Auren Hoffman (32:35.484) Yeah, yep.

Adam (32:54.584) financial services, you I want to take a mortgage. I'm going to read a lot before I take a mortgage. I promise you. And where am I going to go? I'm going to go to publishers I trust. You know, so this trust as a currency, this idea of, you know, curiosity and authenticity, I think plays a bigger role in this version of humanity. Like the world is in a weird place. So to know something is real, to know something is driven by a human.

that someone cared to write about it and review it before you take action, I think will mean more over time. So again, I mean, I'm a fairly optimistic person, but here I'm optimistic because I think this contextual signal and curiosity signal will pay dividends in years to come as advertisers wanna get closer to, sorry for that, closer to consumers.

Auren Hoffman (33:49.298) Now I saw you recently side like a 30 year partnership with Yahoo. mean, 30 years is like freaking forever. Like, you know, 30 years ago, like Google wasn't even around 30 years ago. Yahoo wasn't even around. Like they just didn't even exist. Like how did, how did you guys even decide to do like something so long term?

Adam (34:16.142) I wanted 50 by the way, but I'll tell you one, it's, it's, such, I mean, I have so many things to say about this partnership. You know, when I started to pull up, yeah, I was not in my market. You know, I never thought we'll work with Yahoo and with this new management, you know, with Jim and zone and Matt Sanchez and Rob and read from Apollo. mean, these guys are winners through and through. And when one happened and I was able to, some of them I knew from before some of them I got to know and.

Auren Hoffman (34:39.101) Yeah.

Adam (34:45.602) funny enough, you know, when you do things for a long time, you realize that eventually it is really down to the people who get to do what they do. And that's what, you know, differs between winners and losers. I feel fortunate that I was able to be in a conversation when we kind of dream about the future, about how do we work together to help grow both of our companies, you know, kind of redefine our dreams. And that was incredible. 30 years, again, I wanted 50, but 30 years was mainly meant to say, let's do this forever.

You know, let's work as if all we care about is each other. And that is, I mean, you should be so lucky, you know, if you're in a position where partnership and friendship feels like forever. you know, I will renew this in my seventies, which is a great feeling for me. but that's kind of the company I always wanted to build. I never wanted to be renewing anything every year. You know, I don't want to go for like expensive wine every quarter to win your business. I want to be with you in line with you, win, win with you. You go up, I go up.

You go down, I go down. That's all I want. and with Yahoo and with that team in place, it feels like there's so much we can do together, even beyond what we actually went out to do at first, given all the opportunities.

Auren Hoffman (35:59.792) I mean, when I read that, it still seems crazy. Like most marriages don't last 30 years. Like, like it's just like, it's just, it seems like an insane amount of time against, cause especially since Yahoo hasn't even been around for 30 years. but, you guys obviously haven't been around that long either. That's like almost double the length of your company, but it's like, I love the ambition. Like it's just like, it's so cool that you guys did that.

Adam (36:23.094) Yeah. mean, you know, I, I, I, I, the way I think about it is really, but it's, it's, it, it needs to, I'm going to sign one day the forever partnership. Like what I'm going to do, I'm going to sign a deal that will say term forever. And until then, and until then I hope I get to, you know, sign things that feel like forever. that, and I can tell you about it and I owe it and I've been in this situation many times before, some publishers, some people ask me, why do you even want that? And I'll tell you.

Auren Hoffman (36:37.446) Yes, that's awesome. Yes.

Auren Hoffman (36:43.868) Yeah.

Adam (36:52.78) the more we can be in a partnership state of mind, you end up growing faster because there is no moment of tension that about to come where I'm optimizing for something and you're optimizing for something and we're looking for leverage. We're just in it to win it together. And so I always thought that partnerships and good friendships are better than there's, know, constant optimization that sometimes industries tend to do. So I feel fortunate.

Auren Hoffman (37:16.658) Yeah.

I mean, if you make the marriage analogy, like you're making this commitment for forever as well, or at least till death, you're making a commitment. so there's no reason to do any type of short-term optimization in that marriage partnership because you're making this very long commitment to somebody.

Adam (37:42.84) Yeah. mean, look, when you have, when you, when you married, you have good days and bad days, but it's not positive. It's better than anything you can do. So that's, that's kind of like a good analogy. And, and, know, I, I hope to will be here forever. So that's that just in line with the term I'm having in mind.

Auren Hoffman (37:47.516) Yeah. Correct.

Auren Hoffman (37:59.174) Now you also signed a deal with Apple News this year. Apple is like really one the hardest companies like historically to work with, to get into, to build deals with. Walk us through if someone else wants to, there's so many companies I know that want to do deals with Yahoo, I'm sorry, want to do deals with Apple. They want to do something with them. Sometimes they can't even get on the phone. Like sometimes they're like, I'm like your number three app in this category. They still can't get anywhere on the phone from Apple.

Walk us through if you're giving me advice to like an up and coming company, how they should interact with Apple. Cause it's own weird beast. So you can't even like often like get into the building. If you want to go to like one infinite loop right now, like, like good luck. Like they'll meet you at like the Starbucks across the street. Like you get in and off and like, it's like, sorry, you're not even cool enough to get into the building with me.

Adam (38:49.71) Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I don't want to get in too much about Apple and speak on their behalf. can tell you, I can tell you a few things. One as an industry, it is so great to see this opportunity for, you know, technology companies and, and founders listening to this podcast that, you know, you're seeing iconic, great companies that say there's an opportunity to partner and build something special together. I don't think, you know, 10 years ago, you know,

when you and I started our companies more than a decade ago, those were the days. And now we're entering this, you know, this new generation of great iconic companies that say, you know what, we can build an ecosystem around us and grow faster and do good things together. Netflix partnered with Magnite. Great. Good stuff. You know, I love that partnership. And you're seeing these relationships that, again, I think in the past we two, we didn't see it coming, but my,

Auren Hoffman (39:37.202) Yeah.

Yeah.

Adam (39:48.628) My expectation as I look into the next five, 10 years, we're to see many great consumer companies, utility apps, OEMs, various digital canvases saying, how do we engage consumers? How do we create a new revenue stream? Look, Amazon's first line of EBITDA is ads, right? Uber will generate more than a billion dollars in advertising this year. mean, Uber is supposed to be sending me from one place to the other.

and Amazon's supposed to be selling the product. This is great. You know, it just shows you that.

Auren Hoffman (40:20.552) there's this joke in the tech industry that everyone becomes an ad tech company. And we're seeing that obviously with Amazon, with Instacart, with Uber, you just go down the list. Like they're all now having like massive revenue streams and very high profit. Like a very high percentage of their profit is coming from, you know, Netflix, et cetera, coming from advertising. And people keep saying that trend is going to end, but it doesn't seem like it's going to end. Like, how do you think companies are going to start thinking about that?

Adam (40:50.126) No, I think it's the beginning. I disagree with anyone who thinks this is ending because first of all, if you're a fortune 1000 company CEO, your board is having a conversation with you about what is your advertising strategy? I promise you that meeting has happened because like no one sits in that chair looks around and say, yeah, we're just going to give, we're just going to get billions of dollars. That is trying to come to us. Stay out. That's not how.

Auren Hoffman (40:51.687) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (41:03.014) Yes, yeah, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (41:14.332) Yeah, Walmart has like billions in profit from advertising. mean, it's crazy.

Adam (41:18.316) And that means they can invest in the business. They can make, they can open more markets. They can make it more affordable. It's good for consumers. So the way I think about it is it's the beginning. It's maybe it's a new wave of publishers. Maybe the next decade of new publishers will become, you know, utility apps and OEMs and these commerce retail media companies and great companies that offers us also promoted services and it allows them to do more and it allows us to discover more. So.

It's a win-win and again, so long that as an industry, we kind of commit to try to create value to the advertiser and to the user, then we're going to end up winning. And that's the essence of long-term thinking. You know, it's like so long that we optimize for the long-term and we create something that users would want to use again and again and again, then this industry will flourish way more, even more than it does now.

Auren Hoffman (42:04.391) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (42:12.168) Yeah, and great companies, companies that I admire like Costco, like they've always had the they've always had the consumer in mind. They're always trying to do what's best for the consumer. And they're always they're always like essentially substituting the short term for the long term. They're always long term focused. Those are the best companies, the companies that try to like more optimize for the short term and do some things around the edges for the consumer around the consumer.

Those are the ones that have trouble lasting.

Adam (42:44.182) And, and if it's hard, it's easier said than done, but it's always the right thing to do because you can create something that users love. If people give you their time, then you will find a way to build a great business on top of it. And this is why it's worth investing in engagement and value. And you're seeing, you know, you look around, you're seeing great companies offering content to consumers. have a business called Tabula news, which again, I really like because we work with Samsung and Xiaomi and you're going to see great partnerships coming up.

Auren Hoffman (42:47.64) Of course, yeah.

Adam (43:12.312) whereby these OEMs and apps say, have a relationship with you already. You trust us already. We should give you content you like and engage you more. And then you come back to us and you're going to appreciate what we do for you. And that is just an example. It's a proxy for that trend of companies saying, we don't want to be just a utility service. We want to be a full stack company that offers you multiple things so that you engage with you.

Auren Hoffman (43:24.369) Yeah.

Adam (43:42.096) you know, in variety of way, look, Uber eats is a big portion of Uber, right? And again, that's a good example of, of taking advantage of that relationship.

Auren Hoffman (43:46.62) Yes. Yep.

Auren Hoffman (43:52.196) Speaking of LogTurbo, you've been now running this company for 17 years. That's a long time to run a company. What is like what broke in year 15 that was doing just fine in year five?

Adam (44:06.222) Wow. So many things, like in the obvious answer, like the things that come to mind that are just obvious are, you know, obviously when you're smaller and remember to bullet for the first four years was not successful at all. we were, you know, around a dozen people, perhaps we're almost 2000 people now. but back then, you know, everyone could be in a room together. That has changed. Now we do all hands every two weeks. So I'm trying to sustain this transparency feel, but back then it was much easier.

Auren Hoffman (44:34.2) Why do you need 2,000 people to do what you do? Like that just seems like an extreme number. Like why do need so many folks?

Adam (44:41.878) I mean, you were just sorry. Technology investment is massive. If you think about Tabula being, you know, first of all, you know, offering something for publishers of election, we have a publisher full suite of technology. Then we offer, we have almost 15 to 20,000 advertisers that are used to, we'll look to optimize. So, you know, it's a robust platform for both publishers and advertisers in many ways. If we compare Tabula's investment in technology to other companies, we're probably under invested.

But know, $2 billion, almost $2 billion and 2000 people is almost a million dollars raised. That's not that bad. But, but, in fact, it's probably pretty good. So I think, I think for me, it's mainly about how do you scale a startup? How do I go from 2 billion to 4 billion and keep it lean and mean so that it feels like it carries the values and things that make it fun and make it something that people want to do for a long time. I look at my management, many of us have been together for more than a decade.

Auren Hoffman (45:11.292) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Yeah.

Adam (45:37.736) And I think that the things that are probably funny enough, harder to do when you're bigger and more successful. And this is a bit of a counter-intuitive thing in my mind is that when you're smaller, everyone is ahead of you. So it's like a Formula One, you you're driving really fast, but you know what you need to do because you're seeing it. It's ahead of you. And that's with us for years. You know, we just had many, many great companies. tried to just beat it.

Auren Hoffman (45:59.942) Yeah, yep, yep.

Adam (46:07.136) On that segment of what they competed with us. And now we, we, you know, I, I'm very proud of the team execution. We've became, you know, the, biggest in many of the things we do. And, and that changes the culture. How do you make people feel like today's the day, you know, that today's client email is the most important thing you can, you can do. And, know, you walk into to blow his offices, we have a piano and the sofa is huge looking like the logo and.

there's food and all those things. But we're still fighting the fights. I think the hardest thing to do as you scale is keeping the culture strong and evolve it into something that can scale to 2,000 people but still feel like a startup in many, many ways. So you can still break things and make mistakes.

Auren Hoffman (46:57.212) How do you personally get better? Because like, you said, like if you want to get right now, if you want to get better at tennis, you could hire a tennis coach. There's probably thousands of people in this world. don't know if you are, you know, who are better than you at tennis. You could hire them. They would do a great job. They could coach you and you're, you know, you can get, go from, you know, where level level you are now to the next level. But if you want to get like better as like CEO of a tech company, like

There's not really like coaches out there to like tell you what to do to help you get like you're, you're, you're kind of already at kind of top of your game. So how do you kind of work on your own improvement? And there's not even what's sure what the playbook is.

Adam (47:36.262) I think it, first of there's always value in people that have done something successfully before to learn from and build yourself, know, around, surround yourself with a community of people that have strong opinions about what they think you should do, but you don't have to, and you just listen to it and make your own decisions. Obviously. however, you know, the bullet is my first job. I don't know any other company outside of Google, Facebook, and Amazon that has built an advertising business at our size in 22 markets around the world.

you know, that generates a million dollars every four hours with, you know, with over 20,000 of EBITDA and, know, with hundreds of applications a day for people to join the company with a culture like Taboola of the level of transparency we have and how it feels to be here. So, and the reason I say that is because we built it together. It's like, know, it's like, my team, my CTO, when he joined Taboola, I came from cyber, did not know what CPM was the best. It can be the city of Google if you wanted to, in my humble opinion.

Our COO before this was, you know, he was a rocket scientist, did not know what CPC was. Could be the CEO of in my opinion. These people are the Avengers. They're so good at what they do. They've learned, they learn fast. And remember, and this is a humbling thing for those who think they're great because we tend to like ourselves over time as we become successful. So this is a humbling exercise I'm about to tell you. Remember that.

know, classical music is an example, right? 200 years after Chopin, Bach and Mozart were born, we still play the same music. If you go to Carnegie Hall and you go to a great concert, you're likely going to hear Mozart, Bach or Chopin, or maybe some others, but those three will play a big part of what you listen to. And you're going to really appreciate that. Those kids, when they were six years old, wrote symphonies for 30 people that took 200 years after.

It's still hard for us to even play what they wrote when they were six years old. That's prodigy. None of us. And it is likely that most, % of people listening to this are not prodigies. We are all fairly average. We try hard, we lean in, we're humble to listen and make mistakes. But if you think you're anything close to Chopin back then, know, keep smoking what you're smoking, but you're probably not.

Auren Hoffman (49:35.718) Yeah, incredible.

Auren Hoffman (49:44.54) Yep. Yep.

Adam (50:00.28) So I'm saying it because it's a very, you know, down to earth, humbling exercise to be reminded that what's winners from losers is not necessarily who is the best LinkedIn profile. It's not necessarily who has done it, who has made it. It's not necessarily that it's a lot of times combination of passion and empathy and intelligence. And that is because none of us is Chopin and most of us are average and still some of us are winners. Some of us are really winners.

and some of us are not.

Auren Hoffman (50:32.2) Alright, a couple of personal questions we ask all of our guests. What is a conspiracy theory you believe?

Adam (50:38.092) Well, we Star Wars on this podcast, so maybe I'll go with George R. Banks with the Sith Lord. Maybe it was, you know, there's some episodes, know, that he shows some powers, so maybe, who knows? Who knows? Nobody knows.

Auren Hoffman (50:46.888) Auren Hoffman (50:55.016) Okay, all right, I like it. All right, last question when I scroll over and guess, what conventional wisdom or advice do you think is generally bad advice?

Adam (51:04.91) breakfast is the most important thing. No, I skipped breakfast. So I think, think a lot of times, I think a lot of times we have a tendency as operators to do what's right for the business for the next 10 years. We hire senior people. We go heavy handed into infrastructure investment because we're trying to do, to build like a huge company. And I think a lot of times we're not ready for it. So my, my, my advice is.

Auren Hoffman (51:11.452) So do I, by the way.

Adam (51:35.692) Try to think shorter terms, three years, not 10 years, try to do something that would be great for them and then be open minded to change. So I think this is, this is something that a lot of times your intuition is to build a huge scale of infrastructure for when you can serve a zillion people on your company, but you're just at 1 million. So maybe invest less, save some money, put it, put it in other areas. Maybe don't hire a chief.

Auren Hoffman (52:04.988) Yeah, duct tape is okay because by the time you're out there, whole tech stack's gonna change anyway, building something.

Adam (52:10.382) Maybe don't hire a CLO when you're training people. Maybe wait for that. Like wait. No presidents just yet. Just wait a little bit.

Auren Hoffman (52:15.174) Yeah, yep.

Auren Hoffman (52:19.016) Yeah, I generally found even going even more extreme that like, maybe you never have to hire like a lot of those amazing people that have great experience. could rent. And maybe to Bula you're big enough and most powerful enough that you can actually hire these like incredible people. But most companies that are probably listening to this today, like they can't get like the number one person, the number one CFO, the number one marketer, the number one salesperson, but like they actually could rent that person.

Like they could get that person for a few hours a month and get their advice and actually that person would be happy to help and, stuff like that. And maybe that's all they need. They just need a little bit of wisdom from this amazing person. And then they have an up and comer that actually can implement it.

Adam (53:03.81) And I will, will add to that as we're wrapping up that maybe the higher person full time for that position that has a lot to win with them. you're an incredible feeling when someone is joining you on their way up, not afraid to change their LinkedIn profile because they lost something with you. Maybe your chances for success improve.

Auren Hoffman (53:13.639) Yes.

Auren Hoffman (53:18.31) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (53:27.304) I love this. Adam Singolda. I really enjoyed this conversation. I on World of Dast, I follow you at Adam Singolda on X. I definitely encourage our listeners to engage with you there. This has been a ton of fun.

Adam (53:42.574) Thank you for having me, this is great.