[10] By 2019, Taboola was used to provide 450 billion recommendations every month,[11] due to adoption by major news websites, like the IBM-owned The Weather Company.

[17] Commerce Sciences' technology may re-work a website's layout, based on whether a user is more likely to click on a banner ad, newsletter, or video.

[19] Under the terms of the deal, Taboola would have paid Outbrain shareholders 30 percent of the combined company's stock and $250 million in cash.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the drop in revenue made it harder for Taboola and Outbrain to continue to make their fixed payments to publishers.

Taboola CEO Adam Singolda said the merger "failed because of the financial contribution of Outbrain" in the previous 12 months.

[23] On 30 June 2021, Taboola began publicly trading on the Nasdaq at a valuation of around $2.6 billion following a merger with special purpose acquisition company ION Acquisition Corp.[24][25] On 23 July 2021, Taboola announced it was acquiring Connexity, a marketing technology company that operates a retail- and e-commerce-focused advertising network, for $800M from Symphony Technology Group.

[30] Taboola is used by content publishers to encourage users to view more articles on the same site, or to gain revenues for referral traffic.

", with Fortune stating that while companies that partnered with Taboola and Outbrain for advertising generally earned significant income from the partnership, the ads recommended by these services "often represent the worst of the Web".

[39] Advertiser-sponsored content displayed through the platform might include articles such as "The World's Cutest Cat Pictures All On One Site" or "Jeff Bridges' Magnificent Home Is Beyond Stunning".

The NAD said it recommended the changes, citing the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), due to concerns that Taboola's "sponsored content" disclosures "were not sufficiently clear and conspicuous, or easy to notice, read, and understand.

Several of those that do not, including The New York Times, pay for content created with advertisers in-house to appear in the widgets to increase traffic to their sites.

A company spokesperson said that "Taboola has a very clear and strict set of guidelines in terms of both fake news as well as trademark infringement".

[47][48] In February 2022, Taboola, a member of the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) UK, was awarded the Gold Standard 2.0 Certification by the organization.