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Is Taboola Dead or Dying? (my experience and opinion) (6)

08-05-2020 02:08 PM #1 bannered (Member)
Is Taboola Dead or Dying? (my experience and opinion)

Hi everyone,


I've been semi-successfully running on Taboola for a fair few years now.

Recently (past 2-3 weeks) I've experienced a huge changes in the traffic quality, quantity and delivery.

I'm using the exact same campaigns targeting I have for many months but the traffic I'm getting is completely different.

I used to get quite a lot of US traffic along with other Tier 1 GEOs and just a bit of tier 2 and 3. Now US traffic on these campaigns is close to 0, just a few $ spend on a few thousand daily budget...

All campaigns are much slower to start/spend and not scaling anywhere near like they did before. I tried raising my CPC to 3-4x what I'd usually bid, but again, barely any US traffic, mostly other tiny tier 3 island type GEOs.


I started noticing this change roughly around the time they removed the "Accelerated" feature.

I always used high Daily Caps along with SmartBids. I spoke to my manager on this matter, but they didn't admit anything had changed.

I also spied around on top MSN placements and noticed that there are way less global ecom ads around.


Q1) Has anyone noticed a dramatic change in traffic recently?
Q2) Taboola managers are advising to target individual Tier 2 GEOs nowdays for ecom campaigns - do you think this is too get affs away from their premium placements?

Q3) Would you say Outbrain/Revcontent is a better choice than Tabooola for ecom offers to hit 4-5 figures/day - right now?

It all seems in the past 12 months the algo has been used to force us into spending more and downgrade the reach and performance of global campaigns where we could get some cheaper scale.

Thoughts?

08-05-2020 03:19 PM #2 bhal07 (Member)

The past few posts here have suggested that US traffic on Taboola is getting way more expensive as of late.

I don’t run much on Taboola (I want to but can’t get anything profitable) but I’m interested to see what people have to say about this...

Maybe Outbrain is a better option at the moment?


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08-05-2020 08:26 PM #3 jack_l (Veteran Member)

Quote Originally Posted by bannered View Post
Hi everyone,


I've been semi-successfully running on Taboola for a fair few years now.

Recently (past 2-3 weeks) I've experienced a huge changes in the traffic quality, quantity and delivery.

I'm using the exact same campaigns targeting I have for many months but the traffic I'm getting is completely different.

I used to get quite a lot of US traffic along with other Tier 1 GEOs and just a bit of tier 2 and 3. Now US traffic on these campaigns is close to 0, just a few $ spend on a few thousand daily budget...

All campaigns are much slower to start/spend and not scaling anywhere near like they did before. I tried raising my CPC to 3-4x what I'd usually bid, but again, barely any US traffic, mostly other tiny tier 3 island type GEOs.


I started noticing this change roughly around the time they removed the "Accelerated" feature.

I always used high Daily Caps along with SmartBids. I spoke to my manager on this matter, but they didn't admit anything had changed.

I also spied around on top MSN placements and noticed that there are way less global ecom ads around.


Q1) Has anyone noticed a dramatic change in traffic recently?
Q2) Taboola managers are advising to target individual Tier 2 GEOs nowdays for ecom campaigns - do you think this is too get affs away from their premium placements?

Q3) Would you say Outbrain/Revcontent is a better choice than Tabooola for ecom offers to hit 4-5 figures/day - right now?

It all seems in the past 12 months the algo has been used to force us into spending more and downgrade the reach and performance of global campaigns where we could get some cheaper scale.

Thoughts?

That's interesting man...

I haven't run in the US on Taboola for a few months, but all our UK and AU and INTL campaigns have been doing the same as always.

Indeed, last month was our best month ever, and almost entirely due to Taboola.

It sounds to me as though one part of the overall Taboola ecosystem might have changed (or more likely the way a certain feature was working relating to budgets/bidding/etc) and that had a really negative effect on your specific targeting style for some reason.

If you were targeting lots of geo's together including the US and getting good US traffic, but now you're not, then maybe its as simple as US CPC's just getting higher due to brands re-starting their on there after pausing due to Covid? I don't know... that is a bummer though indeed-


Re: other networks, I LOVE Revcontent as a company and platform but I think its infinitely harder to get things profitable there than Taboola or Outbrain. Too many affiliates, too little volume (especially outside the US), and hard to compete with the super aggressive 'Shark Tank' type lp's that are common on it. The highest I've ever got on Revc was maybe 1000$ a day, a couple years ago.

Outbrain is good, we mostly only have success on there when we do INTL campaigns though for some reason... it seems like targeting lots of geo's together always increases your volume and decreases cpc, whereas when we try to run individual countries its always much more expensive than on Taboola. Highest we've got there was 10k once briefly, usually a good campaign there is closer to 1-2k.

Taboola accounts for about 75% of our traffic right now... and then yeah, we use 'Balanced' for all our campaigns on it... we also use SmartBid.... not sure what other variables are at play....

We just started a US-only campaign though so I'll let you know how that one goes!

08-05-2020 09:51 PM #4 clickcapital (Junior Member)

I'll preface this with the fact that everyone does things their own way on Taboola, but one thing you said stuck out to me:

"I used to get quite a lot of US traffic along with other Tier 1 GEOs and just a bit of tier 2 and 3. Now US traffic on these campaigns is close to 0, just a few $ spend on a few thousand daily budget..."

Does that mean that you are targeting worldwide on your campaigns? I know their algo keeps getting updated and it could be that you are just not going to get US traffic much when you target worldwide (this will likely depend on your bid). You might need to split up by country, which would allow more custom bids.

08-06-2020 05:18 AM #5 stickupkid (Senior Moderator)

Maybe your angles are dead after so many months running? Maybe others copied you and find a way to also steal your placements?

And yes, companies are spending again so you might feel that.

08-06-2020 03:33 PM #6 nativeq (Member)
Is Taboola Dead or Dying? (my experience and opinion)

Quote Originally Posted by bannered View Post
Hi everyone,


I've been semi-successfully running on Taboola for a fair few years now.

Recently (past 2-3 weeks) I've experienced a huge changes in the traffic quality, quantity and delivery.

I'm using the exact same campaigns targeting I have for many months but the traffic I'm getting is completely different.

I used to get quite a lot of US traffic along with other Tier 1 GEOs and just a bit of tier 2 and 3. Now US traffic on these campaigns is close to 0, just a few $ spend on a few thousand daily budget...

All campaigns are much slower to start/spend and not scaling anywhere near like they did before. I tried raising my CPC to 3-4x what I'd usually bid, but again, barely any US traffic, mostly other tiny tier 3 island type GEOs.


I started noticing this change roughly around the time they removed the "Accelerated" feature.

I always used high Daily Caps along with SmartBids. I spoke to my manager on this matter, but they didn't admit anything had changed.

I also spied around on top MSN placements and noticed that there are way less global ecom ads around.


Q1) Has anyone noticed a dramatic change in traffic recently?
Q2) Taboola managers are advising to target individual Tier 2 GEOs nowdays for ecom campaigns - do you think this is too get affs away from their premium placements?

Q3) Would you say Outbrain/Revcontent is a better choice than Tabooola for ecom offers to hit 4-5 figures/day - right now?

It all seems in the past 12 months the algo has been used to force us into spending more and downgrade the reach and performance of global campaigns where we could get some cheaper scale.

Thoughts?
Hey,
Q1: to make sure i understood your question, are you targeting multiple geos at once in your campaigns? Have you ever tried to split it up by usa only? Could help to split them up by geo and refresh your creatives
Q2: it’s not about driving away affiliates from premium placements, it’s more about getting advertisers/ affiliates to test other tiers also, so other shity pubs monetize too . That is because once you make it work on some big traffic sources you’re not interested in pch or pushnami traffic for example( available for affiliates/ advertisers in general)If you have good sites that you know converted well, keep refreshing creatives ( I don’t have full info whether your ctr dropped on those sites, how many ads you tested/ paused lately, so this is a first impression )
Q3: i’d test outbrain too, but focus on one geo at once.( outbrain is as good as taboola)

Also, for combining geos, you might end up paying usa cpcs for cheaper countries that might take over all the traffic.


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