Taboola, a global leader in powering content recommendations for the open web, has announced a strategic partnership with Jounce Media, a prominent authority in programmatic supply chain management. This collaboration aims to bring greater transparency and quality assurance to the Taboola Select publisher network by ensuring it remains free from Made for Advertising (MFA) properties—sites designed primarily to attract ad spend without offering substantial value to users.
The issue of MFA sites has become increasingly significant in the digital advertising industry. According to industry reports, approximately 15 percent of ad spend is currently being funneled into these low-quality, ad-centric websites. These platforms are created solely to maximize advertising revenue, often at the expense of user experience, which in turn reduces the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.
Through its partnership with Jounce Media, Taboola is taking a proactive stance to safeguard advertisers from this growing challenge. By leveraging Jounce’s expertise in programmatic supply chain verification, Taboola will provide advertisers with the confidence that their ad spend is allocated to high-quality, value-driven publishers that enhance user engagement and maximize campaign effectiveness. This initiative underscores Taboola’s commitment to maintaining a premium, transparent ecosystem for both publishers and advertisers, ensuring that brands can reach their target audiences on reputable platforms.
Taboola has spent more than 15 years forging partnerships with top publisher properties including Yahoo, Business Insider, and The Associated Press. Recently, Taboola launched Taboola Select, offering advertisers even more access to highly visible placements across a curated selection of publishers as well. Taboola Select is a curated selection of highly visible and brand safe placements on just 15 percent of Taboola’s most premium publishers, allowing advertisers to drive performance-focused campaigns.
Through this new partnership with Jounce Media, Taboola will utilize Jounce’s MFA-detection technology and data, alongside proprietary machine learning models and procedures, to guarantee the exclusion of MFA publishers from Taboola Select.
“Made For Advertising supply undermines advertiser trust in the open internet and siphons ad spend from reputable publishers,” said Chris Kane, President of Jounce Media, “Taboola’s decision to package its most premium supply in the Taboola Select network and to use Jounce data to ensure the marketplace is MFA-free is a positive step that serves both marketers and publishers.”
“Advertisers deserve access to premium, brand safe and effective publishers to run their campaigns,” said Adam Singolda, CEO and Founder at Taboola. “Taboola has been on the forefront of providing this access, through our immense scale with trusted publishers. Adding the expertise and guidance of Jounce is yet another vote of confidence in our ability to connect advertisers with consumers in premium destinations.”
