Taboola To Buy US Ad Solutions Firm Connexity For $800M To Expand Platform

Weeks after going public via SPAC on the Nasdaq, Israeli content recommendation firm Taboola announced that it was acquiring LA-based ad solutions company Connexity for $800 million, in a bid to expand its offerings.

Taboola indicated that it plans to finance the transaction with $260 million in cash, $300 million from committed debt financing, and approximately $240 million through shares.

The deal is Taboola’s fifth acquisition and adds over 200 people to its team, bringing the number of total employees across the world to approximately 1,600. Connexity CEO Bill Glass and the company’s management team will lead the newly formed business unit at Taboola, according to the announcement.

Connexity is one of the largest e-commerce media platforms out there with over 1,600 direct merchants such as Walmart, Macy’s, and eBay, and 6,000 publishers like Condé Nast, Hearst, Vox Media, and News Corp Australia. The company works with the merchants to place digital ads with publishers, reach new customers, and drive sales. According to the announcement, Connexity reaches more than 100 million unique shoppers per month and has an index of more than 750 million product offers.

Taboola indicated in the statement that the acquisition of Connexity aligns with its “Recommend Anything” growth strategy “to introduce new types of recommendations and enter new segments while leveraging its significant scale and recommendations platform to deliver even greater value to its 9,000 digital property partners, 13,000 direct advertisers and 500 million daily active users.”

In a post on Friday, Taboola founder and CEO Adam Singolda wrote that one of the most exciting areas was the company in recent years was e-commerce, an over $35 billion market.

“By combining our organizations, cultures, massive data, reach, and direct access to publishers, advertisers and merchants — we are making a huge step towards our vision. We’ll be at the forefront of powering recommendations for the open web, behind every merchant in the world, leveraging Taboola to reach their clients outside of the walled gardens,” Singolda said, adding a note for e-commerce giant Amazon.

“Together with Connexity, we can achieve our shared dream. Amazon has millions of merchants, but merchants mainly have Amazon. That changes today,” he wrote.

“E-Commerce is the future of the open web, consumers will be buying outside of Amazon, on publishers’ sites next to trusted editorial content a lot more than they are today,” Singolda said in the company announcement. “Combining Taboola and Connexity’s technologies is one step forward in creating an alternative to walled gardens.”

Glass said the acquisition deal with Taboola is “a natural fit and a huge win for both of our customer sets.”