Taboola goes international, launches sponsored video placement

Video recommendations provider Taboola is offering a new product to its customers that will allow them to boost viewership with paid placement in its recommended video widgets. The company has also found some success internationally, as it is being used for recommendations on some highly ranked sites in Brazil, Israel, Mexico and Poland.

Taboola provides a widget to publishers that provides recommended videos based upon the context of the story that they’re reading. Those videos can come from the publisher whose website an end user is on, or from multiple other providers that have agreed to make their content available as part of Taboola’s network. The idea is that the website gets additional content from other providers, while the content creators get additional viewership opportunities from being seen on a wider range of publisher sites.

Now it’s taking that concept a step further, with the ability to have sponsored placement in those widgets. Publishers can now pay to have their content highlighted among the recommended videos, as a way to increase viewership from outside sites. While those videos are still recommended based on Taboola’s targeting technology, they are clearly marked as sponsored content.

Taboola is offering the model on a pay-per-click basis, meaning that content owners don’t pay for a video’s placement unless someone chose to watch it. It’s a good way of ensuring that the videos shown are relevant, and that content creators don’t get charged based solely on impressions. Taboola then shares a cut of the revenues from sponsored videos with the publisher whose sites they ran on. (For a good example of this in practice, check out this local Hearst affiliate, which is offering recommended videos at the bottom of the page — including sponsored content from other providers.)

In addition to its most recent product addition, Taboola has also been making some progress in expanding beyond the U.S. market. Domestically, it powers video recommendations for clients like the Bloomberg, CNN, Hearst, the New York Times and USA Today, but it’s gotten some top international customers as well. Those include Agora in Poland, Esmas in Mexico, IG.com in Brazil and Ynet.co.il in Israel.

Taboola wants to expand even more internationally, and CEO Adam Singolda told us that he is looking to add more salespeople outside the U.S. The startup, which has offices in New York and Israel, recently raised a $ 9 million round of funding led by Crescent Point, with participation from Evergreen VC. To date, Taboola has raised $ 15 million since being founded in 2007.

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