As bloggers, it’s a good idea to have multiple streams of income. And using advertising networks is a great way to make extra money with your blog with little effort. There are many Taboola reviews out there and maybe you’ve read a few. In this Taboola review, we will break down why you might be hesitant to join this particular network. You’ll be surprised by what we found out.
What is Taboola?
Taboola is an advertising network and was founded by Adam Singolda in 2007 and has over 1,000 employees. The headquarters are in New York. Taboola is responsible for the “Around the Web” and “Recommended for You” link boxes you sometimes see at the bottom of web pages. They acquired ConvertMedia in 2016 which allowed them to expand their advertising to include video content as well. At the time of this review, Taboola has a B- rating on the BBB.
How Does Taboola Work For Publishers?
Once you are approved as a publisher of Taboola, you will be assigned an account manager. Publishers can buy ad space on more popular sites to encourage visitors to visit their site. But on the flip side, publishers can earn money by placing ads from Taboola advertisers on their blog by using the Taboola widget.
The Taboola Widget
Your account manager will give you Javascript code to put on your website to run ads. This is the Taboola widget. You will also receive instructions on how to add the code.
Once the code has been added to your site, the widget will display recommendations to your site visitors that are relevant to the content on your site page. Generally, when visitors click on these recommendations, you earn a commission. This will depend on how that campaign is set to pay, i.e., CPC (cost per click), impression.
Publisher Campaign Costs
As a publisher, you can set up campaigns to advertise your content on other sites. The minimum requirement for publishers setting up ad campaigns is $0.01 but according to Taboola they recommend a value between $0.20-$0.70 to make campaigns more competitive to other publishers.
“Recommended For You”
You may have seen those “Recommended for You” displays at the bottom of web pages. They usually contain images and those images usually have a site reference under the image. Your ads will reflect your site name below the images. Likewise, you can earn commissions from displaying those types of ads on your own site.
Taboola Features
There are a number of features that make Taboola a bit different from other basic advertising networks. Aside from being available worldwide for the most part, here are some additional features:
- Every new campaign is reviewed by a Taboola member
- Campaign targeting by location
- You can block other publishers so that your ads don’t show up on certain publisher’s sites. So if you see sites on your reports that are unrelated to your site, or you don’t want your ads to run on a certain site for any reason, you can remove them and block them from placing your ads on their site in the future.
- Good reporting features such as revenue reporting, organic content analytics, audience development and editorial controls
- You can add additional logins to your reporting area by contacting your account manager
- Downloadable reports
- Flexible code that utilizes thumbnails and text links as well as widget placement.
- Widgets can be placed in a number of different areas–not just below the main article content.
- You can set up widgets to link to landing pages. Other networks do not have this feature.
- Taboola feed allows a number of different content types including:
- Organic recirculation
- 3rd party modules (newsletters, sign-up)
- Sponsored video and articles
- Products and services
How Much Money Can You Make With Taboola?
As with any advertising network, the amount of money a publisher or blogger can make will vary depending on various factors. So for Taboola publishers, they are paid via a number of different methods such as CPC (cost per click), pageviews, CTR (click through rate), and impressions. So with that said, how much you can make as a publisher can vary greatly.
Ultimately your potential income is highly dependent on the amount of traffic your site gets. If your site isn’t getting enough traffic, no amount of ads is going to change that. If you think your site needs a little traffic love, you may want to consider Wealthy Affiliate. They will teach you all the ins and outs of getting free traffic from Google.
That said it’s always good to have multiple streams of income so you may not want to limit your earning potential by soley working with Taboola. You may want to work with other networks as well such as:
How Do You Get Paid With Taboola?
Payments are made through Payoneer which is a global payment platform. If you want to use direct deposit, you will also have to supply your banking details assuming you live in an area that supports this payment option. Payments are made 45 days after the end of the previous month. So your January commissions would not be released until 45 days after January 31st.
Taboola Publisher Requirements
In order to become a publisher with Taboola, your site will have to meet certain criteria. To get started with Taboola, you will need to fill out a form that will include your site URL and the amount of traffic your site gets each month. You cannot use Taboola to promote inappropriate or illegal content such as:
- Adult content and nudity
- Any religious content that is inflammatory
- Fraudulent content
- Hate speech
All site content must be accurate to the best of your knowledge and you must verify that you own the site. According to our research, your site should have a minimum of 500,000 monthly page views which is unlike Outbrain’s requirement. This requirement might be a problem for certain sites. Either way every blogger knows that traffic is king. If you’d like to learn how to get tons of traffic to your site for free, you may want to consider looking into Wealthy Affiliate.
That said there are also other networks worth checking out that don’t have such high traffic requirements. Some other affiliate networks you should consider regardless of traffic or not are Maxbounty.com, Traffic Jam Media, or iGain.com. Joining and promoting multiple networks is always a great way to make even more money with your blog.
How To Log Into Taboola
Log into Taboola by going to this link.
Taboola Support
To contact Taboola, you can write to them via email at info@taboola.com. Alternatively, their phone number in New York is 212-206-7663. You can also complete the form on their contact page located here.
Taboola Complaints
Now that we’ve discussed how Taboola works, let’s talk about what’s not so great about this advertising network. Here are some things you should be aware of before you sign up:
Clickbait
Numerous complaints that the Recommended for You and Around the Web links are click bait or fake news. In fact, a ChangeAdvertising study in 2016 found that 26% of links were clickbait. As a publisher you want people to click on ad links but you don’t want those links to direct them to sites that are unrelated to your content. This could actually adversely affect your rankings, your visitors and increase your bounce rate. Visitors don’t like to be fooled into fake clicks!
Advertiser Charges Issues
We mentioned earlier that Taboola has an overall positive Better Business Bureau rating. However there are several complaints listed with the BBB from advertisers who were overcharged and/or had money withdrawn without authorization. Sadly these complaints have had no response from Taboola at the time of this review.
Payoneer Problems
There seems to be a responsibility issue here. When publishers complain they haven’t got paid, Taboola refers publishers to Payoneer. But in some cases, Payoneer refers publishers right back to Taboola. Obviously this creates a ridiculous loop of inaction leaving publishers out of pocket.
Should You Use Taboola?
As you can see, Taboola is a legitimate advertising network, but it doesn’t come without its problems. Keep in mind that when you use any advertising network to place ads on your site, you are relying on ad clicks. If your site doesn’t get enough traffic to qualify, you may be left out in the cold anyway. But there are ways to get around the whole traffic issue. You can learn how to get a ton of free traffic with Wealthy Affiliate. Wealthy Affiliate can help new and experienced bloggers make more money with their sites.
If your site gets over 500,000 page views each month, this might be worth checking out. If some of the payment issues make you think twice, there are some alternatives. You might want to check out these networks: Maxbounty.com, Traffic Jam Media, & iGain.com.
Well, I guess that’s it for now. If you’d like to know more about advertising with Taboola, click here for their faqs. And if you’ve already tried this network or are considering checking them out, I’d love to read your comments and experiences below.
Until next time,
Eddy with a y
Taboola definitely sounds like something I want to steer clear of. I certainly don’t want click bait, and have clicks that are not related to my site. We work hard as bloggers to get our blogs ranked good. I see this as something that would jepordize that. Thanks for all the great reviews. As an affiliate marketer and blogger, it is nice to see someone putting these reviews out there for us.
Agreed, the click bait situation gives me pause as well.
I just got done reading your MaxBounty review, and then I stumbled on this one. Taboola isn’t even something I’ve heard of until now, so I’m glad I found this! I’m always looking for new ways to monetize my blog.
What concerns me is that BBB rating. It doesn’t look super great. I know it’s still a B, but it’s a borderline C! I also am not sue about the payment processor. I’ve never heard of Payoneer, and it sounds like from your review that people have had a few issues with them.
I’m going to keep my eye out on Taboola. If they can get a better BBB rating, then I would consider looking into them. Thanks for the great review!
You’re very welcome. I’m not a big fan of when a company doesn’t offer Paypal as a payment option either. So I can totally relate with your concern. The BBB ratings I’m usually less concerned with because of the nature of the BBB. But that’s me.
It is obvious that Taboola is not a scam, but I don’t think that it is a network that I personally would like to sign up with.
The various issues which it mentions are not ones that I would like to deal with. In particular, I don’t like the fact that their are difficulties with getting payment from them which they do not seem to be hurrying to resolve. Nor do I like that some publishers have reported that they have been overcharged for their ads.
I do like the sound of the other ad networks which you mention.
But of course, as you say, you need traffic in order to work with any ad network, and I would endorse your recommendation to use Wealthy Affiliate’s training to get that traffic before considering joining any network.
Very many thanks for your post.
Chrissie 🙂
I have seen and Heard of Taboola but never really paid much attention to it. Bottom line I was very happy to read this article on a review for Taboola.
Unfortunately I know my site doesnt get enough traffic yet. Man its crazy how more traffic opens more doors.
thank you for a great article. I hope I can take advantage of this in the future.
Dale
Yeah traffic for a blog is the key to everything. That’s why producing optimized useful content consistently is important.
Hi
I have heard so much about Taboola and I always wondered if the site was legit. However, I did not have nay chance to look into it. Thank you so much for saving me a ton of research and now I finally know what taboola is and some of the issues people face. I will consider using taboola although as you have stated in your article that some people have payment issues with payoneer and there were some advertiser overcharge issues, I might be joining at my own expense. Anyway, thank you so much for a honest review of Taboola. I hope you have a great day
Regards
Pam
I read that Native Advertising has become quite big. While banner advertising is not working well any more, Native is increasing. In order to become an advertiser, don’t you need a certain number of pageviews per month? I know I will be looking at putting this – or a competitor – on my sites in the future.
Uh no as an advertiser you just pay to play. A publisher that wants to display the ads requires some traffic requirmements.