Taboola Innovation & Technology Culture

From childhood dreams to global impact, it’s recognition time for the teams behind building and launching Realize and its new Predictive Audiences tool. We asked Taboolars across Product, Engineering, and Product Marketing, “What was your dream job as a kid?” 

Their answers? Heartwarming and unexpected. Their jobs today? Inspirational and game-changing, and the impact of their work is increasingly making its mark on advertisers worldwide. 

Predictive Audiences: Its Superpower, Explained

Before we meet the incredible team behind the magic, let’s dive into what exactly Predictive Audiences is and what’s got the team so hyped. “We love superheroes at Taboola,” Roei Turgeman, Group Director, Product Management shared, with Boaz Shor, Algorithm Engineer, and Allen Chang, R&D Team Lead, adding that if Predictive Audiences had a superpower, it would be “x-ray vision for customer behavior.”

The Predictive Audiences tool is about leveraging data to connect advertisers with the right people at the right time. Allen explained, “Predictive Audiences leverage historical data to help advertisers identify and reach users with similar interests to their existing customers.” A key strength of the powerful tool the team is super proud of? It allows advertisers to move beyond simple demographics and tap into users’ intent, predicting their future actions based on their online behavior. 

Meet The Team

While the road to their careers today may have been unexpected for some—from childhood aspirations of journalism, lawyering, and astronomy—the team behind Realize has many reasons to celebrate their accomplishments. Their work has driven users to report strong performance and higher conversions for less spending compared to campaigns run outside of Predictive Audiences, and it’s just the beginning. Now, let’s meet the team!

Meet Allen Chang, R&D Team Lead. With an early childhood dream to work in AI, his passion is now a driving force in his work at Taboola. He leads the R&D team behind Predictive Audiences and builds solutions that empower advertisers to reach their ideal customers. Allen’s younger self? “He’d be excited to see what I’m doing because it’s always been my dream to build AI products.”

Boaz Shor, an Algorithm Engineer, took a significantly different route to the tech world. “I initially wanted to be a doctor,” he revealed. His pursuit of medicine led him to computational biology, where a love for the “computational” side of things ultimately steered him towards computer science. Today, Boaz plays a crucial role in crafting the algorithms that power Predictive Audiences. “The kid that I was would think this is a part of an amazing science fiction movie. They’d be very excited.”

Gabi Assif, Product Manager, expressed how his early goal was to be a lawyer for deaf individuals. “I even learned sign language,” he added. While his path shifted away from law, today, Gabi has been an integral part of ensuring that tools like Predictive Audiences are intuitive and impactful. When reflecting on his earlier career dreams and recent accomplishments, Gabi humorously added that his younger self would ask, “What’s a product manager?”

Jonathan Quach, an Algorithm Engineer, shared how, in his earlier years, he was fascinated by astronomy but ended up transitioning to tech after admiring his friend’s coding work, piquing his interest in pursuing a tech career. Today, Jonathan expressed, “It makes me genuinely happy that our users are reporting good performance using Predictive Audiences. They’re saving costs, and with every dollar they put in, they’re getting more out.”

Katherine Pickles, Senior Product Marketing Manager, shared, “When I was younger, I wanted to be a journalist or a writer.” Today, her knack for crafting compelling narratives and understanding audience needs now translates into her work in product marketing, ensuring that the value of Taboola’s products are clearly communicated. Her younger self? Katherine said, “They’d be excited that I’m working on products that show real innovation and drive impact.”

For Tom Chin, an Algorithm Engineer, working in tech and building tools that solve real-world problems was always a motivator. Tom shared, “I wouldn’t have imagined that someday I could become someone who would develop such large systems serving this number of users globally. I see a real impact on this product because I see the daily real-time metrics.”

Roei Turgeman, Group Director, Product Management, also took a turn from his early aspirations. “As a kid, I wanted to be a lawyer, but I used to take apart VCRs, so I think, in some way, it was my destiny to build cool products that have an impact,” he shared. Now, he’s at the forefront of overseeing a team of product managers. Roei’s expertise lies in understanding market needs, defining product strategy, ensuring collaboration between product and R&D, and playing a key role in the strategic direction of innovations like Predictive Audiences.

A Team Collaboration

Like any successful product, Predictive Audiences was a deeply collaborative effort. Katherine shared, “I work in product marketing, so that means that I work very closely with our product teams developing new products, and I work on enabling our advertisers and our sales and account managers to sell those products to their customers.” This collaborative spirit extended throughout the development process as Boaz explained, “We have a very good collaboration between R&D and Product. (Product) tells us what they hear from their customers, what their needs are, what they’re looking for, and we (R&D) tell them what we can actually do.” This partnership, he noted, led to “an amazing experience working together,” where both sides helped each other “achieve what we needed to” and “define the product in the best way” for customers. 

Roei further highlighted the importance of teamwork, adding, “I’m fortunate to work with a team of skilled product managers and our R&D partners to bring innovative ideas to fruition.” This close partnership was echoed by Gabi, who called out the “exceptional” nature of the collaboration and the expertise he gained. Reflecting on the full-cycle experience of working on this product, Tom added, “Being involved from the beginning and seeing the positive impact on our advertisers has been incredibly rewarding.” With a joyful smile, Boaz emphasized, “It’s safe to say that we’re proud of what we accomplished.”

From those early childhood dreams to building and launching Predictive Audiences under Realize, a performance marketing platform that has a real impact on how advertisers connect with their audiences, it’s remarkable and (might we add, heartwarming) to hear the excitement and pride from the team who stands behind it. As Jonathan reminds us, “Technology should ultimately serve people, and I’m proud to be in a job that allows me to get to do that.” 

To learn more about why we are consistently ranked as a great place to work, check out the Taboola Life blog.  Visit our careers page and realize your potential with #TaboolaLife.

If my younger self could see me now… they’d probably be shocked and a little confused, but also incredibly excited about the work I’m doing today as a Data Science Team Leader!

Huge shoutout to the amazing team I had the privilege of working with to bring #PredictiveAudiences to life :)

NEW YORK, NY  – Taboola (Nasdaq: TBLA), a global leader in delivering performance at scale for advertisers, today announced the launch of Realize+, the next phase of Taboola’s performance marketing platform, Realize.

Realize+ is an agentic system that helps performance marketers unlock more conversions beyond search and social. It continuously makes and executes campaign decisions, helping drive incremental results, while reducing manual effort.

Taboola estimates that around 80% of marketers would increase investment in the open web if it offered automated, AI-powered campaign solutions that they get from the walled gardens. Additionally, nearly 86% say they would allocate up to a quarter of their performance budgets to the open web if such capabilities were available.*

Realize is a technology platform that helps advertisers achieve outcomes at scale, leveraging Taboola’s unique supply, first-party data, and AI. It enables performance campaigns across many of the world’s largest and most trusted publishers, OEMs, and apps.

To deliver this, Realize+ is built on a two-part approach: 

• The Decision Engine: Within Realize, automatically moves budget in real time to the highest-performing campaigns and opportunities using a new tool called the Budget Allocator.
• The Element Generator: Creates and continuously improves ads and targeting, helping campaigns stay effective without manual updates.

Together, these capabilities are designed to replicate the performance and autonomy of walled gardens, while providing a direct path to premium inventory and ensuring more budget is spent on outcomes. 

Realize is also opening itself to Claude Skills, giving advertisers and agencies a conversational front door to Taboola from inside Claude. The first skill released will handle campaign setup and optimization and it is the first of several skills Taboola plans to release over the coming months, which remove friction for agencies and advertisers standardizing on AI-native workflows.

Realize+ has spent several months in beta. Stemming from positive early results, phase 2 of the beta will now be expanding in Q2 with improved models, while also featuring an extensive roadmap throughout 2026.

Supporting quotes

“Allocating budget across campaigns in real time is one of the biggest challenges in performance marketing,” said Héctor Vargas Mendoza, Senior Growth Marketing Manager – Team Lead at Sonova Marketing GmbH. “Tools like Realize+ and its Budget Allocator are especially compelling because they have the potential to automatically shift spend toward what’s working best—without constant manual adjustments. That kind of efficiency could be a meaningful unlock for teams looking to drive stronger performance at scale.”

“Driving consistent performance at scale requires both efficiency and adaptability,” said Matt Linder, Co-founder at Strand Marketing. “We’ve been encouraged by the early results we’re seeing with Realize, particularly its ability to help optimize campaigns in real time and surface new opportunities for growth. As these capabilities continue to evolve with Realize+, we’re excited about the potential to further streamline execution and drive even stronger performance moving forward.”

“For years, advertisers have hit a ceiling when trying to scale performance beyond search and social,” said Adam Singolda, CEO and founder of Taboola. “With Realize+, we’re removing that barrier – bringing automation, intelligence, and true performance to the open web so marketers can drive measurable growth at scale. And by launching Realize+ we’re meeting advertisers and agencies where they already work. As the industry shifts toward AI-native media operations, we want Taboola to be the easiest open web platform to plug into any agent, any stack, any workflow.”

“We’re entering an era where advertising is shifting from manual optimization to fully agentic systems. With Realize+, we’re building intelligent agents that operate continuously on behalf of advertisers – evaluating strategies across thousands of signals, learning from patterns across the entire ecosystem, and making decisions in real time. 

If you think about the complexity advertisers face today – hundreds of variables across creative, audience, bidding, and placement – it’s simply not tractable for humans to manage. Agentic AI changes that. It allows us to explore and optimize across that entire space dynamically, not just reactively. What’s powerful about Realize+ is that we’re doing this while maintaining transparency and control, which is something that’s been largely missing in walled garden systems. Advertisers don’t just get outcomes, they understand and guide how those outcomes are achieved. 

Additionally, as the industry shifts toward AI-native media operations, we want Taboola to be the easiest open web platform to plug into any agent, any stack, and any workflow. I’m excited to make it easier for any agency, big or small, or any advertiser to now operate Realize with full control, or Realize+ with more automation from within their Claude environment,” continued Singolda.

*Source: Based on a survey of 200 senior marketers at U.S. and UK enterprises with 1,000+ employees in 2026.

About Taboola  

Taboola empowers businesses to grow through performance advertising technology that goes beyond search and social and delivers measurable outcomes at scale.

Taboola works with thousands of businesses who advertise directly on Realize, Taboola’s powerful ad platform, reaching approximately 600M daily active users across some of the best publishers in the world. Publishers like NBC News, Yahoo, and OEMs such as Samsung, Xiaomi and others use Taboola’s technology to grow audience and revenue, enabling Realize to offer unique data, specialized algorithms, and unmatched scale.

Disclaimer – Forward-Looking Statements

Taboola (the “Company”) may, in this communication, make certain statements that are not historical facts and relate to analysis or other information which are based on forecasts or future or results. Examples of such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding future prospects, product development and business strategies. Words such as “expect,” “estimate,” “project,” “budget,” “forecast,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “plan,” “may,” “will,” “could,” “should,” “believes,” “predicts,” “potential,” “continue,” and similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements but are not the exclusive means for identifying such statements. By their very nature, forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties, both general and specific, and there are risks that the predictions, forecasts, projections and other forward-looking statements will not be achieved. You should understand that a number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from the plans, objectives, expectations, estimates and intentions expressed in such forward-looking statements, including the risks set forth in the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025 under Part 1, Item 1A “Risk Factors” and our subsequent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company cautions readers not to place undue reliance upon any forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made. The Company does not undertake or accept any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements to reflect any change in its expectations or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based.

We're proud to share that Taboola's launch of Realize has earned an Honorable Mention in the Best Product Launch Communications Campaign category at the inaugural Chief Marketer IGNITE Awards.

The IGNITE Awards recognize the most innovative and impactful work across modern marketing, from breakthrough campaigns to advancements in marketing technology and communications.

This recognition is a reflection of the team's work in bringing a new performance advertising platform to market, and the advertisers and partners who believed in what we were building

【Event Review 🚀】

The challenge of 1 billion metrics per minute! Paul, a software engineer at Taboola, was invited to attend Observability Day

In the post-cookie era, the accuracy of ad delivery not only depends on audience tags, but also the stability of backend technology is the key lifeblood of brand conversion.

Recently, Taboola Taiwan's software engineer Xie Chaohua (Paul Hsieh ) was invited to participate in the annual technology event Observability Day hosted by IThome to share Taboola's world-leading monitoring architecture practical experience with many developers.

🔥 Presentation Highlights: Metric instrumentation: from Dropwizard to Open Telemetry 
Taboola is a global leader in performance advertising, processing more than 1 billion metrics per minute. During the meeting, Paul selflessly shared how to lead thousands of Java service instances to smoothly transition from traditional frameworks to OpenTelemetry without affecting existing operations and the challenge of ensuring "backward compatibility".

🎯 Value to brand owners and agents:

🌟 Stable traffic supply: Powerful monitoring technology ensures zero latency in the advertising system, allowing advertising budgets to accurately reach every potential audience.
🌟 AI Engine Evolution: More transparent data metrics allow Taboola's AI recommendation engine to more sensitively capture traffic dividends and optimize ROAS.
🌟 Localized technical support: As Taboola's performance advertising platform, Realize not only provides professional advertising optimization suggestions but also relies on strong global technology genes to help advertisers solve various technical pain points in delivery.

The depth of technology determines the height of marketing. Taboola and Realize will continue to use cutting-edge AI and big data technologies to bring more effective advertising solutions to advertisers.

For the past few weeks I’ve been building something I’m genuinely excited about at Taboola.
Like a lot of analysts, I had a stack of AI skills and sub-agents each great at one thing.

But I was still the conductor.
Manually triggering each step, passing context, remembering what comes next.
So I built an orchestrator.
One command → the whole pipeline runs:
query design → QA → exploration → analysis → synthesis → reporting → ticket.
With approval gates between every step nothing moves without me.

💡 Halfway through I realized: this shouldn’t be just for analysts.
So I added a second mode.
Same pipeline but the AI handles the technical discovery, and the PM just approves direction.

What I love most:
The simple, repeatable analyses now mostly run themselves. 🤖 a “mini-Shir” handles the routine work so the real Shir can spend her time on the messier, more exploratory questions ... the ones where the value lives.

If you’ve built something similar (or thinking about it), would love to compare notes 😊 

Ask anyone working at a tech company whether they use AI, and the answer will probably be yes. But the bigger question is not whether people use AI. It is whether the company is redesigning work around it and applying it across the organization.

Over the past two years, Taboola has been working to make AI an internal operating layer. The effort has been led by our President and COO, Eldad Maniv.

We asked Eldad to share his insights and learnings and talk about what AI means for building a career at Taboola.

Q: When you started this initiative two years ago, what was the vision?

We were aiming for a step-change, not incremental productivity gains. That meant redesigning core workflows around AI from end to end, helping work move faster across teams, and giving people better context to make decisions with far less manual effort.

Q: Looking back, what have been the biggest challenges you’ve encountered along the way?

The hard part wasn’t getting people to use AI. It was changing how a 2,000-person company works after 20 years of accumulated processes and code. To scale it, we had to address infrastructure, tools, data, security, and privacy across every function and region. That level of complexity is why many companies use AI, but very few reach full-scale adoption.

Q: How has the journey evolved so far, and what comes next?

We started in 2024 by creating clear ownership for AI adoption. In 2025, we acquired our own hardware, built secure infrastructure, and gave early adopters the tools to create agents and dashboards.

This year, the focus is shifting from individual initiatives to value at scale: we formed a central team within the Office of the COO, and AI-first processes are moving into our systems. The next step is for departments to operate as one machine, with shared rhythms, scorecards, and AI-enabled handoffs. That is the direction for 2027.

Q: What were some of the early successes that showed AI could create real value at Taboola?

The level of adoption across the company has been impressive. I’ve seen curious, fast-learning people in teams including Sales, Finance and HR build useful applications, despite having no coding background. They all understand their domains deeply, and with AI they can turn that knowledge into tools that others in the organization can use.

We now have more than 600 internal AI applications and over 200 reusable skills deployed on our homegrown, secure AI infrastructure. Examples include Sage, which lets sales teams analyze the business in plain language; an automated prospecting system that has influenced tens of millions in revenue; and an Account Manager productivity app built by one developer in just three weeks. AI also now reviews 75% of the large volume of content processed by our ad platform.

Q: For candidates exploring opportunities at Taboola, what does it truly mean to join a workplace with this kind of AI-driven culture?

It means AI is part of how work gets done, not a separate initiative. Taboolars are encouraged to build or shape AI solutions themselves. People who are curious, willing to learn quickly, and comfortable with change have the opportunity to make a greater impact. Good ideas can move from concept to a working tool much faster than before.

I’m extremely excited about the technology and the value it creates. But AI is our operating layer; Taboolars are the engine.

Explore our open roles.

This year’s Digiday Technology Awards finalists reflect an industry adapting to a rapidly changing digital landscape, with AI-ready infrastructure, first-party data, privacy and operational efficiency emerging as defining priorities. 

Across publishing, commerce and advertising, technology leaders are rethinking the systems that underpin digital experiences and finding new ways to make those systems more responsive to both evolving consumer behavior and the demands of AI-driven discovery.

WordPress VIP and Pew Research Center earned a finalist spot in the Best Content Management System category for their work to improve LLM visibility. The platform is helping organizations rethink the role of the CMS as AI reshapes how audiences discover information. In partnership with Pew Research Center, WordPress VIP transformed Pew’s CMS into infrastructure designed for machine readability and attribution, making its research easier for AI systems to discover and interpret. The work demonstrated how the CMS is evolving beyond a publishing tool into a strategic foundation for AI-driven discovery, development and content operations.

ShopMy, which is nominated for Best E-Commerce Technology, used first-party audience signals and creator-led curation to build a different model for digital commerce and product discovery. Its shopping app connected consumers with creators they trusted and allowed them to follow curated collections, save products and make purchases directly within the platform. This gives brands a direct channel to high-intent shoppers while creating additional monetization opportunities for creators, illustrating how technology can use audience data to strengthen the connection between discovery and purchase without relying entirely on algorithmic recommendations.

Google is a finalist for Best Sell-Side Programmatic Platform for its work with The Guardian. Using Google Ad Manager, The Guardian applied first-party signals to improve audience addressability and monetization while simplifying its programmatic supply chain in a post-cookie environment. The resulting gains in signal coverage, revenue and operational performance pointed to a broader industry shift: privacy-compliant technology is increasingly expected to improve business outcomes rather than simply replace legacy targeting methods.

Together, this year’s finalists represent a technology industry moving from adaptation toward reinvention. As AI, privacy and changing audience behaviors continue to reshape digital media and commerce, these companies offer a glimpse of how the infrastructure beneath the internet may evolve next.

Stay tuned for the reveal of this year’s winners. In the meantime, check out the full shortlist below.

Best Affiliate Marketing Platform
NucleusLinks Drives 129% Affiliate Revenue Uplift for Zilch
The CJ Platform
Sally Beauty, impact.com & Tombras Drive Affiliate Growth
Superfiliate

Best Agentic AI Tool – NEW
FERMÀT – Agentic Commerce Platform
Uma, Upwork’s Mindful AI
Seel
Search Atlas: The First Agentic AI Marketing Platform
Flipkart Commerce Cloud – Agentic Commerce Suite
PubMatic AgenticOS: Autonomous Advertising Platform

Best AI Platform
Clinch’s Flight Control: AI Content Orchestration Platform
Conversational AI Solves for Product Discovery for Onewheel
Rokt – AI-Powered Relevance at the Transaction Moment
Bria – Introducing the Controllable Visual AI Platform
Disney excites travelers using Cluep’s AI Agent
WRITER & Qualcomm: A New Standard for Brand Excellence

Best AI Tool
Incubeta – Seamless Search
PMG – Alli Operating System
Conative AI: Inventory Planning for Modern Ecommerce
LTX – Launch of LTX-2.3
PolyAI & SafeRide: The AI agent America’s patients call
Blockboard – Launch of BlockVantage AI Campaign Tool

Best Alternative Identification Technology
Mundial Media’s Cadmus AI
PODiQ Identity by Consumable for Sonoro Intelligencia
Seedtag and Qatar Tourism: Privacy-First Global Campaign
Nexxen Discovery Drives Visitation for AOT
Intent IQ: Empowering Buy-Side & Sell-Side Simultaneously

Best Attribution Tool
Kroger Precision Marketing – PrecisionView 360
Digital Remedy Connects the Dots for Ski Resort
Spectrum Reach’s MSA Drives Attribution for Matter Brothers
Max Connect Digital’s Kudos AI
Mastercard Commerce Media

Best Automation Tools and/or Platform
Kevel Console + CoinGecko: Where Retail Media Runs Itself
NucleusLinks x Zilch: 129% Revenue Uplift Through Automation
Celtra
Foam, part of Whalar Group
GetResponse -Automation and AI Recommendations
ThisIsWhyWithGoogle

Best Buy-Side Programmatic Platform
AdRoll’s Buy-Side Platform Powers Quint Revenue Growth
Nexxen DSP Drives Donor Growth for Direct Relief
Viant’s Ad Platform Redefines CTV as a Growth Engine
Deploy by DSPolitical: Setting a New Standard for Politics
Blockboard – Development of Verified AI Media
Intent IQ’s IDeal 360 for ID-less audience amplification

Best Content Creation Platform
Digiday Media & RHEI – Global Launch of Made for Creators
Bria Delivers Production-Ready Gen AI Content at Scale
swsh x Rolling Loud
Streamlabs Sponsorships Expands Brand Access for Creators

Best Content Management System
WordPress VIP & Pew Research Center Boost LLM Visibility
Contentstack Content Cloud
WMT Astra CMS Platform
Lastmile Retail – Leading Enterprise-Grade Local Marketing

Best Content Marketing Platform
Celtra
Realtor.com achieves 300% ROI with Knotch
Influencity
RAD Amplify, a RAD Intel Company

Best Customer Data Platform
Amperity Powers New Look’s Customer Data Transformation
Team Velocity – Apollo Platform
swsh x Rolling Stone

Best Data Management Platform
LucidLink & Sandwich – Automating Creative Production
Optable & Unity – Unlocking Brand Demand for 256M Gamers
The Irish Times expands advertiser base with new technology
Rokt mParticle
Experian + American Home Shield Boost CPA efficiency by 18%
The Irish Times + Permutive expand advertiser base with new technology

Best Data Team
Kroger Precision Marketing Data Team
Rise

Best Digital Out-of-Home Advertising Technology
Premium reach & results: Bauer Media Outdoor x Lloyds Bank
HOPE Hydration
Big Happy & Haverty’s – Boosting Store Visits with 3D DOOH
Vistar Media & Travel Texas: Inspiring Travel with 3D DOOH

Best E-Commerce TechnologyPostscript and Aloha Collection: Shopper AI
The First Agentic Storefront by Swap
Vêtir – Launch of Style This Piece
Share a Coke 2025: Turning personalisation into purchase
Launch of Shopper App and Circles
YASO & Pixi – China Launch of On-the-Glow Blush
Cvent Event-Led Growth at Scale
RainFocus: Event Orchestration Across Customer Journeys

Best Event Platform
Cvent Event-Led Growth at Scale
RainFocus: Event Orchestration Across Customer Journeys

Best In-Store Technology
Endear & GANNI: Driving In-Store Sales
Perfect Corp. & Invoshop’s AI Skin Analysis at Amazon Milan
Intel Retail Experience Tool (RXT)

Best Interactive Content Platform
Genuin – Video Experience Infrastructure for the Open Web
Kaltura Agentic Avatar
Club Canela from Canela Media
Celtra
VIVERSE: Frictionless Discovery and Distribution for Devs
BrightLine & Disney Advertising: State Farm® x FX’s The Bear

Best Location Data Platform
Simpli.fi Turns Location Data Into Measurable Store Visits
Lastmile Retail – Leading Enterprise-Grade Local Marketing

Best Marketing Analytics Platform
How Practix MMM Proved Linear TV’s Financial Impact
Arimas integrated MMM takes agency partner to the next level
Adjust & Praktika – Measurement & Automation
Semrush Traffic & Market
How Spectrum Reach Architect Optimizes Advertising Budgets
Realtor.com achieves 300% ROI with Knotch

Best Marketing Automation Platform
Omnisend: Ecommerce Email & SMS Marketing Platform
Braze – Launch of BrazeAI Decisioning Studio
Ribeye: Automating Local Media Marketing
Clinch: The OS For Autonomous Advertising
LT.agency Cuts Campaign Update Time 98% with Fluency
U.S. Army – Army Marketing Cloud: Personalizing Recruitment

Best Measurement Solution
Upwave, Proving Brand-Building Value
StatSocial – Turning Social Reach Into Sales Proof
Mastercard Media Measurement
myGaru – Telecom-Verified Ad Measurement
Epsilon PeopleCloud: Person-Based Measurement
Measured & Free Fly – Proving Performance in CTV

Best Mobile Marketing Platform
Adjust & Virgin Mobile UAE – Mobile Marketing
Mintegral – Global Mobile Advertising Platform
Rokt mParticle
TrueDialog Business Texting Solution
Verve – Redefining CTV for Mobile Performance

Best Monetization Platform for Publishers
Ad-Shield Restores Hidden Ad Inventory Lost To Dark Traffic
Primis: Monetizing Video at Scale for Publishers
Spectrum Reach & Anoki AI: Good News Is Good for Business
Reinventing Publisher Revenue for Streaming
Maximizing revenue and defeating the spinning wheel on Live
Mediavine

Best Native Advertising Platform
beehiiv ad network
adMarketplace & Opera AI Deliver Intent-Based Monetization
The Grinch Steals Rides: McDonald’s x Uber Advertising

Best Partner Clean Room
Vault Data Clean Room

Best Personalization & A/B Testing Platform
Omnisend: Ecommerce Email & SMS Marketing Platform
Sightly x SkinPen: Cultural Intelligence For Skincare
Contentful x Docusign: Personalization at Scale

Best Sales Enablement Platform
Seismic Enablement Cloud
Foam, part of Whalar Group

Best Sell-Side Programmatic Platform
BidsCube
DAZN & Google’s Hybrid Ad Monetization Engine for Sports
Intent IQ’s Bid Enhancement for ID-less Monetization
Nexxen SSP Scales CTV Monetization for NEW ID
Google Ad Manager & The Guardian – Curation at Scale

Best SEO Platform
Semrush One – Semrush, an Adobe company

Best Subscription Platform
Subtext SMS Platform Powers Subscriber Engagement & Growth
The Digital Vending Machine from Bango

Best Sustainable Ad Tech Platform
DanAds & Tripadvisor – Eco-Rewards in Ad Express

Best Video Advertising Platform
Turning Live Moments Into Measurable Outcomes
MNTN Launches QuickFrame AI

Best Video Management Platform
Cloudinary Video Platform
ViewLift – Scalable VMS for Global Streaming

Technology Founder of the Year
Adam Singolda – Taboola
Andrew Casale – Index Exchange
Andrés Fócil – WMT Digital
J Brooks – GlassView
Anda Gansca – Knotch
Mark Jablonowski – DSPolitical

The AdExchanger Awards celebrate the organizations, technologies and teams driving measurable impact across today’s advertising ecosystem.

On September 28, more than 250 senior leaders from across advertising, media and ad tech gathered in New York City for the 2026 AdExchanger Awards Gala during Programmatic I/O New York, celebrating the industry’s most impactful work at the New York Marriott Marquis.

This year’s winners represent the best of the industry, featuring standout organizations including People Inc., PubMatic, DoorDash, Magnite, Index Exchange and many more. From breakthrough technologies and data-driven campaigns to visionary leadership and innovative media strategies, the 2026 class sets the standard for performance, innovation and growth across the advertising ecosystem.

2026 WINNERS

Agency, Consulting, & Publisher

Best Use Of AI or Technology By an Agency

Winner

PubMaticButler/Till and PubMatic's First Fully Autonomous Campaign

Honorable Mentions

• InterMedia AdvertisingClosing the Loop: How CarShield, InterMedia, and NBC, Paramount & Tubi Innovated Direct Buying For Performance CTV
• The ShipyardBehavioral AI: Predictive Targeting Gets an Encore After Boosting Revenue 20.3%
• Stream CompaniesRetail Ready

Best Use Of Data By An Agency

Winner

InterMedia AdvertisingClosing the Loop: How CarShield, InterMedia, and NBC, Paramount & Tubi Innovated Direct Buying For Performance CTV

Honorable Mentions

• Butler/TillButler/Till’s Bayesian MMX + Halo Analysis: Doubling a Launch Pharma Brand’s Media at 17.7x Return
• Adelaide MetricsHow Publicis Integrated Media Quality Data at the Heart of Haleon’s Global Media Growth Model
• Innocean, Wienerschnitzel and BasisInnocean x Wienerschnitzel x Basis – the Top Dogs in QSR
• Rise, a Quad AgencyRedefining Measurement for the Invisible Search Era: Rise’s AI Referral Agent Reporting System

Best Use Of Technology By A Publisher or Media Seller

Winner

People Inc.D/Cipher Off-Property Intent Targeting Utilizing People Inc. 1P Data

Honorable Mentions

• FutureFuture Optic: First-Of-Its-Kind Solution Built for AI Discovery
• Spectrum ReachAnoki's ContextIQ for Live News Delivers Increased Sales for InterMedia and CarShield

Excellence in Publisher Growth & Monetization

Winner

TaboolaDeeperDive: How Taboola Turned AI's Biggest Threat to Publishers Into a Growth Platform

Honorable Mentions

• PrimisPrimis Video Discovery: Turning Publisher Audiences Into Sustainable Revenue
• RaptiveBuilding the Future of Publisher Growth, Monetization, and AI-Powered Discovery
• Media TradecraftWith Custom Technology + High-Touch Service, Media Tradecraft Rewrote the Monetization Playbook

Maximizing Impact for the Open Web

Winner

SWYM.aiButler/Till, Geloso & SWYM: Maximizing Open-Web Value Through Intelligent Supply Decisioning

Campaigns

Best Data-Driven CTV Campaign

Winner

Spectrum ReachHow Spectrum Reach Redefined Data-Driven CTV Performance

Honorable Mentions

• Blis, part of T-Mobile Advertising Solutions + hunterblu mediaHow Carrier-Grade App Data Turned CTV Engagement Into Retail Sales Lift for Trace Minerals
• Comcast AdvertisingComcast Advertising Proves TV and Streaming Drive Real Sales for Papa Murphy’s
• Gracenote + Index ExchangeGo for Dos: How Gracenote and Index Exchange Helped Dos Equis and dentsu X Transform Programmatic CTV with Content Data
• MadhiveMadhive’s Maverick AI-driven Campaign Delivers 4X Better Performance for a Department Store Chain

Best Programmatic Out-Of-Home Activation

Winner

PerionHow Volkswagen Conquered Rival EV Drivers with Precision DOOH

Honorable Mentions

• Big HappyBig Happy x poppi x Sodexo: Driving Standout Performance With Splashy DOOH
• Strategus, LLC.Strategus x Makeup By Mario: A Sephora-Focused DOOH Campaign That Sold Out Ethereal Eyes Makeup Palette Again
• PerionVaseline Malaysia: Live UV Data Powers a Real-Time DOOH Alert System

Most Innovative Marketing Campaign

Winner

The ShipyardRewriting the Rules of Premium CTV Buying

Honorable Mentions

• TransUnionBring Clarity to Chaos: How TransUnion Turned Mindshare Into Market Share
• GlanceGlance CTV's FRAME Ad Experience Drives Peak Brand Awareness and Recall for Fossil
• Uber AdsHow Uber Put "Share a Coke" in Motion
• Intent IQMaking the Unreachable Reachable: Horizon Media, Bob's Discount Furniture & Intent IQ Unlock Growth in ID-Less Media
• InterMedia AdvertisingThe First Privacy-Safe Framework for Show-Level Buying and Optimization in Programmatic CTV
• AdsWizzWeather-Triggered Audio: How AdsWizz and Winstar Turned Forecasts Into Concert Ticket Sales

Individual & Overall Awards

Best Account Support

Winner

Basis and Noodles & CompanyBasis Feeds Noodles & Company with Delicious Data

Honorable Mention

• Emily ZhaoWorkmagic, Data Science

Responsible Media

Winner

Gracenote + Index ExchangeShining a Light on the CTV Bidstream: Gracenote & Index Exchange’s Drive for True Media Transparency

Honorable Mention

• DSPoliticalDeploy: Advancing Responsible Media Through Increased Transparency, Privacy, and Accountability in Political Advertising

Rising Star - Leadership Under 40

Winner

Laura HicksGumGum

Honorable Mentions

• Brandon BurasUniquely Digital
• Harry TongPubMatic
• Kamya ElawadhiDoceree

Technology & Service Provider

AI Innovators - Agentic Platforms & Operating Systems

Winner

SwivelHow Swivel Powered the First Agent-to-Agent Media Transaction and Built a Category for the Industry

Honorable Mentions

• AgentioThe AI-Native Infrastructure Powering the Future of Creator Advertising
• DstilleryDstillery's DS-1 Agentic AI Advertising Platform
• PubMaticPubMatic’s AgenticOS: The Autonomous Campaign Operating System
• SkaiSkai's Agent-Native Operating System for Marketing

AI Innovators - Commerce Media

Winner

Envive AIHow Envive AI Unlocked $5.35 Million in Revenue for Beauty Brand Supergoop! Through Goal-Oriented Commerce AI

Honorable Mentions

• adMarketplace, Inc.adMarketplace's AI Discover: Delivering Intent-Based Monetization and Reshaping the AI Search Experience
• CommerceIQCommerceIQ's Agentic Retail Platform
• RoktThe Rokt Brain

AI Innovators - Creative and Content Optimization

Winner

SmartlyTurning Intelligent Creative Into an Enterprise Performance Engine

Honorable Mentions

• AnokiAnoki AI: The Company Teaching Machines to Understand Video & Streaming TV Like Humans
• AdGreetzBizGreetz AI®: A SaaS (Or Managed) Creative Platform Orchestrating 50+ AI Models With Proprietary Creative Agents
• BluefishThe Agentic Marketing Platform for the Fortune 500

AI Innovators - Data, Measurement, Performance

Winner

SWYM.aiGeorgia-Pacific & SWYM: Applying AI Intelligence & Decisioning Before the Bid

Honorable Mentions

• HightouchHightouch Ad Studio, Operationalizing AI for Modern Performance Marketing
• PermutivePermutive’s AI-Powered DMP Delivers a 17% Boost in Active Attention for The Irish Times
• UpwaveUpwave’s AI Agent, Bayes: Bringing Brand Measurement into the AI Era

AI Innovators - Video/Streaming/CTV

Winner

MagniteMagnite’s streamr.ai Makes Streaming Advertising More Accessible and Scalable

Honorable Mentions

• FreeWheelFreeWheel's AI Innovations Are Transforming How Premium Video is Bought and Sold
• PerionPerion Outmax: The AI Agent That Manages Cross-Platform Video as One
• RibeyeAI-powered revenue acceleration and ad operating system built for local media

Best Data Technology

Winner

VidmobHow AI Can Transform Creative Data into a Scaled, Predictive Value Lever for Marketing

Honorable Mentions

• AmperityFrom Fragmented Data to AI-Powered Customer Intelligence
• DeepIntentHelix AI from DeepIntent
• PixabilityPixie by Pixability: The First Agentic AI Curation and Optimization Solution for YouTube

Best Demand-Side Technology

Winner

DeepIntentThe DeepIntent DSP

Honorable Mentions

• fullthrottle.ai®fullthrottle.ai®: One platform to build audiences, activate omnichannel media, and measure results down to the transaction.
• Intent IQIntent IQ’s IDeal 360: unlocking growth through amplified audience activation, attribution, & insights in ID-less media

Best Identity Technology

Winner

AdstraAdstra's Conexa: Composable Identity Resolution for the Modern Enterprise

Honorable Mentions

• AcxiomAcxiom Real ID: The Trusted Identity Foundation
• Intent IQIntent IQ’s Distributed Identity Technology & IIQ ID: bridging the gap between publishers & advertisers for ID-less audiences
• DSPoliticalVoter-Optimized CTV: An Identity-First Approach to Audience Activation in a Signal-Loss Advertising Era

Best in Commerce Media

Winner

ShirofuneDriving Commerce Media Toward Profitable Customer Growth

Honorable Mentions

• IncrementalIncremental: Replacing ROAS With Causal Decisioning at Scale
• PacvuePacvue AI-Powered Commerce Media Operating System
• Uber AdsUber Advertising x Alexa+: 12 Days of Sleigh

Best Industry Startup

Winner

PurePlay AIReal-Time Signals. Agentic Action. Superior CTV Performance.

Honorable Mentions

• TaivThe Missing Layer of Sports Media
• GenuinThe AI-Native Media Infrastructure Rebuilding How Publishers Own and Monetize Audiences

Best Measurement or Analytics Capability

Winner

MeasuredProof, Not Platform Metrics

Honorable Mentions

• PurpleLabPurpleLab Enables True Outcomes-Based Healthcare Advertising At Scale
• MutinexReimagining Marketing Measurement: Mutinex and Hershey’s AI-Driven Analytics Transformation

Best Privacy Technology

Winner

SafeGuard PrivacySafeGuard Privacy: The Global Infrastructure for Privacy Compliance in Digital Advertising

Honorable Mentions

• InuvoIntentKey by Inuvo Replaces Consumer Identity with Concept Intelligence
• YobiYobi Advertising Decisioning Model

Best Sell-Side Focused Technology

Winner

Index ExchangeIndex Cloud: Bringing Intelligence Inside the Exchange

Honorable Mentions

• SWYM.aiGeorgia-Pacific & SWYM: Applying AI Intelligence & Decisioning Before the Bid
• Optable x UnityHow Optable and Unity Unlocked Brand Demand for 256M Gamers Across North America
• OpenXOpenXBuild: Maximizing Every Ad Dollar Through Custom Decisioning

Most Innovative Use of CTV Technology

Winner

InterMedia AdvertisingThe First Privacy-Safe Framework for Show-Level Buying and Optimization in Programmatic CTV

Honorable Mentions

• MadhiveMadhive Redefines Local CTV Through Maverick AI Agents
• Brand MetricsProving CTV works, from inside the streaming environment
• RZRRZR Performance CTV: A Decade of Mobile Measurement Discipline, Applied to the Living Room