New Study: Advertisers Increasing Budgets to Attract New Audiences, But 81% Fail to Reach Them; Advertisers Cite an Increasingly Fragmented Consumer Journey as a Problem and 92% Would Reallocate Ad Spend to the Open Web to Reach Untapped Audiences, if Identity and Measurement Challenges Were Solved

Taboola’s survey of more than 300 senior marketing and advertising leaders found that advertiser budgets are rising nearly 10%, yet 81% say they are failing to reach new audiences and 75% struggle to recognize the same non-converting customer across touchpoints. The report says 81% would consider increasing spending on channels such as publishers and news sites if identity challenges were resolved; it presents industry findings, not reported financial results or a market reaction.

Analysis

The survey is a demand-intent signal, not evidence of incremental spend flowing to Taboola. Its strategic premise is credible: if advertisers cannot measure audiences outside closed platforms, they have little reason to shift budgets merely because they say they are open to doing so. TBLA’s upside therefore depends on proving that its identity and measurement tools improve incremental reach and campaign outcomes—not simply on publisher scale. That is the key distinction versus Alphabet, Meta, and The Trade Desk, whose advertiser relationships and measurement capabilities compete for the same budgets.

Near term (days), this release is unlikely to change earnings expectations; the survey is company-sponsored, self-reported, and drawn from a selected group of large advertisers. Over 1–3 months, watch for product adoption and customer-spend evidence, not further survey claims. Over 6–18 months, privacy limits, publisher data quality, and the ability to maintain attribution as journeys include LLMs could determine whether open-web spending becomes durable or returns to walled gardens. A further risk is that LLM interfaces capture discovery and referral activity, weakening publisher inventory even as advertisers seek channel diversification.

Contrarian read: the stated openness to diversify may be more bullish for the open-web category than for TBLA specifically. The bottleneck is verifiable measurement and incremental return; if TBLA cannot demonstrate those, the survey’s apparent demand may accrue to other platforms or remain unspent. No immediate trade is justified without valuation, guidance, and adoption evidence.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Do not trade the announcement alone. Treat it as a watch item for TBLA, not a near-term earnings catalyst; the survey does not establish realized budget transfers or TBLA share gains.
• For a potential long, wait for company-reported evidence that advertiser adoption is translating into durable spend and improved campaign outcomes. Reassess if guidance or reported performance fails to show traction despite the claimed advertiser interest.
• Monitor publisher and advertiser adoption of open-web identity and measurement tools, alongside privacy or platform changes that impair cross-site attribution. A reversal toward closed platforms, or LLMs disintermediating publisher referrals, would weaken the thesis.