Taboola ads (Realize) for business: set-up, bidding and specs

Everything below comes from Taboola's own Realize help center: Setting Up a New Campaign, Setting Your Marketing Objective, Audience Targeting Overview, Setting Your Bid Strategy, Setting Your Budget and Pacing, Video, Title and Thumbnail Best Practices, Realize Tracking Set Up Overview, Campaign Review Process and Campaign Reporting. Taboola changes its platform often, so check those pages before you launch. For what native advertising is and where Taboola's ads appear, see our native advertising guide.

How a Realize campaign is set up

Taboola describes a campaign as "one or more ads with the same targeting and cost per click (CPC) bid." You build one in the Realize dashboard in this order:

• Name and branding text. Both are mandatory. The branding text is the site or product name shown under your ads on publisher sites.
• Settings. Marketing objective, scheduling, audience targeting, bid strategy and budget. Some of these are mandatory.
• Ads. Every campaign needs at least one ad with a thumbnail, a headline and a website URL. Taboola recommends 3-10 ads per campaign so its algorithm can test them and send traffic to the best ones.
• Review. Submitting sends the campaign to Taboola's review (see ad review below).

Taboola also recommends running a first campaign for "a minimum of 7-10 days" to establish a baseline before you make changes.

Marketing objectives

Each campaign gets one marketing objective, and Taboola says all of them help its algorithm optimize toward your goal. The five it lists are:

• Lead Generation: leads such as email signups.
• Online Purchases: for ecommerce and product sales.
• Website Engagement: user engagement and page views.
• Brand Awareness: awareness of your brand.
• Mobile app installs: getting people to install your app.

Realize combines the objective with data from the Taboola Pixel, so lead and purchase objectives work best once tracking is in place.

Targeting

By default Realize runs "broad targeting" across its network and lets its algorithm find the audience. You can narrow that with:

• Location. A country, or as narrow as region/state, city or postal code. Taboola recommends starting with the entire country.
• Platform. Desktop, mobile and tablet.
• Your own audiences. Taboola Pixel audiences for retargeting, and customer file audiences in the countries Taboola lists.
• Marketplace audiences. Taboola's first-party data and third-party segments.
• Contextual targeting, based on the content people are reading.

You can combine audiences, but Taboola warns that "too many audience overlays can result in limited reach" and suggests checking the reach estimator before you add layers.

Bidding strategies

Realize runs an auction every time an ad placement is available, and your CPC bid enters you into it. It offers three bid strategies:

• Maximize Conversions (optional target CPA): automated. Taboola's SmartBid algorithm adjusts your CPC for each auction, for upper-funnel goals like page views or lower-funnel goals like form submissions and purchases.
• Enhanced CPC (eCPC): semi-automated. You set a baseline bid and SmartBid raises it on high-value impressions and lowers it on ones less likely to convert. Taboola suggests it if you know roughly what a click is worth and will adjust bids yourself.
• Fixed Bid: manual. "Unless adjusted otherwise, the bid you input using Fixed Bid will always be the price paid in auctions." Taboola suggests it if you know your exact CPC, focus on impressions, bid on vCPM/CPM or will not track conversions.

For Maximize Conversions and Enhanced CPC, Taboola recommends installing the Taboola Pixel or server-to-server tracking. How Taboola charges (CPC or CPM) is covered in our native advertising guide.

Budgets and pacing

Budget and bid strategy sit in the same Budget and Bidding step. Realize offers three budget types:

• Daily budget, with an optional monthly or lifetime spending limit. Taboola notes your daily spend can sometimes reach up to double the cap; if it goes beyond that, "you will not be charged the overspend."
• Monthly budget: the campaign will not spend more than this each month, and the budget resets on the first of the month.
• Lifetime budget: the campaign ends when the total is spent or the end date arrives, whichever comes first. An optional Pace Ahead setting spends faster early on.

Taboola does not publish a fixed price, but it does state starting points:

• The budget and pacing page recommends a daily budget per campaign of "10 times your CPA goal, or at least $50 USD".
• The set-up guide recommends a daily budget of 10X your CPA goal with Maximize Conversions, and with Enhanced CPC or Fixed Bid a minimum daily budget of 5X and a minimum monthly budget of 150X your CPA goal.
• It also suggests new campaigns aim for at least 100-200 clicks a day.

These are Taboola's recommendations, not account minimums. What you pay per click depends on your bid and the auction.

Ad specs

A Realize ad is a thumbnail (image, GIF or video), a headline and a URL, with an optional description and CTA button. Taboola's creative best practices state:

• Image: 5MB maximum, JPEG preferred (JPEG, BMP, PNG, WBMP and GIF accepted). 1200x674 px recommended; minimum 400x350 px, though smaller images serve in fewer placements. Aspect ratios 16:9 (preferred), 4:3 or 1:1.
• Video: .mp4, .mov or .gif, 50 MB maximum (5 MB for .gif), 16:9, 1067x600.
• Headline: 34-45 characters is best, 60 maximum. Title limits vary by publisher, so Taboola advises putting the main point first.
• Branding text: 30 characters maximum.
• Description: 180-200 characters, 250 maximum.

When you upload an image, Realize previews it in several crops (16:9, 6:5, 2:1, 1:1, 1.91:1) and gives you a cropping tool, so keep the subject near the centre.

The Taboola Pixel and conversions

The Taboola Pixel is JavaScript on your site that records actions such as page visits, sign-ups and purchases. It feeds automated bidding, conversion reporting and return on ad spend, and builds the website audiences you can retarget. Taboola lists four ways to install the base pixel:

• A WordPress plugin.
• The Taboola Pixel for Shopify app.
• Google Tag Manager, if you already use it.
• Manual installation by a developer.

After the base pixel, you still need to add the conversion rules you want to count, which Realize can do with a codeless conversion tool. Server-to-server (S2S) tracking is offered as a complement to the pixel, for example when you want Realize to receive only the conversions your own attribution platform credits. Tag your landing page URLs too (see our UTM tracking guide), so the traffic shows up correctly in your own analytics.

Ad review

Every campaign item is reviewed against Taboola's advertising policies before it runs. A new campaign shows as "pending" while it waits. Taboola checks titles, thumbnails, branding text and destination URLs, and also checks the landing pages. The result is one of three:

• Fully launched: every ad is running.
• Partially launched: at least one ad is running, but not all.
• Rejected: nothing is running.

Taboola says it aims to review content "within one business day from submission", and its set-up guide says review can take up to 24-48 hours, including after any later edit. Leave time for it before a launch date, and read the advertising content policies before you write titles and pick images.

Reporting

Realize reports open at campaign level, showing the last 7 days for all campaigns combined by default. You can pick a single campaign, filter by site, country, platform and other categories, and switch the table from Default to Custom to add the performance and conversion columns you care about. The by-site view matters on a network like Taboola's, because results can differ a lot from one publisher to the next.

Where to start (our view)

Taboola suits businesses with something people will happily click from a news page: a useful article, a comparison, a product story or a short video. Before you start, put the pixel in and define one conversion, so you can judge results by leads or sales rather than clicks.

For a first test, we would use one campaign in one country, a handful of headline and image combinations, a budget sized from Taboola's own guidance above, and at least the 7-10 days Taboola recommends before changing anything. Then check the by-site report and send the most effort to the placements that convert. The landing page usually decides the outcome; our landing page basics guide covers that, and our services page shows how we help with ads and pages.

Frequently asked questions

Is Taboola Ads the same as Realize?

Yes. Taboola's self-serve advertiser platform is now called Realize, and Taboola's advertiser help pages now live in the Realize help center. You sign up and log in through Realize.

How much do Taboola ads cost?

There is no fixed price. You pay per click or per thousand impressions based on your bid and the auction. Taboola recommends a daily budget of 10 times your CPA goal, or at least $50 USD, per campaign.

What are Taboola's image specs?

Taboola recommends 1200x674 px with a 16:9 ratio (4:3 and 1:1 also work), at most 5MB, JPEG preferred. The minimum is 400x350 px, but smaller images serve in fewer placements.

How long does Taboola ad review take?

Taboola aims to review content within one business day, and its set-up guide allows up to 24-48 hours. Edits to approved ads are reviewed again.

Do I need the Taboola Pixel?

Not to run ads, but Taboola recommends the pixel or server-to-server tracking for Maximize Conversions and Enhanced CPC, and you need conversion data to judge results by leads or sales.

Which bid strategy should I start with?

If you track conversions, Taboola points to Maximize Conversions or Enhanced CPC. If you know the exact CPC you want to pay or will not track conversions, Fixed Bid keeps the price you enter.