Taboola CEO Adam Singolda sees one of the ad platform company’s biggest AI revenue opportunities in helping agencies build agents that buy directly from suppliers — namely, Taboola.
Asked on yesterday’s Q3 2026 earnings call about monetization from its AI products, Singolda pointed to Taboola’s Claude integration, which lets advertisers launch campaigns through the assistant. But his broader ambition involves changing how agencies access advertising inventory:
“I think agencies, the big old schools, are spending a lot of time with us at a very senior kind of level, imagining a new version of themselves whereby they don’t have to go through the traditional ad tech. And with us they can build agents—agentic agents—that can reach out directly to Taboola and negotiate directly with us and our publishers and distribution based on whatever the client needs…
So I do think that the way it’s going to is that big clients will basically have agents that will negotiate with suppliers directly as relates to their own goal, whether that’s subscription or purchases or whatever they may need. And by doing so will bypass the whole kind of ecosystem. And that’s maybe where I see the biggest kind of upside from a revenue perspective.”
The discussion came alongside a disappointing Q4 revenue outlook for the company.
Read: “Taboola Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript” (Nov. 4) – Benzinga
Related — agency reinvention: “WPP says turnaround on track as third-quarter revenue decline narrows” (Oct. 29) – Reuters
From tipsheet: This points toward the headless model: campaign managers could work in their agency’s own interface, while agents connect directly to Taboola’s buying technology and publisher inventory to execute campaigns. Agencies could bypass other buying platforms while relying on Taboola underneath. That would make Taboola an execution platform for a broader Universal Buying Platform (UBP) or Unified Media Platform (UMP) — whether built by the agency or supplied by another company. How much agency spending follows remains to be seen.
PLATFORMS
Criteo: ChatGPT advertisers are still testing
The most revealing finding from Criteo’s Q3 2026 earnings report yesterday may be how experimental ChatGPT advertising still is.
Criteo says it has brought 3,600 clients onto the platform, but CEO Michael Komasinski described them coming “on and off” as they test results. Average spending is increasing only modestly and budgets have yet to scale. That suggests OpenAI’s growing roster of ad partners — including Magnite and PubMatic — still faces the task of turning advertiser trials into sustained spending.
Highlights from the earnings call included:
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- Every major agency holding company is testing Criteo’s MCP connection. Agencies are testing reporting, audience creation and some campaign operations inside their own AI tools. Retail media activation is still coming. This is concrete evidence of agencies building their own interfaces to suppliers.
- Criteo is retreating from fully self-serve onboarding. It is phasing out standalone self-registration for GO, its AI-powered self-service campaign tool, because activation works better when staff help clients get started. Agentic tools will automate onboarding steps.
Read: “Earnings call transcript: Criteo falls as q3 results show growth pressure” (Nov. 4) – Investing[dot]com
From tipsheet: Both the intermittent ChatGPT spending and GO’s onboarding changes point to a challenge for agentic advertising: easier campaign execution alone may not be enough to turn experimentation into committed budgets. Winning an advertiser’s confidence may be harder to automate than running the campaign.
SELL-SIDE
Fresh content, new licensing opportunity
People Inc. is building custom APIs to make its journalism easier for AI agents to use — a potential foundation for licensing current content as AI search erodes the traffic supporting its advertising business.
Digiday reported on Monday that the publisher is developing feeds delivering article text in Markdown alongside authorship, publication dates, updates and other trust signals.
On Tuesday’s Q3 earnings call, CFO Tim Quinn explained where AI fits into its licensing business:
“Our licensing revenue has three components to it. Think about it as content licensing, AI licensing, and kind of traditional product licensing. The majority of the growth that we have seen is coming from the content licensing line.”
[…]
“The second part of the licensing line, of course, is AI licenses. We remain optimistic in that market, that they will continue to evolve and that there is a big place for our content. There is increasingly a place for recency, meaning new content in that marketplace.”
Read: “People Inc. Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript” (Nov. 3) – Motley Fool
People’s core sessions fell 26% year over year in Q3, while digital advertising revenue declined 8%. See People Inc. results.
From tipsheet: Two questions —
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- Licensing: Fresh reporting gives publishers something to license continually: information that wasn’t available when a model was trained. Can recurring licensing revenue offset the advertising revenue lost as AI reduces search referral visits?
- AI search referrals: Another missing piece is the value of the visits AI search still sends: do those readers engage more, subscribe more often or generate more revenue per visit and does that compensate for lower traffic?
Related: The New York Times adds 420K net digital-only subscribers in Q3, total paid subscribers is 13.8M (Nov. 4) – The New York Times (subscription)
COMMERCE MEDIA
Amazon looks beyond its own shoppers’ purchases
Amazon advertisers can now target shoppers based on purchases at Walmart, Target and other retailers through a direct integration with purchase data company Attain.
The integration lets advertisers build audiences within Amazon Ads DVA+, its renamed DSP, based on retailer, purchase category and online or in-store shopping behavior. They can reach those audiences across Amazon properties including Prime Video and third-party inventory.
Attain CEO Brian Mandelbaum told Adweek the integration is “really bridging the gap between what happens on Amazon to what happens at retailers like Target and Walmart, and local grocery, etc.”
Attain’s purchase signals are refreshed daily. The integration expands an existing partnership focused on measuring sales outside Amazon.
Read:
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- Amazon Advertisers Can Now Target Shoppers That Buy Elsewhere (Nov. 4) – Adweek (subscription)
- Attain enhances the power of purchase data across Amazon Ads DVA+ with direct audience integration (Nov. 4) – press release
From tipsheet: A wider view of purchase behavior gives Amazon’s AI advertising tools more to work with. It also strengthens Amazon’s pitch to advertisers whose customers spend elsewhere: Amazon can be the platform for buying media even when it isn’t the destination for the sale.
FINANCIALS
Earnings reports
Quarterly results from companies shaping AI, advertising and marketing include:
AppLovin
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- Markets: AppLovin stock was up 22.8% in after-hours trading yesterday.
- Stat: “AppLovin posted record third quarter earnings: net income grew 72% year-over-year to $1.44 billion on record revenue of $2.18 billion, up 55% year-over-year, with industry-leading 66% net income margin and 84% Adjusted EBITDA.”
- Results: AppLovin Announces Third Quarter 2026 Financial Results (Nov. 4) – AppLovin
- Transcript: Applovin Q3 FY2026 earnings call transcript (Nov. 4) – Yahoo Finance
- Discussion: CEO Adam Foroughi said AppLovin’s new AI model architecture allows it to train larger models, with more advertiser data improving predictions. He signaled interest in acquisitions to accelerate that process: “What we would look for is, can we buy data relationships, customer relationships that are valuable for us?”
Magnite
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- Markets: Magnite stock was up 9.5% in after-hours trading yesterday.
- Stat: “We delivered a very strong quarter, with the top line growing 20%, driven by CTV growing 39% and DV+ growing 5%, both significantly exceeding expectations.” — Magnite CEO Michael Barrett
- Results: Magnite Reports Third Quarter 2026 Results (Nov. 4) – Magnite
- Transcript: Magnite Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript (Nov. 4) – Benzinga
- Discussion: CEO Michael Barrett confirmed Magnite is working with OpenAI as an SSP, “piping in demand into the OpenAI advertising inventory.”
LLMs & CHATBOTS
Developments
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- Dev tools: “OpenAI to acquire Pierre Computer Company, Inc.” (Nov. 4) – OpenAI
- Connecting apps to AI: “Siri AI is now open to all developers” (Nov. 3) – Apple
- Voice agents: Salesforce Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Cresta (Nov. 2) – Salesforce
MORE
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- New story, aging narrative: “AI shopping agents could threaten Amazon and Walmart’s ad business” (Nov. 4) – Reuters
- Revenue search: “We Are Testing Ad Placements in Reddit Search Pages” (Nov. 3) – Reddit
- Agencies: “Where agency strategists see opportunity as AI challenges their worth” (Nov. 2) – Marketing Dive
- Search: “Google AI Mode adds home services booking links” (Nov. 4) – Search Engine Land
- Neutrality: “Case for and against – sticking with a Publicis-owned LiveRamp” (Nov. 4) – Digiday (subscription)