Exclusive: NBC News strikes ad sales deal with Taboola for programmatic display ads

Exclusive: NBC News strikes ad sales deal with Taboola for programmatic display ads

Tue, August 18, 2026 at 10:32 PM GMT+3 2 min read

Ad tech giant Taboola has struck a deal with NBC News to exclusively power all of its programmatic, or automated, display advertising sales, CEO Adam Singolda tells Axios.

Why it matters: It's a major milestone for Taboola as it looks to expand its business beyond native ads to powering any display ad on the open web.

Zoom in: NBC News will leverage Taboola's Realize performance ad platform to sell all of its global programmatic display advertising on NBC News digital properties, including NBCNews.com and TODAY.com.

• The deal allows NBC News' ad sales team to continue its direct sales efforts on its premium video and other display offerings. Taboola will handle its programmatic display ad sales as the only outside vendor, in addition to the native ad placements it already powers.

How it works: NBC News' display units, which include placements such as high-impact homepage banners, will be accessible to Taboola to sell moving forward, in addition to its own teams.

• That effectively consolidates NBC News' automated ad sales efforts to one vendor, instead of multiple demand- and supply-side platforms.

• If other ad tech vendors wish to access NBC News' inventory in the future, they would need to go through Taboola.

Context: NBC News has been a native advertising partner of Taboola's for 10 years, so the new deal is an extension of an existing relationship.

• "Taboola is an important partner for NBC News. We're pleased to expand this long-standing partnership and look forward to growing our relationship in the years ahead," said Satpal Brainch, chief business officer at NBCUniversal News Group.

The big picture: The deal represents how much Taboola's business has evolved since Singolda founded it nearly 20 years ago.

• Since going public in 2021, the company has pushed aggressively to expand its business beyond placing native recommendation ad units on publisher websites to powering all programmatic display ads on the open web.

• The company, which works with around 13,000 advertisers across 9,000 publisher sites, has inked major deals to sell display ads with big companies, including Microsoft. It's also inked several exclusive native ad deals with companies such as Apple and Yahoo.

What to watch: The ad tech giant is eyeing streaming as it looks to expand its business further on the open web.

• The company last year, for example, inked a deal with LG's advertising division to bring performance advertising from LG's TV ecosystem to the open web.

Editor's note: This story has been corrected to clarify the terms of Taboola's deal with NBC News and remove a reference to vertical video.

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