• by Tobi Elkin  @tobielkin, May 24, 2016

Content discovery platform Taboola on Tuesday announced a partnership with NBCUniversal News Group in which NBCNews.com, TODAY.com, MSNBC.com and CNBC.com will work with Taboola to develop iteratations around the Taboola Native ad server. During the three-year partnership, Taboola and NBCUniversal News Group’s sales team will also work on developing native advertising products. 

Taboola in March announced the launch of Taboola Native across several of its publisher partners around the world. The new collaboration integrates Taboola’s predictive technology and the Taboola Native ad server across NBCU News Group’s desktop and mobile homepages, section fronts, and content pages.

NBCU will serve as an advisory partner for Taboola Native, contributing ideas and ongoing feedback on new product capabilities. Taboola Native is designed to enable publishers to promote Facebook-like branded content recommendations, drawing from both on-site “custom content” created by the NBCU News Group, as well as off-site branded content that lives across the Web. Testing capabilities will enable publisher teams to identify the most engaging “packaging” for each content item (e.g. thumbnail, headline, etc.) so that stories will be shown to the right users at the right time, according to a release.

Taboola’s Audience Exchange will further enable NBCU News Group to manage the flow of traffic across its network and partner sites, driving users to the most relevant and high-value pages in real time.

“Given the breadth of our company’s digital offerings, and the rapid changes we continue to see throughout the industry, NBCU News Group is always looking for expert partners that can provide flexibility and anticipate the trends that will drive consumer behavior in the years ahead,” stated Elisabeth Sami, SVP of strategy and business development for NBCU News Group.

NBCU News Group will also use Taboola’s Full Page Personalization product to create customized experiences by adjusting the entire site design and layout in real time. This  approach will enable people who share frequently to see sharing buttons prominently, while people who enjoy videos will see additional video posts.

“As NBCU continues to scale its native efforts, together with Taboola Native, it can use Taboola's predictive technology to index and recommend thousands of pieces of branded content, whether they reside on NBCU properties or off-site advertiser pages (such as YouTube, corporate blogs, and social media pages). NBCU will be able to draw on Taboola's data from over a billion users to offer targeting and unique insights for brands,” Adam Singolda, Taboola founder and CEO, told Real-Time Daily via email.