• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, March 7, 2018

Native advertising and “content discovery” platform Taboola this morning released comScore data indicating impressive growth and is using it as an opportunity to project an even more impressive one: $1 billion in revenue.

As part of a release of comScore data indicating a 17% expansion in its worldwide desktop reach -- ranking it third behind Google and Microsoft -- Taboola said it is projecting “over $1 billion in revenue in 2018.”

Taboola, is a privately held company, and declined to disclose what its 2017 revenues were for comparison, but it claimed revenues about one-third that size -- $335.6 million -- as recently as 2015.

The company attributed the growth to several factors, including:

• The introduction of the “Taboola Feed.”

• The overall expansion of the video advertising marketplace.

• Growth in international markets, particularly the U.K., Germany and Asia-Pacific.

• Investment in “Deep Learning.”

• The introduction of a self-service interface in January 2017.

As part of this morning’s announcement, the company disclosed that the self-service platform “grew to a run rate of nearly $100 million just a year after launch.”