Taboola’s new LiveIntent partnership means it can now definitively identify users’ devices

Taboola content recommendations at the bottom of a publisher’s web page

Content discovery service Taboola’s new partnership with email marketing service LiveIntent gives it two new targeting capabilities.

First, this is Taboola’s first alliance with a major email marketer. LiveIntent handles 3 billion email newsletters for 1,600 publishers and brands, which it says reach over 160 million individuals monthly.

Normally, LiveIntent loads an ad in the email newsletter when the email is opened, targeted to that user.

Now, it can load four or more Taboola content recommendations in each email, similar to the “you might also be interested in…” ones that appear at the bottom of many website stories. The content recommendations are based on such attributes as location, device type or referral source, as well as that email recipient’s interests relating to the newsletter’s content, stories clicked on and other attributes.

Taboola founder and CEO Adam Singolda told me that his company will not be using LiveIntent’s profiles for targeting. Taboola maintains its own anonymized profiles of web visitors who have clicked on its content, via cookies and mobile device IDs.

The second targeting capability is that Taboola can now definitively determine which devices are owned by the same user, via the LiveIntent emails.

If User A logs in and receives an email from LiveIntent on a laptop, and then does the same on a smartphone, Taboola can determine it’s the same user and continue to track their owned devices via anonymous cookies or mobile device ID. Although the emails are hashed for Taboola — that is, disguised and anonymous — they are consistent across devices.

This kind of cross-device tracking is called “deterministic,” because it can definitively determine that the same user has this laptop, this smartphone and this tablet. Previously, Taboola only had “probabilistic” methods for cross-device identities, based on inferences about user behaviors and locations on multiple devices.

The LiveIntent partnership is only one of a string of alliances the New York City-based Taboola has been making. Last month, for instance, it announced an integration with The Trade Desk advertising platform that, for the first time, offered a single interface for placing video and native ads on Taboola.

[Article on MarTech Today.]

About The Author

Barry Levine

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.