Taboola launches Realize ID to help marketers capture open-web intent

MUMBAI: Performance marketing is getting a data upgrade as Taboola launches Realize ID, a unified identity solution designed to help advertisers identify and act on consumer purchase intent across the fragmented open web.

Taboola said Realize ID has already delivered up to a 2.4x increase in conversion efficiency through signal-enriched predicted intent models. The offering supports Taboola’s Realize performance advertising platform and uses the company’s access to first-party consumer intent data across the open web.

The launch comes as consumers increasingly move between devices, platforms and content touchpoints before making a purchase. Taboola noted that shopping journeys can now span email, news, search, price comparison sites and generative AI tools, adding more complexity for performance marketers trying to identify high-intent audiences.

According to data cited by Taboola, 70 per cent of consumers now use generative AI search as part of their shopping decisions.

Realize ID is designed to turn fragmented identifiers into a single, persistent view of consumers showing purchase intent. It aims to identify users during the period when they have expressed interest but have not yet committed to a product or service.

The solution combines signals from different stages of the consumer journey to help advertisers drive outcomes including engagement, leads, purchases and website traffic.

Taboola operates across both sides of the advertising transaction, working with publishers and advertisers. The company said this creates a closed-loop view of consumer behaviour, allowing it to capture contextual data from visits in real time.

For example, a consumer could read a finance article, search for the best bank accounts, interact with a credit card advertisement and subsequently visit a landing page to open an account. Realize ID is designed to connect these individual interactions to provide a broader view of the consumer journey.

Its first-party data includes media consumption signals such as content engagement, scroll depth and time spent on sites; ad interactions including clicks, video views and search keywords; and buying behaviour such as conversions and mid-funnel actions, including starting a quote.

Taboola said Realize ID analyses billions of complete buyer journeys and uses AI to connect media consumption with purchasing behaviour, helping predict intent before it becomes immediately apparent.

Sameer Jain, head of e-commerce & D2C business, Axis Max Life Insurance, said, “The value of Taboola and the data behind Realize lies in its ability to capture genuine purchase intent, not just casual browsing. Leveraging their trusted insights enables us to engage motivated buyers at the precise moment they are comparing options. The result is better alignment with consumer needs and improved conversion rates.”

Subendu Maity, AVP, performance marketing & digital, Motilal Oswal Asset Management Co. Ltd., said, “Taboola helps us identify audiences with genuine investment intent and engage them at the right moment. By leveraging its data insights, we can deliver more relevant experiences and drive stronger conversion outcomes.”

Taboola CEO Adam Singolda said, “Today, AI is transforming traditional search behavior and established channels are hitting efficiency ceilings, making driving incremental growth more difficult than ever. To scale today, performance marketers must capture consumers across trusted environments beyond search and social, where buyers actively research, compare, and form decisions across dozens of independent content touchpoints.

“Realize ID solves for this, using Taboola unique data advantage, helping performance marketers capture and act on open web intent before it disappears.”

With Realize ID, Taboola is positioning open-web intent data as a way for advertisers to connect fragmented consumer journeys and identify potential customers earlier in the decision-making process.