New Study Finds 76% of Advertisers See Performance Gains from Agentic AI; 86% Would Allocate Up to a Quarter of Advertising Budget to the Open Web with the Right Agentic AI Solution
HONG KONG, May 13, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Taboola (Nasdaq: TBLA), a global leader in delivering performance at scale for advertisers, today announced new research highlighting growing advertiser adoption of AI-powered solutions and increasing interest in applying these capabilities beyond walled gardens.
While agentic AI has driven strong performance gains in search and social, marketers are increasingly focused on unlocking incremental growth beyond those channels—especially in environments that can offer similar AI-powered automation. The new study, titled, "The Agentic Advantage in Performance Marketing: Securing Incremental Growth Beyond Search and Social" explores how advertisers are approaching performance in an increasingly AI-driven landscape.
Key insights from the research include:
- Agentic AI is delivering performance advertising wins, but the benefits are confined to the walled gardens. A significant 76% of advertisers are already seeing meaningful performance uplift from AI-powered solutions, primarily on search and social platforms.
- Performance advertisers feel trapped with Agentic AI on search and social. The vast majority (80%) state they would immediately increase their ad spend on the open web if comparable agentic solutions existed, with 86% willing to allocate up to a quarter of their performance budget to the shift.
- The biggest advertisers are struggling the most with agentic AI. The number one challenge for advertisers adopting agentic AI is integrating it into existing workflows, but the struggle is disproportionately felt by large advertisers. Only 9% of advertisers spending $300K–$499K per month cite integration as a barrier, compared to a large 74% of companies spending $1M–$4.9M per month who call it the dominant roadblock.
"Advertisers of all sizes are leaning into agentic advertising, and the results are following. Our research shows a clear demand for advertisers that want the same "always-on," AI-driven performance they see in walled gardens applied to the open web, however," said Adam Singolda, CEO of Taboola. "They are looking for autonomous systems that learn continuously, pivot in real time, and turn every impression into a measurable outcome."
In April 2026, Taboola announced Realize+, an agentic solution that uses its supply, first-party data, and AI to scale performance through a Decision Engine that reallocates spend in real time and an Element Generator that automates creative and targeting. The company has now rolled out the Realize+ beta to help advertisers drive outcomes at scale.
About Taboola
Taboola empowers businesses to grow through performance advertising technology that goes beyond search and social and delivers measurable outcomes at scale.
Taboola works with thousands of businesses who advertise directly on Realize, Taboola's powerful ad platform, reaching approximately 600M daily active users across some of the best publishers in the world. Publishers like NBC News, Yahoo, and OEMs such as Samsung, Xiaomi and others use Taboola's technology to grow audience and revenue, enabling Realize to offer unique data, specialized algorithms, and unmatched scale.
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*Study methodology: Survey of 200 senior performance marketers at large advertisers and agencies representing organizations with monthly budgets of $500K–$4.9M.
SOURCE Taboola
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