PubMatic vs Taboola

2026 AdExchanger Awards Gala Honors Industry Best

The 2026 AdExchanger Awards Gala, held in New York City, celebrated excellence in advertising and ad tech, honoring organizations, technologies, and leaders across programmatic media, commerce media, CTV, identity, measurement, AI, and ad tech. Winners included People Inc., PubMatic, DoorDash, Magnite, and Index Exchange. The event took place in conjunction with Programmatic I/O New York and featured a live audience vote for the 'People's Programmatic Pick,' won by Mike Richter of Unplugged Collective. The gala recognized breakthrough technologies, data-driven campaigns, and visionary leadership, setting a standard for performance and innovation in the industry.

• The 2026 AdExchanger Awards Gala was held on September 29, 2026, in New York City.
• Winners included People Inc., PubMatic, DoorDash, Magnite, and Index Exchange.
• Mike Richter of Unplugged Collective won the People's Programmatic Pick award.

The Media Shop and PubMatic Launch Southeast Asia’s First Agentic Luxury Campaign

Press Release, September 30, 2026: The Media Shop and PubMatic launch Southeast Asia's first agentic luxury campaign.

PubMatic CEO Rajeev Goel on Agentic Buying and Cutting Complexity

In an interview with ExchangeWire, PubMatic CEO Rajeev Goel discussed the company's evolution from an SSP to a broader platform, focusing on reducing ad tech complexity and empowering publishers and advertisers through agentic buying. Goel highlighted three pillars: Activate, for direct buyer-SSP transactions; Agentic OS, a suite of 20+ AI agents; and Decision Fabric, which allows agencies and DSPs to run algorithms within PubMatic's infrastructure. He emphasized that AI agents will surpass human traders in accuracy, with governance and reasoning mechanisms for oversight. Goel predicts that agent-to-agent buying will shift power to publishers and advertisers, the 'principals', rather than technology platforms. The company reported 4,000 publisher-created deals using AI year-to-date through Q2.

• PubMatic CEO Rajeev Goel was interviewed by ExchangeWire at ATS London.
• PubMatic has three pillars: Activate, Agentic OS, and Decision Fabric.
• Activate has been in-market for about four years, with hundreds of advertisers using it.

AdExchanger Podcast: Infillion-Foursquare, Taboola-Dianomi, WarnerMount Merger

This AdExchanger podcast episode discusses two ad tech acquisitions from last Friday: Infillion's acquisition of Foursquare, adding location data to its ad tech stack, and Taboola's acquisition of Dianomi, targeting the finance vertical. Editor-in-Chief Allison Schiff provides rationale and potential synergies. The episode also covers the Warner Bros.-Paramount merger, now dubbed 'WarnerMount', as the major antitrust hurdle was resolved when California and 11 other states settled their lawsuit. Paramount had threatened to leave California, which pressured the settlement. A new legal challenge emerged but is seen as less formidable. The discussion highlights the strategic moves in ad tech consolidation and the significant regulatory scrutiny on major media mergers.

• Infillion acquired Foursquare, adding location data to its ad tech stack.
• Taboola made an offer to acquire ad network Dianomi to target the finance vertical.
• California and 11 other states settled an antitrust lawsuit against the Warner Bros.-Paramount merger.

PolyAI, Taboola, Contentful, Docusign Win 2026 Digiday Tech Awards

The 2026 Digiday Technology Awards recognized companies leveraging AI and automation to enhance personalized experiences, targeting, and performance. PolyAI won Best AI Tool for its agentic dialog platform, which powers SafeRide Health's AI agent 'Steven', reducing speak-to-human rates from 55% to 2%. Taboola's Adam Singolda was named Technology Founder of the Year for launching DeeperDive, a conversational AI platform for publishers. Contentful and Docusign won Best Personalization & A/B Testing Platform, with Docusign using Contentful Personalization to launch tailored homepages across 20 audience segments, reaching 6.19 million monthly active profiles by March 2026. The awards span categories like affiliate marketing, agentic AI, CDPs, and clean rooms.

• PolyAI won Best AI Tool for its agentic dialog platform, with SafeRide Health's AI agent 'Steven' managing 80% of inbound calls.
• Adam Singolda, founder and CEO of Taboola, was named Technology Founder of the Year for DeeperDive.
• DeeperDive generates nearly three times more revenue per user for publishers.

Taboola Launches Realize ID

Taboola has launched Realize ID, a new cookieless identity solution for the open web, announced on September 23, 2026. The solution unifies usage, advertising, and conversion signals from its ecosystem to predict purchase intent, integrating data from publisher and advertiser activities such as content consumption, search terms, ad interactions, and conversions. Realize ID supports hashed email addresses from CRMs, custom identifiers, and over 15 data platform integrations, with clean room matching planned. This launch is part of Taboola's strategy to expand from native advertising to performance display, following its platform launch and opening to external AI applications. The open web identity market remains fragmented with competitors like NetID, Utiq, ID5, EUID, and Ramp ID.

• Taboola launched Realize ID, a cookieless identity solution for the open web, on September 23, 2026.
• Realize ID combines usage, ad, and conversion signals to predict purchase intent.
• Supports hashed email addresses, custom identifiers, and over 15 data platform integrations.