How Taboola Uncovered What Customers Actually Value and Hit Record Revenue

The Situation

Taboola was doubling down on its self-serve offering as a key growth lever.

The opportunity was clear. Self-serve promised scale, efficiency, and a new segment of revenue. But performance was lagging expectations. Conversions were low. Churn was high. Long-term value was inconsistent.

Despite Taboola's scale and sophistication, leadership faced a familiar problem: they had never systematically spoken to their self-serve customers.

Without direct buyer insight, it was difficult to explain:

• Why customers chose Taboola in the first place
• What value actually stuck after onboarding
• Why users churned
• What needed to change to drive sustainable growth

What Leadership Thought Was Happening

Internally, the team had working theories.

Performance challenges were attributed to a mix of:

• Product friction
• Education gaps
• Market expectations
• Segment differences between advertisers

These explanations were reasonable, but they were still assumptions. Without structured customer conversations, leadership couldn't confidently distinguish:

• What truly mattered to buyers
• What was noise
• What was driving churn versus simple experimentation

As Taboola's VP of Marketing put it: "We'd never spoken to our customers. Before this, we were guessing."

What Decode Did

Decode conducted 30 in-depth interviews with self-serve customers, focusing on two high-potential segments:

• eCommerce advertisers
• Agency teams

Decode operated as a neutral third party, enabling honest conversations without sales pressure. Interviews focused on:

• Why customers chose Taboola
• How value was evaluated
• Where expectations were met or broken
• What challenges caused disengagement or churn

The goal was not validation. It was clarity.

What Customers Revealed

Customer conversations surfaced a more precise picture of self-serve behavior.

Buyers clarified:

• What initially motivated adoption
• Where Taboola's value was clear and where it was misunderstood
• Which friction points created drop-off
• How expectations differed across eCommerce and agency users

Critically, customers articulated unmet expectations that had not been visible internally. These insights explained both low conversion and early churn in ways that dashboards alone could not.

The Impact

With verified buyer truth in hand, Taboola shifted from hypothesis to informed action.

Insights from Decode directly prompted:

• Messaging changes, sharpening Taboola's self-serve value proposition
• Product adjustments, reducing friction and increasing utilization
• Clearer guidance on where to invest for acquisition versus retention

While specific metrics remain confidential due to early-stage implementation, the changes have already contributed to stronger customer engagement and improved performance across acquisition and retention.

Why This Matters

This wasn't a tooling or execution problem.

It was a visibility problem.

Taboola had world-class data, but lacked direct insight into how self-serve customers evaluated value, experienced friction, and decided whether to stay.

Decode surfaced that reality and gave leadership the clarity needed to refocus growth efforts on what actually mattered.