In April 2026, Taboola’s guide to native advertising platforms brought in about 47 visits a month from US searches. Two months after my rewrite went live, it ranked #1 on Google for “native advertising platforms” and drew 711 visits a month, and by July, Semrush valued its traffic at about $9.6K a month.
I wrote it as a freelance writer for Taboola’s Marketing Hub, work I do alongside my role as a content strategist at Breaking B2B. Like a lot of bottom-of-funnel pages, this one had to be written inside someone else’s rules: a set structure, product copy that had already been approved, and a list of competitors to cover. This case study walks through what Taboola needed, how I worked within those rules, and what the page did afterward, so you can brief or write your own “best X” pages the same way.
| Case study snapshot | |
| Client | Taboola, for its performance advertising platform, Realize |
| The page | A guide to the best native advertising platforms for performance advertisers |
| The job | Rewrite a 2021 article written for publishers into a guide for advertisers, within a set structure and pre-approved product copy |
| Before (April 2026) | About 47 US visits a month and $1.0K in traffic value |
| Peak (June–July 2026) | #1 for “native advertising platforms”, up to 711 visits a month, and about $9.6K a month in traffic value |
| Source | Semrush estimates for US desktop search, pulled in October 2026 |
What Taboola needed
The page Taboola wanted rewritten had been live since 2021. It was titled “8 Native Advertising Platforms for Advertisers and Publishers”, ran about 1,300 words, and its main list was built for publishers. Several of its picks, like Google AdSense and AdPushup, help websites make money from their pages rather than help advertisers buy traffic.
The people who search “native advertising platforms” mostly have the opposite job. They’re media buyers and performance marketers with a budget, looking for places to spend it beyond Meta and Google. Taboola wanted a guide for them, with Realize, its performance advertising platform, as the first option.
The brief set the structure: a comparison table, an entry for each platform, a buyer’s guide, a section comparing Realize with Outbrain, key takeaways, and FAQs. Realize’s entry had already been approved by Taboola’s product marketing team, so its facts couldn’t change. A suggested list of competitors came with it, which I was free to change as long as the table kept its columns.
Before the rewrite, the page ranked for 82 keywords and drew about 47 US visits a month, worth about $1.0K a month in traffic value.
Where the brief needed fixing
Before writing anything, I checked every platform on the suggested list against what had happened in the market. Two of them had changed.
Outbrain no longer existed as a standalone company. It completed its purchase of Teads in February 2025 and changed its corporate name to Teads in June 2025. A media buyer who follows the industry would have spotted an Outbrain entry as out of date, so I listed Teads instead. People still search for “taboola vs outbrain”, though, so I kept the Realize vs Outbrain section the brief asked for and opened it by explaining the merger before comparing Realize with Teads.
Nativo had a new owner. Life360 completed its purchase of Nativo in January 2026, so the entry appears under Life360 Ads, the name advertisers now see.
AdPushup stayed on the list as the one publisher-side tool. Its entry says in the first lines that it isn’t a tool advertisers buy media through, so a media buyer can skip it in seconds.
A brief is written weeks before the page goes live, and in a category where companies merge, its vendor list can age in that time. Catching those changes before drafting spared Taboola’s editors a correction after publishing, and it kept the guide credible with readers who know the market.
How I wrote it
Realize first, with its limits on the page
Taboola wanted its own product first, which is normal for a vendor’s guide. What makes that order believable is the rest of the entry. Realize’s approved copy went in unchanged, cons included. Its strongest AI features need a steady history of conversion data, the fullest tracking needs a server-to-server setup, and some targeting options are limited to certain markets.
The comparison section treats the main competitor with the same honesty. It recommends Realize for campaigns optimized purely for conversions, and Teads for campaigns that need to balance branding with performance, especially in finance, healthcare, and other high-consideration categories. A media buyer can see the guide doesn’t claim Realize wins every case, and that makes its recommendation easier to trust.
In my study of alternatives articles that rank, 8 of the 9 vendors listed their own product first, and the ones worth copying held it to the same pros and cons as every other tool. This guide follows the same rule.
Written for the person with the budget
Every platform entry answers the questions a media buyer asks before spending: why the platform is worth a look, which features help performance campaigns, who it suits best, and how it charges. The comparison table puts all nine side by side near the top, so a reader in a hurry can build a shortlist before scrolling.
The buyer’s guide covers the questions behind a platform choice. It asks whether the platform works with publishers directly, what data its targeting runs on, how many ad formats it supports, how far its bidding is automated, and how it tracks conversions. A cost section explains the pricing models (CPC, CPM, and CPA) and what a realistic test budget looks like, and the FAQs end with a six-step guide to launching a first campaign.
I researched each platform from its own documentation and product pages. The finished guide ran to about 4,000 words, roughly three times the length of the old version.
The results
The new guide went live in May 2026. By June, it ranked #1 on Google for “native advertising platforms” (about 590 US searches a month) and for close variations like “native ad platform”, “native ads networks”, and “best native ads platform”.
| Month (2026) | URL | US visits | Traffic value |
| April (before) | taboola.com | 47 | $1.0K |
| May | taboola.com | 377 | $3.3K |
| June | taboola.com | 711 | $8.8K |
| July | taboola.com | 549 | $9.6K |
| August | realize.com | 900 | $7.6K |
| September | realize.com | 516 | $9.6K |
| October 22 | realize.com | 461 | $5.7K |
The page got a second test in August, when Taboola moved its Marketing Hub to realize.com. A domain move can knock a page out of the results while Google catches up. This one held #1 for “native ad platforms” and “native advertising platform” on the new domain and drew 900 visits that month, its best so far.
The guide also showed up in AI answers. Semrush’s AI visibility report shows 611 mentions for the original URL in US answers from ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews, AI Mode, and Gemini.
Semrush also shows a traffic spike in December 2025, before my rewrite. It came from the old page briefly ranking for the brand name “taboola” and says nothing about the article, so I’ve left it out.
These numbers come with caveats. They’re Semrush estimates for US desktop search, not Taboola’s own analytics. The page also had help I didn’t create, since Taboola’s domain carries authority and the URL had years of history. And I don’t have Taboola’s lead or revenue data, so this case study stops at rankings and traffic.
What you can take from this
Check the brief against the market before you write. Vendor lists go stale quickly in categories where companies merge or get bought, and a reader who knows the space will notice before your editor does.
Put your own product first only if its limits are written as plainly as everyone else’s. Readers expect a vendor to favor itself, and specific cons are what make that order believable.
Write for the person with the budget. A search like “native advertising platforms” can come from a publisher or a buyer, and choosing one reader shaped every section of this guide, from the table columns to the cost section.
The same approach works on my own site, where a roundup listing led to a $36K ARR deal and a software roundup for Softr reached about $130K a month in traffic value at its peak.
If you need bottom-of-funnel pages written inside your product marketing team’s rules, book a call with me. I’m a B2B SaaS writer and strategist, and on the call, we’ll look at the pages your buyers compare before they choose a tool.
