Taboola vs Outbrain: What's Actually Different in 2026

Here's what most people searching "Taboola vs Outbrain" don't get told up front: Outbrain doesn't exist as a separate brand anymore. In February 2025, Outbrain completed its roughly $900 million acquisition of Teads, and by June 2025 the combined company had fully rebranded under the Teads name. The Outbrain dashboard, the sales reps, the logo on your invoices: all of it is now Teads.

If you're comparing platforms today, you're really comparing Taboola vs. Teads. The in-feed native widget you know from Outbrain still exists and works the same way. What changed is the company behind it and what it sells beyond that original ad unit.

What actually changed after the merger

• The brand: Outbrain's advertiser-facing product, sales team, and public identity all now operate as Teads. If you log into what used to be your Outbrain Amplify account, you're in Teads' self-serve platform now — same login, new name.
• The offering: the merger combined Outbrain's native recommendation technology with Teads' premium video and CTV inventory, so the combined platform now pitches the full funnel (awareness through video and CTV, performance through native) instead of just native clicks.
• The scale: the combined company covers 50+ markets, reaches over 2 billion consumers monthly, and represents roughly $1.7 billion in combined annual ad spend behind one sales motion.
• What didn't change: the native widget itself, the publisher relationships that made Outbrain valuable in the first place, and (per practitioner reporting) pricing and approval standards that remain distinctly stricter than Taboola's.

Taboola vs. Teads (formerly Outbrain): the real differences

CPC ranges are practitioner-reported, non-official figures — actual cost varies significantly by geography, vertical, and creative performance.

Want help running it? See our Outbrain (Teads) management service, or compare more options in Taboola alternatives.

Who Teads still works well for

Insurance, finance and health are the biggest spenders on Teads. Those are strict, results-driven categories, and they wouldn't keep spending if the platform didn't perform. Our take: Teads rewards advertisers who bring a real content-driven funnel and a testing budget, and it punishes anyone who shows up with one ad and a landing page that can't hold attention.