The Chinese tech giant has entered into a partnership with recommendation leader Taboola
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The strategic partnership with Taboola, one of two Israeli startups that dominate the third party content recommendation market, marks Baidu’s ambition to become a leading player in the lucrative segment.
Companies like Taboola trawl the Internet and use algorithms to select third party content from around the web.
The recommendations, sometimes dubbed as “clickbait”, often take the form of “10 things you didn’t know about…” or “4 scarily effective ways to….” that entice users to keep surfing.
The deal involves $117m of investment from Baidu and will give it a further revenue stream on its pay-per-click business. By some estimations, the content recommendation market was worth $700m last year is expected to increase almost fivefold to $3.4bn by 2018.
Taboola sees mobile search and discovery as key to its venture with Baidu, which accounts for the most mobile searches in China.
Like many Chinese tech companies, Baidu has struggled to gain traction outside of its core market and has seen user growth stagnate in recent years. Investing in Taboola will put the search giant ahead of the local competitors vying for users’ attention.