Taboola has released research on advertisers' use of agentic AI in performance marketing, finding strong uptake of AI tools on search and social platforms.
The survey of 200 senior performance marketers at large advertisers and agencies covered organisations with monthly budgets of USD $500,000 to USD $4.9 million. It found that 76% of advertisers are already seeing performance gains from AI-driven tools, mainly within large digital platforms often described as walled gardens.
The findings also point to pent-up demand for similar tools across the wider internet. Four in five advertisers said they would immediately increase spending on the open web if comparable agentic AI products were available, while 86% said they would shift as much as a quarter of their performance budget.
This suggests advertisers are willing to move some spending beyond search and social if automation can deliver similar results. The research frames that interest as a search for incremental growth outside the dominant ad platforms.
Integration barrier
The report also highlights a divide by spending level. Integration into existing workflows emerged as the main obstacle to adopting agentic AI, with the burden much heavier among the biggest marketers in the survey.
Only 9% of advertisers spending USD $300,000 to USD $499,000 a month identified integration as a barrier. Among those spending between USD $1 million and USD $4.9 million a month, 74% said it was the main roadblock.
The gap suggests larger organisations may be dealing with more complex marketing systems, approval structures and operating processes as they bring AI tools into campaign management. It also shows that adoption alone does not remove practical implementation challenges.
Taboola linked the research to its broader push into AI-based advertising tools for the open web. It has rolled out the beta version of Realise+, which uses its advertising supply, first-party data and AI systems to manage spending decisions in real time and automate parts of creative and targeting.
The product includes what Taboola calls a Decision Engine, designed to reallocate budget as campaigns run, and an Element Generator, intended to automate parts of ad creation and audience selection. Taboola is positioning it as a way to bring some of the automation familiar on search and social to publishers and other sites outside those ecosystems.
The backdrop is a digital advertising market in which large platforms retain a strong grip on performance budgets because of their scale, user data and automated tools. For many advertisers, the open web offers reach but often with less streamlined buying and optimisation than the biggest platforms.
As AI tools become more embedded in media buying, that gap may become more significant. If advertisers believe agentic systems can continuously adjust budgets, creative and targeting with minimal manual input, they may expect similar functions across every channel where they spend.
Adam Singolda, chief executive of Taboola, said the research showed demand for that shift. "Advertisers of all sizes are leaning into agentic advertising, and the results are following. Our research shows a clear demand from advertisers that want the same 'always-on,' AI-driven performance they see in walled gardens applied to the open web," he said.
He added: "They are looking for autonomous systems that learn continuously, pivot in real time, and turn every impression into a measurable outcome."
Taboola says its advertising network reaches about 600 million daily active users through publisher relationships and device makers including NBC News, Yahoo, Samsung and Xiaomi. That scale is central to its argument that advertisers can find additional growth beyond search and social if the right automation tools are in place.
The survey suggests many marketers are open to testing that proposition, but it also shows that operational complexity remains a major hurdle, especially for the biggest digital ad spenders.