Taboola's DeeperDive has reached nearly 7 million monthly active users just six months after launch, positioning itself as a fundamentally different approach to AI search than standalone platforms like Perplexity. Rather than operating as a destination where users leave their current site, DeeperDive embeds directly into publisher websites, answering reader questions using only that publisher's content archive. The distinction matters enormously for how publishers capture advertising revenue and reader engagement in the age of AI-powered search .

The timing reflects a growing tension in the media industry. External AI search engines like Perplexity have faced multiple lawsuits from publishers alleging content scraping and unauthorized use. Reddit filed a 41-page lawsuit in October 2025 claiming Perplexity circumvented technical controls, and a separate lawsuit in early 2026 alleged the platform shared user conversation data with Google and Meta through tracking pixels. Taboola's model sidesteps this conflict entirely by making publishers partners rather than content sources to be mined .

How Does DeeperDive Actually Work?

The mechanics are straightforward but powerful. When a reader asks a question on a publisher's website, DeeperDive processes the query and generates responses using only articles from that publisher's archive. The system draws on Taboola's network of over 600 million daily active users across 9,000 publisher partners to identify trending topics and suggest questions readers might ask. Every AI-generated answer includes links back to relevant articles from the same publisher, keeping readers engaged within that site's ecosystem rather than redirecting them elsewhere .

The engagement metrics tell the real story. Historically, recirculation rates on publisher sites, meaning the likelihood a reader clicks from one article to another, have remained in the low single digits for roughly 30 years. Publishers using DeeperDive are seeing engagement rates of up to 17 percent, meaning roughly 1 in 6 readers continues interacting after an initial article. Once users enter the AI-powered interface and begin asking follow-up questions or exploring suggested prompts, the probability they read another article on the site rises to around 20 percent .

What Questions Are Readers Actually Asking?

The data reveals what drives reader behavior. Approximately 50 percent of user questions on DeeperDive concern the last 24 hours of news, entertainment, and sports. The most popular question categories are politics, sports, finance, entertainment, and shopping, a distribution that reflects the news-adjacent nature of the publisher sites where the tool has been deployed. This concentration matters because it signals high commercial intent. Users asking about finance or shopping are more valuable to advertisers than passive page viewers .

Publishers also gain something they have never had before: direct visibility into reader demand. The DeeperDive dashboard shows editorial teams the questions their readers are asking, often exceeding 10 million questions per month across the entire network. Editors can use this signal to inform coverage decisions and guide homepage choices toward topics with demonstrated audience interest. That kind of demand data has historically been the province of external search keyword tools, accessible primarily to SEO practitioners. DeeperDive moves a version of that signal inside the publisher's own environment .

Why the Publisher Economics Matter More Than Scale

At 7 million monthly active users, DeeperDive sits well below the scale of dominant platforms. ChatGPT leads with an estimated 810 million monthly active users, followed by Gemini at 750 million, Grok at 60 million, Perplexity at 30 million, and Claude at 20 million. Taboola acknowledges this gap openly. Adam Singolda, Founder and CEO of Taboola, wrote on LinkedIn that "we're not at the scale of Perplexity (yet), but we will be." The company's confidence stems not from matching user volume but from a different business model entirely .

Adam Singolda, Founder and CEO of Taboola

"These chat bots are not exactly 'publishers best friends,' and 'borrowing' content from publishers without paying them is a short term strategy," said Adam Singolda, Founder and CEO of Taboola.

Adam Singolda, Founder and CEO of Taboola

DeeperDive integrates contextually relevant advertisements within the AI-powered results pages rather than charging subscription fees from readers or licensing fees from publishers. Singolda described the goal as building "the largest ad supported LLM for the open web, free for publishers and free for users." Publishers that integrate DeeperDive gain access to advertiser revenue from within their own properties, rather than losing that revenue to external AI platforms capturing user attention. For advertisers, the dynamics are fundamentally different from traditional programmatic placements. Users interacting with DeeperDive are actively seeking information on specific topics, producing a signal-rich environment for contextual advertising. High-intent queries about finance, shopping, or travel carry more commercial value than passive page views .

Singolda

Steps to Understanding DeeperDive's Publisher Value Proposition

• Revenue Retention: Publishers keep advertising revenue from AI-powered interactions instead of losing it to external search engines that synthesize their content without directing traffic back.
• Reader Engagement: DeeperDive increases recirculation rates from historical lows of 1-3 percent to up to 17 percent, meaning readers explore more content on the same site.
• Audience Intelligence: Publishers gain direct access to 10 million-plus reader questions per month, providing demand signals that inform editorial decisions and homepage strategy.
• Advertiser Value: High-intent queries about finance, shopping, and travel generate stronger conversion rates than passive page views, according to Taboola's data.

The company did not provide specific conversion rate figures beyond comparisons, but emphasized that DeeperDive users generate some of the highest advertiser conversion rates across Taboola's network. The company attributes this to the depth of engagement from users who actively interact with editorial content through conversational prompts rather than passive scrolling .

Global Expansion and Publisher Adoption

DeeperDive's expansion into six new languages signals accelerating publisher adoption beyond English-speaking markets. The languages being added are French, German, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish. Publishers joining the expansion include Ouest-France in France, El Nacional and Ynet in Israel, alongside others across Japan and South Korea. According to Taboola's press release, new publishers are launching on the platform nearly every week .

This geographic push follows a pattern of rapid adoption since DeeperDive's general availability launch in late 2025. Major publishers including Gannett's USA TODAY Network and The Independent were among the first to deploy the technology. In November 2025, the Bangkok Post became the first Southeast Asian publisher to deploy DeeperDive, a newspaper that has published continuously since 1946. By February 2026, UK publisher Reach had deployed the tool across properties including Express and Daily Star, described as the UK and Ireland's largest commercial news publisher. The trajectory from launch to 7 million monthly active users in approximately six months represents a significant acceleration compared to Taboola's core business, which took ten years to reach similar scale .

The broader context matters here. As AI search engines become increasingly central to how readers discover information, the question of who controls the interaction with readers and who captures the resulting advertising value sits at the center of the business case Taboola is making to publishers. DeeperDive positions itself as a direct response to a structural problem facing news publishers: the rise of external AI search engines that synthesize publisher content without directing traffic back to original sources. By embedding AI search directly on publisher sites, Taboola is offering a path for publishers to compete with external platforms while retaining control over reader relationships and advertising revenue.