New Teads sets sights on curated scale, better accountability and full funnel

The Media Leader Interview

Americas co-president Jeremy Arditi discusses the Outbrain-Teads merger, why the company retained the Teads moniker and how CTV and AI will propel long-term growth.

“This isn’t just about smashing two businesses together and doing what each business was doing before.”

When Outbrain announced it was acquiring Teads last year, the deal turned heads. Yes, it’s a story of two major adtech providers becoming one, but it was unclear what the synergies are between the two.

Outbrain has long focused on performance efforts, primarily through the oft-maligned chumbox, and has been caught up in made-for-advertising (MFA) website scandals like Forbesgate.

Teads’ core business strategy is in brand advertising, especially as the company seeks to push its connected TV (CTV) solutions. Meanwhile, it has explicitly sought to provide “100% MFA-free” inventory.

But according to Jeremy Arditi, former co-CEO of Teads and now Americas co-president and chief business officer, the newly merged company is less an unlikely pairing than a symbiotic coming together of complementary businesses.

“There are many unlocks that come with this combination,” he tells The Media Leader via video call from New York.

“Both companies have a history of being innovative, not just in ad formats, but in controlling unique areas of real estate, on media owner sites and and on connected TV.”

Outbrain formally completed its acquisition of Teads earlier this month. The transaction, first announced in August 2024, cost an estimated $900m (£709m).

The new company, now operating under the Teads name, received a combined $1.7bn in adspend last year and claims to reach 2.2bn consumers. Looking at the two businesses combined, adjusted Ebitda reached $230m in 2024.

With headquarters in New York City, the new Teads now employd a global team of nearly 1,800 people across 36 markets. It counts 10,000 publisher and 20,000 advertiser partners and clients.

The merged outfit is billing itself as the “omnichannel outcomes platform for the open internet”. As Arditi explains, this means the company is focused on delivering branding and performance solutions for advertisers “in a way that is helping them solve for challenges of reach”.

“We have a massive amount of scale,” he says. “It’s scale, but it’s also a curated scale. Both companies have a history of working within the premium editorial area and really delivering the lion’s share of volumes within those premium editorial environments. And [we’re] focusing on providing better accountability to advertisers for their media spend.”

Business synergies

According to Arditi, the synergy goes beyond the adtech solutions on offer and applies to the senior leadership teams as well. He says there has been “a huge amount of chemistry between the teams”, adding that such an intangible benefit is “often what can make or break these kinds of combinations”.

Outbrain, alongside other chumbox providers like Taboola, have often been viewed as controversial within the ad industry. In a 2023 interview with The Media Leader, Dominic Carter, executive vice-president and publisher of The Sun, referred to such sites as “nefarious”, arguing that they harm publishers’ user experience by inundating their sites with too many low-quality ads.

The Sun had previously decided to stop working with such companies.

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Arditi hints that such a reputation played a part in deciding on the new name.

“It’s about curating the demand,” he says. “Our commercial focus has been more on enterprise brands. The new teams will bring higher-quality demand into those placements. That’s a big focus of the combined company. It’s also one of the reasons why we chose to keep the Teads brand despite the fact that the old Teads was the acquiree, not the acquirer.”

Arditi adds that the moniker is a “signal to our teams and to the marketplace that more of the direction of travel is this focus on higher-quality premium experiences for premium advertisers”, admitting that the decision required everyone in the merged senior leadership team to “put the interests of the business first and put their egos aside”.

For advertisers, being placed within premium publisher websites can be attractive, but brands typically demand a high level of control around issues of brand safety and suitability. To that end, Teads is “very focused on continuing to give advertisers the love, the level of control and the transparency that they have known from the old teams”.

“The opportunity for us is to reimagine that canvas at the bottom of the page so that a premium brand can feel comfortable operating there… It’s just a matter of what they’re next to and surrounded by, and giving them the right controls around that,” says Arditi.

He adds that such premium brands are increasingly interested in getting into performance advertising as the traditional market funnel shrinks.

“We’re seeing a very high level of appetite from brands who are happy to see that Teads now has a lower-funnel performance solution,” he explains. “Every day since we’ve announced the close [of the merger], brands that have been working with us have been reaching out saying: ‘Hey, there’s a performance angle to this campaign. We wouldn’t have sent you the brief pre-closing, but now we’d love to include you.'”

CTV and AI as growth drivers

Equally, via Teads’ continued growth in CTV solutions, digital-first brands are increasingly dipping their toes into TV advertising.

Arditi tells The Media Leader that Teads’ CTV business tripled in 2024 and it’s a key growth area for the business.

“It’s [about] bringing a more performance lens into the CTV world and helping advertisers measure and optimise to more performance KPIs when they’re buying across connected TV,” he explains.

Among other innovations, Teads is also continuing to develop AI tools that make workflows on its platform easier for clients and integrating them into creative asset creation.

Teads’ co-CEO wants clients to leverage AI for greater personalisation

“What’s interesting is leveraging AI for bringing in customers who don’t have video assets,” says Arditi, stating that it’s an area Teads is “focused on”.

But more use of AI will inevitably bring more scrutiny about sustainability. He concedes that Teads will need to develop a measurement system for understanding the carbon impact of AI on its campaigns: “I think we’re not at the stage yet where we’re measuring the AI usage, certainly not on a combined basis. That will be the next step for us.”

Adtech consolidation expected

While there is “nothing really in the pipeline” for additional acquisitions in the short-to-medium term, Arditi believes the merger — as well as the advent of generative AI creating new businesses and efficiencies — will likely help kick off a new era of consolidation in the adtech market.

“We and a handful of others sort of restarted a wave of consolidation in the industry,” he says. “And I think we’ll see more.”

“There’s some things that are out there being shopped around that are likely to be the next candidates,” he hints. “Maybe in the verification space or others.”

Meanwhile, at the new Teads, the priority for Arditi and the senior leadership team is basic: deliver for clients across the funnel.

“We know the opportunities are there,” he concludes. “We know there’s appetite from advertisers. We know they’re spending billions, if not tens of billions, in performance advertising.

“It’s a matter of continuing to prove to them that we have solutions that are providing the kinds of results that they’re looking for.”