Greetings from Mountain View. I’m here to attend an event for Glance AI at the Computer History Museum, one of my favorite venues for tech gatherings.
Greetings from SFO. I’m on my way back to NYC for a day before heading to Cannes for a week of rosé on the Palais. LMK if you’ll be there.
Taboola has launched DeeperDive, a generative AI answer engine embedded directly into publisher websites. Currently in beta with USA Today and The Independent, the tool provides AI-generated answers to user questions, pulls content from Taboola’s 9,000+ publishing partners, and surfaces related articles and ads—all without sending users to a search engine.
The pitch to publishers is clear: keep traffic on-site, improve engagement, and monetize through context-aware advertising. It’s a strategic response to the rise of external AI chatbots and a bet that publishers will prefer building value on their own domains instead of feeding the open web.
What’s really happening here isn’t about Taboola; it’s about the collapse of traditional top-of-funnel strategies. As answer engines from OpenAI, Google, and Perplexity start stripping clicks out of the search flow, publishers are scrambling to defend what’s left of their traffic. Is DeeperDive the answer? It's certainly an answer. Kudos to Adam Singolda and the team at Taboola for offering an alternative solution for the open web.
As always, your thoughts and comments are both welcome and encouraged. -s
About Shelly Palmer
Shelly Palmer is the Professor of Advanced Media in Residence at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and CEO of The Palmer Group, a consulting practice that helps Fortune 500 companies with technology, media and marketing. Named LinkedIn’s “Top Voice in Technology,” he covers tech and business for Good Day New York, is a regular commentator on CNN and writes a popular daily business blog. He's a bestselling author, and the creator of the popular, free online course, Generative AI for Execs. Follow @shellypalmer or visit shellypalmer.com.
