Davis Polk advised Taboola in successfully obtaining approval from the Department of Justice for its merger with Outbrain.  Following an extensive second request investigation during which the DOJ Antitrust Division “spent months examining company documents, interviewing top executives and talking to both companies’ customers,” and consideration of “a range of industry dynamics,” the DOJ “concluded that the merger wasn’t likely to suppress competition” and approved the transaction.  See “Taboola and Outbrain’s Clickbait Marriage: What Happened When the Justice Department Showed Up,” Wall Street Journal, July 22, 2020; “Justice Department Probes Whether Taboola’s Deal to Buy Outbrain Would Harm Competition,” Wall Street Journal, April 2, 2020.

Taboola’s digital advertising platform and suite of products, powered by deep learning and the largest dataset of content consumption patterns on the open web, is used by over 20,000 companies to reach over 1.4B people each month.  Outbrain’s native advertising technology is used by thousands of marketers worldwide, reaching over 1.2B people monthly.

The parties ultimately terminated the deal in September 2020 due to performance data, concluding that the original deal price no longer made sense based on the relative contribution of the two companies.

The Davis Polk team advising Taboola was led by partner Arthur J. Burke.

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