Most publisher AI strategy points outwards: block the bots, license to the labs, or charge for access. DeeperDive points inwards. It is a chat-style search box embedded on a publisher's own pages, built by Taboola, that answers a reader's question using only that publisher's archive and places advertising beside the answer. The publisher keeps the audience, supplies the content and takes a share of the ad revenue. It is a defensive product in one sense - it gives readers a reason to stay rather than leave for a chatbot - and a monetisation product in another.
What is Taboola DeeperDive?
DeeperDive is a generative AI answer engine that Taboola announced on 11 June 2025 and describes as designed to live directly on publisher websites. A reader types a natural-language question, the system searches the host publisher's content, and it returns a sourced answer with links to related articles on the same site. It also suggests follow-up questions, drawing on Taboola's network-wide engagement data.
Gannett, now trading as USA Today Co, was the first US deployment and The Independent the first in the UK, according to Taboola's launch release. Publishers add it with JavaScript, and the processing runs on Taboola's cloud rather than the publisher's own infrastructure, according to PPC Land's reading of the technical documentation. Reporting indicates each partner's content is held separately, so answers draw only on the host publisher's archive.
How does DeeperDive make money?
Revenue comes from advertising placed inside the answer page. Taboola's Realize performance platform supplies the demand, and the pitch is search-style ad revenue on the publisher's own site. According to Press Gazette's report on the Reach and Independent trials, publishers can add DeeperDive free of charge and earn a share of revenue from ads at the top and bottom of answers. Neither Taboola's announcements nor the coverage located for this article disclose the revenue-share percentage.
Taboola chief executive Adam Singolda framed the opportunity at launch as a shift from "50 cents per click to $500 per conversion". That is a company claim, not an independent benchmark, and it is best read as a statement of intent about high-intent categories such as travel, finance and commerce.
What do the usage numbers actually show?
Taboola's reported figures are strong on engagement and thin on revenue.
On engagement, Press Gazette reported that up to one in six visitors (17 per cent) on publisher sites that have integrated DeeperDive ask questions, that about seven million people a month actively type questions, and that users are 20 per cent more likely to read another article. Roughly half of questions concern news, entertainment or sport from the previous 24 hours. USA Today Co reported more than three million questions in the six weeks before 30 October 2025.
On the Taboola second-quarter 2026 earnings call on 5 August 2026, Singolda said more than 10 per cent of people were using DeeperDive when they land on publisher sites, and described the product as "already accretive" to publisher revenue but "still small". He also said DeeperDive CPMs were running at five to sometimes ten times those of traditional Taboola monetisation. Those are the company's own statements on an investor call, and no company-wide DeeperDive revenue figure was given. The transcript summary also contains an apparent transcription inconsistency over total user numbers, so treat the user count with caution.
How does DeeperDive differ from AI crawler monetisation?
The two models monetise different visitors. DeeperDive earns from a human who is already on the site and chooses to ask a question. Crawler and agent monetisation earns from machine reads that arrive from outside, often with no human on the page and no JavaScript executing.
That distinction matters for measurement. An on-site answer engine runs in the browser, so it only ever sees people who load the page. A Live Search Agent retrieving an article on behalf of a user in ChatGPT or Perplexity never loads it, so no on-site widget can see or monetise that read. Publishers that do both are covering two separate pools of demand. blankspace operates in the second pool, at the CDN edge, which is a different layer from anything embedded in a page.
Who else offers an on-site answer engine?
DeeperDive is not alone. ProRata's Gist Answers, launched alongside a 40 million dollar Series B on 5 September 2025, is the closest comparable. According to SiliconANGLE's coverage, publishers can add it free of charge, it shows ads below its responses, and ProRata pays publishers half of the revenue from those ads on a per-use basis. Its answers draw on a network of more than 700 publishers, which is a material difference from DeeperDive's single-publisher silo.
Microsoft's NLWeb takes a different route again, as an open protocol for publishers to build conversational interfaces on their own sites rather than a hosted, ad-funded product.
What should publishers weigh before adding one?
The trade-offs are practical rather than philosophical. Publishers weighing a rollout should test five things.
First, revenue transparency. Ask for the revenue share, the CPM definition and the reporting granularity in writing, since the public record does not state them. Second, content boundaries. Confirm that answers draw only on your archive, and whether paywalled content can be summarised to non-subscribers. Third, data. Establish who owns the question logs, which are valuable first-party intent data, and how Taboola's cross-network data is used. Fourth, ad quality and editorial fit, since ads sit beside answers readers may treat as editorial. Fifth, vendor dependence: the answer layer, the demand and the data all sit with one intermediary.
There is also a strategic question. An on-site answer engine can keep a reader on the page, but it does not address the fall in referrals from external AI search. It protects the audience you still have and does little for the audience you are losing.
Frequently asked questions
Is DeeperDive free for publishers?
According to Press Gazette, publishers can add DeeperDive to any page free of charge and earn a share of revenue from ads at the top and bottom of answers. The size of that share has not been published, so the commercial terms need to be confirmed directly with Taboola.
Does DeeperDive use content from other publishers?
Reporting indicates it does not. Answers are drawn from the host publisher's own archive, with each partner's content kept separate. This is the main contrast with Gist Answers, which draws on a wider publisher network.
How much revenue does DeeperDive generate?
No company-wide figure has been published. On the 5 August 2026 earnings call, Taboola's chief executive called it accretive but small, and said CPMs ran at five to ten times traditional Taboola monetisation. Press Gazette described growth as "not insignificant" within a business of roughly 2 billion dollars in annual revenue.
Does an on-site answer engine replace AI crawler monetisation?
No. It monetises human visitors on the page, while crawler and agent monetisation covers machine reads that never load the page. They address different traffic, so one does not substitute for the other.
Which publishers use DeeperDive?
Named deployments include USA Today Co, The Independent, Reach through the Daily Star, HuffPost UK, Ouest France, El Nacional and Ynet, according to Press Gazette. Taboola has not published a complete list.