Taboola an AI-powered ad platform has released new research highlighting growing advertiser adoption of AI-powered solutions and increasing interest in applying these capabilities beyond walled gardens.
While agentic AI has driven strong performance gains in search and social, marketers are increasingly focused on unlocking incremental growth beyond those channels—especially in environments that can offer similar AI-powered automation.
The new study, titled, “The Agentic Advantage in Performance Marketing: Securing Incremental Growth Beyond Search and Social” explores how advertisers are approaching performance in an increasingly AI driven landscape.
Agentic AI is delivering performance advertising wins, but the benefits are confined to the walled gardens. A significant 76 per cent of advertisers are already seeing meaningful performance uplift from AI-powered solutions, primarily on search and social platforms.
Performance advertisers feel trapped with Agentic AI on search and social. The vast majority (80 per cent) state they would immediately increase their ad spend on the open web if comparable agentic solutions existed, with 86 per cent willing to allocate up to a quarter of their performance budget to the shift.
The biggest advertisers are struggling the most with agentic AI. The number one challenge for advertisers adopting agentic AI is integrating it into existing workflows, but the struggle is disproportionately felt by large advertisers. Only 9 per cent of advertisers spending $300,000–$499,000 per month cite integration as a barrier, compared to a large 74 per cent of companies spending $1 million–$4.9 million per month who call it the dominant roadblock.
“Advertisers of all sizes are leaning into agentic advertising, and the results are following. Our research shows a clear demand for advertisers that want the same “always-on,” AI-driven performance they see in walled gardens applied to the open web, however,” said Adam Singolda, CEO of Taboola.
“They are looking for autonomous systems that learn continuously, pivot in real time, and turn every impression into a measurable outcome.”
In April 2026, Taboola announced Realize+, an agentic solution that uses its supply, first-party data, and AI to scale performance through a Decision Engine that reallocates spend in real time and an Element Generator that automates creative and targeting.
The company has now rolled out the Realize+ beta to help advertisers drive outcomes at scale.
