Baidu Takes Piece Of Taboola's Content Recommendation Business

Baidu Inc. BIDU made a multi-million investment in the content recommendation startup Taboola and said it would bring Taboola to China where Baidu claims a 75 percent share of the search engine market.

Baidu invested $20 million to $30 million, according to an anonymous source quoted by The Wall Street Journal.

New York-based Taboola claimed revenue last year of more than $200 million, up from less than $10 million in 2012.

The investment from Baidu is a follow-on to the $117 million series E round of financing announced by Taboola in February.

The series E round in February was led by Fidelity Management and Research Co., and included existing investors Marker LLC­­­­ and Steadfast Capital.

New investors as of February included Advance Publications, Comcast Ventures, VMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE's LVMUY controlling shareholder Groupe Arnault, Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso Chairman Carlo De Benedetti, Yahoo! JAPAN, and others.

Taboola unveiled a similar partnership with Yahoo! Japan a year ago to introduce content recommendations onto premium partner sites across the Yahoo! Japan News network.

Taboola was founded in Israel in 2007, and customers currently include USA Today, Business Insider, Chicago Tribune, and The Weather Channel.

Taboola and its competitor Outbrain have come in for repeated criticism for seeking to drive readers of relatively high-end websites like Bloomberg and The Atlantic to spammy "news" articles like this one.