Israeli ad tech firm Taboola has formed a strategic partnership with ride-hailing app Via.Through the partnership, it will surface curated news and content to riders from its network of premium publishers througha personalized bar at the bottom of the Via app.Ad-tech platform Taboola inkeda deal back in April with smartphone manufacturer ZTE to create an Android rival to AppleNews. Now, its looking to get its links in more places.The Israeli firm, best known for deliveringthose ubiquitous sponsored posts across thousands of publishers' sites on the web, has formed a strategic partnership with ride-hailing app Via, through which it will deliver relevant news to riders directly through the Via app.Taboola News, a pre-installed smartphone widget, will integrate within the Via app, surfacing curated news and content to riders from Taboola's network of premium publishers througha personalized bar at the bottom of the app. A little more than 10 million people are using Taboola News globally, and more than 50 publishers are on it, according to Taboola founder and CEO Adam Singolda.Publishers, including HuffPost, USA Today and Business Insider, pay Taboola to boost their links through its recommendation engine and refer readers to their websites. The company typically gets a cut of the ad revenue generated through these recommendations. Taboola has entered into a revenue share agreement with Via as well, according to Singolda, who declined to give specifics. Via is smaller than both Lyft and Uber. Uber controls a lion's share of the ride-hailing market in the US at 71% share according to SimilarWeb data from April,that looks at app installs from Google Play. Lyft, in comparison, had 26.2% of US market share, with others including Via and Juno making up the remainder.The announcement comes on the heels of another recent partnership with Chinese phone-maker Vivo, which is the world's fifth-largest smartphone manufacturer and reaches 100 million mobile users across Asia."There are a lot of environments where captive audiences spend a lot of time, like cars and airports, but they don't necessarily have much to do," Singolda told Business Insider. "We want to take Taboola News to all those environments, with Via being our first step toward owning the car environment."For Via, it's about enhancing its riders' journey, said Daniel Ramot, cofounder and CEO of Via. Both Taboola and Via have venture capital fund Pitango Growth in common."At Via, we care deeply about providing a superior customer experience at every stage of the journey," said Ramot. "We're excited that this partnership with Taboola will enable us to enhance riders' Via trip by enabling them to seamlessly access hyper-relevant content directly from their app."Singolda likened Taboola to a "reverse search engine," which delivers personalized news and content to consumers, instead of them having to go to search for it themselves. The company wants to take its battle for users' attention to all fronts: whether its their mobile phone screens, ride-hailing apps like Via, or even car infotainment screens in the future, said Singolda.Since its launch, Taboola News has pitched itself as a publisher-friendly version of Apple News, which publishers have said doesnt allow them to fully monetize their audience. Unlike the latter, Taboola News isn't housed in a stand-alone app. Plus, it sends readers directly to publishers' websites, allowing them to own their ad sales and relationships with readers."Taboola News allows us to reach new and engaged audiences with stories, videos and other curated content that will drive readers to our various owned and operated websites, where we can build direct relationships," said Grant Whitmore, EVP and general manager, northeast region at Tribune Publishing Company.ZTE is the second largest Chinese telecom equipment maker after Huawei Technologies, andhas sold handset devices to US mobile carriers including AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint. But with an 11% market share in the first quarter of 2018, it has a far smaller market share in the US than Apple (38%) according to Counterpoint Research.Still, Singolda said he wants to build "an alternative to the walled gardens," referring to Facebookand Apple, which havefaced criticism from advertisers and publishers for their closed systems."Taboola is the Robin Hood of the open web," he said.Join the conversation about this storyNOW WATCH: The first woman in space almost didn't make it back to Earth and she had to keep it a secret for 30 years
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