Friday, February 6, 2026
Reach plc Partners Taboola for AI Answer Engine on Express, Star
The GMA Admin
Reach plc, the UK’s largest commercial news publisher, has partnered with Taboola to integrate the DeeperDive generative AI answer engine across key sites including the Express and Daily Star. This move aims to enhance user experience through on-site conversational search while countering traffic losses from external AI search tools. The deployment reflects publishers’ proactive strategies in the evolving GenAI landscape.
Company Backgrounds
Reach plc Profile
Reach plc stands as the United Kingdom and Ireland’s largest commercial news publisher, operating over 120 brands that reach 70% of the UK online population monthly and 10% of the US online population. Its portfolio includes national titles like the Daily Mirror, Daily Express, Daily Record, and Daily Star, alongside regional outlets such as Manchester Evening News, MyLondon, and BelfastLive. Following audience declines in 2023-2024 due to referral drops from Google and Facebook—peaking at 33% year-on-year page view losses—Reach achieved growth by Q4 2024, with 9% page view increases in Q1 2025 and Google referrals up 43% year-on-year, boosted by Discover app traffic.
Taboola Overview
Taboola (NASDAQ: TBLA), a leading AI-driven content discovery and advertising platform, connects publishers with over 600 million daily active users across 9,000 partners. The company reported $465.5 million in Q2 2025 revenue, up 8.7% year-on-year, with Adjusted EBITDA rising 21.3%, projecting $1.86 billion for full-year 2025. Investments in R&D (8% of 2024 revenue) drive innovations like DeeperDive, targeting $10 billion in display and social ad markets while expanding into performance advertising.
DeeperDive Technology Explained
DeeperDive is a generative AI answer engine embedded directly on publisher websites, using their proprietary content to generate natural language responses to reader queries. Unlike external AI search tools that scrape and summarize content—potentially slashing publisher traffic by 20-60%—it keeps interactions on-site, linking answers to relevant articles from the publisher’s archive. The conversational interface suggests follow-up questions based on real-time signals from Taboola’s network, drawing on current trends without relying on static training data.
Integration involves JavaScript components and API connections to the publisher’s content management system, enabling real-time indexing and scalable cloud processing. Launched in 2025, DeeperDive creates monetization opportunities through contextually relevant ads alongside answers, mimicking search advertising intent while retaining revenue on the publisher’s domain.
Strategic Partnership Details
Reach’s rollout begins with high-traffic sites like Express and Daily Star, aligning with shifting audience behaviors toward conversational search. Terry Hornsby, Reach’s Chief Product & Technology Officer—appointed in 2025 after founding the proprietary ad tech platform Mantis in 2019—highlighted the tool’s role in meeting readers on their terms. “This is an important step for us as we focus on how to reach readers where they are, with conversational search becoming increasingly common. DeeperDive gives us the ability to continue that focus, giving readers the ability to learn more and explore topics they care about,” Hornsby stated.
Taboola CEO Adam Singolda emphasized publishers leading the GenAI shift: “Reach PLC is taking their rich history of delivering quality content and with DeeperDive, offering it to readers in a completely new, appealing and innovative way. Publishers who adopt DeeperDive aren’t just keeping up with the GenAI revolution, they’re leading it, on their terms.” The partnership leverages Taboola’s “pulse of the internet” for timely insights, fostering deeper engagement and new growth avenues.
Broader Industry Context
Publishers face existential threats from AI-powered search engines like Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE), which deliver direct answers and reduce click-throughs. Traffic declines have prompted innovations: Reach reversed a 26% audience drop through data-driven engagement, crossing 100 million social followers by early 2025. DeeperDive positions as a countermeasure, retaining users and unlocking ad revenue from high-intent queries.
Since its 2025 launch, DeeperDive has been adopted by major groups including Gannett’s USA TODAY Network, India Today Group, BuzzFeed Asia, The Bangkok Post, and The Independent. USA TODAY’s integration was hailed as an “exciting win,” combining trusted reporting with AI for audience development. This trend signals a shift toward on-site AI, where publishers control distribution and monetization amid GenAI disruptions.
Implications for Martech and Publishing
This table illustrates DeeperDive’s advantages in reclaiming control from Big Tech.
For marketing technology professionals, the partnership underscores AI’s role in enterprise content strategies. Reach’s adoption—amid its recovery from referral slumps—demonstrates how martech tools like DeeperDive integrate with CMS for personalized discovery, boosting dwell time and ad yields. Taboola’s scalable model, with cloud-based processing, suits large publishers navigating digital transformation.
Future Outlook
As conversational AI proliferates in 2026, expect wider DeeperDive rollouts across Reach’s 120+ brands, potentially driving further audience gains beyond recent 9% page view uplifts. Industry-wide, publishers may standardize on-site AI to mitigate SGE impacts, fostering hybrid models blending journalism with GenAI. Taboola’s growth trajectory, fueled by such partnerships, positions it to capture more of the $55 billion performance ad market.
For martech stakeholders in India and globally—watching SaaS innovations—this signals opportunities in AI-driven content engines for enterprise media. Reach’s move exemplifies agile adaptation, ensuring quality journalism thrives in an AI-first search era.