Taboola has released new research highlighting the growing adoption of AI-powered advertising solutions among marketers, alongside rising demand for similar capabilities beyond search and social media “walled gardens.”
The study, titled The Agentic Advantage in Performance Marketing: Securing Incremental Growth Beyond Search and Social, explores how advertisers are navigating an increasingly AI-driven performance marketing ecosystem and where they see the next wave of growth opportunities.
According to the report, 76% of advertisers are already witnessing meaningful performance gains from AI-led advertising tools, with most of those benefits currently concentrated within major search and social platforms. However, the findings also suggest growing frustration around the limited availability of comparable AI-powered automation across the open web.
The research found that 80% of advertisers would immediately increase spending on the open web if similar agentic AI solutions were available outside closed digital ecosystems. Additionally, 86% of respondents said they would be willing to shift up to 25% of their performance marketing budgets toward such platforms.
The report also highlighted operational challenges tied to AI adoption, particularly among larger advertisers. While integrating agentic AI into existing workflows emerged as the top concern overall, the issue was significantly more pronounced among high-spending brands. Only 9% of advertisers spending between $300,000 and $499,000 per month identified integration as a key barrier, compared to 74% of companies with monthly ad spends ranging from $1 million to $4.9 million.
“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. They are looking for autonomous systems that learn continuously, pivot in real time, and turn every impression into a measurable outcome,” said Adam Singolda, Founder & CEO of Taboola.
