When Outbrain bought Teads from telco Altice for $1 billion – the deal closed in February – it was the culmination of a multiyear process.
In fact, Outbrain tried to buy Teads three times – including once prior to Altice nabbing Teads in 2017 – before finally putting a ring on it, says Teads CEO David Kostman, on this week’s episode of AdExchanger Talks.
“Teads CEO” is Kostman’s brand-new title. Now that the deal is official, the combined company is operating under the Teads brand.
Kostman was the co-CEO of Outbrain between 2017 and 2024 and then spent a year as chief executive of Outbrain.
The “logic was always there,” Kostman says of the merger. “Everyone realized that this is the best combination for the open internet in terms of the value we can bring to advertisers and to the ecosystem of publishers.”
But a variety of governance and control issues hindered a potential deal, Outbrain’s multiple tempting offers over the years. “We became pretty close friends,” Kostman says, referring to the respective management teams at Outbrain and Teads.
Roughly a year and a half ago, when Altice was ready to liquidate some of its assets, including Teads, “they came to us,” Kostman says.
Now that Teads and Outbrain are one, the vision is to become an “end-to-end, full-funnel platform for the open internet.” That’s how Kostman explained the rationale behind the deal when it was first announced in August.
But what does that mean in plain English?
The new Teads will be in a better position to help advertisers of all sizes achieve both their branding objectives and their performance goals, Kostman says.
“What we want to do at Teads is to be able to deliver on branding and performance separately,” he adds, “and then connect the two, which I think we know drives the best value for advertisers in terms of their outcomes.”
Also in this episode: Trying to make “brandformance” happen, fighting Outbrain’s “C-word” reputation (“C” for clickbait) and why Kostman has no regrets about the aborted merger with Taboola in 2020.
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