CEO, Perion Network
Perion Network CEO Highlights AI-Driven Innovations and Growth Strategy in Advertising Technology
Perion Network CEO Tal Jacobsen joined Steve Darling from Proactive to discuss the company's forward-thinking approach to advertising technology. Leveraging AI-driven tools, Perion enables advertisers to analyze and optimize ad spend across connected TV (CTV), social media, and the open web, bridging the gap between online and offline sales for retailers and brands.
Jacobsen highlighted a recent partnership with A360 Media, which equips advertisers on platforms like Us Weekly with advanced analytics to improve campaign performance. This reflects Perion’s commitment to providing cutting-edge t...
About Tal Jacobson
Tal Jacobson, CEO of Perion Network, has described 2026 as "year one" for the company following a strategic pivot in which it reset its management, product line, and focus. In podcast appearances, Jacobson stated that Perion now positions itself as an "AI native" advertising technology company that does not own inventory, allowing it to recommend ad placements across platforms such as Google, YouTube, Meta, and TikTok without being tied to any single one. He introduced Perion One, a platform that sits above existing ad-buying systems, and Outmax, an AI agent that applies algorithmic-trading methodology to media buying. Jacobson said Outmax serves 52 Fortune 100 companies and claimed it provides "up to 80 or 90% better results" than manual work. Jacobson also discussed partnerships with Amazon, Walmart Connect, and Mastercard, and noted that the company's historical product growth has been around 19-20% year-over-year. He projected that Perion's EBITDA margin could reach 28% by 2028, attributing potential efficiency gains to AI-driven automation, stating that as revenue scales, the company does not expect to proportionally increase headcount.
Transcript (16 segments)
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Tal Jacobson0:00
Previously we had two engines. We had the search part, which was kind of a necessity for Microsoft, and we had all the other innovations, which are mainly what I've just described based on AI. The search part is not our strategy, so that part will probably not grow next year. But all the other parts, we anticipate that those parts are going to grow.
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Host0:27
Welcome back inside our proactive newsroom. And joining me now is Tal Jacobson. He is the CEO of Perion Network. And it's good to see you. How are you?
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Tal Jacobson0:35
Hey, great. Thanks for having me.
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Host0:37
Yeah, excited to learn a bit more about what's been going on. I know you had some recent news that we'll talk about in just a second. But for those not familiar, tell me a bit about the company.
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Tal Jacobson0:45
Yeah, absolutely. So Perion is all about connecting the dots for advertisers. Digital advertising runs roughly $700 billion every year through all the pipes. While every single platform is amazing by itself, you know, Google, TikTok, Meta, they're all great, but nobody can figure out what's going on. CMOs are having a hard time convincing their CFO that they can deliver positive ROI on media spend. And that's where we come in. We're connecting the dots. It's all AI-driven. We're building applications that can connect the dots, and that's what we do and that's how we grow. A few years back, we released our retail media solution. So we're helping retailers and major brands manage their spend.
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Host1:41
So is that you letting them know which way to go and how to do it? Is that what it is? Maybe you can sort of explain the process. If you're looking at a retailer looking to use the service, what are they looking to get out?
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Tal Jacobson1:53
Yeah, absolutely. So when they come to us, we're analyzing their spend, we're analyzing the channels. And then they deploy that through us. Their connected TV ads, their social ads, their open web ads, so basically websites, out-of-home ads, anything they're doing through us. We have an AI algorithm that can connect the dots and understand which parts are wasting money and which parts are delivering the results, and that's how we work with them.
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Host2:27
Okay. I mentioned some recent news out, and that is you've sort of put together A360 Media multimedia platform. Maybe you can explain to us a bit about the news and how this sort of fits into your ecosystem.
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Tal Jacobson2:40
Yeah, absolutely. So as I said, we're all about building technology for advertisers, and we're working with the biggest retailers, especially in the US, driving more sales to their online site, but also to their offline side. So we would know, even if you're reading an article on the website, we know the location, roughly the location that you're using it. And we would know that, let's say in Target or Albertsons or Kroger, whoever, you have a promotion that you might be interested in nearby, a store nearby you. So that's the technology that we have that's proprietary. Now, we've selected A360 Media to work with us and deliver that technology to their advertisers. So now, if you're an advertiser of Us Weekly or Life & Style, you can now use our technology on their website to deliver the same results. So they now have more tools and more technologies for their own advertisers.
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Host3:45
I would imagine, Tal, you gained a lot of data off of this information as well. And as we know, data is quite valuable. So I imagine when you're talking to new and potential clients, being able to show the metrics and things like that is obviously a real bonus for the company as well, especially with this kind of data.
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Tal Jacobson4:01
Yeah, absolutely. So just to make sure that everybody understands, all our data we save is anonymous data, right? We're seeing aggregated data. We're not violating privacy, but we do have signals of commerce. So we would know, we have an amazing tool we released about two years ago, which we call Sort and Support. And that's a predictive analytics deep learning algorithm. So it would know that if you're watching a show on Netflix at night and it knows the size of the screen of your TV and your neighborhood, it would predict that you're a person that would likely buy, I don't know, a new Audi. So without violating your privacy, it would know by your behavior what you might be interested in and where. It's all based on deep learning, it's getting smarter and smarter by the day. So it's a whole algorithm that gets smarter by campaign. Every campaign just makes it smarter.
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Host5:09
Yeah. Let's talk about the road ahead. Tell me a bit about what's happening in the rest of this year. More importantly, what are you looking at in 2025? And you've seen some really strong growth for the company. I imagine you want to keep that going.
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Tal Jacobson5:22
Yes, absolutely. So previously we had two engines. We had the search part, which was kind of a necessity for Microsoft, and we had all the other innovations which are mainly what I've just described based on AI. The search part is not our strategy, so that part will probably not grow next year. But all the other parts, we anticipate that those parts are going to grow. We've accumulated during the years quite a lot of cash. We have a bit over $380 million in cash. We're doing a lot of buybacks. So we've announced, roughly six months ago, $75 million worth of buybacks, we're halfway through. And we're looking to buy more growth engines. So on the M&A, we're going to be very active. And we're also going to invest in organic growth through all our organic solutions, which is the CTV solution, the retail solution, our out-of-home solution, our audio solution, so that part will continue to go as well.
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Host6:35
Well, it sounds like it's going to be an exciting year for sure. Tal, thank you so much. Great to catch up with you and see what the company is all about. And I really appreciate your time this morning.
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Tal Jacobson6:43
Well, thank you for having me.
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Host6:45
All right. There's Tal Jacobson, the CEO of Perion Network.