In early 2025, Taboola launched Realize, a powerful new performance advertising platform dedicated to helping marketers achieve outcomes at scale beyond search and social. The product launch was just the beginning. The real challenge was figuring out: how do we share the success that early adopters are seeing with Realize, in a way that makes other marketers stop, think, and reconsider their own strategies and media mix?
We’re taking you behind the scenes of our new campaign, showcasing how the creative came together: from the challenges we wanted to address, to the messaging we’re bringing into market, and the visuals we designed.
Marketers Stuck In The Usual Places
The first step of any successful marketing campaign is understanding your customer. We wanted to get to the bottom of what challenges marketers experience, and what pain points Realize could address.
Through extensive research conducted by our marketing team, we uncovered a common point of tension. Marketers are under relentless pressure to drive consistent, measurable results with increasing efficiency. On the other hand, the channels they rely on (mainly search and social) are increasingly crowded, expensive, and limited in scale. They know it. We know it. And yet, many feel stuck. Taking a risk on a new channel feels too uncertain when budgets are tight. We’ve already seen advertisers succeed with Realize, so we know it’s possible – but marketers don’t, and we’d like to change that.
That’s where the idea for our campaign began. If marketers feel stuck, we needed to show them what it looks like to break free – to grow beyond search and social.
From Problem To Concept
How do you visualize the concepts of “being stuck” and “growing” in a way that makes people stop scrolling and think? The answer has to be bold, and even a bit odd – just enough to capture attention and spark emotion.
We landed on two sets of visuals:
- People stuck in the everyday grind: wedged inside their own computers, trapped in the sand of an office terrarium, even caught inside a vending machine mid-transaction.
- And, in stark contrast, people growing beyond their limits: their necks stretching upward, projecting strength, confidence, and transcendence.
It was surreal, striking, and most importantly, it carried a message that every marketer could relate to: there’s a choice between staying stuck and growing beyond.
Bringing The Visuals To Life
Of course, landing on the concept was only the beginning. Bringing it to life was another story.
Taboola is a frontrunner in the use of AI in marketing, and it was clear to us that this technology would play a big role in realizing this concept. At first, we thought we could create the visuals by manipulating still images with AI: taking photos of models, elongating their necks digitally, and animating those frames. But the results felt flat, clunky, and frankly, a little unnerving.
So we went back to the drawing board. We brought live models into a studio, filming everything from scratch. As is so often the case with AI, combining advanced tech with human creativity made all the difference: we could capture expression, movement, and posture. All the subtleties that make an image feel alive.
From there, the process became an experiment. First came the classic edits: lighting adjustments, color correction, clean cuts. Then the AI kicked in to help us extend the models’ necks in a way that felt believable, but still surreal enough to command attention.
It wasn’t perfect the first time around. In fact, the early edits were too safe: for example, the necks in some takes weren’t long enough to deliver the punch we wanted, and the movement in others was too unnerving. So we pushed further. Trial by trial, version by version, we refined the look until we achieved the look we were going for.
For our team, this blend of live production and AI-enhanced post-processing was completely new. It stretched us, too – in the best way possible.
Realize What’s Yours
The creative visuals grab attention, but they exist to serve the story we wanted to tell. Our tagline set the tone:
We wanted to communicate to advertisers that they already have everything they need to succeed. The challenge isn’t a lack of potential – it’s that the channels marketers are relying on are not enough to achieve their goals. They need more, and that’s where Realize comes in. It’s designed to unlock and maximize that untapped potential, turning prospects already in the funnel, as well as new users they’ve never engaged with, into measurable outcomes.
Every piece of messaging built around it carried two primary dimensions:
- Empowerment: Growth is already within reach – you just need the right platform to claim it. This comes through in the confident tone of the voiceover, the models’ posture, and, of course, the elongated necks.
- Proof Points as a Call to Action: Tangible evidence to inspire action, from real advertiser quotes to vertical-specific stats that make the message tangible. Others like you are already succeeding with Realize. Don’t get left behind.
We wanted marketers to feel intrigued, inspired, and maybe a little provoked – yet confident that Realize isn’t a risk or a waste of time.
“We heard time and again from marketers that they feel limited and frustrated by search and social,” explains Tom Inbal, Taboola’s SVP of Marketing & Strategy. “We want marketers to feel confident that growing beyond these channels is possible, and is already being achieved by their peers with Realize. We want to go beyond just talking about how the product works, to showing what it’s doing for our customers.”
Growing Beyond Together
This campaign also represents a milestone for Taboola: it is being launched with one of the biggest top-of-funnel pushes we’ve ever invested in, across events including DMEXCO and Advertising Week NY.
The goal is simple: to reach our audience wherever they are, across multiple touchpoints, and encourage them to try adding Realize to their game plan, and reap the benefits early adopters are already enjoying.
We’ll be closely tracking performance along the way, from impressions to completed video videos and clickthrough rates, so we can refine the campaign in real time. What resonates will get amplified. What doesn’t will evolve.
Looking back on the process, the common thread throughout was experimentation. From trying different concepts, to testing different production approaches, to taking our messaging into channels we’ve never tried before – this campaign was about pushing ourselves out of our own comfort zones.
That feels fitting, because it’s the same leap we’re asking marketers to take. Moving beyond the tried and true can feel intimidating at first. But it’s also where the greatest opportunity lies.
With Realize, and with this campaign, we’re not just asking marketers to grow beyond search and social. We’re showing them what growth looks like, and inviting them to go a bit beyond their comfort zone, like we did, and realize what’s theirs.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to realizing this campaign, including:
Guy Zuckerman, Head of Marketing Operations
Marina Okner, Designer
Yoni Zigler, Director
Mamash Production Company
