Build a Taboola lookalike from your best customers

Why most Taboola lookalikes bring the wrong people

Taboola's network is huge, and most of it is consumers reading the news. Give it a seed list and the model looks for more people who behave like the seed.

So feed it your whole newsletter list, your webinar signups and a pile of personal emails from a giveaway. The one thing those people share is that they read the news. You get a lookalike of the general public, and you pay for their clicks.

B2B seeds usually go wrong in one of three ways:

→ Mixed list. Customers, churned accounts, free users and students in one file. The model averages them. → Work emails only. Taboola matches on hashed emails and mobile IDs, and the emails people use outside work are mostly personal ones. Only part of the list matches, so the model learns from whoever happened to match. → Too small. A company with 80 customers has maybe 80 champion emails. Taboola won't take a customer list under 1,000 records.

The fix is a clean seed: named people at customers you would happily sign again, enriched with the identifiers Taboola matches on. That gives the model one consistent group to learn from. See Taboola Ads for B2B for how named audiences work on the channel.

How it works with ContactLevel

1. Pick the accounts. Closed-won, still paying, inside your ICP. Leave out churned accounts, heavy-discount deals and the customers your team quietly wishes it hadn't signed.
2. Fill out the people. Use Contact Search to add the stakeholders at each customer account: the champion, the daily users, the budget holder. 100 customers with 10 contacts each clears the 1,000-record minimum. Keep the seed to US contacts, because Taboola's lookalike only runs on US-targeted campaigns.
3. Sync the seed. Connect your Realize account once. ContactLevel enriches each contact with the personal identifiers Taboola matches on and syncs the list as a customer list audience.
4. Create the lookalike. In Realize, build the lookalike from that customer list. Processing takes two to three days, so create it before the week you plan to launch.
5. Suppress customers and pipeline. Target the lookalike. Suppress the seed list itself, plus a synced list of open opportunities. Otherwise part of the budget goes to people already paying you or already talking to sales.
6. Use the bid strategy that fits the reach. A lookalike is the one Taboola audience in this set with enough reach for Maximize Conversions. It needs conversion tracking and a daily budget of at least 10x your CPA goal. If that's too much, use Enhanced CPC with a daily budget of at least 5x CPA and a monthly budget of at least 150x.
7. Test it against topic targeting. Run a second campaign on contextual targeting with the same creative and budget. Check the ContactLevel pixel after two weeks. The question is which campaign sent visits from companies that fit your ICP. Cheaper clicks don't count if they come from the wrong people.

When to use this play

Run it when:

→ You sell in the US → You have enough good customers to build a 1,000-person seed from their buying groups → Your ABM and warmup lists are tapped out and you need new people to reach → Conversion tracking is set up on your site

Skip it when:

→ Most of your customers are outside the US → Your market is a few hundred named accounts. Target them directly with ABM buyer group targeting. → You can't yet tell good customers from bad ones in your CRM

Frequently asked questions

Why not seed the lookalike with all my leads?

Leads include everyone who downloaded something. Many will never buy, and plenty are students, job seekers and competitors. A lookalike of your leads finds more people who download things. A lookalike of your best customers finds people who look like buyers.

How big should the seed be?

At least 1,000 records, which is Taboola's minimum, and up to 3 million. For B2B, bigger isn't better if it means adding weaker accounts. A tight seed of 1,500 named people at good customers will usually teach the model more than 50,000 mixed contacts.

Why is the lookalike US only?

That's Taboola's rule. Lookalike audiences built from a customer file can only be targeted in campaigns aimed at US locations. Customer list targeting and suppression aren't part of that restriction, so you can still run the other plays outside the US.

How long does a Taboola lookalike take to build?

Two to three days after you create it. Plan launch dates around that, especially if you're timing it with an event or a product release.

Does the seed stay current?

ContactLevel keeps the customer list in sync as deals close and accounts churn. The lookalike was built from the seed as it looked when you created it. When your customer base has changed a lot, create a fresh lookalike from the current list.

Should I exclude existing customers?

Yes. Suppress the seed list on the lookalike campaign. A lookalike of your customers will find some of your customers, and you shouldn't pay to show them acquisition ads.

→ Related: Meta B2B Lookalike Audience, LinkedIn B2B Lookalike Audience, Taboola ABM Buyer Group Targeting