ZTE parners with Taboola to bring ads to select phones

• A new ZTE – Taboola partnership could put a newsfeed app on smartphones that is filled with clickbait articles.
• Taboola is one of the more prominent companies that uses clickbait content marketing to drive traffic.
• Little is known about the ZTE – Taboola partnership for now, but it's likely a move to increase profit margins on budget smartphones.

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Taboola announced today that it has partnered with smartphone maker ZTE to put a Taboola news feed on upcoming ZTE devices. The goal is "to power content discovery on Android mobile devices."

You know Taboola, right? The name doesn't ring a bell? How about this: "Don't buy new furniture before you visit this site!" or "7 reasons why you shouldn't eat these foods ever again!" Do those ring a bell? Well, those kinds of ads you see in your social media feeds are likely from Taboola, and that's the kind of thing that will appear on ZTE phones.

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According to the press release on the matter, Taboola intends to preinstall an app on ZTE devices. From the screenshots supplied by Taboola, it looks very similar to Google Feed: you swipe right on the home screen, and you're presented with a feed of articles and information. Except that instead of Google showing you actual articles from actual news organizations that you might be interested in, you'll be seeing an onslaught of clickbait content marketing articles and possibly even fake news.

Businesswire

Sounds great, right?

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The press release doesn't go into any specific detail on how this integration will work from an operations standpoint, but we can theorize that ZTE will put this Taboola feed app on budget devices to increase profit margins. The app likely won't be able to be uninstalled, and each click you perform in the Taboola feed will see a commission percentage go back to ZTE.

Of course, we don't know any of that, but come on: why else would ZTE make a partnership with a service like Taboola?

Amazon has long used advertising as a way to reduce the price of devices. For example, lock screen ads brought down the costs of specific smartphones on the Amazon Prime Exclusive phones list. However, Amazon removed the feature earlier this year, which subsequently raised prices.

What do you think? Would you be more or less inclined to buy an inexpensive phone from ZTE if it meant having a Taboola news feed app? Let us know in the comments!

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