Taboola is an advertising company that you've likely seen across websites on the internet, and they've announced a new partnership with ZTE that's aiming to bring a more personalized ad feed to your smartphone, for better or worse. The app itself looks pretty similar to the old Google Now feed, but it's tailored around content and products that you would potentially be interested in.
From the looks of it, it actually replaces the Google Feed on your home screen, too. Oh, and you'll see lock screen ads on top of that, which is fairly similar to Amazon's old approach and I'm not 100% sure that doesn't run afoul of Google's Play Services guidelines.
The motive behind this is for OEMs to be able to pull in some additional revenue on phones, which seems especially useful on super cheap budget devices with razor thin margins. It's not clear which phones ZTE will be shipping this with, though, so hopefully that's not just wishful thinking.
Nobody likes ads, but everybody likes cheaper products. If Taboola strikes a solid balance this could be a huge boost for Android OEMs, but it could also get some pretty quick backlash. We'll find out soon!
source: Business Wire
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