Taboola to Redshift ETL Set Up: 2 Easy Methods

Taboola is a New York City-based public advertising firm. It displays advertisements at the bottom of many online news articles, such as “Around the Web” and “Recommended For You” boxes.

AWS Redshift is an Amazon Web Services data warehouse service. It’s commonly used for large-scale data storage and analysis, as well as large database migrations.

This article talks about the ways to load data instantly from Taboola to Redshift. It also gives a brief introduction to Redshift and Taboola.

What is Taboola?

Taboola is a web-based platform that aims to solve the online content marketplace’s problems. The tagline “content you might like” says a lot about Taboola’s business philosophy. Taboola’s business revolves around recommending and connecting people to websites that may be of interest to them. 

The service is appealing to people who aren’t sure what they’re looking for (and the majority of habitual internet users, including educated ones, frequently fall in this category). Taboola has grown into one of the leading providers of sponsored content on popular websites since its inception in 2007.

Taboola’s native advertising process is straightforward to follow:

• Advertisers create content, specify the amount per click they are willing to pay, define the type of audience they want to reach, and then sit back and wait for their native ads to drive traffic to their landing pages.
• Publishers who embed a Taboola widget on their website are compensated for displaying paid content.
• The Taboola interface connects advertisers and publishers, ensures well-crafted ads, and simplifies marketing.

Deep Learning Technology powers Taboola’s platform, which uses Taboola’s unique data on people’s interests and information consumption to recommend the right content to the right person at the right time.

The algorithm improves its Prediction Accuracy as it learns which audiences are more likely to engage with your content based on their Reading Preferences, Browsing History, Device, Location, Time of Day, and other factors.

Key Features of Taboola

The following features have made Taboola so popular in today’s market:

• Taboola is well-known for its ability to help you grow your brand across all platforms. Your company’s brand will be able to reach a large portion of your target audience almost immediately as a result of this.
• Taboola then retargets the visitor to your website once their interest has peaked. After that, you can recommend more of your content material to clients who share your interests.
• Taboola has made the process of starting and ending campaigns simple and painless. It also allows you to have complete visibility into the overall campaigning performance. Customers can also find your logo on other platforms, such as Facebook, thanks to Taboola.
• Taboola uses engaging content material to attract your target audience and drive them to your websites. The content is placed on various websites in order to interact with clients regardless of their location or field of work.

To learn more about Taboola, visit here.

What is Amazon Redshift?

AWS Redshift is Amazon Web Services’ solution for data warehousing. The service, like many others provided by AWS, can be set up in a matter of minutes and offers a variety of import options. Redshift data is also encrypted for an extra layer of protection.

You can extract useful information from a large amount of data using Redshift. AWS provides a simple interface for creating clusters automatically, removing the need for infrastructure management.

For storing and analyzing large data sets, Amazon Redshift is a fully managed petabyte-scale cloud data warehouse. Amazon Redshift’s ability to handle large amounts of data – it can process unstructured and structured data up to exabytes – is one of its key advantages. The service can also be used to perform large-scale data migrations. AWS’ Data Warehousing Solution is known as Redshift. For Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) Workloads, Redshift, like other Data Warehouses, is used.

To know more about AWS Redshift, follow the official documentation here.

Key Features of Amazon Redshift

• The Advanced Query Accelerator (AQUA) in Redshift speeds up queries 10 times faster than other cloud data warehouses.
• For ETL, batch job processing, and dashboarding, Redshift’s Materialistic view allows you to achieve faster query performance.
• Redshift’s architecture scales up to petabytes and scales down quickly as needed.
• Redshift allows for data sharing between Redshift clusters in a secure manner.
• Amazon Redshift consistently delivers fast results, even when thousands of queries are running at the same time.
• With the help of ANSI SQL, Redshift can directly query files such as CSV, Avro, Parquet, JSON, and ORC.
• Redshift has excellent Machine Learning support, and developers can use SQL to create, train, and deploy Amazon Sagemaker models.
• Redshift allows users to write queries and export the data back to Data Lake.

Key Benefits Of Amazon Redshift

• Smart Optimization: If your dataset is large, there are several ways to query the data with the same parameters. Different commands have different levels of data usage. AWS Redshift provides tools and information to improve your queries.
• Automate Repetitive Tasks: Redshift is capable of automating tasks that must be completed repeatedly. Creating daily, weekly, or monthly reports is an example of an administrative task. This could be a review of resources and costs.
• Speed: With the use of MPP technology, the speed of outputting large amounts of data is unprecedented. The cost AWS provides for services is unmatched by other cloud service providers.
• Simultaneous Scaling: AWS Redshift automatically scales up to support the growth of concurrent workloads.
• Query Volume: In this respect, MPP technology excels. At any time, you have the ability to send thousands of queries to your dataset. Redshift, on the other hand, is unstoppable.
• Familiarity: Redshift is based on PostgreSQL. All  SQL queries work with it. In addition, you can choose the SQL, ETL (extract, transform, load), and Business Intelligence (BI) tools you are familiar with. You are not obligated to use the tools provided by Amazon.
• AWS Integration: Redshift works well with other AWS tools. You can set up integrations between all services, depending on your needs and optimal configuration.
• Redshift API: The Redshift API is well-documented and has a lot of features. It is possible to use API tools to send queries and receive results.
• Data Encryption:  Amazon provides data encryption for all parts of your Redshift operation. The user can decide which processes need to be encrypted and which ones do not.
• Safety: Amazon is in charge of cloud security, but users are responsible for application security in the cloud. To provide an extra layer of security, Amazon provides access control, data encryption, and virtual private clouds.
• Open Format: Redshift can support and provide output in many open formats of data. The most commonly supported formats are Apache Parquet and Optimized Row Columnar (ORC) file formats.
• Easy Deployment: In minutes, Redshift clusters can be deployed from any location in the world. You’ll have a powerful data warehousing solution in minutes, for a fraction of what your competitors charge.
• Consistent Backup: Amazon backs up your data on a regular basis. In the event of an error, failure, or damage, it can be used to recover. Backups are stored in various locations. This reduces the likelihood of confusion on your website.

Taboola to Redshift ETL Set Up

• Method 1: Using Hevo Data to Set Up Taboola to Redshift ETL
• Method 2: Using Custom Code to Move Data from Taboola to Redshift

Method 1: Using Hevo Data to Set Up Taboola to Redshift ETL

Hevo provides an Automated No-code Data Pipeline that helps you move your Taboola to Redshift. Hevo is fully-managed and completely automates the process of not only loading data from your 100+ data sources(including 40+ free sources)but also enriching the data and transforming it into an analysis-ready form without having to write a single line of code. Its fault-tolerant architecture ensures that the data is handled in a secure, consistent manner with zero data loss.

Using Hevo Data, you can connect Taboola to Redshift in the following 2 steps:

• Step 1: Configure Taboola as the Source in your Pipeline by following the steps below:
  • Step 1.1: In the Asset Palette, select PIPELINES.
  • Step 1.2: In the Pipelines List View, click + CREATE.
  • Step 1.3: Select Taboola on the Select Source Type page.
  • Step 1.4: Set the following in the Configure your Taboola Source page:
    • Pipeline Name: A name for the Pipeline that is unique and does not exceed 255 characters. 
    • Client ID: Your Taboola advertiser account’s Client ID.
    • Client Secret: Your Taboola advertiser account’s Client Secret. In the onboarding email communication, your Taboola Account Manager will share the Client ID and Client Secret. If necessary, you can request these from the Taboola team again.
    • Advertiser Accounts: Once you’ve entered the correct Client ID and Secret, this field will appear. Choose which advertiser accounts you want to import data from.
    • Historical Sync Duration: The time it takes for historical data to be synced with the Destination. 1 Year is the default value.

• Step 1.5: TEST & CONTINUE is the button to click.
• Step 1.6: Set up the Destination and configure the data ingestion.
• Step 2: To set up Amazon Redshift as a destination in Hevo, follow these steps:
  • Step 2.1: In the Asset Palette, select DESTINATIONS.
  • Step 2.2: In the Destinations List View, click + CREATE.
  • Step 2.3: Select Amazon Redshift from the Add Destination page.
  • Step 2.4: Set the following parameters on the Configure your Amazon Redshift Destination page:
    • Destination Name: A unique name for your Destination.
    • Database Cluster Identifier: Amazon Redshift host’s IP address or DNS.
    • Database Port: The port on which your Amazon Redshift server listens for connections. Default value: 5439
    • Database User: A user with a non-administrative role in the Redshift database.
    • Database Password: The password of the user.
    • Database Name: The name of the Destination database where data will be loaded.
    • Database Schema: The name of the Destination database schema. Default value: public.

• Step 2.5: Click Test Connection to test connectivity with the Amazon Redshift warehouse.
• Step 2.6: Once the test is successful, click SAVE DESTINATION.

Here are more reasons to try Hevo:

• Smooth Schema Management: Hevo takes away the tedious task of schema management & automatically detects the schema of incoming data and maps it to your schema in the desired Data Warehouse.
• Exceptional Data Transformations: Best-in-class & Native Support for Complex Data Transformation at fingertips. Code & No-code Flexibility is designed for everyone.
• Quick Setup: Hevo with its automated features, can be set up in minimal time. Moreover, with its simple and interactive UI, it is extremely easy for new customers to work on and perform operations.
• Built To Scale: As the number of sources and the volume of your data grows, Hevo scales horizontally, handling millions of records per minute with very little latency.
• Live Support: The Hevo team is available round the clock to extend exceptional support to its customers through chat, email, and support calls.

Try Hevo Today!

SIGN UP HERE FOR A 14-DAY FREE TRIAL

Method 2: Using Custom Code to Move Data from Taboola to Redshift

Step 1: Getting Data Out of Taboola

Using Taboola’s Backstage API, developers can extract data from its servers. You could, for example, get campaign information by calling

GET /backstage/api/1.0/[account-id]/campaigns/[campaign-id]/items/.

Step 2: Sample Taboola Data

Taboola’s Backstage API returns a JSON response that looks something like this:

{
  "results":[
      {
      "id": "1",
      "campaign_id": "124",
      "type": "ITEM",
      "url": "http://news.example.com/article.htm",
      "thumbnail_url": "http://cdn.example.com/image.jpg",
      "title": "Demo Article",
      "approval_state": "APPROVED",
      "is_active": true,
      "status": "RUNNING"
    }
    ]
  }

Step 3: Loading Data into Redshift

• You can use the Redshift CREATE TABLE statement to create a table to receive all of the data after you’ve identified the columns you want to insert.
• You might be tempted to use INSERT statements to add data to your Redshift table row by row to populate that table. That’s not a good idea; Redshift isn’t built for inserting data one row at a time. 
• If you have a large amount of data to insert, it’s better to load it into Amazon S3 and then use the COPY command to migrate it to Redshift.

Step 4: Keeping Taboola Data up to Date

• It’s not a good idea to duplicate all of your data every time your records are updated. This would be a painfully slow and Resource-Intensive process.
• Instead, identify key fields that your script can use to bookmark its progress through the data and return to as it searches for updated data. It’s best to use auto-incrementing fields like updated at or created at for this. You can set up your script as a Cron Job or a continuous loop to get new data as it appears in Taboola once you’ve added this functionality.
• And, as with any code, you must maintain it once you’ve written it. You may need to change the script if Taboola changes its API, or if the API sends a field with a datatype your code doesn’t recognize. You will undoubtedly have to if your users require slightly different information.

Conclusion

This blog explains the different ways to load data from Taboola to Redshift in a few steps. It also gives an overview of Taboola and Redshift.

Visit our Website to Explore Hevo

Hevo Data offers a No-code Data Pipeline that can automate your data transfer process, hence allowing you to focus on other aspects of your business like Analytics, Marketing, Customer Management, etc.

This platform allows you to transfer data from 100+ sources (including 40+ Free Sources) such as Taboola and Cloud-based Data Warehouses like Snowflake, Google BigQuery, Amazon Redshift, etc. It will provide you with a hassle-free experience and make your work life much easier.

Want to take Hevo for a spin? 

Sign Up for a 14-day free trial and experience the feature-rich Hevo suite first hand. You can also have a look at the unbeatable pricing that will help you choose the right plan for your business needs.