Social Rocket
The creator commerce platform Howl has sold parts of its business to Connexity, the e-commerce and performance marketing subsidiary of Taboola. According to a report by Adweek, Howl founder Li Haslett Chen confirmed the asset sale. A person familiar with the matter told the outlet that it concerns the creator business; financial details have not been published.
For the creator economy, the deal is more interesting than an ordinary software sale: here influencer and affiliate commerce meets classic performance and retail media infrastructure.
What is known about the Howl deal
Adweek reports, citing several sources, that Howl has sold part of its business to Connexity. Chen confirmed the asset sale to the outlet. According to the report, the transaction already took place in August 2026 and concerns Howl's creator business.
A separate public announcement of the transaction from Connexity or Taboola could initially not be found in the company newsrooms we checked. The operational transition is also not yet transparent: the Howl website still promotes creator tools, brand deals, shops and the Howl Select creator program.
For creators and brands, it is therefore currently unclear how quickly accounts, campaigns, tracking or brand relationships will be technically integrated under Connexity.
Howl had strongly focused on creator commerce
Howl positions itself as a platform on which creators manage affiliate links, brand deals, shops and performance data. In August 2025, the company stated that since 2022 it had facilitated more than 1,1 billion US dollars in creator-driven sales and paid out over 100 million US dollars to creators. At the time, Howl named around 23.000 creators on the platform. These figures come from the company itself.
Howl combines classic affiliate compensation with additional models such as flat fees, content licensing, CPC and lead compensation. In this way the company belongs to a development we also see in falling and more performance-based creator prices: brands increasingly want to tie creator spending more closely to measurable results.
Connexity brings performance and retail media infrastructure
Connexity has been part of Taboola since 2021 and operates a performance marketing platform for retailers and publishers. According to its own information, the network processes around 1,5 billion clicks per year and works with companies including Walmart, Wayfair, Etsy and ShopApotheke.
Taboola explicitly acquired Connexity 2021 to expand its e-commerce business on the open web. The portfolio now also includes Skimlinks and Taboola's performance platform Realize.
The Howl deal therefore fits strategically into a larger pattern: creator inventory, affiliate links, retail media budgets and performance measurement are technically growing together more and more. This does not automatically mean Howl will be fully integrated into Taboola – there is so far no public product roadmap for this. But the combination shows which infrastructure is becoming valuable in creator commerce: transaction data, attribution, retailer relationships and scalable campaign handling.
Creator commerce is becoming less isolated
Creator marketing was long treated as a separate channel. Today the boundaries are blurring. A creator post can simultaneously be a brand partnership, an affiliate touchpoint, a performance ad and commerce content.
This also changes monetisation. Platform payouts remain relevant but are only one part of the business. For an overview of the different models of YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and other networks, see our guide to creator monetisation 2026.
At the same time, more advertising budget is flowing directly into social commerce. In this year's back-to-school business, agency data showed, for example, that brands are shifting more budget to TikTok and including commerce features more strongly in their media planning.
What the deal means for creators and brands
In the short term, Howl users should above all look for concrete information on contracts, payouts, tracking, attribution and account migration. As long as Connexity or Howl do not publish a detailed integration roadmap, predicting individual product changes would be premature.
In the long term, however, the deal is another signal of consolidation in the creator economy. Platforms, affiliate networks and adtech providers increasingly try to cover the entire chain from reach through product discovery to measurable purchase.
For brands, this can make creator campaigns easier to measure and scale. For creators, at the same time, clean attribution, contractual rules and the question of which platform actually controls the customer relationship and the performance data become more important. That is exactly why usage rights and contract details in creator deals are also becoming increasingly important.