Taboola wants your clicks while you're waiting for your ride, and it's part of a plan to take on Apple News

Taboola News, a preinstalled smartphone widget, will integrate within the Via app, surfacing curated news and content to riders from Taboola's network of premium publishers through a personalized bar at the bottom of the app. A little more than 10 million people are using Taboola News globally, and more than 50 publishers are on it, according to Taboola founder and CEO Adam Singolda.

Publishers, including HuffPost, USA Today, and Business Insider, pay Taboola to boost their links through its recommendation engine and refer readers to their websites. Taboola typically gets a cut of the ad revenue generated through these recommendations.

Taboola has entered into a revenue-share agreement with Via as well, according to Singolda, who declined to give specifics.

Via is smaller than both Lyft and Uber. Uber controls a lion's share of the ride-hailing market in the US with a 71% share, according to SimilarWeb data from April, which looks at app installs from Google Play. Lyft, in comparison, has 26.2% of the US market share, with others including Via and Juno making up the remainder.

The announcement comes on the heels of another recent partnership between Taboola and Chinese phone-maker Vivo, which is the world's fifth-largest smartphone manufacturer and reaches 100 million mobile users across Asia.

"There are a lot of environments where captive audiences spend a lot of time, like cars and airports, but they don't necessarily have much to do," Singolda told Business Insider. "We want to take Taboola News to all those environments, with Via being our first step toward owning the car environment."

For Via, it's about enhancing its riders' journey, Via CEO and cofounder Daniel Ramot said. Both Taboola and Via have worked with venture-capital fund Pitango.

"At Via, we care deeply about providing a superior customer experience at every stage of the journey," said Ramot. "We're excited that this partnership with Taboola will enable us to enhance riders' Via trip by enabling them to seamlessly access hyperrelevant content directly from their app."

Singolda likened Taboola to a "reverse search engine," which delivers personalized news and content to consumers, instead of them having to search for it themselves. The company wants to take its battle for users' attention to all fronts: whether it's their mobile-phone screens, ride-hailing apps like Via, or even car infotainment screens in the future, Singolda said.

Since its launch, Taboola News has pitched itself as a publisher-friendly version of Apple News, which publishers have said doesn't allow them to fully monetize their audience. Unlike Apple News, Taboola News isn't housed in a stand-alone app. Plus, it sends readers directly to publishers' websites, allowing them to own their ad sales and relationships with readers.

"Taboola News allows us to reach new and engaged audiences with stories, videos, and other curated content that will drive readers to our various owned and operated websites, where we can build direct relationships," said Grant Whitmore, the executive vice president and general manager for Tribune Publishing Company's northeast region.

ZTE is the second-largest Chinese telecom-equipment maker after Huawei Technologies and has sold handset devices to US mobile carriers including AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint. But with an 11% market share in the first quarter of 2018, it has a far smaller market share in the US than Apple, which has 38%, according to Counterpoint Research.

Still, Singolda said he wants to build "an alternative to the walled gardens," referring to Facebook and Apple, which have faced criticism from advertisers and publishers for their closed systems.

"Taboola is the Robin Hood of the open web," he said.