Outbrain vs. Smartly.io

If your client or organization is running a high volume awareness campaign, Outbrain would be a platform to diversify your mix with. Pretty low maintenance and easy to set up, you can get ads running in a few minutes. If your primary goal is conversions, there are probably better channels you can use where the targeting is a little more transparent and would likely see a higher avg conversion rate.

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It is the best for visually appealing brands, basically, any hedonic goods to advertise. Best if you have a lot of visuals to represent your business and want to leverage your presence on given platforms. You can easily turn images into videos or have dynamic attributes for your remarketing campaign. As the pricing is not attractive for smaller clients, it is the best to be either a big brand to use the platform on your own or a big agency to use smartly.io features as your competitive advantage.

• Website network: Outbrain provides high-quality websites in its network so that you can get a quality audience.
• Affordable pricing: The CPC offered by Outbrain is relatively cheaper than other alternatives.
• Content dashboard: The dashboard allows you to edit the content before publishing it on Outbrain's platform.

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• A/B testing
• Automated boosting
• Content optimization
• Customer care

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• Customer Service - Speaking to a human is nearly impossible, there is no "chat" function, and no phone number immediately available. Ultimately, I've had to email a generic CS contact and wait several days before heading back.
• High Number of Guidelines - The number of guidelines one must meet before using Outbrain is much higher than any other ad platform I've used. Most of them are highly specific and not necessarily items that a website would have out-of-the-box.

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• Pricing is not attractive to smaller agencies. The base minimum was 1k per month, then 2.5k per month and it grew up to 5k per month. It means that agencies will have to choose service of competitors as Smartly.io is not affordable for everyone. It becomes a premium business.

The use case is very obvious, brand awareness and low cost conversions because of its reach in billions. The platform is easy to use, well sorted and defined with good click optimized algorithms and brands can use it without hesitation. If monitored well and optimized accordingly, this can prove to be one of the best advertising channels.

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We had an account manager assigned to us, but they really didn't offer too much help outside of the financial side of things. We used the self-serve platform with mild suggestions every few weeks from our reps amounting to "spend a bit more here."

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• If the problem involves some product bugs, customer support does not leave it be. They forward the problem to engineers so it would be solved. Once we caught a problem, they fixed it through the weekend. They always keep you in the loop with the current status of the issue. Once a new person jumps in to follow up, the reaction is
• They are all the time super polite and very friendly.
• Replies in under 5 minutes.
• Customer support can jump into your account and make quick fixes if you allow them to.

Here at AdRizer my personal ad sources primarily revolve around Google Ads & Outbrain. Taboola is extremely similar to Outbrain minus the fact that strategies are dictated on the account level unlike by campaign with Outbrain

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• None. My perspective is that further testing is needed as well as additional tracking capabilities applied to be able to assess value. However, it's a CPC model and relatively inexpensive in regards to additional reach, especially if it's packaged in with an Earned media push into the marketplace.

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• Allowed us the ability to A/B test organic content
• Workflow efficiencies
• Content insights

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A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info