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Outbrain

Score5 out of 10

37 Reviews and Ratings

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What is Outbrain?

Outbrain, headquartered in New York with offices globally, is an internationally known native advertising platform for curating and publishing content across a variety of channels and media spaces, containing editorial controls, analytics for judging impact, and related features.

Categories & Use Cases

Reviews

What users are saying about Outbrain.
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Worst customer support ever

Andrea D'AddioView profile
Founder & CEO at Berlin Italian Communication UG (1-10 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I run the Berlin Magazine online newspaper. My bad experience is about customer support. Outbrain is creating a code problem on our site. We cannot click on any internal links to our articles or banners. We have been asking customer support for help for two weeks. They reply every three days, ignore emails, ask to send screenshots even when they have already been sent. There is no respect for a customer, after two weeks we are already at the third time that we have to write the same email describing the problem. Even sending a video of the problem they still don't respond. Never had such a bad experience with an online business.

Pros

  • among the worst customer services ever, answers after days without ever giving an answer
  • the widget can conflict with the site (I use a Wordpress)
  • customer service reachable only through a general email

Cons

  • costumer service

Most Important Features

  • generating traffic

Return on Investment

  • We just started to use it, but the absence of their costumer support doesn't help me to give an appropriate answer

Outbrain Is Worth It - If You Have Budget and Patience

Incentivized
Tyler Torcivia
Digital Strategist in Marketing at Adrizer (11-50 employees employees)

Pros

  • Communications
  • Easy Navigation
  • CBS Strategies

Cons

  • I wish there was an activity log (i.e. Changes made to account over time) to help troublesome where the advertiser made a mistake OR needs to make an adjustment
  • A big caveat is when running CBS (i.e. Target CPA) you cannot adjust your bids since this bidding strategy is automated. After a while you will be limited by the number of publishers you can block. There are over ten thousand publishers but you can only block 1,000.

Most Important Features

  • CBS
  • Dedicated Account Manager
  • Easy UI/UX Navigation

Return on Investment

  • Overall we have been profitable by running CBS bidding after weeks of semi-automatic learning and funnel building
  • If targeting ROAS you may see extremely high days as well as extremely low. The algorithm will work to achieve your goal on a daily basis as well as monthly.

Alternatives Considered

Taboola, Revcontent, StackAdapt, Yahoo Gemini! (Verizon Media Native), formerly Yahoo! Advertising, Google Ad Manager, Facebook for Business, Twitter Ads, Zemanta and an Outbrain company

Other Software Used

Google Ad Manager, Facebook for Business, Taboola

Does What You Want It To Do

Incentivized
Chandler ElmoreView profile
Community Development & Engagement Lead in Marketing at Blue Federal Credit Union (201-500 employees employees)

Pros

  • Easy to use overall, no major hiccups.
  • Initial set up is fairly simple.
  • Outbrain's distribution network is great and pretty comprehensive.

Cons

  • The terms and conditions of the platform can vary and change rapidly, what works one time might not work a second later.
  • Customer service representatives can sometimes be hard to get a hold of.

Return on Investment

  • Cut our marketing positions to one person and a smaller media buying presence.

Alternatives Considered

Taboola

Usability

Other Software Used

Taboola, Meltwater Media Intelligence Platform, Cision Communications Cloud

Delivers Average Traffic at a Great Value

Incentivized
Vincent MisiewiczView profile
Sr. Search Engine Marketing Analyst in Marketing at Traffic Digital Agency (11-50 employees employees)

Pros

  • Easy, simple to use interface that can create campaigns pretty quickly.
  • Comparatively lower CPCs when compared to other Social/Native platforms.
  • Surprisingly decent quality of traffic. As spammy as some native ads can seem, we've received quality leads when using this platform at scale.

Cons

  • Ad formats are not very customizable, limited on how your ad appears.
  • Billing setup can be a pain if you're working worth multiple accounts.
  • Targeting is pretty vague, not sure who the audience really is, need to monitor traffic using the platform such as GA to ensure it's not too spammy.

Return on Investment

  • In terms of overhead/labor, it is minimal, so looking at a perspective of how much time it takes to set up and manage, it's pretty efficient.
  • For clients focusing on awareness, the large volume of impressions and clicks they can get with relatively little investment is strong.
  • If the budget is fairly limited, I wouldn't expect anywhere near the conversion rate you'd see with a social, search, or even display campaign.

Alternatives Considered

Taboola and Yahoo Gemini

Other Software Used

Taboola, Yahoo Gemini, Google Ads (formerly AdWords), ClickUp, Trello

Outbrain - Content Distribution Hit or Miss

Incentivized
Christine AustinView profile
Creative Lead, Marketing in Marketing at Impact Branding & Design LLC (11-50 employees employees)

Pros

  • Provides additional reach through outlets your audience may live [in], but you wouldn't be able to target otherwise.
  • Easy to use and implement. Wasn't much of a learning curve at all which can be very appealing when using promotional platforms like this.
  • Great customer service response. They typically are very responsive in answering your questions and also have a general FAQ page to filter through if you aren't one to hop in the phone.

Cons

  • Targeting a specific audience doesn't really exist. This creates a frustration because you sorta have your hands tied as to how Outbrain selects who sees it.
  • Would like some optimization feedback on the ads we put out. If there is something that can be improved upon, give me a hint, or, maybe the content I'm putting out just isn't going to attract new audiences.
  • It would be nice to see some sort of integration with Outbrain and HubSpot as well.

Return on Investment

  • Can be a unique solution to hitting traffic or even conversion goals on your website.
  • More brand awareness overall.

Alternatives Considered

Facebook for Business and Twitter Ads

Other Software Used

Facebook for Business, Twitter Ads