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Outbrain, headquartered in New York with offices globally, is an internationally known and used content marketing and content discovery platform for curating and publishing content across a variety of channels and media spaces, containing editorial controls, analytics for judging impact, and more.Outbrain: Endless Possibilities, If You Have the TimeWe use Outbrain to distribute content pieces on our blog onto advertising channels for increased impressions and exposure. We write content which is useful to everyone, and we distribute the content on the Outbrain network to increase readership on our blog and awareness for our brand. Overall, Outbrain provides us with an audience for the content we write relating to our product offerings.,Distribution Network - We are able to appear on a very wide variety of websites in a more organic way than through traditional display advertising. Ease of Use - The Outbrain platform was incredibly simple from set-up to optimization. The dashboard is clean, easy-to-use, and very trainable to other team members. Unique - We found very few comparable services (other than Taboola), and getting into this space of advertising puts you in a completely different view than the typical sidebar or skyscraper ads.,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.,4,More Impressions - We were able to increase the number of impressions we get from display advertising by adding this new space, which is in addition to the typical skyscraper ads we've done. More Visibility - We've been working on ideas to improve branding, and Outbrain did provide an additional space to advertise in.,TaboolaOutbrain - Content Distribution Hit or MissWe used Outbrain to explain the reach of some of our most popular [content] with a goal of trying to attract visitors to the website who have yet to engage with the company and our work. Although we don't typically use software like this, we decided to give it a shot and see if it proved successful.,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.,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.,6,Can be a unique solution to hitting traffic or even conversion goals on your website. More brand awareness overall.,Facebook for Business and Twitter Ads,Facebook for Business, Twitter AdsOutbrain ReviewOutbrain was used to enhance the reach of a client's content campaign through sponsored links in articles relevant to the content.,Large network of sites Good ad format Large network of sites allows for good amplification of content,Reporting not as robust as would have liked End user quality not as high as anticipated Expensive pricing method,6,Content was seen by more eyes than traditional marketing would have allowed. Key actions were performed by visitors, however, not to the standard or quality we had anticipated. Difficult to determine ROI on content promotion.,Taboola,AdWords, Bing Ads, Google TrendsOutbrain - Significant reach, but unkown B2B valueOutbrain is being used as a campaign specific media tactic to extend the reach of our brand that has been included, highlighted or quoted in news publications (Earned Media).,I can provide additional reach through online news outlets without having to execute a direct publisher paid media buy. It can align our brand with a credible publication that has either included our content or quoted one of our experts and extend visibility in the marketplace. Outbrain can [somewhat] mask a pay-to-play model as earned media reach. Outbrain is an oddity in that it's neither Earned or Paid media.,Outbrain reach attribution is something that needs to be addressed, since our executions are packaged within publications that pick up our content...our usage of Outbrain drives traffic to the publication that has included our brand in some way. Therefore, this is not a direct extension of reach, but indirect reach. Therefore, when we report on Outbrain, it needs to be packaged in a way that assumes additional impressions, but not 1:1, since we're not driving traffic to our brand. More granular tracking capabilities (utm parameters for destination URLs). Follow the URL syntax appending that Oktopost leverages for social media. It's important to be able to track engagement or direct response goal tracking as associated to Outbrain reach. Placement scoring relative to how prominent a brand is mentioned within an article. This will help in the creation of reach attribution models and understand the quality of the Outbrain generated traffic.,5,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.,,Google Analytics, IBM Marketing Cloud, Salesforce.comOutbrain for Content Amplification and TrafficWe use outbrain for content amplification. Outbrain is used by our search team to increase traffic to website blogs.,Outbrain is on a CPC model, so they are great if you want people to visit your article rather than just see an ad. Outbrain is good at helping create article titles for advertising purposes.,The outbrain platform was not user friendly in my opinion. Reporting was difficult. Many of the reports I needed, needed to be pulled by a rep.,5,We have shown that outbrain increases traffic to the website and in turn can increase conversions.,Taboola,AdWords, Marin Software, The Trade Desk
  3. Outbrain Reviews
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Outbrain
21 Ratings
Score 6.3 out of 101
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Outbrain Reviews

Outbrain
21 Ratings
Score 6.3 out of 101
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May 17, 2018

Review: "Outbrain: Endless Possibilities, If You Have the Time"

Verified User
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use Outbrain to distribute content pieces on our blog onto advertising channels for increased impressions and exposure. We write content which is useful to everyone, and we distribute the content on the Outbrain network to increase readership on our blog and awareness for our brand. Overall, Outbrain provides us with an audience for the content we write relating to our product offerings.
  • Distribution Network - We are able to appear on a very wide variety of websites in a more organic way than through traditional display advertising.
  • Ease of Use - The Outbrain platform was incredibly simple from set-up to optimization. The dashboard is clean, easy-to-use, and very trainable to other team members.
  • Unique - We found very few comparable services (other than Taboola), and getting into this space of advertising puts you in a completely different view than the typical sidebar or skyscraper ads.
  • 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.
We haven't found the value to be worth the effort it takes to work through the long list of editorial guidelines necessary to pass through the review stage. While valuable exposure can be gained from Outbrain, it is a lengthy process to prep your website or blog for the Outbrain requisites. However, if you already have a fully prepared website, and are in need of impressions apart from traditional advertising, Outbrain could be beneficial.
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Christine Austin profile photo
September 15, 2017

Review: "Outbrain - Content Distribution Hit or Miss"

Christine Austin
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We used Outbrain to explain the reach of some of our most popular [content] with a goal of trying to attract visitors to the website who have yet to engage with the company and our work. Although we don't typically use software like this, we decided to give it a shot and see if it proved successful.
  • 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.
  • 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.
This seems like it might work better with more evergreen content that doesn't get too granular. Not very good if you are trying to target a specific audience, or even test it for that matter.
Read Christine Austin's full review
Eamonn Kelly profile photo
March 28, 2017

"Outbrain Review"

Eamonn Kelly
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
Outbrain was used to enhance the reach of a client's content campaign through sponsored links in articles relevant to the content.
  • Large network of sites
  • Good ad format
  • Large network of sites allows for good amplification of content
  • Reporting not as robust as would have liked
  • End user quality not as high as anticipated
  • Expensive pricing method
  • Well suited to amplify content across large networks of sites
  • Not suited to smaller budget campaigns
Read Eamonn Kelly's full review
Reet Das profile photo
April 29, 2016

Review: "Outbrain - Significant reach, but unkown B2B value"

Reet Das
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
Outbrain is being used as a campaign specific media tactic to extend the reach of our brand that has been included, highlighted or quoted in news publications (Earned Media).
  • I can provide additional reach through online news outlets without having to execute a direct publisher paid media buy.
  • It can align our brand with a credible publication that has either included our content or quoted one of our experts and extend visibility in the marketplace.
  • Outbrain can [somewhat] mask a pay-to-play model as earned media reach. Outbrain is an oddity in that it's neither Earned or Paid media.
  • Outbrain reach attribution is something that needs to be addressed, since our executions are packaged within publications that pick up our content...our usage of Outbrain drives traffic to the publication that has included our brand in some way. Therefore, this is not a direct extension of reach, but indirect reach. Therefore, when we report on Outbrain, it needs to be packaged in a way that assumes additional impressions, but not 1:1, since we're not driving traffic to our brand.
  • More granular tracking capabilities (utm parameters for destination URLs). Follow the URL syntax appending that Oktopost leverages for social media. It's important to be able to track engagement or direct response goal tracking as associated to Outbrain reach.
  • Placement scoring relative to how prominent a brand is mentioned within an article. This will help in the creation of reach attribution models and understand the quality of the Outbrain generated traffic.
The type of client (B2B / B2C) and their unique media goals are highly dependent factors on if or how to use Outbrain. There is a massive amount of reach available through Outbrain, but understanding how to use and measure it efficiently is the challenge. If a brand is leveraging a PR driven, earned media push into the marketplace, Outbrain should definitely be included if publications are picking up the brand content. Leveraging Outbrain to extend this reach allows for the inclusion of the brand (name) in headlines that are then posted on various other news outlets (the goal is to increase the click through rates). The challenge will be to report on the number of Outbrain impressions and clicks associated to the possible additional exposure of the brand. Keep in mind that if an Outbrain driven post recorded 1000 clicks and 25000 impressions, that doesn't mean your brand received that equivalent reach. This is where you need to possibly integrate an attribution model that assumes that your brand's reach (as packaged content within an Outbrain leveraged news story) may be 50% of the total Outbrain reach.
Read Reet Das's full review
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September 28, 2016

Review: "Outbrain for Content Amplification and Traffic"

Verified User
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use outbrain for content amplification. Outbrain is used by our search team to increase traffic to website blogs.
  • Outbrain is on a CPC model, so they are great if you want people to visit your article rather than just see an ad.
  • Outbrain is good at helping create article titles for advertising purposes.
  • The outbrain platform was not user friendly in my opinion.
  • Reporting was difficult. Many of the reports I needed, needed to be pulled by a rep.
Outbrain is appropriate when you want someone to click to an article and read the blog. It is useful to increase traffic to your blog and website. It is less useful for a direct response client, where you are driving a particular conversion.
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May 06, 2016

User Review: "Outbrain reaches a strong audience"

Verified User
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
Outbrain is used for one of our brands to promote global and local content.
  • Nice reporting
  • Wide range of publishers
  • Communicative support staff
  • More competitive click rates
  • Regional targeting options
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November 11, 2015

User Review: "Has Outbrain lost it's native edge?"

Verified User
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We currently use Outbrain across clients that want to drive awareness of their blog / content. We primarily use it where clients want to increase traffic to their site as this is a metric clients are looking to increase year over year (YOY). We don't tend to use it on all clients as it really does depend on their main KPI for each campaign.
  • Drives relatively cheap traffic to content pages or articles on other sites that might have been written.
  • Platform is simple to use and easy to navigate. Working within an agency we see multiple platforms from different suppliers and Outbrain is one of the most simple.
  • Customer service has got better over the last year or so. We were originally on a managed service, it was good but when we moved to self serve it was quite poor, however now they are very fast to respond.
  • Optimisation within the platform is poor for this type of technology - you can't set ads to evenly rotate so you can see which piece of content is performing best. Only real things you can change are CPCs and budget . Nothing to do with site placement, frequency etc., etc. It auto optimisies to what Outbrain thinks is the top performing and ignores the rest but this isn't what you always want.
  • Reporting suite on the back of the optimisations is poor - can't manually get sitelists / impressions. Geo targeting / frequency / audience profiling can't be got.
  • No ranking of ads - don't know what's good / bad about the ads to help optimise new titles / content/.
  • Only send through to certain bits of content - this can be quite strict.
It is not suited for test / trial pieces of content, we find that it works better for how-tos or top 10s. You need to make sure you find out what the content is before you promote it and if you want to do any testing as Outbrain isn't really the best for testing things.
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October 27, 2015

Review: "Value of Outbrain for Nonprofit Content Distribution"

Verified User
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
Outbrain is used to promote content on our blog to a wide audience. Because we are a nonprofit, we don't have an immediate sales goal, but instead have used the tool to greatly increase our overall traffic. In the last month, we have also used the tool's ability to optimize for conversions to try and increase the number of email addresses we can capture from the content.
  • Gets content to new audiences. It's a great tool for acquiring new visitors at the top of the funnel.
  • Outbrain team is easy to work with and will share best practices and tips. That's helped improve our campaigns over time.
  • The tool is easy to use. Just choose your content, add headlines and photos and let the algorithm do its job.
  • There isn't really targeting available, which I've had to remind senior leadership of a bit. I don't think that needs to be changed, but they could provide talking points to help sell to senior leadership.
  • The content does cast a wide net, so you might need to do some tweaking to get a relevant audience. The optimization feature has helped.
It's appropriate if your product or cause could potentially appeal to a wide audience, or if that's your goal. It's not ideal for very targeted or specific goals. Use the conversion optimization feature to help reach the right audience, but know that feature is more expensive. Overall it is on the pricey side compared with Facebook, for example, but provides access to a huge audience.
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Outbrain Scorecard Summary

Likelihood to Recommend (21)
6.3

Feature Scorecard Summary

Ideation (3)
5.0
Approval workflows (3)
3.5
Content collaboration (2)
8.8
Content calendar (3)
7.0
Network for content licensing/production (2)
5.1
Content hub (6)
6.9
Forms / Gated content (3)
4.9
Embedded CTAs (5)
7.0
Content distribution (8)
7.9
Content promotion (7)
8.7
Content automation (3)
7.6
Audience profiling and targeting (8)
5.8
Closed-loop tracking and reporting (6)
2.6
Content performance analytics (8)
4.1
Campaign optimization dashboard (7)
4.4
Competitive analytics (5)
1.6

About Outbrain

Outbrain, headquartered in New York with offices globally, is an internationally known and used content marketing and content discovery platform for curating and publishing content across a variety of channels and media spaces, containing editorial controls, analytics for judging impact, and more.
Categories:  Content Marketing

Outbrain Technical Details

Operating Systems: Unspecified
Mobile Application:No