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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.OutbrainOutbrain: Too brainy for a simple outreach2019-01-21T22:39:10.134ZMy company, a news media, is looking for a platform to market our articles. We were previously using another content distribution platform but we're looking for a cheaper alternative due to weakening currency (IDR). Outbrain came as an alternative as it offered cheaper CPC than our previous choice. There were also other alternatives, but Outbrain is significantly more well-known and hence trusted in our view.,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.,Confusing dashboard: I am used to using a content distribution platform similar to Outbrain, but I was honestly overwhelmed by the complexity of Outbrain's dashboard.
Difficulties in adding new contents: I don't know why but I often encountered an error message while adding a batch of new contents to the dashboard. The message basically said that the content violated Outbrain's terms and policies, despite them being safe (proven when it was considered okay when I input the content links one by one).
Blacklist and whitelist: The features are offered in Outbrain, but it is relatively difficult to set up as you really have to check the websites you want one by one. In my experience, Outbrain does not offer a group of similar websites in the whitelist recommendation. This will help a lot. For instance, a group of news media websites should be recommended to be whitelisted for a news company user.,6,Outbrain delivers, but that's it. It does its job based on your budget and CPC, but not more than that. I can say that this is a bit disappointing since another platform that we used, Taboola, delivers more than its worth.
The users that we get from Outbrain did not translate into quality clicks and session. They only clicked the links on Outbrain and never went further than that. I get that we can tweak the blacklist and whitelist feature to have a better audience, but well, who has the time for that.
On the bright side, their customer service is actually quite helpful. We were just a bit hesitant and reluctant to continue using Outbrain due to the dashboard's complexities, low-quality clicks that came, and the fact that we could negotiate a better deal with another platform.,TaboolaVerified UserOutbrain: Endless Possibilities, If You Have the Time2018-05-17T17:03:04.661ZWe 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.,TaboolaVerified UserOutbrain - Content Distribution Hit or Miss2017-09-15T21:55:47.021ZWe 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 AdsChristine AustinOutbrain Review2017-03-28T16:03:35.752ZOutbrain 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 TrendsEamonn KellyOutbrain - Significant reach, but unkown B2B value2016-04-29T20:30:06.240ZOutbrain 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.comReet DasOutbrain for Content Amplification and Traffic2016-09-28T18:22:05.743ZWe 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 DeskVerified UserOutbrain reaches a strong audience2016-05-06T21:20:14.221ZOutbrain 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,7,Able to reach traffic goals
Engagement stayed level,,Taboola, Facebook for Business, Parse.ly,Implemented in-house,NoVerified UserHas Outbrain lost it's native edge?2015-11-11T17:36:17.794ZWe 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.,5,Users that started with Outbrain had a higher AOV when followed up by display inventory.
Outbrain helps drive direct sales during sale period.,Sharethrough and Yahoo GeminiVerified UserValue of Outbrain for Nonprofit Content Distribution2015-10-27T20:33:41.168ZOutbrain 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.,8,Greatly increased traffic
More brand awareness,Verified UserUnspecified
Outbrain
24 Ratings
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January 21, 2019
Outbrain: Too brainy for a simple outreach
My company, a news media, is looking for a platform to market our articles. We were previously using another content distribution platform but we're looking for a cheaper alternative due to weakening currency (IDR). Outbrain came as an alternative as it offered cheaper CPC than our previous choice. There were also other alternatives, but Outbrain is significantly more well-known and hence trusted in our view.
- 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.
- Confusing dashboard: I am used to using a content distribution platform similar to Outbrain, but I was honestly overwhelmed by the complexity of Outbrain's dashboard.
- Difficulties in adding new contents: I don't know why but I often encountered an error message while adding a batch of new contents to the dashboard. The message basically said that the content violated Outbrain's terms and policies, despite them being safe (proven when it was considered okay when I input the content links one by one).
- Blacklist and whitelist: The features are offered in Outbrain, but it is relatively difficult to set up as you really have to check the websites you want one by one. In my experience, Outbrain does not offer a group of similar websites in the whitelist recommendation. This will help a lot. For instance, a group of news media websites should be recommended to be whitelisted for a news company user.
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.
September 15, 2017
Outbrain - Content Distribution Hit or Miss
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.
March 28, 2017
Outbrain Review
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
April 29, 2016
Outbrain - Significant reach, but unkown B2B value
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.
September 28, 2016
Outbrain for Content Amplification and Traffic
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.
May 06, 2016
Outbrain reaches a strong audience
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
November 11, 2015
Has Outbrain lost it's native edge?
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.
October 27, 2015
Value of Outbrain for Nonprofit Content Distribution
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.
Outbrain Scorecard Summary
Feature Scorecard Summary
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 |