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Outbrain

Outbrain

Overview

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.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Outbrain is a versatile platform that serves a variety of use cases for users across different industries. For the paid media team at …
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Pricing

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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.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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What is Taboola?

Taboola is a native advertising platform from the company of the same name in New York for publishing "recommended" content in a variety of popularly visited news sites and spaces. Taboola is partnered with many publishers (the Atlantic, Tribune, MailOnline, Business Insider, etc.).

What is Choozle?

Choozle, headquartered in Denver, provides a digital advertising software platform that leverages consumer data to power programmatic advertising campaigns across display, video, mobile and other mediums.

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Product Demos

Outbrain Thumbnail Widget - Demo Video

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Outbrain Amplify - Explainer Video

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Product Details

What is Outbrain?

Outbrain Video

What Is Outbrain?

Outbrain Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

Reviewers rate Usability highest, with a score of 7.8.

The most common users of Outbrain are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(37)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Outbrain is a versatile platform that serves a variety of use cases for users across different industries. For the paid media team at AdRizer, Outbrain is a valuable tool for driving website traffic at an affordable cost. The straightforward guidelines and minimal disapprovals make it a preferred choice over larger social platforms. Working with the dedicated account manager ensures a seamless process, even providing white-glove commitment by answering emails after hours.

For e-commerce stores looking to expand their ad reach, Outbrain comes highly recommended for testing and promoting products on new ad stacks. It has been successful for reviewers who have found it to be an effective campaign-specific media tactic. Additionally, Outbrain functions as a brand awareness tool for credit unions, reaching potential members and generating interest in their offerings.

Outbrain's ability to amplify content extends beyond marketing campaigns. It has been used by Berlin Magazine online newspaper to market their articles, though they have faced challenges with customer support. However, the tool is trusted and well-known in general. Nonprofits have also leveraged Outbrain to significantly increase overall traffic and capture email addresses.

Furthermore, Outbrain plays a crucial role in content distribution and audience engagement strategies. Bloggers have utilized Outbrain to increase impressions and exposure for their content. It helps promote global and local content, finding new channels to identify targeted audiences and increase brand awareness. By customizing content based on relevance, Outbrain allows users to effectively capture audiences and drive engagement.

Overall, Outbrain offers diverse use cases across industries, whether it be driving traffic, amplifying content, or increasing brand awareness. Despite some challenges with customer support or code problems reported by users, the platform's benefits are recognized by its extensive user base.

User-Friendly Interface: Several users have found Outbrain's user interface to be easy and simple to use, allowing for quick campaign creation. They appreciate the straightforward navigation within the platform, resulting in a smooth overall experience. With minimal learning curve involved, users can easily navigate through the clean and intuitive dashboard.

Cost Savings: Some users have noted that Outbrain's CPCs are comparatively lower when compared to other Social Native platforms. This has led to potential cost savings for these users, making Outbrain an affordable option for their advertising needs.

Quality Traffic Generation: Despite initial concerns about native ads being spammy, many users have been pleasantly surprised by the decent quality of traffic generated through Outbrain's platform. They appreciate that Outbrain's comprehensive distribution network allows them to reach outlets frequented by their target audience but would otherwise be difficult to target. This additional reach helps increase visibility in the marketplace and provides valuable exposure to their content.

Limited ad customization: Some users have expressed dissatisfaction with the limited customization options for ad formats in Outbrain, stating that it restricts their ability to have more control over how their ads appear.

Billing setup complexity: Several reviewers have mentioned that setting up billing for multiple accounts can be a cumbersome process, resulting in inconvenience and complexity.

Vague targeting options: A number of users have found the targeting options in Outbrain to be vague and unclear, making it difficult to accurately determine their target audience. This lack of clarity has been reported to impact the effectiveness of ad campaigns.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-17 of 17)
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Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Outbrain has an edge over others because of its ease to set up campaigns, better algorithm to drive conversions and optimize on more than a goal and good reporting. Furthermore, this has by far the biggest inventory of the network of publishers and many premium inventories. I've been a loyal user of the media buying platform because of the said reasons.
September 14, 2020

Does What You Want It To Do

Chandler Elmore | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Outbrain is easier to use than Taboola and a lot more straight forward. With Taboola, I have found that you never really know what impact is being had outside of the data they provide. I have never had this concern with Outbrain because I have seen the ads placed on sites I visit.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
So we had demos and trial versions for Taboola, AdRoll, ContentStudio. All aim to help businesses find more customers on the web and help them grow. What stood apart for us was Outbrain's automation in lead discover, verification and personalized content for us and thus structure our branding and be in sync with our purpose statement.
Vincent Misiewicz | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
When we're recommending a Native campaign, Outbrain is our platform of choice. Taboola is pretty comparable, but the setup with Outbrain is a little easier, difficult to comment on the quality of traffic they drive, but know that Outbrain is acceptable. Yahoo Gemini does a few different things, so not a true Native-only platform, but you do have more control of ad formats and how they appear, which is nice.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Initially, we used Outbrain because we felt that Taboola was getting too expensive. However, after a month trial and a rather disappointing result, we are going back with Taboola. Still happy with Taboola (I wrote about this at length in a separate review). Outbrain is good, but its results and my experience during the trial were not that great to abandon Taboola altogether.
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Compared to Taboola, Outbrain had more editorial guidelines, provided more potential impressions, and cost slightly less. However, keeping up with meeting the constant editorial guidelines (despite writing very high-quality, original content) was overwhelming and cost our team too much time, considering this was just one of many advertising formats we're using.
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Outbrain used to have the best reporting / performance out of all the native suppliers that we've used however now I feel that it is lagging behind and lacks optimisations which means we've started looking around for a better platform.

It may be that these features are available but no one has been in to show us or explain to us what is new and what can now be done.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Outbrain is really the leader in the field so we did not consider other products. Other products are more likely to promote "sketchy" content that we would not want our content to appear next to. It will be interesting to see what other players enter this market in the near future.
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