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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

(1-5 of 5)
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Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have used Outbrain on and off again for over 4 years. We started using it for a select few clients before rolling it out as a fully managed service offering within the paid realm. It was great at driving traffic initially but we found that the traffic was very top of funnel or came through as an accidental click and had a very low propensity to actually convert.
  • Traffic
  • Increasing views/sessions
  • Get more exposure to valuable content
  • Targeting outside of specific websites or niches
  • Value of traffic
  • Outdated admin
Outbrain great for driving visitors and sessions. If impressions is what you're looking for this will work well. If you're looking for bottom-funnel conversions, I would likely recommend you focus on platforms that enable better targeting and more audience limitations. Outbrain worked well to get eyeballs but not actually driving $$ for us and our clients.
  • Majority of our tests were ROI Negative
  • Impressions skyrocketed, but didn't convert
  • Great for increasing views
We've also used Taboola. Overall, comparing the traffic 1:1, the Outbrain traffic tended to perform better onsite by a slim margin.
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."
Backend could use a lift. It seemed pretty outdated when I used it last and bulk editing was an issue.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Outbrain is a great find for our marketing campaigns when it comes to acquisition and brand awareness. The software is particularly used by the promotions & acquisition team to find new users and a very genuine cost per reach. The platforms bills on every clicks it achieves by promoting the campaign which ensures best use of marketing monies.
  • Variable CPC helps keep the cost low - too huge the inventory.
  • Multiple goal optimization to its best, in this platform.
  • Selective bidding on the publisher helps scale the campaign.
  • Sudden addition of new publisher in the campaign with high clicks hamper the campaign performance sometimes; there should be a check.
  • Event based conversion implementation is a bit challenge still.
  • Lack of account teams in the organization for Indian geo is another challenge.
Outbrain is a great product to reach to the masses cost effectively with customizable content based on geo, keywords, etc. The platforms charges only on clicks and also optimizes towards the end goals of the campaign as decided before initiating the campaigns. The tools is a good driver of awareness and acquisition.
  • Lower CAC.
  • Ads to the right targets and exclusion capabilities help save more bucks.
  • Algorithm helps improve conversion ratio to decrease CPL & CPA.
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.
Though the responses are quick and you get all the timely updates on your dashboard, there isn't much that you'd require from them as the platforms sheds all the lights on everything itself; this is as easy to use platforms for the marketers, unlike Yahoo Advertising Verizon Native Media Ads.
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.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We find content for our social media bi-weekly posts, and it has many features. We find news from all over the world, filtered by theme, and it helps us out a lot.
  • Trustworthy content.
  • New info.
  • Ideas for social media posts.
  • General information.
  • Better filtered articles, maybe by region?
Of course I would recommend Outbrain, it takes the guessing and the minutes surfing the web to find suitable posts for our social media content, so we can be more efficient about our time for business.
  • Less idle time surfing the web looking for content.
  • Condensed writing with all we can imagine for posting.
This is the only website we have used, so far, so good and we are very happy with it. Our team also.
We haven't had any issues or trouble with it. So, not having any issue and having to contact the support line, this calls for a 10.
Easy to use, and super friendly to learn how to navigate within it. Not hard at all.
September 14, 2020

Does What You Want It To Do

Chandler Elmore | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our current use of Outbrain is to reach possible new members for our credit union. We target and advertise to those via Outbrain that are the most likely to engage with us later on. Outbrain is used more as a brand awareness tool to get more of a passing interest in what our credit union offers.
  • Easy to use overall, no major hiccups.
  • Initial set up is fairly simple.
  • Outbrain's distribution network is great and pretty comprehensive.
  • 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.
Outbrain is well suited when you need a fairly straightforward tool that helps get brand awareness out to places on the internet that you might not show up other than through Outbrain. It is a simple(ish) tool that allows increasing brand reach with a beginner to intermediate skill set. Though not the be all end all, it covers a lot of bases well.
  • Cut our marketing positions to one person and a smaller media buying presence.
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.
The customer service is fine, nothing to write home about. It is hard to get a hold of them in the few times that I have needed them.
This is, in my opinion, the higher selling point of the platform. It is relatively easy to use platform that seems designed with the knowledge that the users of the platform do not do this day in and day out. This is a good thing because the learning curve is not that high, but can be a shortcoming if you are looking for a more robust platform.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Outbrain Amplify is used by my ogranization to find new channels for identifying targeted audience with our offerings to promote our content using Outbrain's premium publisher network. Our foremost purpose is to increase our brand awareness amongst our target audience and geographies where we are trying to make our sales more predominant. It has helped us so far in capturing audiences by making our content rich and custom based on their relevance.
  • Lead generation, verification and capture.
  • Contact databases with good amount of details to customize or filter based on important parameters.
  • Marketing analytics.
  • Pipeline management for tracking leads which are potential targets.
  • NPS scoring.
  • Lead Database Integration.
  • Ability to give insights into how target audiences are reached - by platform, geography, campaigns, time, etc.
  • Great distribution network - ability to connect securely with audience on the open web.
  • Gauge the performance of highly rich data campaigns on lead conversions.
  • Configuration of content.
  • Organic dashboards than traditional graphics on a wide range of websites and platforms.
  • No free trial version/licenses - you have to go all in from the very first moment you choose Outbrain.
  • Main ROI depends on how you calculate your reach and impact - Outbrain gives you data on lead conversion but is that long-term conversion or not? - Outbrain isn't able to tell that in short term.
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.
Good and quick resolution of tickets, good documentation for integration and personalization, helpful and knowledgeable support staff.
We give Outbrain's capabilities 8 because of its abilities to find relevant leads based on personalization, geography and then help in integrating those insights into more powerful PR campaigns at the same time. Why I gave 8 and not 10 is because even though we are able to make more engaging content for the users what could be more powerful is having more powerful conversations thereafter.
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