Outbrain is a content recommendation platform. The company works off the thinking that you use a search engine for content/information you know you are looking for and you ‘use’ a content recommendation platform for content/information that you didn’t know you were looking for. Outbrain’s CEO Yaron Galai says that he is trying to recreate (in an online situation) that ‘flipping of the page’ moment that you would get when going through an offline publication, whereby you don’t know what article will be on the next page.

Essentially, Outbrain specialises in putting paid links where readers are looking for something else to read.

Outbrain 2 minute intro video:

In Comparison to Other Online Recommendation Systems

Online recommendations systems are usually based on the assumption that if you’re interested in one thing, you’ll be interested in similar things—a principle called “relevancy.” We have seen this to work really well on shopping sites, like Amazon, but according to Outbrain, it doesn’t work so well for content sites. Outbrain doesn’t serve up links based on how similar the topics of the new stories are to the one the reader is already reading, in fact the system makes its determinations based on how likely the reader is to stay engaged on the site once they click through.

According to Outbrain founder and CEO Yaron Galai, serving up links based on relevance actually works very poorly. “Unless the reader is a sports fan who wants to read obsessively about their home team, related links don’t actually perform as well as links on seemingly unrelated subjects, but ones that Outbrain’s algorithms have discovered somehow appeal to similar readers.”

Outbrain gives you (normally expensive) access to premium online publishers, and they appear when readers are looking for something else to click on – at the end of an article (Note: there are also other placement options).

Success of Outbrain

Outbrain’s recommendation engine is now used on over 1,000 brand publisher sites in the U.S. and Europe (as well as tens of thousands of smaller sites).

How it Works – how they choose what to recommend

Outbrain claims to use a variety of approaches to surface the best links for each user. They look at a variety of factors including contextual similarities, post popularity and audience patterns when choosing recommendations. They also filter recommendations for each user visiting the publisher site so that they don’t see links to posts they’ve already read. The Outbrain algorithms are all geared to help readers find interesting content and boost engagement on the publisher site.

Its algorithms claim to also focus on measuring how engaged a reader stays on a site after they’ve clicked through—how many subsequent pages they view—and ranks their catalogue of hundreds of thousands of stories accordingly. Outbrain doesn’t only recommend content on the publisher’s site. It also includes links to external sites.

For example, in the image below, the recommendations on the left (“We recommend”) are for content on the host site (in this case, CNN’s Health channel). The recommendations on the right (“From around the web”) link to external sites.

 

 

In relation to the Irish Independent online newspaper which also uses Outbrain, refer to the image below where content from external sites is mixed in with other content from the Independent’s pages.

 

 

The hosts (the publisher) get the recommendation engine for free. The external sites pay to have their content listed (they pay on a per-click basis). The upside for the publishers? They get a recommendation engine that displays content on their site that is most likely to keep readers engaged, which is always a good thing. (Outbrain claims that websites get a 5-10% lift in views.) But they also get a revenue stream (if they qualify, many won’t) when readers click through to other sites.

Outbrain helps publishers make more money no matter if people stay (and read related posts and see more ads) or click and leave (in which case the publisher makes money from the click to leave – though few will fall into this bracket, see more in publisher section).

Outbrain also claim that readers also win because their system of measuring how long people actually stay on a site means that they end up recommending much higher quality content, stories, and sites that readers would genuinely be interested in.

Outbrain’s system generates about 200 million monthly clicks, Galai says, which results in a total of 3.5 billion subsequent page views.

Using Outbrain – the Advertiser

Advertisers can use Outbrain to get “cheap” access to premium publishers that have a huge audience, but also high ad rates if you were to advertise with them through other channels. Advertisers can promote on the CNN website for more than $5 to $10+ per thousand impressions (ie, not clicks) or they use Outbrain ‘advertising’ for less than $0.35 per click.

The ‘catch’ is that your advertisement can’t be seen as a blatant advertisement. It has to be content – or at least appear as such. According to some online commentary, Outbrain is not overly restrictive on the form of content as long as your landing page isn’t an obvious ad / offer.

Most Outbrain ads are an ad rate arbitrage activity.

[Definition Arbitrage: The simultaneous purchase and sale of an asset in order to profit from a difference in the price. It is a trade that profits by exploiting price differences of identical or similar financial instruments, on different markets or in different forms.]

Advertisers (who are publishers themselves) pay X amount for an Outbrain click, and then monetise that visit on their own site with premium ads that pay out Y amount.

For example, a health site might promote content on a general purpose site for €0.15 per click because once that visitor lands on their site, they can promote a high dollar/euro pharmaceutical ad.

For example, if you browsed onto a general purpose website and clicked on a link on that page entitled “Foods That Could Cause An Irregular Heartbeat” – you would land on this:

Note The Premium Pharma Ad. (Image courtesy of http://www.shivarweb.com/3574/how-to-advertise-on-outbrain/)

Or you could click on another Outbrain ad and land on a page littered with lower ‘quality’ ads.

They paid for 1 OutBrain Click and they pay for it with this. (Image courtesy of http://www.shivarweb.com/3574/how-to-advertise-on-outbrain/)

As long as the arbitrage makes sense, the publishers will keep doing it. Publishers with Outbrain ads get paid for clicks leaving their site, and advertisers get to monetise the visitors with premium ads after that.

As another example:

(Image courtesy of http://www.shivarweb.com/3574/how-to-advertise-on-outbrain/)

AllState [http://www.allstate.com/ the 3rd largest personal insurer in the USA] is a business based on high margin with a longer duration sales cycle. It wishes to emphasize its authority in its niche in terms of its expertise and reliability.

They could choose to pay $10+ CPM for a banner ad that tells people they can count on AllState or they could create a piece of genuine, well written, helpful piece of content that provides a guide on how to survive winter with your car that gets ‘actual’ clicks for $0.20 per click.

The thinking is that potential customers end up reading interesting and engaging content on the AllState website. It might not be an actual ad…but the content is basically a big ad for AllState, re-emphasizing their place in the industry and it also means valuable traffic to their website (more on this below).

How To Advertise On Outbrain

Go to http://www.outbrain.com/ Sign up to “Amplify Your Content.”

Note: Outbrain requires you to contact their sales team directly if you are not located in a certain country. See below screenshot. (Note: I emailed Outbrain to see if I can ‘amplify’ my content as an Irish business. In another part of the site it says that countries in the EU do qualify but still waiting for clarification on this.)

Next you decide if you want to advertise an RSS feed or a specially selected piece of content. At initial stages it is advisable to hand pick your content. You can choose at item of content that you believe will perform well (or maybe you already got good feedback on). You can’t edit the Outbrain headline – they pull whatever is the title of the page.

Third stage is setting the budget. Outbrain provides a network recommended amount for test campaigns just so you can get a good sense of potential traffic. Revisit this after testing the first initial campaigns. Obviously if you budget more per click, you’ll get more traffic.

(Image courtesy of http://www.shivarweb.com/3574/how-to-advertise-on-outbrain/)

In terms of start dates Outbrain has to approve your content before it goes live (can take a day or two) so keep this in mind in terms of timely content.

Finally you just need to watch out for your approval email.

(Image courtesy of http://www.shivarweb.com/3574/how-to-advertise-on-outbrain/)

Are there downsides to Outbrain for advertisers?

Advertising on Outbrain is easy to set up. However, a concern is how little control you have over the settings. Outbrain does not offer the option to choose which publisher sites your content appears on. Your ‘ad’ placements are all automated, all you can control is the geo-targeting. From reading research it does seem that Outbrain and their algorithm is good at finding appropriate placements…but you don’t have the control that you get with Google Display Network.

Outbrain’s take on this is that they believe that applying filters can limit your reach and their ability to recommend your content to audiences when they want it. Outbrain can, however block your content from appearing on up to 5 publishers. The top 10 publishers your content appears on is under Dashboard > Top Traffic Sources. You just email selfserve@outbrain.com with your username and the publisher(s) you want to block.

Targeting only includes geo-targeting. (Image courtesy of http://www.shivarweb.com/3574/how-to-advertise-on-outbrain/)

Getting the most from Outbrain as the Advertiser

Make sure your content is easily shareable. Make sure your Twitter cards are in place, ensure your Facebook markup is set; ensure that the right social sharing buttons are at the right place on the post.

Use it as a method of lead generation. The Outbrain audience is looking for content to read. They are not looking to buy (not to mention Outbrain’s ban on advertising), and they are unlikely to convert. Try to get email signups or Facebook likes/Twitter follows so that you can market to them later when they may be interested in buying.

Build a remarketing audience. It would be remiss to ‘purchase’ Outbrain traffic and then to have it leave forever without ‘reminding’ that initial audience of your existence at a later stage. As we know, remarketing is relatively inexpensive and can be quite an effective marketing technique. You can measure its effectiveness with the website attribution techniques that you should have in place.

User-testing for your content. Since Outbrain is so cheap, it can be a good place to test headlines and responses to your content. You could run multiple small campaigns with different headlines to look at click-through rate.

Outbrain for Publishers

Installing Outbrain requires the placing of a small JavaScript tag on pages where you want to display content recommendations.The Outbrain widget is usually placed immediately after article content, above the comments and footer. Its recommendations can also be used in sidebars, section fronts and home pages as personalised navigational units. It also supports mobile and video implementations.

If a publisher signs up to Outbrain, then Outbrain automatically inherits the site’s CSS in order to merge with the publisher site’s look and feel. Adjustments to the look and feel of the widget can be made by CSS and can be hosted either by the publisher (the client) or by Outbrain.

Control on Content Recommendations

You do have control over what content is recommended. Within the Outbrain settings dashboard, you can determine whether your widget should only show links to content from your site or to also include links from other sites (sponsored recommendations).

In addition, there are editorial tools available within the Settings dashboard to give you more control over your Outbrain recommendations. You can block sponsored recommendations by landing page domain or by keywords in the titles to prevent certain content from appearing in your widget. All you need to do is add those terms to the block list in your dashboard and they won’t show on your site. (Note: can take up to 1 hour to refresh).

Generating Revenue

You can generate revenue if your site receives over 10 million monthly US article page views and you have installed the widget for 30 days, you may qualify for a revenue share from hosting sponsored recommendations.

What kind of reporting does Outbrain offer?

Outbrain provides an online dashboard detailing all performance indicators including page views generated from our recommendations, click-through rates, revenue generated through our sponsored link program, RPM and most clicked articles.

Alternatives to Outbrain

Taboola is Outbrain’s main competitor.

Conclusion

The key takeaway is that Outbrain is like an ad network for content. It is a ‘cheap’ advertising method relative to display & CPC ads and has good potential reach. You can get visits to your site using content (text/video) you own for a very low ad price.

In terms of publishers, it would depend on the type of publisher if this would be suited for them. Some publishers already have a recommendation platform installed in their sites and might be slow to install something that encourages people to browse away from their website. It’s definitely something to be aware of though and assessment might be best on a case by case basis.