Help & FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

• What is Outbrain?

  We’re passionate about helping people discover great content that is interesting to them. Outbrain powers the personalized content recommendations on most of the top publisher websites. We serve over 38 billion content recommendations each month. Plus we’re not just recommending related links. We want to keep your audience happy by showing them something they’ll like, no matter the topic.

• What is Outbrain Amplify?

  With Outbrain Amplify, links to your content appear as recommendations at the bottom of articles on top publisher sites where people are looking for something new to discover. Our self-serve platform allows you to control what you want to pay, and better yet, it’s as simple as sending us a URL.

• Why Use Outbrain Amplify?

  Outbrain Amplify helps you grow traffic to your blog, articles and video content, or 3rd party reviews about your product or brand. You can start with a daily budget as low as $10 and change both your budget and CPC anytime you like. It also allows you to actively manage your campaign performance any time you want.

• Who should use it?

  Our self-serve product is ideal for marketers with smaller budgets as it allows you to work with a daily budget as low as $10. It is also ideal for marketers who would like real-time insights about where their traffic is coming from and the ability to exercise control over campaign settings around the clock.

• How does pricing work?

  You set a daily budget and a cost-per-click (CPC).

  You are charged your CPC each time your ad is clicked by a user. Your daily budget is the maximum amount you would like to spend each day. Outbrain’s Amplify Self-Serve accepts daily budgets between $10-$200 a day. We will attempt to distribute your content until the daily budget is fulfilled. Once this budget is met, we will pause your campaign until 12am (ET) the next day. If your daily budget is not fulfilled, you will only be charged for the budget used.

• What is the recommended cost-per-click (CPC)?

  Unlike traditional advertising platforms where a higher CPC means more impressions,  Outbrain will serve your content across our publisher network based on a combination of your CPC and click-through rates (CTR).

  Setting your CPC at 15c is the  recommended network average which will initially to help get you reach across the network. As your content starts to drive clicks, our recommendations engine will start serving your content even more. The more clicks you get, the more you will be served so that over time, if you have a lot of high performing content that consistently generates a high number of clicks, you can reduce your CPC gradually  to drive more clicks for the same daily budget.

   

• How many times will you show my paid links in one day?

  The number of times your paid links are shown depends on its performance, your CPC and budget, and how competitive it is compared to other content in our system. We can’t guarantee a set number of impressions or clicks for your ad, and you’ll only be charged for the clicks delivered.

• How long does my campaign run for?

  You can choose when you want to start and end your campaign. We will begin your campaign once the content is approved by our editorial team. Our standard turnaround time for approval is less than 24 hours.

• Why is reaching my audience in content consumption mode more effective than search and social media?

  When your audience is in content consumption mode, they are actively consuming content online whether it be reading online editorial, watching videos etc. Your audience is browsing and looking to consume the next interesting thing.  As such, using content to draw your audience from one piece of publisher content to yours will ensure a more engaged audience and better quality traffic.

   

  Clients using Outbrain typically see higher page views per session, more time on site and lower bounce rates than traffic via search and social media.

• What kind of content does Outbrain accept?

  Outbrain’s platform can be used to distribute your own content along with other 3rd party articles about you or your product. For example, if you received a great piece of press, Outbrain provides you with a simple way to spread the good word. Or, if there are specific pages on your site or blog that you would like to choose instead of your entire site, you can add them manually too.

  We are all about great content but we do have some guidelines as to what we accept. Make sure to have a read before you submit your content.

• How can I add content?

  You can add content via RSS (any content you produce for your site updates automatically) or by manually adding individual links. Using your RSS feed is recommended for content producers who are continuously developing new content for their blog or website as it allows us to index everything automatically. The more content you submit, the more likely we are to find customers who are interested in your content. To add links manually, all you have to do is give us your individual URLs. Outbrain accepts links to article pages – not homepages.

• How much content should I submit?

  The way our content recommendations work is that our engine serves your content across the network based on a combination of your CPC and CTR. So the more content you have, the more that will get served and the more potential you have to get clicks. Once these clicks start increasing, your content will start being served more and more so you’ll start seeing a gradual increase in your CTR and in fulfilling your daily budget. The lower your clicks, the less likely your content will be served as recommendations because our engine will recognize that readers aren’t as interested in this content. So to give your campaign its best chance of performing, it’s often better to add as much content as possible to give your campaign a better chance at driving more clicks.

• Why do I receive an error message when submitting content?

  Your content may not have been submitted correctly for a couple of reasons. It could be missing the “http://” or you may have tried to submit a homepage.

• What image and content title is used for the recommendation?

  Your content title is taken from the title tag used on your article page and the image displayed is taken from the first image in your content. If the article does not contain any images, the brand logo from the site will be used.

• How do I change campaign CPC, budget or payment method?

  You can easily change all aspects of your campaign in your dashboard under Paid Distribution. This is where you can manage your campaign, account settings and see all of your reporting metrics.

• My campaign status is OFFLINE with no articles currently running yet I haven’t disabled it.

  Once your daily budget caps out, your content won’t be amplified until the campaign rolls over the next day at 12am.

• Can I show my paid links during certain hours of the day?

  At this stage, you can’t specify your campaign hours we’re working on it! However, you can disable/enable your campaign at certain times to ensure it runs at your preferred time.  You can do this by logging into your account and choosing Paid Distribution>>Campaign Settings>>Budget & Scheduling>>Change Campaign Status.

• What geographies can I target with an ad?

  You can now geo-target your traffic by country and adjust the setting yourself.  If your campaign is currently set to global and you’d like to adjust it to one specific country, simply go to the Campaign Settings page and select “Edit” under Budget & Scheduling.

  As your reach is no longer as broad, we recommend you raise your CPC a few cents to build up your reach and exposure again in this new market setting. If you narrow your market selection (ie the number of eyeballs your content is exposed to!) and your CPC is too low, you may experience lower clicks and limited reach.

• Can I stop running content automatically if it is time sensitive?

  If you are have submitted individual URLs, all you have to do is login to your dashboard and disable the URL. If you submit an RSS feed, all you need to do is drop us an email at selfserve@outbrain.com and we can remove it for you!

• Can I choose which publishers my content appears on?

  Unfortunately, we don’t allow you to whitelist publishers in our network as this cripples our content recommendation engine’s ability to serve the most interesting content to readers.

  Unlike traditional advertising where you would select the best contextual environment for your audience, our engine determines what readers want based on the click through rates on content. The more clicks a piece of content gets, the more our engine will serve it as it realizes the content is of interest to readers.

  So your content will be served across our entire network and you’ll find that while you may likely drive most of your traffic from these business-targeted sources, you may also find additional and new audiences on sites you wouldn’t otherwise have included

• Do you offer reporting to help me track my advertising campaign?

  We sure do! We believe this is vital in ensuring you get the most out of your campaign performance. You can view your reporting metrics in Outbrain Manage, our program console with your reporting metrics, campaign and account settings.  If you have a tracking number for your own analytics that you would like to use as well, you can contactus to get this setup for you.

• Is your reporting data in real time?

  At present, our reporting metrics have a delay of 2-4hrs but these will be real-time very soon.

• Can I export the data from my reports?

  Yes you can. Just look for the Excel symbol in the top right corner of your clicks and contents report.

• What kind of click-through rate should I expect for my campaign?

  There are a number of factors that impact ad performance, so we can’t provide specific estimates. The click-through rate of your content depends on factors like how compelling your headline is, the quality of your content, your CPC and daily budget.

• What time zone do your reports use?

  At present, all of our reports are provided in US Eastern Standard Time.

• What kind of payment is accepted?

  We accept Visa, Mastercard and AMEX. We do not currently accept purchase orders, checks, PayPal or other forms of payment.

• What currencies are supported?

  USD is the only currency we support right now.

• Can I pay for my ads with a billing address outside of the United States?

  If your billing address is linked to a non-US credit card, your payment may go through depending on your bank authorization. However, to ensure smooth registration and payment set up, we recommend using a US account with US billing address.

• How often will I be charged for my campaign?

  Your card will be charged in the first week of every month and you will be sent a receipt via email.

• Will I ever be billed for more than my daily budget for my campaign?

  No. The maximum amount that you will ever be billed for is your daily budget. On any single day, it’s possible that your paid links may continue to display for a short period after your daily budget is reached. Although we turn off your advertisement for the day once your daily budget is reached, this change isn’t instantaneous. You may notice some clicks or impressions that are delivered beyond this budget but you won’t be charged for them

• Will I be charged if no one saw or clicked on my recommendations?

  No you won’t. You’ll only be charged for the clicks that you receive.

• I have a smaller budget. How can I compete against the market CPC if it’s higher than mine?

  Unlike other bidding platforms, we don’t determine what is served based on cost-per-click (CPC) alone. Our content recommendations engine is yield optimized to take into account clickthrough rates (CTR) as well as your CPC. The more interesting your content is to audiences, the higher your CTR and the more your ads will be served.

• How do I know if my CTR is good or bad?

  A CTR of 0.25 with a CPC between $0.15-0.20 is generally a good indicator that your content is performing well.

• My campaign is "on", so why isn't it receiving clicks?

  This may be because your CPC is too low to fulfill your budget. Otherwise, it may be that your content headlines need to be reviewed to make your content more compelling to the audience. If your campaign is consistently achieving zero or minimal clicks for the next few days, we recommend raising your CPC and reviewing your headlines. If you decide to change your headlines, you’ll need to amend these in your title tag and resubmit your content for approval.

• How often should I review my campaign?

  We recommend reviewing your campaign at least once a day to begin with so you can monitor your performance over time and if necessary, make adjustments. We’ll also send you a weekly update with your campaign status and results summary.

• My CTRs are low.

  You may want to increase your CPC so your content is amplified further. We also recommend ensuring you add content regularly so our system has more opportunity to find the audience who wants to consume your content. Plus you can review our  tips  to improve your headline clickthrough rate.

• My CTRs are high.

  Congratulations, your content is performing well! You could look at reducing your CPC and monitor if you still achieve consistently high CTRs over consecutive days. If the CTR drops, then you may need to increase your CPC again.

• My daily budget is capping out at the same time over consecutive days

  You can look at reducing your CPC within the same budget to achieve the same volume with a lower CPC. Alternatively, we recommend maintaining your CPC and increasing your daily budget to achieve an even higher volume of clicks.

• My daily budget is capping out later and later each day

  You may want to raise your CPC to amplify your content further and create more traffic.

• My daily budget is capping out later and later each day

  You may want to raise your CPC to amplify your content further and create more traffic.

• My daily budget isn’t fulfilling each day

  Your CTRs are likely to be low too. To increase your CTR and subsequently, your daily spend, you can either increase your CPC to amplify your content or improve the quality or volume of your content so it generates greater interest and clickthroughs.

• Who do I contact for support or feedback?

  For all your questions, no matter how big or small, you can contact us. We’d also love you to share feedback on your experience or suggestions on we can improve the product. You can share it all with us at selfserve@outbrain.com 

• How do I create an additional campaign?

  Just go to your Campaign Settings page and click on the green “Add new campaign” button above Campaign Status.

  Adding an additional campaign means you can amplify content that you may want to track and promote separately to your existing campaign.

  Your existing credit card will be used for all campaigns and the campaigns will all fall under your existing user name and login.

  When you add a new campaign, our system will recognize it as new content appearing on our publisher sites for the first time even if it is content you have run in a previous campaign.

  To give yourself enough reach across our publisher sites, make sure you set up your new campaigns with our recommended starting CPC, add lots of content and review your titles to ensure they are compelling to generate lots of interest and clicks.

• Can I upload more than one piece of content at a time?

  Yes you can! You can now multiple pieces of content in one go! Plus you can add custom titles for each piece of content to test which title will get you the most clicks.  Head to Campaign Settings and click the + Add Bulk Content button to start adding new content now and check out our headline optimization tips here!

• Can I add tracking tags to my URLs to track my Outbrain traffic campaign in my analytics?

  You can add a suffix-style tracking tags to your campaign (just like Google Analytics’ UTM codes) to track your Outbrain campaign traffic. We will append it to the end of all your campaign URLs automatically. You’ll be able to see a preview of how your tracking will look while editing as well as in the content table containing all of your links.