The Outbrain widget is extremely flexible. We have listed common questions below, but please do contact us if you have additional questions or want to use us in a novel way.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I get started with Outbrain?
Installing Outbrain is simple. You place a small javascript tag on those pages where you want us to display. If you are a site (or set of sites) with over 1 million monthly pageviews, an Outbrain Account Manager will help you customize Outbrain for your specific needs. Please contact John at john@outbrain.com to receive your javascript tag and discuss your preferred settings.
Where on our site should the Outbrain widget be placed?
We are frequently placed immediately after article content, right above the footer. Example:
This is great placement for people who have finished reading an article and want to discover more great content. We can also be used in sidebars, section fronts and home pages as personalized navigational units.
What kind of traffic lift should I expect from Outbrain?
Click-through rates on our recommendations vary considerably based on a variety of factors (placement, UI, number of links, length of your content, etc.). But if you adopt our UI best practices, you'll likely see a CTR of between 3% - 12%. Not bad for a few minutes work, right?
Can I control what content is shown as recommended on my site?
Yes. You can set Outbrain to only show links to content from your own site. Or, you can provide Outbrain with a list of sites' whose content you'd like to recommend in order to help people find great content from sister (or partner) sites. In fact, this is a common way publishers use Outbrain to circulate traffic cross their ecosystem.
And of course you can open up Outbrain recommendations to "Best of the Web", meaning we will show links to any site whose content we think will be of interest to your readers. It's all up to you.
Do I need to customize the widget's look & feel?
We automatically inherit your CSS in order to merge elegantly with your site's look & feel. No design wizards or customization needed. If you'd like to alter the look and feel post deployment, you can either make the changes yourself using our CSS Guide or contact your Outbrain account manager who can overwrite the inherited style sheets remotely.
Can I generate revenue with Outbrain?
Yes! If you have over 1 million monthly US pageviews you qualify for a revenue share from our sponsored recommendations. Please contact us to enroll.
What are sponsored recommendations?
Sponsored recommendations, like all recommendations, are links to high quality articles and content. Customers pay us to distribute these recommendations in relevant places and they are clearly marked as paid. Outbrain has strict content guidelines to make sure we only select quality stories that are interesting and well written. Our goal is to provide your readers with links to great content, whether sponsored or not.
People come to your site to read great content. Most advertising, however, distracts them from that activity, trying to convince them to buy a product or a fill out a form. Our sponsored recommendations align your needs with that of your audience, allowing you to profit by pointing out great content that your readers will actually find interesting.
Can I control what sponsored recommendations are shown on my site?
Yes. You can block sponsored recommendations by landing page domain or by keywords in the title. All you need to do is add those terms to the block list and they won't show on your site. Keep in mind that this data is cached and will take up to 1 hour to refresh.
How can I scale up revenue through Outbrain?
You control how many sponsored recommendations you wish to display, and where you'd like to place them on your site. Outbrain supports "sponsored only" deployments which can be used in conjunction with our normal widget, or we can place several paid recommendations above or below your organic recommendations. Please talk to your account manager about how to optimize Outbrain for your specific needs.
What kind of reporting does Outbrain offer?
Outbrain provides you with an online dashboard showing you:
- how much traffic is being generated to your sites through our recommendations and our widget's click-through rate on your site
- which of your recommended articles people are clicking on the most
- how much revenue you have earned through our sponsored link program with daily trends and top earning articles
- If you deploy our rating system, which pieces of your content people have rated high vs. low
How do I provide access to reports to people in my organization?
Outbrain can grant reporting rights to multiple users on a per site basis. Please register [link to registration page] each user and send your account manager the usernames of the people in your organization who should have access to reports for each site.
Can Outbrain integrate with my site analytics?
Yes. When someone click an Outbrain recommendation, we can append a parameter of your preference to the end of your URL so that it registers in Google Analytics, Omniture, etc. In addition, we will pass into that parameter values that indicate whether the click came from your own site, another site in your eco system, or an outside site so that you can slice and dice network referrals to your hearts content.
What settings can Outbrain customize for my installation?
Your Outbrain Account Manager can toggle a variety of settings to make sure you get the deployment you want:
- Setting the the number of recommendations displayed
- Setting the number of sponsored recommendations to display (more paid listings, more revenue for you)
- Turning on thumbnail images above your recommendations vs. using text links
- Limiting recommendations to a set of distinct sites you've approved
- Altering look & feel, including the language surrounding the widget, fonts, colors, bullets, borders, etc.
- Adding a 5-star rater or thumbs up icon
- Adding terms or domains to your sponsored recommendation block list
- Integration of traffic data into your analytics platform
- Using specific icons to represent video or photo recommendations versus article recommendations
- Adding additional widget deployments on the same page for extra traffic and revenue
Do you have an API?
Yes, we do have an API. If you'd like more information about it, please email your Outbrain account manager.
Does the Outbrain widget affect page load?
We follow an internal principle called "graceful degradation" to ensure minimal impact on your page load. When your page loads:
- Our javascript pings our datacenter to ensure connectivity before making additional calls. If the ping does not return, we make no further calls and the widget simply does not render
- We assess how much content is user visible and only load when the user scrolls far enough down the page to see our widget. This reduces unnecessary loading.
- We wait for all your content to load before we attempt to call our services
- Our images and javascript are served through a CDN for fast & reliable delivery and our recommendations are served from multiple datacenters for optimal response time
Do I need a different piece of javascript for each site deployment?
No. Your one piece of javascript can be reused across multiple sites and site sections. All configurations and version updates are also set remotely, so no need to modify the javascript when changing user visible settings.
If you decide to use multiple Outbrain units per page--for instance both a sidebar and footer unit-- you may need one piece of javascript for each deployment.
Can I test in a development environment?
Yes, you can test in your development environment. However, our recommendations will not serve properly on test sites with restricted access since we cannot crawl your content. If you want to test recommendations on a development server, there are two options:
- Use the corresponding permalink from production in the code on your development server. This allows our system to generate related links based on the content we've crawled in your production environment.
- Grant access to a specific Outbrain IP address so we can crawl the content on your development servers. Contact your account manager to get the current list of IP addresses of our crawlers. Your account manager will also be able to explicitly turn off syndication of your development content so it isn't recommended to people on the outside web.
Can I submit my content so that it's recommended on other sites?
Yes, we have a terrific traffic acquisition program designed specifically for publishers. It's a wonderful way to automatically distribute links to your content across the thousands of sites where Outbrain is installed. Please click here to learn more.
