Hey everyone-
I've been reading back through old posts when I search for 'Outbrain', but thought I'd post a new thread as well on it as there isn't as much info on it as on some other sources like Revcontent.
I just started using Outbrain recently and was hoping to get some advice on Best Practices, Targeting, average cpc's, etc.
On Revcontent I average about 35-65 cents a click for the best Desktop US Widgets. Is Outbrain substantially more than that or similar? Their recommended bid is in the low 80's if I remember right.
Can you still get good traffic (CNN, Fox News, MSN, etc) bidding less than that?
And how do mobile and tablet compare?
Any advice on targeting? Publisher optimization? So far I've just been lowering the coefficient way down for any publisher/section that doesn't seem applicable to my offer or that has a really low lp ctr, but my targeting is really broad and am worried I should have been more specific.
Would love to hear anyone's thoughts/experiences/etc!
Hey everyone- still eager for thoughts/advice if anyone has any!
Did get my first 6 conversions so far on Outbrain though, so slowly learning the ropes..
You have to target by 'Interest', so a little different than Revcontent.
Then they also give you the capability to increase/decrease the coefficient for different widgets (or 'Sections' as they call them). So that is good. You're also only allowed to blacklist 100 sections per camp, although you could just reduce the coefficient to -99% and have the same effect.
So far I've noticed WAY less bot widgets than Revcontent, if in fact there are any really.
Also I think their 'suggested bid' is substantially too rich. They suggest .84$ per click but I think if your ctr is even halfway decent you should be able to get clicks for way less. I guess for something with higher EPC's but lower ctr like solar or life insurance lead gen maybe that's appropriate.
Also sort of overwhelmed with just how much traffic there is, its incredible. I bet someone could spend 5 figures a day on some of their individual publishers easy, like CNN/Fox News/etc.
My main curiosities at this point:
-Is it 'best practices' to always separate geo's? Obviously in general I'd say 'yes' to this on all platforms, but at the same time I think it varies to some extent
-Does it make sense to have two identical campaigns but one with 2x the bid or .5x the bid of the other, so you're experimenting with both the more and less expensive placements on a given high-traffic site?
-Does it make sense to just blacklist everything except for one good site- and basically create a 'whitelist' campaign by default, just because you block everything but that one publisher? (say a big one like MSN, CNN, Fox News, etc I mean). Almost like how one might run Breitbart by itself on Revc?
-Does it make sense to segment by interest, or just do one camp per geo/device and continually expand to new interests?
-How good is the lookalike=audiences feature? I've implanted an audience pixel on all my lp's for this campaign, both the ones I'm using for Revc as well as Outbrain, so it should be growing quickly.
-How much cheaper is mobile and tablet vs desktop? On Revc I typically bid about 1/3 as much for mobile, but I could see mobile being more expensive relative on Outbrain since more 'brand' advertisers who just care about eyeballs..
Anyway, extremely excited at the network's potential! If anyone else on here uses Outbrain please share your thoughts I'd absolutely love to hear them!
this is a great post Jack, i would like to give this a push.
i only do revcontent as you aware and yeah there is hell level of bot click, i am using tracking tool to filter them out and relies on the traffic quality bar
btw Jack, may i ask what usually the bid you put in revcontent? do you follow revcontent suggested bid range?