Secret to Outbrain? (3)
What's the secret to getting a steady flow of traffic on outbrain?
I start my US desktop bids around 55 - 60 cents and my mobile bids around 40 cents. I get traffic for 1 day I guess it tests my ads then no traffic ever again even if I increase my bids higher.
I run fine in Taboola and I thought Outbrain would kinda be the same way but it seems to be its own monster and I need to figure out how I can at least get to $50 - $100 a day so I can test my offers.
Is my bid to low? Do I need to keep adding images everyday? Not sure what it takes to to get outbrain going.
Thanks for any help.
Yep, I've had the same problem on Outbrain. The traffic doesn't seem to flow as steadily as with Taboola or Revc, and when it flows well it flows great but when it doesn't it really doesn't.
I think it's because their algorithm is super sensitive to ad ctr. As you alluded to- new ads will get lots of good impressions and a nice 'burst' of volume because they are testing those ads to see the estimated ctr. If the ctr isn't good though the algorithm is going to quit showing them, so I've had lots of campaigns that do exactly like yours did and die after a day or two, or which just slowly get less and less traffic over time.
It also seems to me that 'run of network' traffic on Outbrain tends to be a bit pricier than Revc or Taboola, so its possible you're not bidding enough. With that said though there's some really good pubs on Outbrain you can get traffic from for that main 'run of network' bid, whereas on Revc most of the best sites will have much more expensive clicks than the 'average'.
So yeah, I would rev the proverbial engine if I were you. Set the bid to 4x where you want it to be the first day, with only 20$ budget, let it cap for the day, then lower it to 2x, let it cap at 20$ or 40$, then to 1.5x, etc. Hopefully that marks your ads or your campaign as 'worthy' in the eyes of the alogorithm.
Some people might do the same at a slower rate, or a faster one. Their reps will tell you lower your bid by like 5% a day, but in my opinion that's too slow and costs too much money if you're just testing out new campaigns. Conversely some people might rev+lower all the way down over the course of one day, lowering the bid and raising the budget at each new 'cap', however I don't know if that gives the algorithm enough time to keep up so I like the 2-3 day pattern myself.
And then yeah I always try to continually upload ads too but not a ton of them. Maybe 1-2 ads 2-4 times a week or so on a campaign that's going well.
You can also continually duplicate a campaign if it starts slipping, so that its always 'fresh'. Or just temporarily raise the overall bid up for a day to give it a 'spike' of traffic and hopefully get back on the algorithm's good side, etc. Or run the same campaign at multiple bids and see how each iteration does.
Anyway, I'm still far from an expert on Outbrain, I should note, but it's definitely the network I'm spending the most money on right now and I am living and breathing it's algorithm all day every day so wanted to share my two cents lol 
Thanks for the reply really helpful info.
I'll have to try a few things you mentioned and see how they work out.
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