Whitelist blacklist on Outbrain (5)
is it true that whitelists are no longer an option at Outbrain?
What is the best way to launch/test a campaign now? Do i go RON and blacklist aggressively?
Is it worthwhile targeting the Outbrain extended network, or is this better left for scaling?
I'm not an Outbrain expert by any means... but right now what I'm doing for testing is RON, but no extended network, and then blacklisting based on lp ctr - usually like 5% of the sites will have a 0% lp ctr and I just block those, then also block at 1x or 2x offer payout depending on what that amount is, if there's no conversions by that point (right now I'm running a low payout CPL offer so I usually give legitimate-looking widgets 2x payout before I block them, if its something weird looking maybe 1x).
The only other thing I've noticed on Outbrain is that the algorithm seems to like intl campaigns with lots of geo's.... I always do better targeting like 10 countries at once vs individually, as I would on Taboola (Taboola seems to me to be the opposite in this regard).
PS Yes - I believe they aren't wanting to upload whitelists anymore, if I remember correctly... but usually those were just their big in-house whitelists anyway rather than a specially curated list of handpicked sites like you can upload to Revcontent for instance, so I never used those a lot anyway.
Thanks @jack_l. i appreciate the advice.
It's very interesting what you're saying about target multiple geos to appease the outbrain algorithm. This explains some of the funky targeting information i'm seeing in the spy tools. Are you running offers that work in multiple geos, or are deliberately throwing money at geos where you can't convert, so your real country will convert better?
Originally Posted by tacoloco
Outbrain just takes more "gas" to get going and keep going, as it were, so it's more important (as far as I can tell) to bid high at first and 'rev the engine', and to have really high ctr ads and keep the ctr up, to target multiple geo's if possible, to keep the campaign on as much as possible, etc.
Taboola on the other hand is good in that you can target just one single US state and just one three hour block a week if you wanted and it will still work.. whereas on Outbrain I don't think that would give you any traffic... at least not for very long...
Revcontent is similar to Taboola but even better because it has basically instant responsiveness. So if you hit 'pause' on a campaign your ads will quit showing within about 3-5 minutes, vs 20-60 on Taboola or Outbrain... and you can pause and un-pause it as much as you want with no negative effects...
But yeah... they all have their quirks and idiosyncrasies and positives and negatives
Edit: I definitely wouldn't hesitate to run single geo campaigns on Outbrain though... it's not like they don't work... especially if its a big geo like US or UK..
Yes, outbrain no longer allows you to wl in the initial phase, however if you spend a decent amount with them and have some winning sites, they are able to isolate those in a wl for you 
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