Outbrain Tutorial for Native Noobs - Part 1 (22)
***************
Introduction & Expectations
(Background story can be found in this thread.)
I want to start by emphasizing one thing: This is NOT a case study.
My original intention was to spend a little bit of money to get a feel for how Outbrain works, and then write a step-by-step guide on how to set up a campaign on Outbrain. For that purpose, a budget of $1k was assigned, which would have been more than sufficient.
However, one thing led to another, and the plan evolved...
I thought it would be good to also describe how to use automation tools, namely Landerlabs and theOptimizer Native, because they can save people time and money.
But, in order for theOptimizer to start optimizing, I'd need to get at least SOME conversions. So, I had to do my research on Adplexity Native to choose lander(s) and offer(s) that had a very good chance of getting conversions.
Thus, the scope of this tutorial expanded - from a mere step-by-step on how to set up a campaign on Outbrain, to a full-fledged guide including spying and optimization.
Why is this important to know? Because I don't want you to read this tutorial expecting to see a wildly profitable campaign, because you won't.
The budget I had to work with was $1k, and the geo was the US, plus I was (still am) a Native Noob, AND running on Outbrain for the very first time.
If I told you I was able to get this campaign profitable, you should be very suspicious. It would take a miracle to do without a whitelist of placements. (If any of you managed to do this - you have my utmost admiration and respect - I'd be eternally grateful if you would share some tips with the rest of us!)
Nevertheless, I am confident that this post will shorten your learning curve considerably. If you read this tutorial with the attitude "I'm going to save time, minimize test budget to get results faster using the tips in this tutorial", you'll get a lot more out of it than with the attitude "I'm going to rip this campaign and expect it to be profitable from day 1".
Finally: I won't be revealing the exact landing page, offers or ads I was using, because I'd be doing all of you a disservice. Why? Think: Hundreds of people running the same ads + lander + offers on the same traffic network - we all know what would happen.
Plus, because I was operating on a small budget, I decided not to split-test landers or offers (I only tested multiple ads), so what I was running probably wasn't the highest-converting anyway. I hope that all of you will do split-testing from the start - it will benefit your campaigns in the long-run.
However, I promise to point you in the right direction - the lander and some of the best ads I was running can be found on Adplexity, and I'll even give you the search link.
Sorry for the long intro - let's get to the details!
***************
Tools Used
Outbrain for traffic. (Sign up here.)
Adplexity Native for spying. (Discount thread here.)
Optional: LanderLab for lander hosting and modding. (Free service until further notice - sign up here.)
Optional: theOptimizer for automatic campaign optimization. (Discount thread here.)
***************
Signing Up to Outbrain
Please sign up to Outbrain if you haven't already. (Again, the link is here.)
Worth mentioning: A $10k to $30K ad spend commitment will get you a dedicated account manager. If you're planning on spending at least $10k on Outbrain, do reach out to request for one by emailing stm@outbrain.com - this is a dedicated email for STM members! Having a rep to provide guidance can make a big difference!
If you're planning on using theOptimizer, you'll need to request for API access for your Outbrain account. If you don't have a rep, you can either reach out to the support team (support@outbrain.com), or submit the API Request Form.
If/when you do get a rep, there are a couple of things you can start by requesting:
1)Ask for a blacklist of publishers that probably won't convert well for what you're promoting.
2)Ask for the performance network to be turned on. The performance network is a list of publisher sections that have good conversion rates. Not everyone on the self-serve platform will get access, but it wouldn't hurt to ask!
***************
Spying with Adplexity
First, I needed to get a good idea on what kinds of stuff was doing well on native traffic.
Initial Requirements
I went to Adplexity with some initial ideas on what I was looking for:
-Low-payout offers, probably lead-gen or app offers. Even when I was running pop traffic, I liked to use low-payout offers to cut placements for cheap, then test higher-payout offers. (Think: How much it would take to test 1000 placements even at 1x payout/placement, for a $5 lead-gen offer vs. a $50 ecom offer. )
I also knew based on "keeping my ear to the ground" - by talking to affiliate managers and the other affiliates - that insurance offers have been doing well even in spite of (or because of?) the covid situation. Particularly car and life insurance.
-Preferably targeting a tier 3/4 geo, where traffic would be cheaper. In the end I chose some US offers based on AM recommendations, but this tip can potentially help if you can find suitable offers in tier 3/4 geos.
-Advertorial+Listicle landers. I've read quite a few threads on STM where native traffic veterans have recommended them.
-Offer verticals and landers must be allowed by Outbrain's advertising policies - which you can find here.
Adplexity Search Criteria
So I went to Adplexity and did a search using these criteria:
-Date filter = last 7 days. I needed to make sure the data was very recent, which is always a good idea, but especially important at that time to see which campaigns were STILL running in spite of covid.
-Days running = 10-30 days. 10 days is long enough to assume campaigns at least showed promise (or they would have been paused before the 10 days). 30 days to exclude branding campaigns - according to this Adplexity Native Tutorial.
-Language = English. I didn't feel like getting landers translated for initial testing.
-Searched "BY KEYWORD" and "on the landing page", the keyword "car insurance".
-Selected "Received Most Traffic" from the dropdown.
Here's the link to paste into your browser without having to set these criteria manually:
https://native.adplexity.com/search/...me_desc&ln=:en
I browsed the first 100 or so search results - skipping those that obviously weren't selling insurance - and for the relevant results I noticed that a number of them were targeted at seniors - including this one which was in the very top row:
So I decided to give the seniors angle a shot.
I refined my search by searching for the keyword "senior" - but still got a lot of irrelevant results. So I retried the search, but this time searching on "in AD info" instead of "on the landing page", because I noticed that most of the relevant ads had this word in their titles. Here's the search link:
https://native.adplexity.com/search/...me_desc&ln=:en
BAM! Results were way more relevant!
Getting Intel From Relevant Results
I then opened up every single one of the search results in new tabs, checked out their landers, and closed the tabs of campaigns that weren't using listicles.
From the remaining search results, I picked out a lander that included the types of offers I was planning on promoting (based on AMs' recommendations), including a car insurance offer and a life insurance offer. (This lander also contained a lot of offers I wasn't about to promote, which I later deleted.)
I clicked "DOWNLOAD THIS LANDING PAGE" to download the index page and corresponding files. (I bookmarked the details page of the Adplexity result I chose to download my lander from. Please do the same in case you need to find it again.)
Also: Outbrain requires that a landing page site contain at least a "privacy policy" page and a "contact us" page, with actual contact information that may include: Phone number, email, and physical address. (Again, do read their advertising details.)
The good news is that most landers already contain the necessary information - we just need to customize them for our use. So I went back to the Adplexity result where I downloaded the lander, clicked on "Show more" to open the "Landing Page Details popup, then clicked on the last link in the "Redirect Chain" section to go to the actual, live url of the landing page:
I was lucky that the actual landing page was still live (yet another reason to search only on recent results)! I found the privacy+contact+terms pages, clicked on each to open them, and downloaded each page.
I use windows, so I right-clicked anywhere on the page and chose "Save As". If unfortunately the landing page is no longer accessible, you can either find a landing page that still is and download that instead, or recreate the privacy+contact+terms pages yourself - by using the index page as a template, deleting the content, and copying + pasting + rewriting/customizing content from a similar lander site's privacy+contact+terms pages.
In Sublime Text, I "fixed up" the landing page. I deleted listicle items that weren't relevant to my offers, customized wording and logo etc. I customized the privacy+contact+terms pages by replacing the contact info with mine. I also fixed the links from the index page to the privacy+contact+terms pages.
I also made some notes on the types of images and ad titles that were used in these relevant Adplexity search results (more details to come in the "Creating Ads" section of this tutorial).
***************
Setting Up Tracking
Tracking - a boring but essential step. I'll try to make this as painless as possible.
Registering Landing Page Domain
If you don't yet have a domain to use for your advertorial page, now would be the time to register one - as you'll be needing a url to set up
If you need instructions on how to register a domain name on namecheap, follow the steps here (in the section "REGISTER A DOMAIN AT NAMECHEAP").
No need to point the nameservers to anywhere yet.
Setting Up Outbrain's Conversion Tracking
-Log into Outbrain > click on "Conversions" in left menu > click "ADD CONVERSION".
-On the "Create Conversion" page, choose "Event-Based Conversion".
-Under "Details", assign a name to the conversion (any name; I just put in "Voluum1"), choose a conversion category (would usually be "Lead" or "Purchase", or whichever is suitable in your case - I just chose "Purchase"), assign the "Window" to an attribution window of your choice - if you're not sure, leaving it at 60 should be OK (I did). Leave "Value" blank as Voluum would pass that back automatically. Checkmark "Include in 'Total Conversions' to be able to see conversions on Outbrain's dashboard later. Optional:
Choose "Create an Audience Segment" if you wish to target converted users later on (wouldn't hurt to). Click "Save".
-You should now see this new conversion in the list.
-Copy the name of the conversion ("Voluum1" in my case) - you'll need to paste this into Voluum in a minute.
Setting Up Campaign in Voluum
-Make sure that all affiliate networks are added to Voluum, that all offer are added to Voluum, and that Voluum's postback url is added to each affiliate network. You can find all the instructions in the 40-day tutorial.
-Add "Outbrain" as a traffic source to Voluum. "Traffic sources" > "+ New traffic source" > type "Outbrain" into search field > click "Outbrain" to select template > click "Next".
-In the "Add traffic source" window, leave all the tokens alone, scroll to the bottom to section "Passing conversion info to traffic source", toggle "Traffic source postback URL" to on, and paste the following Outbrain postback url BUT REPLACING "Voluum1" with the name of your Outbrain conversion and the "currency" value if the payouts that will be passed from the affiliate networks to Voluum are in a currency other than USD:
-Click "Save".
-Still in Voluum: Go to "Lander" > "+ New lander" > "lander". Assign a name, a lander url (that domain registered in the previous step; use the secure "https" format as LanderLabs will take care of that for you; I added "/index.html" too just to be safe which probably wasn't necessary - obviously you'd put whatever you named your index file). Set the "Number of CTAs" to the number of offers you'll be promoting on that landing page. Specify a "Tracking domain". Copy one of the "Click URLs" and save it somewhere as we'll be pasting that into the lander later. Click "Save".
-Go to "Campaigns" > " + New campaign" > "TRK Simple". Assign "Workspace", "Traffic source", "Country tag", "Name". "Campaign destination" = "Path". "Path Destination" = "Landers & Offers". Choose the lander we've just added to Voluum, then specify the "Offers" - in the order they'll be listed in the listicle (don't do this and you'll see how confused you'll be later!) Click "Save".
-Lastly, right-click on the new Voluum campaign you've just created and choose "Copy URL" and save this somewhere. We'll be pasting this into Outbrain later.
Setting Up Facebook Pixel
This is entirely optional, but if you're also running on Facebook, it would be silly not to build an audience from the Outbrain traffic for retargeting on FB later!
After all, you're paying for this traffic - may as well get all the value you can! Adding this tactic of multi-channel retargeting may just turn a profitable campaign into an even more profitable one!
Here's what you do:
-Go to http://business.facebook.com/, select business of your choice, open the "Business Manager" menu (sandwich in left corner) and go to "Pixels" under "Events Manager".
-Click "+ Add New Data Source" > "Facebook Pixel":
-Specify a pixel name and click "Continue".
-Click "Manually add pixel code to website".
-Click the base code to copy to clipboard, then click "Continue". Paste the code into your lander, right before the </head> tag.
-This is where it gets interesting: We can add some code to the lander, so that users that click on the outgoing links of EACH offer are tracked separately, so you'll be able to target them separately on FB later.
Within the FB pixel code, right before the <noscript> tag, insert one of these snippets per offer on your lander:
function Name1() {
fbq('trackCustom','Name')
};
Of course replacing "Name" with anything that describes the offer. For my lander, because I was promoting car insurance and life insurance, my code looks like this:
<script>
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(argum ents)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version ='2.0';
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script',
'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js');
fbq('init', '123456789012345');
fbq('track', 'PageView');
</script>
<script>
function AutoInsurance1() {
fbq('trackCustom','AutoInsurance1')
};
function LifeInsurance1() {
fbq('trackCustom','LifeInsurance1')
};
</script>
<noscript><img height="1" width="1" style="display:none"
src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=123456789012345&ev=PageView&noscript=1"
/></noscript>
<!-- End Facebook Pixel Code -->
-Finally, add onclick="Name()" to all your outgoing links to the offers. For example, for the links going out to my car insurance offer, I would modify this original link from this:
And that's it! This will enable me to create Custom Audiences for users that clicked into EACH offer, and target them with similar offers on Facebook! For example, I'll be able to build a custom audience from users that clicked into the auto insurance offer, and target them with other auto-related offers. Or, if I was running a home warranty offer, I'd be able to build a custom audience from that, then hit them with other offers for home owners, such as mortgage refinance, roofing, solar, windows and doors...see the power of this yet?
To verify you've set up this FB pixel tracking correctly, simply browse to your Voluum campaign url and click on the outgoing links, then check your pixel data on FB to make sure you see those clicks appearing there.
***************
Setting Up Lander in LanderLab
If you don't have your own server, Landerlab is simply the easiest and fastest way I know of to get landers ready for action, so I want to give you this option. (It's even easier than the method in the 40-day tutorial.)
Finish Fixing Up Lander
Remember that CTA link you copied from Voluum? Time to replace the lander links in the correct way, in the correct order as how you specified it when creating the Voluum campaign.
For example, I had 4 items in the listicle promoting 4 offers, and when setting up the Voluum campaign I selected the offers in the same order they appear on the lander. The outgoing links would be in this format:
https://trackerlink.com/click/1
https://trackerlink.com/click/2
https://trackerlink.com/click/3
https://trackerlink.com/click/4
Look through your index and privacy+contact+terms pages to make sure everything looks good and all the links are correct, then zip all the lander files into a single zip file - making sure the file folder organization corresponds to the domain directory organization before doing the zipping. (For example, the index page needs to be in the root. If you're linking from index.html to about.html via "./about.html", then both pages need to be in the same folder. And if the index file references images in a subdirectory, then the image files will need to be in the corresponding folder with the correct name. Etc.)
Upload Lander to LanderLab
Next step is to upload that lander!
-Register for a free LanderLab account here.
-Register for a free cloudflare account here (unless you have one - in which case just use that).
-Log into cloudflare, click on the profile icon > My Profile > API Tokens tab:
-Click "View" for "Global API Key", put in password and captcha verification, click "View", copy the API key.
-Back in LanderLab, click on "Cloudflare Accounts" icon in left menu > + Add Cloudflare Account:
-Click on "Domains" icon in left menu > "+ Add Domain":
-Insert domain name, choose cloudflare account from dropdown, click "Add":
-Click on "Landing Pages" icon in left menu > "+ Add Landing Page".
-Click "Upload from Zip". Assign a name to the page, e.g. "Senior Rebates Lander 1 About Page", choose the domain you added, then upload the zip file of the index + privacy+contact+terms pages (don't drag the file - that function isn't working for some reason - click the upload area to upload). Click "Next".
-For the next step, "Add to Tracker"/"You haven't added any integration yet.", just click "Skip this step". We can set things up in Voluum directly later. You should then see a "Success" screen. Click on "Go To Landing Pages".
-For your lander, click the Publish icon and click "Publish" for your landing page to set it live.
Verify Lander Site is Working
Browse to your Voluum campaign url to verify that everything is working correctly (set your VPN to the target country first if you're not located there). Make sure everything looks good. Check all the links to make sure they're going to the intended offers. Click the links to/from the privacy+contact+terms pages to verify them.
One note about LanderLab: You can actually go to any Adplexity lander and click on "IMPORT TO LANDERLAB" and modify the lander within LanderLab's WYSIWYG editor. But I chose not to do this because LanderLab can't yet handle importing privacy+contact+terms pages separately to the same domain. But if you're running pop camps for example and ripping single-page landers, importing into LanderLab and editing it there can be a good option.
***************
Phew! So that was a TON of preparation work! Thanks for bearing with me so far!
Please proceed to part 2 where we'll be setting up the actual campaign on Outbrain:
Outbrain Tutorial for Native Noobs - Part 2
Amy
Love the details Amy! ❤️
Awesome stuff. Thank you Amy!
Thanks for the Tutorial. I'm using
Thanks.
Originally Posted by fuyuzhelianmeng
In the below screenshot example we are promoting 3 different products/offers using a single landing page.
So to route the visitor to the right offer, we append &to_offer=N to our landing page click link.
Single offer landing page click link:
http://trackdomain.com/click.php?lp=1
http://trackdomain.com/click.php?lp=1&to_offer=N
http://trackdomain.com/click.php?lp=1&to_offer=1 http://trackdomain.com/click.php?lp=1&to_offer=2 http://trackdomain.com/click.php?lp=1&to_offer=3
Thanks for the reply. Do the offer name in
According to my experience, even if we just use
http://trackdomain.com/click.php?lp=1
Thanks.
Originally Posted by fuyuzhelianmeng
Don't forget to use ?to_offer=1 or ?to_offer=2 etc when using
https://docs.binom.org/create-lander.php#p3
Hey Amy! I was wondering if you happened to use
Originally Posted by zingo 8
See here the explanation in the Voluum doc:
https://doc.Voluum.com/en/taboola_traffic_source.html
Originally Posted by fuyuzhelianmeng
Originally Posted by jack_l
Amy
Can you use Social Ad Scout instead of Adplexity ?
Originally Posted by markpoc
Ads on Facebook and Native networks can be VERY different. Most (if not all) Native networks have WAY more lenient advertising policies than Facebook does. So you'd probably be doing yourself a disservice by running FB ads on Native networks.
Plus, text and image size requirements are likely different depending on the network.
So my suggestion would be to get a spy tool specifically for native ads if possible.
Amy
So what exactly does LanderLab do, and is Cloudflare required to make it work?
Originally Posted by iwanttofly
On top of that, one can edit landers using the visual editor even without knowing how to write a single line of code, plus you can get a lander up and running in under 5minutes using the ready-to-use templates.
Regarding cloudflare, yes. It is required and is part of the services integrated and optimized for landerlab landers to open quickly.
Let me know if you have any other questions.
Originally Posted by platinum
Also, would I sign up for CloudFlare through LanderLab?
Based upon your posts here and on Attila's, I'm assuming these are your products or you're closely involved. If not, please let me know and I'll try to ask them directly.
Originally Posted by iwanttofly
Also, would I sign up for CloudFlare through LanderLab?
And yes - within Adplexity you can import a lander into LanderLab with one click:
I don't know whether you can do the same in Anstrex - I don't have access to that tool.
https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...igns-on-Native
Amy
Hi Guys, I'm not sure if it's Ok to ask questions in this thread.
For some reason, I couldn't find an active discussion about Outbrain.
I launched a test campaign, and it's running for a couple of weeks.
The goal was to test the platform, make sure it delivers leads, then add sophisticated solutions and optimize further, so I didn't use theOptimizer, Adplexity, or tracker for now.
Campaigns seemed to deliver traffic with reasonable CTR, CPM, and CPC but no leads.
When I spent 700 USD and generated 3 leads I contacted Outbrain.
They told me my campaign had great metrics, but couldn't explain why it didn't generate leads.
They said they'd turn on the performance network on my account and advised me to launch a new campaign.
I launched a new campaign as they advised, and so far it spent 300 USD and generated 3 cold leads, so far none of them picked up a phone call.
Has anyone tested Outbrain recently and is willing to share the results?
Originally Posted by cmocean
The most common causes are one or more of the following:
1)The offer isn't very good at converting prospects into customers.
2)The creatives (ads+lander) aren't preselling the prospects sufficiently. People are interested enough to click through, but not motivated enough to complete the conversion.
3)What the creatives say and what the offer page says do not "jive". People read the ads and your lander and have certain expectations, but when they click through to the offer page, those expectations are not met somehow (e.g. expecting free / cheap but then find out otherwise).
So in summary: Your ads + pre-lander + the offer TOGETHER need to complement each other to presell the prospect sufficiently to make them convert.
This only way to give you some specific feedback would be to see your ads + lander + offer. I would recommend to start a new thread with this information to get some critique. Most that helps!
Amy
Amy, thank you for your input.
I agree that no creative is perfect, and there's always room to improve and adapt for each lead generation channel.
However, the marketing materials that I used have been previously tested in Facebook and Google ads, and I expect to see a conversion rate higher than 0. I was totally prepared to see high CPL and negative ROI so I could optimize later, but zero leads indicate that the issue is with traffic, not the creative materials. I'm going to try a few more combinations of publishers, but at the moment I think that Outbrain traffic is way overrated.
Originally Posted by cmocean
Have you tried running on Taboola? Taboola and Outbrain are basically the two top native sources in terms of volume and quality.
UNLESS - the traffic quality has declined drastically very recently. I wouldn't know because I'm not currently running there.
It really can't hurt to start a new thread to see if there's anyone else running on Outbrain that could weigh in.
Amy
Home > >