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Experience switching from Revcontent to Taboola / Outbrain (5)

01-06-2021 07:41 AM #1 haqe321 ()
Experience switching from Revcontent to Taboola / Outbrain

Got some Revcontent campaigns into green and looking to play with Taboola / Outbrain as they're apparently more scalable. Wondering if anyone can share their insights / experience when it came switching to these + any notable differences compared to Revcontent - or is it basically same just at larger scale

01-07-2021 12:35 PM #2 matuloo (Legendary Moderator)

The core setup is more or less the same, but there will be some major differences. The audiences are different, both in category/niche and GEO coverage. Both taboola and outbrain are more strict, when it comes to what they approve to be promoted on their networks. So it's possible they are going to reject what revcontent accepted... I'm not saying it's gonna be the case for sure, but it's possible, based on what vertical you are in and what your creatives look like.

The algo of each network is different too, so the traffic disctribution will differ from one network to the next.

But anyways, let me tag some experienced native guys that we have here on the forum, they are definitely more qualified than myself to give advice @platinum @jack_l can you guys chime in and help a fellow member

01-07-2021 02:27 PM #3 platinum (Veteran Member)

Actually the question is a bit broad and @matuloo summed it up pretty well!

Generally speaking both Taboola and Outbrain tend to have more "reputable" publisher sites compared to the other networks. Therefore, the compliance rules are more strict. As matuloo mentioned, you're most probably going to need new creatives and landers when moving from Rev to Taboola or Outbrain, especially if you're running aggressive angles or are in the grey border line with rev already.

Briefly you will need to:
- Avoid using too aggressive images especially the type of images which some viewers might find disturbing.
- Have working privacy policy, terms and contact pages linked to your landers.
- Remove any bold made up testimonial/screenshots, or any other shocking claims (especially medical or scientific ones - if there is evidence, sometimes you'll need to cite or link to the official document)

Of course the compliance list goes even longer, but these are the main ones.

Then when it comes to the optimization approach and bidding strategy, the difference is quite noticeable. On both Taboola and Outbrain you can leverage the benefit of using their built-in algorithm to help you get the results quicker. Also, campaign level bids usually define the some kind of mid-range bid (depends and differs on each traffic source) and their algorithm will play with the bids trying to find the sweet-spot for the results you're looking for.

So to sum it up here's a quick breakdown of the differences for both Taboola and Outbrain.

Taboola:
Headline length: 60 characters (titles over 50 characters are allowed but may be truncated)
Min. Img size: 600x400px
Conversion optimization options: Smart Bid (algo) or Fixed Bid (fully manual)
Optimization events: Yes (custom conversion events)
Widget (site) blocking limit: 1500 on campaign level (+1500 on the account level)
Custom Publisher Bids: Yes - default limit 200 sites per campaign
Ad level bids: No

Outbrain:
Headline length: 150 characters (suggested to keep it up to 50-60 characters)
Min. Img size: 600x400px
Conversion optimization options: Fully automatic; Semi Automatic (most used among affiliates); Target CPA and Target ROAS
Optimization events: Yes (custom conversion events)
Default Blocking limits: 30 Publishers and 100 Sections (needs additional request to lift these to a higher limit)
Custom Publisher Bids: Yes (on the section level only)
Ad level bids: Yes - when used overrides the algorithm bidding strategy and results in a multiplication of [Campaign CPC] x [Ad Bid Adjustment] x [Section Bid Adjustment]


Both these sources tend to behave better when you post conversion events to them, so I'd suggest to do that when ready to get started with any of them.

01-07-2021 07:30 PM #4 matuloo (Legendary Moderator)

Thanks platinum!

01-08-2021 01:23 AM #5 jack_l (Veteran Member)

Quote Originally Posted by matuloo View Post
The core setup is more or less the same, but there will be some major differences. The audiences are different, both in category/niche and GEO coverage. Both taboola and outbrain are more strict, when it comes to what they approve to be promoted on their networks. So it's possible they are going to reject what revcontent accepted... I'm not saying it's gonna be the case for sure, but it's possible, based on what vertical you are in and what your creatives look like.

The algo of each network is different too, so the traffic disctribution will differ from one network to the next.

But anyways, let me tag some experienced native guys that we have here on the forum, they are definitely more qualified than myself to give advice @platinum @jack_l can you guys chime in and help a fellow member
@haqe321 - the only thing I would add is that while on Revcontent you can start with low bids and work up, on Outbrain you really need to 'rev the engine' with a high bid and then gradually reduce it. Outbrain seems like by far the most sensitive to ad ctr so you really need good ads and you need to continually upload new ads, whereas on Revcontent and Taboola one good ad can last for months.

And then yeah the other two big differences are that Revcontent doesn't have infinite scroll widgets, so usually you either are or are not getting traffic from an individual widget based on bid. Whereas on Outbrain and Taboola you'll still get traffic on most pubs but the bid will determine where you are in the infinite scroll (top, medium, bottom, etc). This also means you can clone campaigns more without worrying about hurting yourself, as it were, and on both platforms I think cloning camps is a great strategy, and then let your winners run and turn the losers off.

And then finally as platinum mentioned the biggest difference is that Outbrain and Taboola have 'SmartBid'/AI-based buying where you can let the algo buy for you as its knowledge builds up the more and more conversions you get (similar to facebook's pixel). I personally like to use SmartBid on Taboola and the 'Optimized' ad setting but some folks would disagree and do it totally differently, so maybe test out a few strategies. And then on Outbrain I like 'Semi-Optimized', but I've also had good luck with fully optimized, and some folks do totally manual, so same thing there in that there are different strategies you can pursue.

Technically I think Revc also has a SmartBid-type setting you can use but I've never really heard of anyone using it extensively (could be wrong though).



PS Also Taboola is VERY hypervigilant about cloaking right now so I would be really careful not to accidentally give them the impression you are doing that. I would not split-test two different landing pages via tracker rotation from the same campaign link, or radically change one after initial approval. I would split-test the landers via two identical ads with different tracking links. Obviously this is not as good as split-testing from the same ad, and its kind of overkill, but better safe than sorry in my humble opinion. I would like to think that their moderation team can tell the difference between split-testing vs cloaking, but I'm not sure if this is always the case. Note: They actually built this into their current dashboard - when you upload ads there's an option to upload multiple landing pages. So you can upload 2 different lp's, 2 different images, 2 different headlines, and then it will spit out 8 ads (2*2*2=8).

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