Home > Paid Traffic Sources > Native

---

Neat Little Outbrain Hack (11)

---

Hey ya'll-

Wanted to share a little trick I re-discovered on Outbrain recently... had done it a couple times last year but then forgot about it...

Nothing crazy but as it didn't occur to me for a long time I'm guessing there's other folks who haven't though of it either.

Basically, if you have always passed your conversion data to Outbrain, you can sort by 'Publisher' or 'Section' (a Publisher can contain multiple sections, if you're wondering the difference), set the time to 'All Time', and set the filter to 'All Campaigns', and then see the results per publisher or section across every campaign you've ever run combined.

Then... you find all the ones that are consistently really bad, and block them on the account level.

I just did this for the first time in a year or so and blocked about 40 publishers.

None of them were in the top 25 by volume, but combined I imagine they have accounted for maybe 10% of my overall spend in the last year.

I have blocked sections on a campaign level before, and in a few cases when I noticed a really bad section on one campaign I would go and block it on an account level, but by filitering it in this way you catch the publishers and sections that are really bad but which never get enough volume for you to notice them when only looking within a single campaign.

Some were just outright 0% 'bot widget' type ones, but there were others that would get conversions but were just really bad overall and always had very low conversion rates.

Since I did this I've noticed an improvement in the performance of my campaigns as well, so thought I'd share it on here

---

Thanks. I bet this would work on Taboola as well, no? I'm on my phone, but definitely worth looking at in the morning.

---

I don't remember if Taboola allows account-level blocks or not... but yes, if they do then you could certainly do the same thing

---

I know a rep can, I've seen them. I'm just not sure how to do it myself, something I need to ask.

Which raises the question. I assume placements tend to do the same across the vertical, correct? If a site sucks for auto leads, it will probably suck for life leads?

---

Awesome tip I’m gona do this now! Thanks for sharing.

Hey Jack have you tried the new MSN only feature on Outbrain? I’m testing it now, still early but I’m noticing very expensive clicks and low volume. Gonna keep upping the bid and see how it goes.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

---

Hey man for sure - yeah, I've tried the MSN-only whitelist they have a number of times actually. I agree completely - much pricier clicks and lower volume. I've definitely done alright with it, but not significantly better than plain run of network. I think it is really valuable if you want to test a new offer and get a clear idea of its potential though.

With that said, I have had decent success with their other big whitelist, not sure if its their 'News' one, or if its their 'Performance' one or what... Again, not always better than run of network, but certainly worth trying

---

Cool man always great to hear from you, seeing you as such a leader in the native section of STM and all tbh haha. Cheers.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

---

Thanks man, that's very kind of you to say.

---

So per my rep at Taboola. If you go select 'All Campaigns' and then go to the site tab, you can turn off sites. This is then an account wide block. He said that it will apply to future campaigns as well. I have done this before he mentioned it and I believe it behaved that way, but I recommend testing for yourself to be sure.

---

Thanks @jack_l for calling attention to this tactic!

The same tactic can be applied to pretty much any other traffic networks that has lots of publishers. I do this with pop traffic and display traffic all the time. Some pubs just suck balls across the board for all geos and ad placements.



Amy

---

cool, i didnt try this network, thank you for the tips.

true!

---

Home > Paid Traffic Sources > Native