While I’m mainly going to talk about OutBrain here, realize that OutBrain and Taboola are nearly identical services and virtually interchangeable, at least in my opinion.

Have you ever made it to the end of an online article when you’ve seen something that says, “From Around the Web” or “Recommended Content?” Underneath you see several eye-catching images, each with a weird or shocking headline such as, “10 reasons your wife is about to leave you” or “This toxic vegetable is in your fridge” or “You won’t believe what they found in this abandoned car”.

These are probably OutBrain or Taboola ads. Although technically, they’re not ads because they must be content, even if that content is what you might call an ‘advertorial’, or an ad that appears to be a story.

Outbrain was founded in 2006 and bills itself as a “content discovery platform.” Taboola was founded in 2007 and is their biggest competitor. In fact, there was nearly a Taboola and OutBrain merger back in 2020. The combined company would have made a huge native advertising platform, but the deal fell apart and they are still competitors today.

I like using these services because you know the traffic is made up of readers and because I believe they’re still both grossly underused by advertisers.

Just remember that these aren’t technically ads, and they’re not PR, either, which means they don’t fit into your typical online marketing model. But they are cheap and they give you access to premium online publishers. Plus, they appear exactly when a reader is looking for something else to read – at the bottom of the story they just finished.

Here’s how it works: You create a post on your PIM that you want to promote. You then use OutBrain or Taboola to advertise your post on websites that are just as well targeted as a Facebook ad, only with far more reach.

As an example, if you were to take a traditional ad on CNN.com, you would pay something like $10 per thousand impressions (which gives zero guarantee of any clicks). But by using OutBrain, you would pay about 35 cents per CLICK. (These numbers are approximate and as of this writing).

The catch is that your advertisement is not an advertisement, it’s a promotion for your post or article. It has to be content and not a straight up ad or offer.

That said, both of these services allow the lines to get blurry here, so if your article provides great content AND contains a promotion, you’re probably fine.

By using these services you’re going to get cheap, yet incredible reach as long as you play by their rules.

Here’s how you might use it: Write an article on the top 5 worst foods for your heart. Promote that article on OutBrain, but at the end of your article you promote a free book on heart care in exchange for their email address, or even promote a paid heart supplement that immediately puts you into profit.

Just remember that the traffic must first go to a real piece of content and not a straight up advertisement.

Signing up to either service is simple and straightforward. Spend some time getting your locations, placements and devices set to find your true target audience. And be sure to layer your options rather than betting on a single setting to do it all. Your entire focus should be on getting qualified traffic that you can optimize, so track as much data as you can.

One huge improvement OutBrain has made lately is to allow you to bulk upload content and use their software to automatically test different version of content. For example, you could post 5 different versions of your article and offer to see which one performs the best for you. You can test headlines, images, content and so forth to truly optimize your results.

Once you submit your content it will be reviewed and approved, and then you can work it as you would any other paid ad campaign. You’ll want to track your data, improve upon it and test it some more.

Be sure your content is easily shareable on Twitter, Facebook and so forth. This way your OutBrain visitors can share your content with others, possibly making it go viral.

OutBrain’s audience is looking for content, which is why you are likely to find success if you offer more information in the form of a lead magnet. Offer them a free report, a free book, cheat sheet or whatever is relevant to the initial article in exchange for their email address. If you can successfully get emails with your content, then OutBrain will be one of the cheapest ways to drive traffic to your content.

To get started with OutBrain, first decide what you want: Social shares? Email sign-ups? Immediate sales? Then decide what content will best help you to reach that goal.

Go to OutBrain.com to set up your account, define your test budget, submit content for approval and watch analytics when your content goes live. Analyze your results and decide from there what to do next.

Check out Taboola.com, too. Choose whichever service speaks to you, or try them both out and then decide.

It’s an underutilized, cost effective way to advertise and in my opinion it’s well worth testing.

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