[LINK] Outbrain

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

Outbrain-ing Australia

By Lucy Clark, 13th March 2013
<http://www.bandt.com.au/news/digital/outbrain-ing-australia>


Six months since its launch to the Australian market, Outbrain is turning 
the monetisation of online publishing upside-down.

Outbrain is a “content discovery platform” for publishers – it provides 
links to other web content that it believes will interest the reader, 
enabling publishers to monetise through third-party content.

Headquartered in New York and established six years ago, Outbrain is just 
beginning to make a mark in Australia, with major online publishers 
including The Age, SMH and news.com.au on its books. 

Outbrain is responsible for those ‘recommended’ links to other news stories 
underneath publishers’ content.

Ayal Steiner (pictured), general manager of Outbrain Australia, told B&T: 
“We algorithmically predict what other pieces of content would be most 
engaging for the reader.

“Behind the scenes, there is a lot of technology that goes into looking at 
the data and offering content for each reader. But, on face value on the 
page, it just helps the reader discover as much content as possible – 
similar to flipping the page in a magazine. And it’s not an ad – it’s part 
of the reading experience.”

Worldwide, Outbrains powers more than 80,000 sites, including CNN, Fox 
News, ABC News, Rolling Stone and The Guardian. It powers more than 70 
billion page recommendations a month.

Steiner added: “We put our readers first and make sure they trust the 
publisher to show them interesting pieces of content. But for the 
publishers, it’s a new monetisation avenue. Publishers will say that 
Outbrain is the number one top performing unit on their pages.”

And Outbrain has big plans in Australia. “What we see today in Australia is 
just the beginning,” Steiner told B&T. “We will be introducing mobile with 
our publishers soon.

“With all the current hype about content marketing and people buying 
traffic from search engines and social media, discovery is a new space – 
it’s an exciting space.”
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