Within the last 60 days or so, I’ve invested over $10,000 in ad spend into both Taboola and Outbrain. If you’re not familiar with the two, they are well known as the “other articles” native ads on 1000s of websites. You know, the ads at the bottom of Forbes that say “You’ll never guess how this man gained 10lbs of muscle overnight” and stuff like that. Basically the tabloid ads of the internet.
If you’re looking for ad ideas, and killer headlines, the ads people run on Outbrain and TAboola, are unmatched. You can easily see what image types and headlines are the ones which are converting the most. You’ll see them on damn near every site that hosts these ads. If you need headline ideas, look on sites like NY Post, Entrepreneur and Forbes for the “powered by” ads section. Chances are it’s Taboola or Outbrain ads you’re looking at.
While both Outbrain and Taboola are great platforms to run ads on, they are both very different. Both have different publications which your ads go on, as well as different delivery methods. With Outbrain, you’re able to set only a daily budget. You basically tell them how much you want to spend each day, and they spend that amount, plus about 20%. They always go over. With Taboola, you get a monthly budget, that you can break down daily if you want.
The audience targeting on both platforms is pretty much the same. You can choose from geographic location, and exclude publications you don’t want to run your ads on. For example, if you sell business coaching, you probably don’t want your ad on TMZ.com. Th best way to narrow down your audience is by excluding as many publications as you can, that way your ads run on the ones you want the most.
When you sign up for Taboola they assign you a rep. That rep sells you a package and then sends over a doc-u-sign paper agreement to sign. I had to commit to $5,000 and a $.45/per click rate. There was no time frame for me to spend the $5k, just agreement to spend it.
When I set my first campaign with a budget of $500 with Taboola, I spent the $500 in like 30 seconds. They have so much traffic it was nothing to them. Literally, my entire spend was gone in seconds. Google analytics reflected it was real too. I got around 1200 clicks in a few seconds. NUTS!!!
When I signed up for Outbrain, there was no rep. I did everything electronically. I was up and running with my first campaign in minutes flat. There was no minimum buy in and I could set a daily limit on clicks. With Outbrain, they spaced the clicks out over the e tire day.
While I paid $.45/click at Taboola, I averaged $.10/click at Outbrain. The quality of traffic and site distributions are very similar, so I get more bang for the buck at Outbrain.
I still use Taboola too though. With Taboola there’s some real good sites that I want my content on. Like Forbes and CNBC. I want my ads there for branding and such. Especially since the pixel tracking in my site can retarget them on Facebook and the Ad Network. So there’s a need to use both for me. Plus, I like my ads anywhere I can get them.
If you’ve been considering other places to run ads outside of Google PPC, Facebook and the other usual suspects, and you got some serious headline writing skills, you should run some tests on Outbrain first, and once you get the results you want, commit and use Taboola as well.
If you’re wondering what kind of ads I ran, I ran ads to blogs posts on my site www.hardcorecloser.com I have a very good method of generating leads once people hit my site. I’m sure you’ll see why, when you check it out. Be sure to share this on social media and subscribe to my homie Justin’s blog [since you’re already here]
