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Say it OutLoud!

We all know the feeling. You’re sitting at your desk when suddenly Google Alerts hits and you see it! Someone has written a fantastic piece about your product! Or picked up on a post you just wrote and reblogged it with great commentary! You jump up and down, do a little dance, show it off to your friends or boss, and then someone says (always the spoiler): “Great….But how many people will read this?” 

That’s when you need OutLoud. 

Newly launched, OutLoud amplifies great press coverage, blog posts, reviews, or press releases that you want to make sure get read. With OutLoud, anyone can submit interesting articles (and interesting is key!) to Outbrain and we will recommend them on relevant pages across the thousands of sites using our content recommendation engine, from USA Today, Slate, Fox and Tribune to Golf.com, and the SportingNews. And it’s only $10-per-month for each article you choose to amplify (that’s not a typo).

OutLoud is a great fit for just about anyone that wants to promote themself:

• The excited marketer wanting to drive word-of-mouth by amplifying positive reviews and articles about their company
• The proud blogger who wants their most brilliant posts to reach a larger audience
• The innovative PR professional trying to find new ways to distribute press releases and earned media
• The social media director, trying to build community by exposing larger audiences to a company blog, or to conversations happening on other sites about their products
• The passionate blog reader who fell in love with an article which perfectly expresses her point-of-view and who wants to make sure others are exposed to it too  

And at $10, OutLoud is really a no-brainer. If you analyze the opportunity for more than a few minutes, you’ve already spent more than you would by just trying it. Imagine, thousands of people exposed to your chosen content for less than the cost of a beet salad. 

How much did it cost you to write that great article? Or to develop that product, so good someone else took the time to write about it? Or to seed your talking points so effectively in the market that now others are repeating them for you like a trained parrot? After all that effort, spending another $10 to make sure a lot of people read what you’ve produced just makes sense. 

OutLoud targets your articles by relevancy and audience engagement—when we think someone will be interested in your content (because they are reading something similar), we show your links. Articles that people seem to enjoy more get an audience lift. Because of this focus on reader interest, there are no traffic guarantees with OutLoud, but there also isn’t a limit to how much exposure you could receive. The more interesting the article, the more successful it is in drawing a large audience. An average article will drive 50 to 100 readers a month, and we frequently see articles that drive hundreds or even thousands of interested readers.

Here's one way your OutLoud links might show up (the top link, disclosed as 'Selected for you by a sponsor'):

We have some other cool features for the program too …online access to real-time reporting and an embedded way for people to share your articles over Facebook or Twitter after they read them. You can add, replace or remove articles at any time. And with our self service interface, you can manage your articles directly. 

So OutLoud, and Get Read!

(more details here)

Coverage of OutLoud on VC Cafe, Jay Meydad's blog, Yaron's blog and 140.co.il. Thanks all!

outbrain @ MPA's Innovation Summit, then off to Blogworld

The booth is back out and ready to roll again.  This week you can't miss outbrain as we are exhibiting at the Magazine Publisher's Association's Innovation Summit at the Grand Hyatt here in New York City tomorrow and Thursday.  This promises to be an awesome event given the recent news in the magazine sector on shuttered print titles and the need for establishing additional revenue streams.  We are committed to helping publishers of all sizes, including magazines enhance their web assets by serving readers great content.  For magazines this translates into happier online readers, significant traffic and a new, sustainable stream of revenue. 

Then it's off to Blogworld in Las Vegas for our third year.  Come say hello to Kate and I as we will have the latest in how we are helping some of the largest publishers and smallest bloggers all delight their readers with relevant content.  This year we add revenue to the mix and in classic outbrain fashion, it's not what you expect.  You won't see ugly, irrelevant banners or images of teeth or midsections within our widget.  What you will see is a reader friendly ad unit that is actually useful to the reader.  Think about how google ads are relevant when searching and apply this same concept to content.  Come check us at booth #413.

Hockey Anyone?

Here at outbrain, we like to make our own hockey sticks but not out of wood.  Rather we prefer to use page views and uniques to shape our sticks.  We just put the finishing touches on a nice one and just had to share it with our install base.  Thanks to all of you and some new members like USAToday.com, all the FOX TV stations, TheBigMoney.com, Slate.com, SportingNews.com, TheCarConnection.com and a gaggle of others we're ready to faceoff.

Lijit & outbrain stand for reader goodness

The Internet can be a big, overwhelming place.  There's a lot of information out there - some would say too much information.  Here at outbrain, we try to help readers discover content that they might not have been looking for, but find incredibly interesting.  But we know that sometimes readers know what their looking for and the question then becomes one of searching from a trustworthy source.  Google, Bing, Ask, etc. these tools are great if you want to search everything, but sometimes the more information you have to access, the harder it is to find the best result.

Enter Lijit.  The good folks at Lijit are doing their part to help searchers find what they are looking for by making the searchable network a little bit smaller and a little more personal.  When you install Lijit's search wijit, you can set up your own list of sites to include in the search index & corresponding results.  Think your "own network" of trusted sources.  This focus on relevancy is why we here at outbrain recommend to our bloggers that adding Lijit to their blogs is a good idea.  Lijit's reader focused approach is similar to our lighthouse here, which is serving readers "the most interesting" content.

In addition to returning interesting search results, Lijit also provides bloggers with a top notch reporting system that surfaces detailed statistics about what readers are searching for.  This is highly valuable information for better understanding what you audience is quering on your blog.

The folks at Lijit are great and just so happens they make some great tools for your blog.  Give their widgets a shot and take one step further in serving your readers well.

follow Lijit on Twitter, check their blog for cool updates, and if you're in Boulder give em' a shout!

Reader Trust First, Revenue Second

These days revenue is the top priority for most publishers and by many accounts rightly so.  But for long term growth, revenue is what comes as a follow up to a good reader experience.  If a publisher is moving the needle on reader metrics like return visits, time spent, engagement actions (ratings, recommends, comments) then revenue producing programs have a much stronger base to work from.  It's no secret that we here at outbrain are building an alternative solution for publishers to earn revenue.  We don't believe the internet needs another revenue solution that attempts to interrupt a reader from reading about a subject their interested in to a commercial display type of ad.  Instead we are looking to build trust with our publishers' readers via the links we serve them as recommended reading.  As a company, reader trust is a lighthouse across our business and one that we measure and track as a KPI.  When a publisher places a third party application on their site, what is the effect on reader trust?  If an application generates some revenue, but lowers reader trust, is it worth it?  Some have called this outlook ideological, especially in these tough times as publishers are working hard to right their ships.  But we stand by the premise that readers don't want to be interrupted and that earning reader trust is key to being successful when you're in the business of serving an audience online.  So we will lead with reader trust, and generate revenue from readers trusting and clicking on outbrain generated links.  Sure we could make more money upfront by jamming interruptive ads into our real estate, but in the long term, we know that building reader trust is one of the cornerstones of what lies ahead for successful companies serving audiences online. If you are interested to learn more about how we earn reader trust drop us a line.

Publishers Can Get More From Archived Content

More and more we are hearing that publishers are looking to lift page views by getting visitors coming from search engines to click deeper into their sites.  These visitors, called "deep linkers", come to the publisher pages from a search query on a specific topic.  The issue is that many of these visitors are arriving at archived pages on the publisher site.  The problem is these "deep linkers" are arriving at content pages that are simply out of date with little to no updated content.  So the "deep linker" arrives at the archived page and bounces off.  The opportunity here is to get these "deep linkers" beyond the initial page they land on from the search engine.  Enter outbrain.  When publishers install outbrain, our java-script running at the footer of each post will automatically show the "deep linker" the most relevant and fresh set of links, even on posts that are deep within an archive.  This means that "deep linkers" looking at content pages that may be months or even years old can also see links to interesting links that are up to date or "just breaking."  Do the math.  Look at how many visitors you may be getting from the search engines, Facebook or Twitter on pages  that are not current.  If that traffic amount is significant, calculate the lift in pageviews that may result if you can get some of them to click another link.  We have seen some numbers and it can be quite staggering.  If you want to learn more ping john (at) outbrain (dot) com. So yes the conversation is all about revenue these days, but traffic acquisition will always be a key component for a publisher.  Addressing large swaths of traffic opportunities is always a good idea to win the short term battle and also the long term war.

"Chicago Blogger" TweetUp tonight @ Clark St Ale House

Tonight at 5:30 in Chicago come down and join the founder of outbrain and other fellow outbrainers at the Clark Street Ale House for a cold beer.  Choosing which beer to enjoy sounds like the hard part as they have some 30 on tap and another 70 ready to go.  Keep your eyes out for some folks from the Chicago Tribune and bloggers from www.ChicagosBestBlogs.com. 

Clark Street Ale House
Neighborhoods: Near North Side, River North
742 N Clark Street
(between Chicago Ave & Superior St)
Chicago, IL 60610

(312) 642-9253

To ReTweet you can grab this "pre-packaged" tweet;

outbrain's "Chicago Bloggers" TweetUp is tonight at the Clark Street Ale House at 5:30; http://bit.ly/Y2cOa outbrainers are wearing stars

The hash tag for the event will be:

#ChicagoBlog

Enjoy!

Outbrain happy hour in Chicago

Next Wednesday (the 15th), we'll be grabbing a beer with bloggers in Chicago. If you want to join us (beer's on us!), either send me an email (galai[at]outbrain.com), or follow us on Twitter (twitter.com/outbrain) and DM your blog's URL to us and we'll send you the details.

Also, feel free to re-tweet this:
RT @outbrain: Are you a blogger in Chicago? Join the @outbrain crew for a free beer next Wednesday (the 15th). DM @outbrain for details.

Hope to see you next week!

{image CC - defekto. Thanks!}

How Remarkable Products & Authenticity Win Together

The issue of authenticity has been raised this week in connection with FORD's social media campaign for the 2010 launch of the new FORD Fiesta.  The spirited debate started here on this post and following comments over @ EyeCube around the ability for FORD's test drivers or "agents" as they are being called, to produce authentic reviews of their experience with the car, given that FORD is giving them the car for 6 months, gas and insurance paid for.

Bill Sledzik from Toughsledding held that agents may be influenced by the program (read FORD's generosity) and this influence may alter their review of the car.  Scott Monty from FORD and Rick Liebling (author EyeCube) both responded that since FORD is being open and transparent upfront, and is encouraging agents to give authentic feedback, good or bad, that the campaign can produce authentic feedback.

As far as the feedback is concerned, I think based on FORD's upfront posture, they will get enough authentic feedback to work with.  Will some agents hold back? maybe but ultimately that's not the point.  The point is FORD is betting that the Fiesta is a remarkable car and that authentic feedback will show just that.  As we know, no matter how much social sauce and WOM tactics we employ, if the product or service is not remarkable (read worth talking about) then it's back to the drawing board. 

From seeing the car in person at the FiestaMovement Tweetup in NYC this week it certainly looks remarkable and worthy of garnering plenty of positive WOM.  Here at outbrain, we are actually staking our company (and our recent raise of 12M) on the value of authentic reviews produced by consumers about products like the Ford Fiesta.  In fact we built an entire system to do just this.  We think that a review from a trusted source (i.e. from one of FORD's Fiesta agents) can be a very compelling method to increase awareness about a product.  In fact we have built a scalable way for marketers to distribute links pointing to people talking about their brands and products.  In the early going here in talking with top brands and agencies, some marketers have objected to not having total control over the environment.  Environment in this case being the landing page where the authetic review lives.  But that's exactly the point.  The authentic review is valuable precisely because the content may not be all positive.  The coveted metric of engagement is directly correlated to authenticity.  We consumers make a decision in a nano second on how trustworthy an advertisement or review might be.  If we deem the review to be trustworthy, then engagement rises.  Engagement metrics with consumers reading reviews (they deem authentic) far outpaces engagement levels with other more common types of ad units.  So kudos to Scott & Co. @ FORD, Bill and Rick over at Eyecube for surfacing this conversation.  We agree that authenticity is the new currency for marketers, now it's just a matter of getting remarkable products out in the market worth talking about.