Outbrain expands strategic partnership with Microsoft
Outbrain Inc., a leading web recommendation platform, announced the expansion of its global partnership withMicrosoft. It will leverage Microsoft Azure for improved results encompassing services, technology, and business initiatives.
Why we care:
As a long-standing Microsoft partner,Outbrainhas a wide range of advertising and technology integrations that span MSN, Microsoft 365, Xbox, and Microsoft Bing. Outbrain will be working with Microsoft Azure for a multi-year period to accelerate the fast-paced development of its media platform.
Details:
Outbrain’s platform serves 1 billion consumers worldwide with over 10 billion recommendations and ads daily, generating more than 1.5 million engagements per hour spanning over 7,000 media partners.
A multi-year strategic partnership with Microsoft aims to foster Outbrain’s global expansion, fast-track development cycles, and improve connectivity between its advertisers and publishers, especially its programmatic bidders.
This collaboration will support Outbrain’s business and innovation capabilities, enhancing its already extensive data with a rich set of tools and services, ultimately helping Outbrain to better serve its customers with improved business outcomes.
Interesting Read:Is Microsoft Reinventing Its Ad Business With Massive Acquisitions?
And that’s what they said:
David Kostman, Co-CEO of Outbrain expressed his excitement over the extended partnership andsaid,
“We share the mission of supporting independent journalism and the open web. Over the course of the last decade, we have worked together to serve publishers and advertisers with high quality solutions across the globe. Extending our partnership with Microsoft to include Microsoft Azure technology as part of our hybrid cloud platform will drive innovation and deepen the relationship between our companies.”
Rob Wilk, vice president, Microsoft Advertising said that Outbrain has been an important part of their ecosystem since 2012. He further added,
“The company’s focus on delivering innovative advertising products and programmatic solutions has helped expand our business in several areas over the last few years. We’ve been impressed by Outbrain’s platform, scale, and technology and are pleased to see Outbrain embrace Microsoft Azure and look forward to how it will improve performance for advertisers in Microsoft’s growing advertising ecosystem and on the open web.”
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Outbrain Launches New Native Advertising Header Bidding Capability
Outbrain, a recommendation platform, has announced the global launch of a new Native Advertising Header Bidding technology, which allows Outbrain to serve advertising on any ad placement, enabling media partners to enhance their monetization strategy.
Outbrain Native Ads are served via Native Header Bidding, which allows the Outbrain advertising network to programmatically bid into display and video ad units.
Interesting Read:Outbrain Expands Video Offering With A Swiss Start-Up Acquisition
According to the company, this strategic shift is intended to assist Outbrain media partners to optimize income from standard ad units while also giving Outbrain advertisers additional possibilities to broadcast their advertising and engage customers with Outbrain Native Ads.
Outbrain joins the Header Bidding market by harnessing its extensive integration with media partners, which gives unparalleled access to contextual performance and behavioral interest signals, allowing for more efficient bidding. As a consequence, consumers will have a more personalized and relevant ad experience, while advertisers will achieve optimum success.
Interesting Read:At $1.25B Valuation For News Link Recommendations, Outbrain Raises $160M
Ayal Steiner, Outbrain VP of Advertising said –
“Up until now, Outbrain ads were only shown in our recommendation feed but with Native Header Bidding, we now show ads also on display and video ad placements.”
Steiner added –
“The expected result is that users will experience more relevant ads served through native ad experiences that are much more user friendly, and Outbrain advertisers will benefit from more ad inventory which creates new opportunities to engage potential customers on the open web.”
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At $1.25B Valuation For News Link Recommendations, Outbrain Raises $160M
The New York-based firm, Outbrain, which delivers recommended online links at the bottom of news items,raised $160 millionin its first public offering today, valued at $1.25 billion.
It sold 8 million shares of common stock on Nasdaq for $20 each, and the price surged to $20.99 on the first day of trading before falling down to $20.15 at the end of the day. The stock is traded under the stock symbol “OB.”
Outbrain, started in 2006 and launched with its first publisher in 2008, is a widget that appears at the bottom of media stories, such as those on CNN, and suggests further links to click on.
Some have referred to this as clickbait, but the business claims that it is quite successful, with many users willingly clicking on Outbrain’s recommendations for additional stories.
Advertiserscan add their ads, and Outbrain will split a portion of the revenue with them.
The co-CEO of Outbrain, Yaron Galai, said in an interview –
以至于改变了和演化,started before mobile even existed in a real way. The thing I’m proud of most is the vision for this market has remained remarkably consistent
He added –
And that was to solve two things. First, the user experience for people to help them discover what’s next. And the second is to create a sustainable source of revenue for media owners, for publishers and newspapers
Galai还表示,移动是一个g的到来ame-changer for Outbrain. The user experience of a newsfeed on a mobile phone has evolved into a natural sort of experience, with users on social networks and other sites just acclimated to thumbing through a tailored feed of recommendations.
Over the years,Outbrainhas completed five acquisitions. With 900 workers globally, the firm employs 300 individuals in two research and development facilities in Israel and Slovenia.
Galai also commented –
The results we see in the growth of the company generating a run rate of about a billion dollars in revenue is all based on engagement. Advertisers only pay us for actual engaged consumers. And so the growth is proof of that
