
Publishers Are Rethinking Those ‘Around the Web’ Ads - gk1
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/31/business/media/publishers-rethink-outbrain-taboola-ads.html?_r=0
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gregmac
These ads specifically were the ads that drove me to ad blockers. I resisted
for years, as I took the stance I simply didn't visit sites that had overly
obnoxious ads. I've had flash turned off for years so that likely cut down on
a lot of that garbage anyway.

Then these fake "Other things you might like" ads started appearing around
many sites. Occasionally somewhat relevant, but always click-bait headlines. I
was even tricked once or twice early on, since I hadn't yet recognized those
as ads.

Then they started becoming outright obnoxious, and everywhere, and one day I
just lost it and installed an adblocker. Now I can't imagine how I'd ever go
back.

~~~
pjc50
Yup. And I blocked Taboola and Outbrain in my hosts file years ago after some
particularly unpleasant ads of rotting teeth. To me they're a symbol of low-
quality misleading advertising.

I think there might be a place for good cross-advertising of articles, but
that seems to not be what the public clicks on.

~~~
davemel37
It has less to do with what the public clicks and more to do with the level of
quality competition amongst advertisers. As more and more brands get smart
about native, the networks will push out the arbitrage sites and other bad
actors.

Bad advertisers is a sign that an ad network actually works but hasnt matured
yet.

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detaro
Surprised it took this long. These things are incredibly jarring and low-
quality, and actively try to redirect users away from the publishers sites
into a rabbithole of even more links.

If they supposedly pay so well, I wonder where the money for that comes from.
Just high ad-density?

~~~
chipperyman573
>If they supposedly pay so well, I wonder where the money for that comes from.
Just high ad-density?

Probably because ad-networks pay per click, and if you have something SO
clickbaity like these ads there's a lot of ad clicks. For example if google
ads and Outbrain both pay $7 per thousand clicks (I have never used either so
this is just a random number) and google ads bring in 1000 clicks while
outbrain brings in 3000, you're making 3 times as much money.

~~~
mbesto
From someone I know who advertised on Outbrain, he said the CTR was way higher
on Outbrain than it was on AdWords...so while we may all sit here and talk
about how crappy those ads are for general use, they do in fact drive traffic.

~~~
chipperyman573
That doesn't surprise me at all. Hell, I've clicked on them before and I could
tell exactly what they were. I'd imagine that the average user probably clicks
on them significantly more than they click on any other type of ad.

~~~
robryan
It is mostly just an arbitrage, the site advertising their click bait content
just needs to get more money from the numerous ads on their page than they
spent on the outbrain click.

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ericthor
Oh yes the "chumbox" [https://theawl.com/a-complete-taxonomy-of-internet-chum-
de0b...](https://theawl.com/a-complete-taxonomy-of-internet-chum-de0b7a070a2d)

~~~
colanderman
That's funny, I got through the first paragraph and thought "wow, that was a
short article". To my brain, chumboxes are what mark the end of an article.

------
davemel37
It is surprising to me how little people seem to know about native/ content
amplification ads.

Here is a brief primer: First, as far as quality goes, there are different
networks with different quality policies. In general, Outbrain is very strict,
Taboola is also, but less so, and RevContent, Content.ad, and the 50 or so
other native networks (including mantis targeting marijuana publishers and
jewish content network targeting orthodox jewish publishers), Like all
channels, there are good actors and bad actors.

Native ads - defined as ,turning the atomic consumption unit into an ad unit,
work really well because they dont require switching context. (i.e. adwords,
Facebook newsfeed ads, indeed job postings, etc...)

These ads work really well when done properly. (High contrast images,
compelling but very descriptive headline that qualifies the visitor, and
constant freshness in both images and headlines... pointing to a high quality
advertorial that presells a product or service, with links to purchase within
the content and as banners on the side of the page.)

Any new channel that is very effective will attract affiliate marketers and
some bad actors, but eventually, the networks police themselves, and they
become very effective ad networks for everyone (i.e. Facebook newsfeed ads are
basically as main stream now as Adwords is, but 5 years ago, it was full of
shady affiliates. It still is, but much less so.)

In general, There are five types of native advertisers.

1\. Advertising arbitrage sites - These are the the celebrity articles, etc...
the folks who do this right are making bank, but for every person who succeeds
at this, hundreds try and fail. It is a real skill. It also requires a large
bankroll since you get paid net 30-45 for the ads you place.

2\. Affiliate marketers primarily promoting info products and digital products
- These are the health ads (i.e. secret fruit loses belly fat or nail fungus
home remedy ads) and the software security ads. One thing you can be sure
of... when it comes to rampant affiliate marketers, if it wasn't driving
sales, they would move on to another channel.

3\. Direct advertisers (most notably LendingClub & bankrate - I think)Don't be
surprised to start seeing Proctor and Gamble to be running detergent native
ads and typical Ecommerce sites running ads to their content.

4\. Publishers growing their audience. - This is the most natural usage of
native ads, but lends itself to arbitrage like the first type of advertiser. I
worked with a few very large publishers buying ads on Taboola and Facebook
news feed and arbitraging it by serving up Taboola native ads successfully.

5\. Remarketing - These networks let you remarket you visitors and I think
criteo (for sure some do) run remarketing through taboola, etc... You can also
do it natively in the network by using their remarketing pixel.

If you do go this route, expect CPCs in the US on solid publishers to run you
over $1.00 and smaller publishers in the $0.30-$0.60 range.

You can still get the junk traffic for about $0.10 a click, but not much
cheaper.

All in All, I think native ads will find their place and be a net positive for
the internet...but clearly we aren't there yet. One thing is for sure.
Affiliate marketers who are spending $10-$20k/day on Native ads, are not
losing money. It works and it works well... and not just for arbitrage or info
products.

I've run successful Ecommerce product ads via native successfully.

Edit: Spelling

~~~
malchow
In our experience the vast majority of the money into the system is from
arbitrageurs. We've been fighting these guys for a long time.

Here's a better solution, now in private beta:
[http://pubsub.publir.com/](http://pubsub.publir.com/)

~~~
davemel37
Technically, all advertising is arbitrage between the value of the eyeballs
and the cost to reach those eyeballs...Adwords and Facebook were swamped with
arbitrage advertisers until they got better at relevancy.

Arbitrage by definition will stop working eventually. you are exploiting
information assymetry and a market inefficiency.

Once better targeting is in place and mainstream advertisers crack the native
cookie youll see the arbitrage die out like it did with Shopping comparison
engines in adwords.

~~~
malchow
Totally fair. I meant ad arbitrage. I.e., the advertisers are themselves
running ad-supported sites.

~~~
davemel37
Even ad arbitrage can be a net win. If Foxnews buys a native ad on drudge
report for a timely article, thats probably a net win for users... but
technically, since Fox is supported by ads, its ad arbitrage.

The "viral" and "slideshow forced pageview" sites will never be a net win in
my opinion...

but a quality publishers who is ad supported running arbitrage with native can
be a net win. (Although, I would quicker call that audience building than
straight arbitrage.)

but, I agree. These single click ad arbitrage sites are pure evil and should
be kicked off the native networks.

------
M_Grey
Honest question: How many people are left without some form of ad-blocking? It
seems to have become incredibly ubiquitous, and when malicious ads aren't
teaching people to go and get it, loud and obnoxious ads are.

~~~
legodt
Mobile users. There just aren't any pleasant ad free browser experiences for
stock mobile phone users. Firefox for Android is quite poor and fixing through
chrome requires root, something most users are not going to be doing

~~~
eropple
I have heard good things about block-this, which creates a VPN connection that
just strips out ads, but it seems (unscientifically, because Android doesn't
track VPN battery usage) a battery suck.

~~~
posterboy
yeah and it collects those ad avoiding users' data easier than any conent
network could. way to go. I mean, that's what I'd suspect.

~~~
eropple
Uh. It's open source. I built it from source myself.

~~~
posterboy
wat. that wasn't obvious from the comment.

~~~
eropple
Google "block-this". First result: "Block This - Open Source Ad Blocker".

~~~
posterboy
Yes, sure, I am going to search something on the off chance of it being an
open source project, because someone on the internet said it, who doesn't even
go with the good practice of including a link. Or, you know, I could express
myself, inform you of the impression you've left on me, and provoke the answer
to read for anyone, instead of finding it for myself. I'll admit in hindsight,
either approach seems somewhat improvable.

------
revelation
The web must be hell to people without multiple levels of adblocking
extensions.

Meanwhile, I'm confused the NYT is now citing random people from Twitter:

 _One Twitter user asked The Guardian in April: “Don’t these @Outbrain
articles kind of undermine the integrity of news outlets?”_

That must be _Outbrain inside_.

------
sotojuan
Heh, these ads were so bad to the point of being ridiculous. I had fun reading
them because they seemed so self aware and like a parody of ads.

~~~
loudandskittish
I've always enjoyed some of the juxtapositions, like some article about sexism
with one of those things suggesting readers might also like "Top 10 smoking
hot celebrities who got UGLY!"

And they I have to wonder, do those things even pay enough to be worth it?

------
intrasight
I've not seen those in some time. Thank you uBlock Origin. On Android I use
Firefix with Javascript disabled and in desktop mode. And if it's unreadable,
I prefix url with

about:reader?url=

------
flashman
One of my least-favourite parts of video game news outlet Rock Paper Shotgun
is the box of Taboola links at the end of the article. They never have
anything to do with video games.

The sad part it, I'm sure RPS gets a lot of money from that box of links,
meaning if they ditched it, I'd get less content from them. I would greenlight
their site in my adblocker but it's just not worth the crap fiesta of ads.

~~~
brainfire
Weirdly, "subscribing"/"supporting" RPS doesn't seem to remove the ads, or if
it does then that's not indicated on the page about it.

------
thr0waway1239
OK, great, but let us see what is going to replace them.

My guesses:

a) more aggressive retargeting - "Customers also bought" suggestions from
Amazon will now follow you around the web even when you complete a purchase

b) sign in using Amazon account to read articles

c) retargeting with social proof (you didn't buy X from company Y, but here is
a testimonial from a friend of a friend who thinks X is great)

d) revival of popup ads, only a little more beautifully designed - with large
clickable area and small, nearly invisible, too far above the fold close
buttons

------
st8675309
Fascinating watching this go down. It's like capitalism vs religion but the
iteration cycle is months/years not decades/millennium.

------
samdung
I wonder how Taboola and Outbrain keep coming back even when i manually
blocked them on Adblock and Adblock Plus.

~~~
Gaelan
Do you have acceptable ads on? They somehow managed to get whitelisted.

------
MarkMc
It's interesting to compare Outbrain to Google.

Google has all my search history, a list of all the AdSense websites I visit,
my YouTube history, my location history, ten years of my email history, my
Android app history, my Play Store purchase history. They have a large number
of PhD engineers working to develop the best internet advertising algorithms.

And yet when Time or Forbes want to display an ad that will generate the most
money, Google is beaten by a company that is simply focused on catchy ads.

I realise that Google's higher standards (and perhaps higher commission) put
their ads at a disadvantage in terms of publisher revenue, but I thought that
their huge advantage in targeting ads would more than compensate.

~~~
cm2012
I spend a lot of money on advertising. Google's non search stuff is not nearly
as good as FB for targeting.

------
627467
I keep asking: if you're a serious publisher, shouldn't it be your job to
create/curate the right content for your readership? Isn't it your job to know
your readers? Leaving screen real-estate (and really substantial amount) to
random third party algorithms who most likely than not will be spamming my
eyes with unrelated and sensationalist content is disrespectful.

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cyborgx7
Can't wait for the ad industry to die. I'll do what I can to help that process
along.

------
ocdtrekkie
One of the stunning things to me was discovering that Edge uses Outbrain and
Taboola type links on the browser's New Tab page... And you could get
malicious fake virus pages right off the home screen of Windows 10's default
browser.

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cloudjacker
If only advertising networks had the same disdain that perceived ponzi schemes
had

everyone throws money at the click through rate casino, anyone doing studies
on their ROI, or do we hand waive it away by saying they were targeting wrong

------
Jordrok
Thank goodness that the publishers are finally starting to catch on. Outbrain,
Taboola, and their ilk have always been utter trash and the sooner they die
the better off we'll all be.

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3chelon
It astounds me the number of so-called quality news outlets that seem happy
use these providers. Do they even know what kind of NSFW trash is appearing on
their readers' browsers?

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chris_wot
These ad networks tend to distribute redirect JavaScript. I know of at least
one newsroom that has editors all getting redirected to spam sites. From their
own publication!

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tyho
The link just shows me a login form. Mirror:

[https://archive.fo/zu1Wp](https://archive.fo/zu1Wp)

