Comments on: Outbrain Launches “Sponsored But Good” Revenue Model http://www.centernetworks.com/outbrain-sponsored-but-good Web 2 and Social Media News and Reviews Sat, 21 Nov 2009 01:50:56 -0600 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: Steven Finch http://www.centernetworks.com/outbrain-sponsored-but-good/comment-page-#comment-21543 Steven Finch Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 #comment-21543 This is an interesting revenue model, but I think they will find it hard to find the right advertisers. This is an interesting revenue model, but I think they will find it hard to find the right advertisers.

]]> By: Jamie Lin http://www.centernetworks.com/outbrain-sponsored-but-good/comment-page-#comment-21547 Jamie Lin Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 #comment-21547 I think placing relevant ad among its recommendations is a natural progression given the kind of data (human-generated content relevance) Outbrain has accumulated and will continue to accumulate. But this particular implementation doesn't feel optimal as it doesn't seem to be taking advantage of the same user rating scenario to decide which ad is relevant to current post. If that's the case, I don't see much difference between this and a Google AdSense ad. I felt Outbrain's key asset is their ability to capture user preferences, which has potential to perform much better than Google's machine learning/guessing. I think placing relevant ad among its recommendations is a natural progression given the kind of data (human-generated content relevance) Outbrain has accumulated and will continue to accumulate. But this particular implementation doesn’t feel optimal as it doesn’t seem to be taking advantage of the same user rating scenario to decide which ad is relevant to current post. If that’s the case, I don’t see much difference between this and a Google AdSense ad. I felt Outbrain’s key asset is their ability to capture user preferences, which has potential to perform much better than Google’s machine learning/guessing.

]]> By: David Sasson http://www.centernetworks.com/outbrain-sponsored-but-good/comment-page-#comment-21549 David Sasson Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 #comment-21549 @Jamie Hey Jamie, thanks for your comment, and thanks to Allen for the write-up. This is David from Outbrain. So you know, we absolutely do use rating data to personalize our sponsored recommendations (just like our organic recommendations) and to target them to user interests. We will be doing a couple of things: 1) Editorially vetting that the content advertisers sponsor is *interesting* and well written. Pages that don't meet these (admittedly subjective) criteria won't be in the network. 2) Targeting the recommendations to people based on their interests, not simply based on the page that they are on. When it comes to providing good content recommendations, we think finding pages that are <strong>interesting</strong> is more important than finding pages that are precisely relevant to the current page. @Jamie

Hey Jamie, thanks for your comment, and thanks to Allen for the write-up. This is David from Outbrain. So you know, we absolutely do use rating data to personalize our sponsored recommendations (just like our organic recommendations) and to target them to user interests. We will be doing a couple of things:

1) Editorially vetting that the content advertisers sponsor is *interesting* and well written. Pages that don’t meet these (admittedly subjective) criteria won’t be in the network.

2) Targeting the recommendations to people based on their interests, not simply based on the page that they are on.

When it comes to providing good content recommendations, we think finding pages that are interesting is more important than finding pages that are precisely relevant to the current page.

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