Audience Engagement Top Stories
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Outbrain launches Content Coalition to fuel audience exchange between publishers

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Outbrain, the global content recommendation platform, has launched a new product — Content Coalition — which invites publishers to form audience exchange networks with other publishers in order to diversify their audience referral sources.

The service is being offered to publishers free of charge and aims to drive a better discovery experience for users by recommending content from other coalition members.

Launched and tested first in Australia and New Zealand, but now available across the EU and U.S., the initiative will enable Coalition members to grow their audiences through a new channel by utilizing Outbrain’s SmartFeed technology to exchange links, for free.

Outbrain’s SmartFeed is an AI-driven platform that uses AI to recommend appropriate content for readers – the new product will build on this by allowing publishers to have full control over which sites they share links with and set audience exchange rules and policies around the type of content to be recommended.

Outbrain SmartFeed

The move comes as many publishers are looking to diversify their discovery and referral networks after Australian publishers faced an average 16% drop in traffic when Facebook switched off news link sharing in the country for a week in February.

“The events of the past few weeks in Australia and Facebook’s move to block news content have demonstrated once again why publishers need to diversify ways to grow their audience,” said Stephanie Himoff, Global VP Supply Partnerships at Outbrain, adding, “creating Content Coalitions allows publishers to develop brand loyalty while reducing dependency on search and social platforms.”

Content sharing creates a richer and contextually relevant discovery experience for audiences, improving the user experience and removing the need for cross-platform news consumption

Stephanie Himoff, Global VP Supply Partnerships, Outbrain

Speaking to WNIP, Himoff continued, “The benefit for large publishers is getting their relevant content discovered on more specialist sites, showing potentially harder to reach audiences that they’re also a destination for content which interests them.

“For smaller publishers, it’s a chance to scale and share audiences. We know people are diverse and have a range of different interests, so there’s an opportunity here to find new audiences for free by cross-pollinating with sites around potential users’ other interests.”

Publishers interested in joining the coalition can find out more here.