How Coca-Cola is getting people to discover its content through Outbrain

We announced Singapore mobile commerce Carousell partnering with local media giant Singapore Press Holdings to launch SheShops marketplace earlier this week. But, more importantly, a general trend I thought was noteworthy and highlighted by our friend Terence over at SGE.io is the convergence between editorial and e-commerce. One example we can look at is Coca-Cola. The company is also looking at the startup scene.

Being in the Information Age can mean an overwhelming amount of information available. There’s just too much to consume on a daily basis. I appreciate tools like Outbrain, which helps in content discovery. The platform understands where your interests lie, predicts what you will find interesting, and personalizes the content pushed to you.

How it works

If you look at this inSing.com page that introduces recipes to celebrate Pink Dot and scroll right to the bottom, you will see other news that the system thinks you might be interested in either from the publisher or other publications. There’s another format to look at, too. It’s separated into two columns, one of which facilitates content discovery within the site itself, and the other facilitates it out of the site.

Outbrain Asia regional manager Anthony Hearne told me how the content is pushed and personalized. He says it’s based on its algorithms created by Outbrain’s Israeli team, which is dependent on context, popularity (what is trending), personalization (drops a cookie to try to understand content consumption and improve recommendations), collaborative filtering, and social sharing. Typically, “related links” often only link internally and are mainly based on timeliness and similar tags. These algorithms, though, enable people to discover more content not limited to just one source and interest.

With the technology in place to increase engagement, there is a shift in the heat map showing where people consume content, even below the fold. Anthony says engagement has gone up significantly; people are reading further down the page with the knowledge that interesting content lies at the end.

How it makes the bucks

Outbrain makes money from content publishers looking to amplify their content on various sites. Outbrain shares the revenue with site owners as an incentive, providing a native revenue stream. It also drives traffic into its own content, which increases audience engagement. In fact, Anthony also added that the click-through rate to internal content is twice the amount of external links. He also said its platform is currently installed across 100,000 global sites, that includes Fast Company and CNN.

And because it attempts to understand your likes and dislikes, it applies personalization across different topics, making readers more engaged than they used to be (which explains my lack of sleep). In fact, the number of pageviews per session and those purely based on search and social media increased 44 and 46 percent, respectively.

People in Asia click on content more, Outbrain sets up HQ in Singapore

Outbrain says that it currently serves more than 10 billion pageviews with an estimated reach of 378 million unique international visitors per month. 400 million of those pageviews are within Asia. And Anthony shared that in Asia, there is a 70 percent higher click-through rate than in America. Apparently, people in Asia click on related links more.

Why is this so? Anthony simply attributes it to trust. The audience trusts that they will not be clicking on advertisements, which allows them to put deeper faith in publishers. In fact, it has an editorial team to make sure the paid distribution content is quality. The editorial team curates content going into the platform, rejecting content that does not make the cut, thus protecting the end user’s content consumption.

With the immense potential here in Asia, Outbrain set up its HQ here in Singapore 11 months ago to learn about the region. It currently has 80 publishers in Asia, and the office will be servicing its growing client base, as well as a launchpad for its expansion.

(Editing by Paul Bischoff)

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How Coca-Cola is getting people to discover its content through Outbrain